‘Barefoot Contessa’: Ina Garten’s Elegant Oscars Night Menu
Everyone’s celebrating Oscars night this weekend. It’s a fun night to nosh on your favorite treats and perhaps even get everyone guessing about which movie or stars will be entering Academy Award history that night.
One celebrity chef who loves a good Oscars party is “Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten.
Here’s what she’s making for Sunday’s awards night!
Garten’s Hollywood connections
The 72-year-old Food Network star’s fans aren’t just ordinary people like us. She has quite a few Hollywood admirers. Among them are Tina Fey, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Taylor Swift, who Garten affectionately told The Huffington Post in 2018 is “very smart and very interesting and she loves her friends. She is wise beyond her years to say the least.”
Another famous friend is Jennifer Garner, who honored Garten in a column for Bon Appetit.
“What is my favorite Ina Garten recipe? This is an unfair question, I may have to quit here,” Garner wrote. “How could I possibly choose a favorite? Do you mean to ask me my favorite from each book? My favorite chicken, my favorite shrimp, my favorite muffin? Torture.”
Garner eventually revealed her favorite dish of Garten’s is the cook’s beef bourguignon.
Garten’s Chocolate Cassis Cake
The dessert the Hamptons, New York resident will be serving her guests Sunday night is gloriously chocolatey.
She posted about it on Instagram, saying “For the Academy Awards this year, I’m dressing up and serving something a little glamorous to watch the stars walk the red carpet.”
“I’m making Raspberry Royales – Champagne with just a splash of raspberry liqueur – and I’m serving it with my decadent Chocolate Cassis Cake.”
“They’re delicious together and (if you use a baking spray without flour) the cake is totally gluten-free! I hope your favorite movie wins!”
How to make her cake and champagne cocktail
To make this glorious cake, you’ll need butter, bittersweet chocolate, unsweetened cocoa powder, crème de cassis liqueur, good vanilla extract, extra large eggs, sugar, and kosher salt. You’ll also need heavy cream and strawberries.
It’s so good, Giada De Laurentiis confessed to InStyle in 2016 that it’s her favorite birthday cake.
“I have the same chocolate cake every year,” she said. “Ina uses a cherry liqueur in the frosting that is just freaking phenomenal and actually seeps into the cake itself.”
To make the Raspberry Royales Champagne a la Garten, you’ll need to coat the rims of your champagne glasses by pouring a small amount of framboise (an alcoholic drink fermented with raspberries) in a flat dish or saucer.
Pour 1/4 cup vanilla sugar in a different saucer and then quickly dip the rim of each champagne glass in the framboise, and then in the sugar. Make sure you set each one aside to dry.
Once each glass rim has dried, add two tablespoons of framboise into each glass. Drop in a few raspberries and then fill each glass with champagne. Enjoy the delicious and refreshing champagne!
Clearly, this is a menu worthy of its own Academy Award category!
Read more: ‘The Barefoot Contessa’: Ina Garten Confesses This is the 1 Dish She Can Never Get Right
