Molten Chocolate Cake
November 21, 2011 § Leave a comment
I thought there would be cake at the finish line of the Philadelphia Marathon. At least that’s what all the cheering squads along the course with cardboard signs would have had you believe. Cake and beer. Sadly, the post-race eats were more along the lines of Chewy granola bars, though a lovely lady, completely unaffiliated with the race, did hand me a free jug of chocolate milk.
It was a great race. We lined up in our respective corals before the sun had risen. Parts of the course were lined with people, screaming, clapping, in costume, like they were at a parade. Our, wonderful, wonderful, friends were standing at miles 1, 8, and 14, cheering. Apparently they had quite a time shoveling down half a scorching-hot pizza and walking a half-marathon trying to find us on the course.
Mid-race, I wondered why the hell I had ever decided that this would be fun. But the last two miles I almost felt like I was floating, which is a feeling I never thought I would associate with marathon running. Even now, just one day later, I’m struggling to remember anything specific about the race itself.
Admittedly, there were things we could have planned better — namely having a place to meet afterwards in the madhouse that was the finish line area. So sadly, there are no smiling post-race pictures with medals around our necks, but I will say that it was an adventure. We rolled out of Philadelphia Sunday afternoon, with a stop at the Medic tent and then at Dunkin’ Donuts.
I can’t say I feel like running another anytime soon. But if you happen to be at Boston 2013, please remember my cake and beer at the finish line.
In the meantime, I’ll be eating this.
I don’t think I’ve ever made anything else from Martha Stewart besides these cakes. They pour lava chocolate, which is reason enough to make them. And they come out perfectly every time, dark, rich, baked on the outside and gooey on the inside, in less than ten minutes, which is like exactly what you’re craving at 11 p.m..Needless to say, I’ve made them quite a few times.
Pear-Cranberry Ginger Crumble
November 14, 2011 § Leave a comment
Just when we were preparing for a long period of hibernation, just when I was preparing to outlast the snow, the sleet, and the slush, it suddenly became summer again. Well, as close to summer as you can get mid-November; Hey, I was actually wearing shorts today! And I realized that with all the time I’ve spent complaining about being stuck in Princeton, and how awful and uninspiring most of this state is, I’ve neglected to tell you about the beautiful parts of New Jersey.
We spent the last weekend on our fall break at my long-time roommate’s house in northwest New Jersey. My roommate is a very defensive defender of New Jersey. Crack one joke about how dirty Jersey is, and you’re in for a spiel about how all of Jersey isn’t Newark. And as much as we give her a hard time, she’s right.
Her house sits on the highest piece of land for miles around, above the largest reservoir I have ever seen. We happened upon the area at the peak of fall, when the air was chilly and brisk and the trees hadn’t quite ridded themselves of their yellowed leaves. We spent the majority of the weekend being what we call “old ladies.” We went on short walks, did crossword puzzles, watched movies, and baked every night — a sort of routine that was as enjoyable as it was comforting. We did some hill running that was more or less comparable to running at home in San Francisco. We made this pear-cranberry gingersnap crumble, and may have spooned it over oat pancakes and topped it with maple syrup from a two-gallon jug the next morning. The morning’s activities were interspersed with updates from the New York City Marathon on TV. Next thing we knew, break was over and we were piling up in the car and driving back to campus.
This crumble combines all the flavors I love about the fall — the spicy bite of ginger, the tartness of cranberries and the sweetness of soft, translucent cooked pears. It was impossible to ignore sitting on the countertop. We added an extra apple, thinking the fruit filling might get too mushy with ripe pears. Oh, and we browned the butter, of course. Otherwise, we left the recipe untouched.
Pumpkin Gingerbread Cupcakes
November 10, 2011 § Leave a comment
Things that are making me happy today: Fictional Life
Blake, the gangly cross country captain of McCormick High, liked to play piano. He sat on the black and white tiled floor and strummed his fingers on his cloth suitcase tap ti tap tap tap. Every so often, he looked up at the screen monitor. An hour and a half later, it still said delayed.
