Shark Week!

I love Shark Week!  It's pretty much the best week of the year.  A whole week of awesome Shark Stuff plus it usually falls on the week of my birthday!  This year I decided to have a Shark Week premiere party.  We got to not only watch the premiere of the Shark Week programming but also enjoy foods fit for a King Shark.  I served two types of seafood sliders, cupcakes and drinks with shark cubes. 

First up were the Parmesan Fish Sliders with Basil Aioli.  I chose to make these with a white fish (talapia) that I finely chopped.  To the fish mixture I added a mix of italian seasoning, salt, pepper, garlic powder and fresh grated parmesan cheese and let it marinate for a few hours. I then added a bit of egg mixture and a few tablespoons of italian breadcrumb mix to help bind everything together and formed patties.  After cooking the patties in a frying pan with a bit of vegetable oil I served them on a mix of potato rolls and sesame seed rolls.  I topped them off with a basic basil aioli and a basil leaf.  Since, I love a variety of flavors when I'm eating I decided to make a second slider as well.  For the second slider I made a Teriyaki Shrimp slider with a spicy mayo.  I made this very similarly to how I made the first slider.  

I replaced the talapia with shrimp, which I seasoned with a store bought sweet teriyaki sauce.  Once again I added a bit of egg as a binder and some breadcrumbs to make the sliders a bit less dense.  For the breadcrumbs in these sliders I chose to use a panko breadcrumb as opposed to the traditional italian breadcrumb.  I topped these off with a spicy mayo sauce and a splash of the honey teriyaki marinade to keep things on the cool/sweet side.  These sliders were by far the hit at the party over the italian persuasion fish sliders.  In terms of construction they were much more difficult than the fish sliders though.  The shrimp was definitely less moist than the fish so the fine chop that I gave them didn't produce patties that were as well formed as the fish patties, they were much more crumbly.  Next time, I will definitely run the shrimp through a food processor to get more of a ground shrimp texture. 

Since you can't have dinner without dessert I also served some Shark Themed cupcakes.  I made these the day before the party and just topped them off with the Shark fins right as my guest were walking in the door!  The cupcakes are a pretty basic lemon cake recipe-- I injected some raspberry preserves in the center with a piping bag, for a nice surprise.  I topped the cupcakes with a blue raspberry marshmallow frosting.  I had some awesome marshmallow frosting on a wedding cupcake a few weeks ago and I wanted to try to recreate this on these cupcakes.  The shark fins were made of a basic marshmallow fondant that I dyed a gray/black color with food coloring.  

I didn't use a recipe for the sliders, I just made one up as I went along.  Since they were such a hit the next time I make them I will write everything down and post it.  The cupcakes were just a standard lemon cake recipe.  The marshmallow frosting which turned out really light and fluffy I made by using a basic butter cream frosting to which I added a teaspoon of raspberry extract and 8 ounces of marshmallow fluff.  I had a million bags of marshmallows at home so I had tried to make my own marshmallow fluff but I was really unsuccessful at this, I ended up running out to the store and getting "real" fluff.  I have 1/2 a container of fluff left so I am definitly seeing more marshmellow frosted cupcakes in my future!