80th birthday picnic: pulled pork, potato salad & cakes

Recipes for Amy’s Barbecue Sauce and Shirley’s Potato Salad

We recently celebrated my mom’s 80th birthday with a family picnic at Wayne Morris Ranch in Eugene. The picnic shelter includes limited kitchen facilities (sink, stovetop and outlets) but no barbecue grills. So, we decided on a menu of pulled pork sandwiches, an assortment of salads, baked beans and birthday cake! My sisters and I made all the food between us. For the pulled pork, we used the recipe for barbecue sauce from my friend (and work-twin) who self-named her recipe: Amy’s Famous Barbecue Sauce for Pulled Pork Sandwiches. We had a variety of salads including coleslaw, fruit salad, tomato-basil pasta salad and Shirley’s (my mom’s) Potato Salad. Our dessert table included German chocolate cake with coconut pecan frosting, lemon cake and funfetti cupcakes. Anyone who knows our family, knows one dessert option is never enough!

Most of us were travelling, so we made what we could ahead of time. My sister Michelle and I made the cakes and froze them, which helped with easily transporting them across state lines. Okay, one state line. Then we frosted and decorated them the night before and morning of the party. For the meat, we slow-cooked several pork shoulders in advance, then shredded and froze the meat. We had two versions of Amy’s barbecue sauce. One followed the recipe below and my sister made a no-sugar variety. They both turned out delicious and I think if you didn’t try the sugary one first, you wouldn’t have known that the other version wasn’t fully loaded. 

Amy’s Famous Barbecue Sauce for Pulled Pork

As an introduction to this barbecue sauce, let me explain that Amy and I worked at Motorola together for many years. I guess because we were both blond, our initials were both A.H. and we both worked in the public relations department in Phoenix, oh and we are both super fun, that meant that the executives in Austin couldn’t tell us apart. So twins we became, standing in for each other when needed. They never knew the difference. For my journalism and AP-style-guide loving friends, note that “BBQ” is not a word. Neither is “barbeque.” It’s always “barbecue.” Just thought I’d settle that upfront. With her permission, here’s the recipe that Amy has perfected over time.

Ingredients

2 lb. boneless pork loin or pork shoulder

1 Tbsp butter

2 Tbsp grated (or finely diced) onion

1 clove garlic 

1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 

1/4 teaspoon chili powder 

1/8 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp mustard (I used part yellow mustard and part whole grain Dijon mustard)

2 slugs tabasco sauce (I used Sriracha cause it’s what was in my fridge)

2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 cups ketchup

*Note: if you want a little more kick, add red pepper flakes or cayenne seasoning.

Directions

The meat:

Rub pork with seasoned salt and ground pepper. Brown the meat in a large fry pan on stovetop. Place meat in crockpot on low setting for at least 6 hours. When the pork is fork-tender and basically falling apart, remove it from the crockpot and completely shred with 2 forks. At this point, you can freeze or refrigerate it until ready to use or return shredded meat to the crockpot.

The original recipe calls for 2 lbs. boneless pork loin or pork shoulder. I think I’ve used both in the past, but this time I cooked a boneless and a bone-in (because it was on sale for 99 cents a pound!) pork shoulder. They both worked just fine. I turned mine on before I went to bed, so it cooked for about 9 hours. I cooked a second one the next day. And yes, the smell of pork wafted up my staircase for days.

The sauce:

Barbecue, not barbecue and not BBQ, sauce.

Melt butter in saucepan over stove. Add grated onion and crushed garlic and sauté until starting to brown. Add remaining ingredients, adjusting amounts to taste. When thoroughly blended, pour over pork in crockpot, mixing well. Continue cooking on low until ready to serve. You can let it cook on low setting for several hours. Test to make sure it’s heated through. Check on your crockpot and if the pork starts to dry out and stick to sides of crockpot, you need to stir and add a little water.

No-added-sugar version:

A bit of trivia according to Wikipedia: Early homemade barbecue sauces were generally made of just vinegar, salt and pepper. Boring. Sugar, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce started to be used in the 1920s, and after World War II, the quantity of sugar and the number of ingredients increased dramatically. 

If you are trying to limit sugar (or would rather get your sugar from the cake), omit the brown sugar and maple syrup. Use no sugar added ketchup. Check your balsamic vinegar – some brands have a little added sugar while others don’t. To sweeten the barbecue sauce, add 1/2 cup date paste.  

To make date paste:

• 2 cups pitted dates

• 1/2 cup water

Place dates in a bowl of boiling water to soften. This should take about 5-10 minutes. Drain and put dates and up to 1/2 cup water into food processer. Blend until smooth. This will make more than the ½ cup you need for the recipe, but I’m sure you’ll find another use.

Important: Err on the side of making too much barbecue sauce. You can always refrigerate or freeze the sauce. Nothing is worse than not enough sauce. I made two batches of sauce and think I had about 5 pounds of pork. It’s also easier to warm up the sauce first when mixing with cold shredded pork.

The roll dilemma

Which bread or buns are the best to use for pulled pork sandwiches? Amy recommends sourdough rolls. One camp suggested ciabatta rolls. I had a sample at home before the party on brioche. My conclusion: it depends on your personal preference and who’s eating it. Brioche or Kaiser rolls are soft and fluffy – so easier to eat (think braces, dentures, 80-year birthday party guests perhaps?) but you don’t want to let the meat sit on the rolls for any period of time or they will become mushy. For a thicker, chewier bite, opt for sourdough or ciabatta. If you like your pulled pork sandwiches open-faced with coleslaw piled on top, then ciabatta is the way to go. Either way, I find that smaller rolls are better. Don’t buy stadium or outdoor-style buns. 

