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Lentil-Beet Salad (or Lentils with Mint and Beets)

July 20, 2016 2 Comments

The lentil-beet salad from Urban Pantry (technically dubbed "lentils with mint and beets") was the winner of last Saturday's idea poll. It comes from the teeny cookbook Urban Pantry, which was actually a Christmas present from Caleb's parents years ago. A recent shopping spree at Trader Joe's resulted in an abundance of beets and mint in my fridge, and in light of the embarrassing quantity of French lentils I apparently purchased, this lentil-beet salad seemed like the perfect choice for dinner.

I found it remarkably difficult to compose a bowl of this salad that looked nice enough to photograph. The thing about beets is they tend to stain everything. Also, it was at least 90 degrees in my kitchen because I had the foolish notion to make foccacia to go along with this salad. In the end, I gave up on pretty photos and decided this salad was successful enough that I will make it again and maybe those photos will come out better. With that disclaimer, on to the actual salad....

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Cheesy Beer Bread

July 17, 2016 Leave a Comment

When I scanned ahead on the recipe schedule for Baked Sunday Mornings and noticed this cheesy beer bread, I was really excited. Bread and cheese are two of my favorite things, particularly melty cheese and warm bread. I am not a beer drinker, despite my friends’ best efforts, but I am a fan of beer in baking applications....

Ideas Post 2: Vote for a Recipe

July 16, 2016 3 Comments

The weather forecast for the coming week in New Jersey keeps us sweltering in the 90s, with a heat index pushing 100. Gross. It's definitely not the right weather for turning on any heating element...There is a lot of salad, cold soup, and fruit in my near future. With that in mind, this week's poll on what recipe I should post on Wednesday is going to focus on easy-to-make, minimal or no-heat-required food.

The options are:

A) Russian chicken salad from Everyday Super Food

B) Lentil-beet salad from Urban Pantry

C) No-bake Oreo mint bars from Cookies and Cups

D) Cranberry-orange shortbread from Joy the Baker

Meanwhile, if you have suggestions for other dishes or cookbooks you'd like to see covered, please feel free to suggest something.

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Gooey Cinnamon Squares

July 14, 2016 Leave a Comment

The delightful gooey cinnamon squares from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook won the voting contest as this week's "idea poll" recipe. I'm late posting about them, because leave it to me to promise the internet I would have something posted by Wednesday evening, and then come down with a cold and be sick in bed by 5pm on said Wednesday. It seems a little ironic that I've gone ages without being sick and even avoided catching colds from the multitude of people who had them this winter, only to come down with one now that I set a deadline for myself. Anyhow, back to these gooey cinnamon squares...Every single recipe I've ever made from Smitten Kitchen has turned out beautifully. In fact, the success of Deb's recipes in my kitchen was a contributing factor to why I didn't start a blog earlier. My reasoning was, since Deb's recipes are so perfect (her instructions are clear, her writing style is cozy, her food is delicious, her photography is gorgeous), why would I bother? Well, the answer to why is here, and my blog gives me an excellent opportunity to highlight Deb's cookbook as one that will undoubtedly earn its place on my bookshelves....

Ideas Post 1: Vote for a Recipe

July 9, 2016 4 Comments

I had a post all planned out for today, but I'm sitting on a train and my kitchen notebook isn't with me, so I've decided to hold off on publishing about confetti white chocolate bars until I can double-check all the amounts and baking time. In lieu of that, I have a different kind of post for today.

I've had this idea for a while now, but I'm not convinced of how well it will work. Since a major purpose of this blog is sharing recipes with you, I thought it could be fun to have some user input on what I should cook next. (Or on what I should post next, because the largest obstacle to me posting more frequently isn't the cooking part, it's the post creation.)

So here's the idea. Every Saturday, I'll offer four topics; two sweet and two savory. If you'd like to see one appear on this blog sooner as opposed to later, say so in the comments thread. If a topic gets the most votes by Monday evening, it will be Wednesday's post. If there's something you'd like to see, and it isn't one of the topics, feel free to suggest it and I'll add it to the top of my list of recipes to try.

This week, the options are:

A) Gooey cinnamon squares from Smitten Kitchen

B) Cranberry cornmeal cake from Sweeter off the Vine

C) Pulled pork mole ("Slow Burn") from Heartlandia

D) Asian cabbage slaw with orange-peanut dressing from Love and Lemons

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Greens and Grains Soup

July 8, 2016 Leave a Comment

This greens and grains soup from Magic Soup will be your new favorite dinner. It is so delicious and so easy to prepare, I can't stop making it for myself. Over the past few weeks, I've had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner - sometimes with yogurt added to the tahini sauce (I prefer that addition), sometimes with chopped Kalamata olives and roasted red peppers, sometimes with the recommended pomegranate seeds and sliced almonds. If you take 3 minutes in the morning to select your grain and start it soaking in water for 8-12 hours, you can be eating this nutritious soup in under 30 minutes. ...

