I’m taking a break to ring in the new year…
May your 2010 be healthy, happy, and prosperous!
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So that chocolate shortbread that I messed up? I kept the dough because I hate to waste good ingredients, and I found the perfect use for it. First, press the dough into the bottom of ramekins, not too much thicker than the cookies you meant to make:
Next, bake it the same way you would the cookies:
Finally, top with ice cream. I used eggnog ice cream because the smooth sweetness perfectly balances the salty, very dark chocolate dough:  I served this fresh out of the oven to our guests, and no joke, they were still raving about it the next day. I’m pretty sure this mistake will be requested again in the near future!
When you need a little Caribbean in your life:
I adapted Warren Brown’s ‘Gingerly’ pound cake recipe for this (from his book CakeLove: How to Bake Cakes from Scratch). It’s meant for a 12-cup bundt pan, but it made 32 cupcakes. Here’s the recipe with my adaptations. Dry Ingredients:
Liquid:
Creaming:
*I had no sour cream, but I had a cup of buttermilk left over from making red velvet cake, so I combined 7/8 cup buttermilk and 3 tbsp melted butter to substitute. Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Whisk the liquids together in a small mixing bowl. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs individually, fully incorporating after each. On low speed, add the dry and liquid mixtures alternately in 3-5 additions each, starting and ending with the dry. Do not fully combine after each addition or you may overwork the batter. Brown says this process should only take about 60 seconds. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl if necessary (I use a beaterblade, so typically all I have to scrape is whatever is clinging to the wiping blade. I highly, highly recommend one of these! I think it makes baking far more enjoyable). Mix on medium speed for 15-20 seconds to develop the batter’s structure. If you want to make the bundt cake, Brown recommends baking it for 50-55 minutes. If you want to make cupcakes, 20 minutes should do it, unless you’ve overfilled them. They won’t rise a lot, but I had to put a couple of mine back in for 5 more minutes. The tops will be a little sticky before they cool, but if you press them very gently, they shouldn’t deform or leave anything on your fingertip. For the frosting, I used a recipe from Food Network and substituted 1 tsp lime oil instead of the vanilla, plus three drops of green food coloring. The recipe made just enough frosting. I’m usually of the opinion that cake, however delicious, is mostly a vehicle for frosting, but you don’t want to overdo it on these because the cake’s flavor is fairly subtle. Enjoy — I did!
‘Twas the night before DINKmas, when all through First Ward
Not a hoodlum was stirring, not even drunkards; The blog posts were typed into WordPress with care,
In hopes that St. Blogtraffic soon would be there;
The kitty was nestled all snug in her bed,
While visions of heavy cream danced in her head;
And Mark in his scrub pants, and I in my fleece,
Had put away laptops and headed to sleep,
When out on our block there arose such a clatter,
Mark grabbed his shotgun to see what was the matter.
And down to the second floor windows we flew
(The hurricane panels on three block the view).
 The streetlamps and warehouse lights piercing the night
Gave the lustre of mid-day to all in our sight,
When, what should make both of us do double-takes,
But a shiny cakeplate, and eight frosted cupcakes,
And a little blonde woman, in hand-knitted scarf,
I knew it could only be Martha Stewart.
More tasty than cookies her cupcakes they came,
And she whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, chocolate! red velvet! now, ginger & lime!
On, spice cake! on, creme-filled! on, lemon & thyme!
With buttercream frosting! With chocolate ganache!
Now dash on some sprinkles! Dash them on fast!”
And before the icing could become too dry,
They followed her orders to quickly comply,
So sprinkle they did and then up they flew,
With the shiny cakeplate, and Ms. Stewart too.
 And up on the roof I could hear them amass
I hoped she realized that our fireplace is gas.
As I said this to Mark, and was turning around,
Down the staircase Ms. Stewart did come with a bound.
She was dressed in St. John, from her head to her feet, With an apron which, of course, had been ironed neat;
And despite all the action her hair was no worse,
And she gave me a grin as she opened her purse.
Her eyes — how they twinkled! her smile how merry!
Each cheek like a rose or a little Bing cherry!
Her lips painted pink with perfect Cupid’s bow, And her perfume may have been Chanel, I don’t know;
Her heels were sky-high and a glistening black,
Across our wood floors they went clickety-clack;
In her purse I could see she had several crafts,
I thought, ‘Why in the world don’t mine turn out like that?’
 Here she was in the flesh, a daytime tv star
(though she looks a bit younger when seen from afar);
A wink of her eye and a twist of her head,
Although an ex-con, there was nothing to dread;
She spoke not a word, but went straight to her work,
And baked up some goodies; then turned with a jerk,
And grabbing a towel to clean off her hands,
And giving a nod, up the staircase she ran; She jumped in her ride, gave her cupcakes a whistle,
And away they all flew like a Soviet missile.