The only pic of potato salad (way there in the back) that I managed to get!

Shirley’s Potato Salad

This is the potato salad my mom has made our entire lives. But now it’s too hard for her to peel all those potatoes, so us daughters have stepped in. This salad will always make me think of my mom and I think it’s important to carry on the tradition at least once a year! I’m not going to say this is super healthy (ahem Miracle Whip heavy), but if you like lots of eggs in your potato salad, you need to try this. It’s way better than any grocery store deli potato salad. I increased the portions for our party, but the below yields a large bowl, enough to serve a crowd of 10 or more. (For the record, this is the only time I eat Miracle Whip.)

Ingredients

10 medium russet potatoes

10 eggs, hard boiled

4 green onions 

¾ jar Miracle Whip 

3 squirts brown mustard 

3 squirts regular mustard

¼ cup sugar

Salt

Paprika

Directions

Peel all potatoes, cut in half or quarters depending on size and place in big pot of liberally salted cold water. Place on stovetop and bring to a boil. Turn down to medium-low and simmer in boiling water until medium firmness, but not too soft. You don’t want them to get mushy. Test them after 15 minutes with a fork. Drain potatoes and set aside to cool.

Boil eggs to your desire. You can even add a couple extra if you want. There are so many instructions out there on how to hard boil the perfect egg. I say the jury is still out. I do think the Instant Pot method works well though.

When cool, dice up potatoes and peel and chop the eggs. Add the chopped green onions. You may want to add more onions. Mix together lightly in large bowl, being careful not to mush the potatoes.

In a separate bowl, combine Miracle Whip, diced green onions, brown mustard, regular mustard and sugar. Pour dressing over potatoes, eggs and onions and mix everything together. I like to add a little more salt. Sprinkle paprika over the top and refrigerate for at least two hours. I made mine the day before.

Optional: Add diced dill pickles! Add black pepper! And, of course you can use mayonnaise instead of Miracle Whip. But do any of this and then it wouldn’t be Shirley’s Potato Salad, now would it?

Last but not least, the cakes!

As if coconut pecan frosting wasn’t enough, I added bittersweet chocolate Swiss buttercream.

For the German chocolate cake, I used the tried-and-true recipe from the Baker’s German Chocolate packet (Look for the green one in the baker’s aisle). I debated on making a different recipe that calls for browning the butter (always a good idea) and uses unsweetened coconut, but in the end I went with the traditional recipe that I knew my mom liked. While it calls for three 9” cake pans, I used three 8” cake pans. This results in a little higher rise for the cakes. I buttered the bottoms and sides of the tins and placed parchment circles on the bottom of each. Let cakes cool in pans on wire rack for 15 minutes. Then remove from pans and let cool completely on racks. 

When just cool, I placed each cake on a cardboard round (you can buy pre-cut rounds of both cardboard and parchment) or cut your own. Then I wrapped each cake in plastic twice to trap the moisture inside, then covered in foil and placed in freezer. For transport, I put in a cooler with a block of ice. I took out of freezer the morning I frosted them. I added a delicious glossy bittersweet chocolate Swiss buttercream to the sides of the cake to make it look more finished. Plus this frosting recipe has a yummy salty undertone that goes well with the sweetness of the cake.

I followed the instructions exactly for the Coconut Pecan Frosting. However, make sure you allow time for the frosting to cool before spreading on the cakes!

My sister Michelle made a moist and delicious lemon cake that uses a trifecta of lemon: lemon juice, lemon zest and lemon extract. It bakes up into a beautiful color. The cake was frosted with a lemon buttercream frosting. In between the layers is my sister’s homemade lemon curd on top of a very light layer of the buttercream to keep it from slipping around. The morning of the party we were running out of time and frantically trying to decorate the cake (not saying that someone left the cakes across town). If you don’t own a cake turntable and a bench scraper, let me tell you they make frosting a cake so much easier. I have a plastic one similar to this but wish I had this Adeco Revolving Cakestand! Our idea was to use a stencil in the shape of the numeral “80” and fill it in with sprinkles. We didn’t think about the fact that a paper stencil would stick to the cake and pull off some of the frosting. Oops. And the floor of our sister Joanie’s brand new house was christened with sprinkles. (Sorry Joanie.) I think it turned out cute though! 

Our stencil turned out a bit “rustic” — perfect for a picnic!

Lastly, we decided on Homemade Funfetti Cupcakes. Every party needs funfetti. I recommend using Wilton Rainbow Jimmies Sprinkles or another brand that you’ve tested out. Wilton won’t melt and turn into tie dye. A big thank you to my niece Courtney who made the frosting and decorated the cupcakes! Compared to the cakes, these were a tad dry but I still ate them! (I tend to have trouble with white cakes drying out …. Be careful not to overmix.) My husband said, “This is the best thing you’ve ever made with sprinkles.” Haha, I’m sure it was because they were baked into the cupcake and not rolling around the house or crunching between his teeth.

Here are a few family pictures from the party. Yes, I know I got way more pictures of the cakes than I did of the food 😂

Happy 80th birthday to my momma!

Happy 80th Mom!!

Sisters surrounding my mom, from left to right: Joanie, Michelle, Tami and Angie (me)

Me and my momma