Nanaimo Ice Cream Bars

July 3, 2016 2 Comments

Nanaimo bars are a Canadian treat, which in a wonderful twist of fate, were scheduled for this week's Baked Sunday Morning post and completely coincidentally requested by a Canadian friend after I brought the Brown Sugar Shortcakes over to her house for dessert. Named for a West Coast town in British Columbia, Nanaimo bars are traditionally a no-bake bar consisting of a wafer base, custard interior, and chocolate topping. As usual, Matt and Renato put their own spin on the treat, upgrading it to a delicious ice cream bar that is perfect for the summer heat.

I've never attempted making ice cream bars before (I'm perfectly happy with a bowl of ice cream alone or on top of pretty much any other dessert), so I wasn't certain how well these would go. Although this post comes to you belatedly due to some technical hiccups, these bars are supremely simple to make and utterly delicious. There are several stages to making these bars, but the total hands-on time is only about 20 minutes. As you can probably tell from the photo, I was way too impatient and I didn't chill my ice cream for the proper 2 hours suggested before adding the chocolate fudge topping, thus the unsightly spots of melted ice cream on top of my chocolate coating. Oh well. Even though my Nanaimo bars aren't gorgeous and were a bit messy to eat, none of that detracts from their taste. ...

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

June 20, 2016 1 Comment

Many many Christmases ago, my mom gifted me with a monster of a cookbook called The New Best Recipe. I can't claim to remember what we made from it first, although odds are it was these cookies. We do have something of a habit of making cookies together over the holidays. Whatever the recipe, it turned out so well mom wanted the cookbook for her own collection. Given the weight of this cookbook and the fact that I was flying back to upstate NY with limited space, buying and shipping a second copy to myself worked out pretty well for everyone.

I've made a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my life, but ever since trying this recipe for chewy chocolate chip cookies, it's the only one I've used. For over a decade. I usually have a difficult time following any recipe more than once because there are so many recipes in the world and I want to try them all. However, I've had a lot of time to consider, and the definitive answer to "what is the best chocolate chip cookie?" and "how do I make chewy chocolate chip cookies?" is this recipe. The grass is not greener on the other side. This is the one recipe everyone should use. Cook's Illustrated discovered that an extra egg yolk, a ⅔ brown : ⅓ white sugar ratio, and copious amounts of butter would yield the tenderest, chewiest, most perfect chocolate chip cookie possible. I've modified the recipe a teeny bit from the original instructions, by letting the butter cool first, adding a bit more flour, not bothering with the break-in-half-then-reform step (extensive testing indicated no difference, neither visible nor gustatory), and doubling their original recipe. ...

Brown Sugar Shortcakes with Mixed Berries and Whipped Cream

June 19, 2016 Leave a Comment

I've been looking forward to making these brown sugar shortcakes from Baked Occasions since I first saw them on the recipe schedule. Getting to eat tender shortcake, whipped cream, and fresh berries is one of my favorite things about summer. I love shortcake - I suppose I already made that pretty clear in my rapturous praise of Matt and Renato's Strawberry Supreme Cake. These brown sugar shortcakes are almost as amazing as the cake was, which really means they're incredible, just not quite as mind-blowingly amazing. On the other hand, they are much easier and less time-consuming to make, and there's no buttercream frosting involved. These shortcakes are technically in honor of Flag Day, but today just happens to be Father's Day, and I actually like these even more than I liked the Dad's Black Cocoa Bundt Cake - because summer berries + whipped cream + buttery shortbread >>> chocolate cake. So while these cakes might be in Baked Occasions for Flag Day, I certainly advocate baking them as often as possible during berry season....

Black Cocoa Cake with Butter Whiskey Glaze

June 5, 2016 Leave a Comment

Today's recipe for Baked Sunday Mornings is a Chai-spiced Berry Trifle, which sounds delicious, but there was just no way I was going to make a trifle that serves 24 for little old me and I didn't really feel like it was the kind of dessert amenable to sitting out at work all day while people came by and helped themselves. So I decided to go rogue instead and bake Dad's Black Cocoa Cake with Butter Whiskey Glaze from Baked Occasions because it was my Dad's birthday last week, and he's more important to me than the Queen anyway.

This cake is very easy to make, you basically combine your batter ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and whip some cream in your stand mixer (or by hand, if you're a rockstar like my mom). ...