But I heard her exclaim, ere she soared out of sight,
“Tasty baked goods to all, and to all a good-night.”
I was excited to share this recipe because it is so easy and so tasty: What you can’t see is that I completely screwed up and you can hardly pick those up without them falling apart. It seems that when you double a recipe, you should double all of the ingredients. Whoops. But let’s not talk about what I did there. Anyway, I tried again and got them right:
The recipe is here. I first made these a couple Christmases ago and they’ve been a household favorite ever since. The cats look cute, right? But take my advice: it’s not worth it to try to get fancy with the cookie cutters on shortbread cookies because all of that butter makes them crumble, and half of the cats ended up Manx. Nothing says ‘Happy Holidays’ like mutilated cookies! Yesterday I finished distributing my holiday baking gifts around town. Now I can get down to the business of baking for our soon-to-arrive guests!
That’s not hyperbole, look at how dark these are: The recipe is here. I can’t stress this part enough: the key is using double-dutch dark cocoa, which is a blend of regular Dutch-process and black cocoa. I first ordered it because I couldn’t find Dutch-process cocoa in stock at any local grocer. This blend sounded intriguing, and now I won’t use anything else if I can help it. Normally I love playing around with brownie ingredients, but these are so good that I haven’t been able to bring myself to change anything about the recipe since I got it in February! You can eat it in the ramekin:
We’ll have family visiting for the holidays and I have this dessert extravaganza planned, but I had never made molten cakes so I wanted to do a test run. I looked at a bunch of recipes and chose this one because it looked like one of the least complicated. It turned out to be one of the easier desserts that I’ve ever made. I used Ghirardelli 72% cacao baking chocolate and just estimated 6 oz from the 10 oz bag. The only surprise was the cooking time. I placed the ramekins on a small cookie sheet so I would be able to get them out of the oven without burning myself or dropping them, and I had to keep extending the cooking time until the tops looked done enough at 20 minutes. The recipe fills four 8-oz ramekins, so I baked two right away and put the others in the fridge overnight. I baked them tonight (for science!) and they were every bit as good as last night. Mark thought they were better, but I’m pretty sure that was a result of all-day anticipation! I’ll definitely be making these ahead of time so I can just pop them in the oven after dinner when we have company. Big taste, minimal effort, small price tag:
Tonight was the first time I’ve made this in a while, but it is one of our go-to lazy meals when we are tired and don’t want to go out (or eat another frozen pizza). Our freezer is full of Whole Foods’ salmon and mahi Whole Catch, which comes in vacuum-sealed pairs of frozen filets of about 6 oz each. They’re a surprisingly good deal, too, at under $10 per bag. Here’s the best part — being from Seattle, Mark is a big seafood snob, but Whole Catch has his enthusiastic approval. Assuming you’ve put the fish in a baking dish in the fridge the night before to defrost, all you have to do is drain off the water and add a splash of soy sauce, a splash of balsamic vinegar, and just a sprinkling of McCormick Mediterranean Spiced Sea Salt. I’ve tried doing this hours before and I’ve tried doing it minutes before, and honestly there is not a lot of difference in the final product. Cover the dish and cook it at 425 degrees for 18 minutes. While that’s baking, you can prep and cook the fresh green beans. My preference is to simmer them in water with just a little olive oil (keeps them crisp) and salt/pepper for 8 minutes. Then serve it all and look like a genius. (Bonus points if you’re not too tired to make some couscous to go with it.) What’s in the box?
These little darlings belonged to my beloved grandmother (coin for scale):
My sister pinned this one to her bridal bouquet for ‘something borrowed’:
This is one of my favorites because it’s so sparkly and the dogwood is the state flower of Virginia, where I grew up. It used to be a trembler brooch, but it came apart and I didn’t realize the spring was a special type of thing, so I glued the flower straight onto the body. Oops. It’s still pretty:
This one has a silver back with a little stamp to show that it was made in Mexico. I usually wear it on a turquoise cardigan and it always gets compliments:
This is the largest brooch that I own. I am a little afraid to wear it because the pin is quite loose in the catch; I think it has been bent a little out of shape, but I don’t want to risk damaging it by trying to bend it back. It was very dirty when I found it amongst my grandmother’s things and could use a little more elbow grease:
I hope you enjoyed my heirlooms! |
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For the vet’s office!
Like many of my favorite baked goods recipes, I found this one in a 
or out:
With an eggnog ice cream chapeau!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year…
Just a few supplies for the holiday baking season! My list isn’t too long, but I should be up to my elbows in flour for the next couple weeks. The in-laws are coming for the holidays and I think I have more baked goods planned than we can possibly eat, but I’m always willing to try. Recipes and pictures to come!
