December 2009 • Eat, DINK and Be Merry

Lust list: antique enamel diamond wasp brooch

By Amber, on December 8, 2009, at 9:49 pm

I was looking for something else and happened across this:

wasp brooch

I love enamel jewelry, and this piece is certainly unique. It’s a bit out of my price range, but it reminds me of a brooch that I bought a couple years ago in a Soho accessory store:

bee brooch

Funny, $40 seemed a little pricey at the time, but I had to have it. I used to wear it on a fuschia wool winter coat, but now that my winter coats spend most of the year in a closet, it adorns a handbag:

brooch on coach

Cinnamon-eggnog scones

By Amber, on December 6, 2009, at 9:11 pm

This may be my new favorite recipe:

scones Finger-licking good

I’m a little crazy for eggnog. I’ve been known to visit multiple grocery stores during the holidays in order to stockpile enough cartons of eggnog ice cream to get me through March. Now we can make our own, thank goodness, but that is not the point of this post.

The point is these. They were easier than I expected and fluffier than I imagined. I made them on my snow half-day and when I discovered that I was nearly out of white sugar, I was not going back out into traffic, so I substituted brown sugar. I used cinnamon chips from the grocery store, and where you have the choice between vanilla extract and eggnog flavor, I used the latter. I’m thinking that after the holidays are over and fresh eggnog is no longer available, I may try using heavy cream or half-and-half, then doubling the eggnog flavor.

I froze the dough longer than the 30 minutes suggested in the recipe because I wanted to bake them right after dinner. I served them fresh out of the oven with leftover frosting from my mauve velvet cake, and they were amazing!

yum

Anticipation

By Amber, on December 3, 2009, at 10:48 pm

From what I’m told, Houston gets snow maybe once or twice a decade. Last December, five months after we moved here (and three months after riding out our first hurricane), we were treated to this:

snow 2008 (Not my house.)

I should mention that, for me, one of the biggest pros of moving here was to escape the periodically icy clutches of the Northeast. Snow is beautiful when enjoyed from inside a warm house, but as soon as everyone has to go back to work or venture out for more bread and milk, it turns ugly and grey from all the traffic, your car gets covered in salt, and your shoes get filled with slush. But there’s no snow in Houston!

Except when there is. And as it turns out, snow is pretty exciting when it’s a novelty event. We enjoyed it and figured we’d had our snow for the decade.

And yet, tonight the city is abuzz over a winter storm warning, just 358 days after the last snow. A few areas could see as much as 4″. Oh sure, it will be gone by Saturday afternoon, but that works just fine for me.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow I’ll get a partial snow day and head home early to bake cookies and drink egg nog!

Mauve velvet

By Amber, on December 1, 2009, at 10:26 pm

Some people take pictures of their beautiful holiday meals. And some people’s holiday meals are better represented by pictures from prior meals.

red velvet Not my Thanksgiving cake.

My parents were in Texas to shop retirement property in Hill Country and stopped by for Thanksgiving weekend. The big dinner was steak, mashed potatoes, broccolini, and red velvet cake. Maybe not the most traditional Thanksgiving fare, but it was enjoyed by all and there were no leftovers to deal with — except for some cake, which is my very favorite flavor of leftover.

Incidentally, although I have used the recipe before (see photo above), this time the cake was the source of two lessons learned:

Red gel coloring is not so much red as a shocking coral color, at least until you mix it with something that can mute it (but mauve velvet cake still tastes delicious).
If the frosting recipe calls for half mascarpone and half cream cheese but circumstances lead you to double up on the mascarpone instead, you will either be serving your cake with pudding, or whisking a lot of thickeners into the frosting until it can sit up enough to stay on the cake. Whoops, guess there is that much of a difference!

Oh, and check out my awesome apron, made by my best friend. It’s reversible!

apron