Avocado Pound Cake

June 4, 2016 Leave a Comment

Avocado pound cake. How can you read that recipe title and not be immediately intrigued? When I emailed my co-workers that I'd brought avocado pound cake and homemade Twix bars to work, I confess I expected excitement about the Twix and skepticism over the avocado pound cake. Instead, everyone fell for this pound cake. It's like a traditional 1-2-3-4 pound cake (1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 4 eggs), with the avocado replacing some of the butter. It's amazingly tender, not too sweet, not too green, subtly avocado flavored, and perfectly balanced by the addition of cornmeal. Even though there's only a small amount of cornmeal in the recipe relative to the all-purpose flour, it has a tremendous impact on the flavor and crumb. This avocado pound cake is a cross between the best cornbread and the best pound cake I've ever had, and could be enjoyed in either context. I had a hard time limiting myself to two thick slices in one morning....

Strawberry Supreme Cake

May 22, 2016 4 Comments

So.... this strawberry supreme cake from Baked Occasions is the cake. Seriously, if I could only eat one cake for the rest of my life, it would be this cake. And I have loved many cakes in my life, so it's a very high bar.Today's Baked Sunday Mornings selection is in Baked Occasions as a nod to May Day. Although May 1st is the calendar May Day, May 20th is the beginning of strawberry season here in the Northeast, so our timing is perfect for access to fresh ripe strawberries. This strawberry supreme cake is the pinnacle of strawberry shortcake perfection, yet I never would have bothered with making it if it weren't for Baked Sunday Mornings (thanks guys). As it happens, I adore strawberry shortcake, but I swore it off ages ago after a summer in college when I kept ordering it at restaurants in upstate NY and was invariably disappointed with the canned syrupy strawberries and bland shortcake I received each time. Unlike those travesties, Baked's strawberry supreme cake is the penultimate strawberry shortcake. Its rich and buttery, dense yet not heavy, strawberry-puree-flavored cake layers are what all shortcakes aspire to be and most fail to accomplish. With a layered strawberry jam plus strawberries in whipped cream filling and the trademark Baked buttercream frosting covering the top, this cake is perfect for welcoming the arrival of warm weather.

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Detox Apple Cabbage Salad

May 18, 2016 Leave a Comment

One of the possible security questions I had to fill out the other day was "What was your least favorite vegetable growing up?". It's funny how taste buds must change with age, because I'm certain I hated all cabbage varieties growing up (except in sauerkraut form - thanks Papa). I don't think my parents even prepared dishes with cabbage, I just automatically assumed I disliked them because everyone hates cabbage, right? The first time I realized I actually like cabbage was when my mom made a fantastic Thai cabbage salad for a friend's bridal shower. It turns out I really enjoy vinegar-based cabbage salads. That was almost exactly 10 years ago, and even though Williams-Sonoma took the recipe off their site, I still make that salad.

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Brown Sugar Buttermilk Raspberry Cake with Fudge Frosting

May 14, 2016 Leave a Comment

Layered is a stunning new cookbook entirely devoted to scrumptious layer cakes. It's written by Tessa Huff, who used to have her own custom cake shop and now shares her gorgeous creations and decorating tips at Sweet Style CA. I pre-ordered her book purely because her blog is so immaculate and not covered in ads and annoying pop-ups. That's a good reason, right? My immediate problem after flipping through Layered was I wanted to make almost every single cake ... and there are 150 cakes, which works out to one cake a day for the next 5 months. Purely based on the effort involved in making her go-to Swiss meringue buttercream, there's no way I could manage that pace. Still, I foresee a lot of cake in my (co-workers') future, especially given how well this raspberry cake and accompanying fudge frosting turned out.

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Derby Cookies

May 8, 2016 1 Comment

It seems like we're on a bit of a nut kick recently with the Baked Sunday Mornings selections. Or maybe Matt and Renato just bake more with nuts than I'm used to doing myself. The recipe for today is Derby Cookies (aka Buttery Brown Sugar Bourbon Walnut Balls), because the first Saturday in May is the annual Kentucky Derby. The names these people give their poor horses never cease to amaze me, with this year's runners including the ridiculous "Mor Spirit", the awful "Suddenbreakingnews", and the depressing "Oscar Nominated". Unlike the horses' names, these Derby cookies are creative and tasteful, combining a buttery shortbread base with ground walnuts and bourbon for the perfect slightly nutty, vanilla-perfumed, melt-in-your mouth cookie....

Sweet Potato Coconut Date Rye Muffins

April 27, 2016 Leave a Comment

Sweet potato coconut date rye muffins.... the name is a list of buzzwords in "healthy baking" right now. This emphasis on alternative flours and sweeteners in the Violet Bakery cookbook makes sense, given Claire Ptak's previous life as pastry chef at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Like her rye brownies, these muffins are intriguingly different from traditional muffins, yet utterly delicious.

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Cucumber Avocado Soup

April 26, 2016 Leave a Comment

This cucumber avocado soup from Love Soup is fantastic for warm weather days. Even though it's not quite summer yet, it was almost 80 degrees here the other day, which is right on the cusp of too-hot-to-cook in my apartment, so I'm getting ready for the impending [disgustingly humid] NJ summer. ...

Vegan Chocolate Cake aka "Hippie Cake"

April 24, 2016 1 Comment

This Sunday's recipe from Baked Occasions is a vegan chocolate cake (or "Hippie Cake"), in honor of Earth Day. It's difficult for me to get excited about baking vegan desserts, because I believe that pretty much everything is better when it involves real butter and eggs. That's part of the fun of this group though - I bake things I ordinarily would never bother to make. ...

Millet-Cauliflower Mash

April 22, 2016 Leave a Comment

Especially after the abysmal disaster that was the black bean brownies from Deliciously Ella Every Day, I've been a little hesitant to try anything described as a healthier version of comfort food. I feel like you might as well eat less of the delicious real thing, instead of eating a plateful of an awful-tasting imitation. So it was with some trepidation that I approached Amy Chaplin's millet-cauliflower mash. I was prepared for the mash to be awful, or at least nowhere close to mashed potatoes. Instead, this was actually quite good and tasted shockingly similar to creamy mashed potatoes. Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was add cheese, but this mash was pretty good with a drizzle of tamari or sriracha sauce instead....

Banana Protein Muffins

April 20, 2016 2 Comments

The banana espresso chocolate chip muffins from Baked: New Frontiers are delicious and you should make them straightaway. They are better than any banana bread, and they make a fantastic breakfast or coffee/tea-time/midnight snack. I've gone way past my limit of three recipes from Baked, but that's okay because more people need to know how incredible every single recipe they publish is.

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Honey Lavender Scones

April 15, 2016 Leave a Comment

Growing up, I always viewed lavender as an aromatherapy herb, definitely not an herb that belonged in my food. Somehow, lavender worked its magic on me, as over the last few years I've completely bought in to the idea that it does belong in my kitchen, or at least in baked treats and cocktails. Among the intriguing scone flavors in Little Flower Baking, this honey lavender scone seemed like a perfect choice for testing recipe number two. I already had everything I needed to make them, which was not the case for the delicious-looking strawberry basil, strawberry rose, peach ricotta, or curry pineapple scones (it's not quite the right season yet for strawberries nor peaches and I was out of curry powder). As a bonus, I could gently test my co-workers' boundaries for non-traditional baked goods.

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Sticky Pork Ribs

April 14, 2016 Leave a Comment

Caleb stumbled upon the recipe for these sticky pork ribs while browsing YouTube one night. Somehow, he wound up tuning into Gordon Ramsay, who actually seems quite personable in his own YouTube videos (rather than his always-yelling reality persona). I'd just gotten my braces taken off and could finally eat ribs again after several years, so it seemed like a pretty opportune time to try these. Although it was posted as a video, the recipe itself is from Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking. This was lucky both because I could post about it, and also because Gordon didn't really bother to give actual measurements in his video.

These sticky pork ribs were really outstanding, which I found somewhat surprising - I never would have tried one of Gordon's recipes of my volition. They're also dead easy to make, especially if you have a friendly butcher. At Whole Foods they'll separate the ribs for you, which cuts the prep time down dramatically.

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White Chocolate Chai Cookies

April 11, 2016 Leave a Comment

I pre-ordered Little Flower Baking, not because I'd loved the baked goods from Little Flower (I didn't), but because I am still a little infatuated with Christine Moore's green soup. My irritation with this new cookbook escalated rapidly as I realized that almost every single bakery item in the first slender volume from Little Flower has been reprinted again in Little Flower Baking. What a waste of precious paper and space. Then I found these white chocolate chai cookies, tucked among a bunch of conventional cookie recipes... I may still be mildly annoyed about the high duplication rate, but these cookies are fantastic. They taste almost exactly like a masala chai tea, a real one full of whole milk, sugar, and spices (instead of the terrible sugar-free ones I keep being served at Indian restaurants). I usually am not a fan of white chocolate in cookies (unless they are pistachio cookies), but here the white chocolate pairs perfectly with the chai spices to recreate the tea as a phenomenal cookie.

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