From his vantage point on the floor, he watched the people passing by — starting with the shoes, the suitcase wheels, and the occasional cane. He unzipped his suitcase and took out a cinnamon bun his mother had packed earlier this morning. It was still warm.
A pair of stiletto heels walked by. A lady he presumed, but a glance upward saw a girl, maybe two or three years older than him, in a tight black skirt and a shirt that reflected the iridescent, industrial lighting of the station. A middle-aged man, in loafers and a crumpled pinstripe shirt sat down on a cold metal chair nearby. An older man with trembling fingers slowly fumbled to page 3 of yesterday’s Lifestyles section. A young couple smooched by the entrance to Track 8 before the man stepped on the escalator. The woman then turned around so as to not watch him leave. She had deep wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and, lips pursed, seemed determined not to cry. A young man in a badly-knotted tie dashed by her, clutching a briefcase to his chest, late for his first day of work. Blake turned his attention back to the cinnamon bun.
It was slightly dense; he could see his mother mixing the dough vigorously at the countertop. The layers didn’t flake off easily, and the thick icing left his fingers sticky and his mouth parched. He wiped his fingers on the tiled floor. A woman in a suit happened to walk by at that moment and gave him a look of disgust. He looked back at her skirt suit, stretched so it formed creases down her body, he wondered if she knew the snag in her tights was quickly making its way up her left leg as she walked. He smirked.
She was someone his mother would call a fake. Someone who didn’t know her real station in life. Sometimes his mother would come home Sunday mornings ranting about the new women on the church food committee. Fakes, she would say, social climbers the lot of them. One Easter, one of the women had made a batch of beautiful sugar cookies, shaped and decorated like bunnies and Easter eggs. Everyone had raved about them and his mother had harped for a week afterword about how they couldn’t possibly have been any good. Blake had stopped going to church a year ago.
The train was now delayed for another hour, according to the monitor. A voice on the loudspeaker blamed the snowstorm for a track foreclosure near Mystic, Connecticut. Blake hopped up, stretching out his legs that were an inch too long for his pants — his mother never shopped for clothes fast enough. He thought maybe he’d have a glass of water, and dragged his suitcase to the donut shop. But when he got to the front of the line, he said I’ll have a cup of coffee instead. He counted out a dollar in dimes. He had never had coffee before.
I should probably note than these are pumpkin gingerbread cupcakes made from some recipe that I just can’t seem to find anymore. The only info I have on them is that the recipe was printed in some Boston publication. But really the notable part was that I browned a half cup of salted butter on the stovetop, then stirred in the necessary amount of powdered sugar to make the mixture spreadable. Then I iced the cupcakes. And they were amazing. But I think eating the icing from my finger was equally amazing.Goat Cheese Custards
November 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
The first time I arrived on a street corner in New York City, I was uncomfortably overwhelmed by the mass of people walking straight towards me, shoving, sidestepping and sometimes, halting mid-step so that the dozen people following close on the heels had to suddenly snap to the side in order to avoid collision. The sheer quantity of people was shocking. I swore I could never live in a place inhabited by so many people determined to follow their own path, regardless of how many people had to get pushed out of the way on the sidewalk. Sitting in the back of a taxi was a whole other story and nerve-wracking ordeal as every time we made a turn, I was terrified we would crash into the car beside us. Nevertheless, I came back to the city numerous times as an escape from what we politely call “the orange bubble,” which is the Princeton campus. Gradually, I have learned to navigate, to shove, and to walk with a purpose, and oftentimes find myself, completely unnecessarily, enacting the same techniques in other cities.
We spent a couple of days in the city last week and somehow managed to avoid the more centralized areas for much of the time. Staying in Morningside Heights, just north of Columbia, we took the subway; we ate cupcakes and drank carafes of sangria in the West Village; we sat by the docks and watched the sun set over New Jersey. In many ways, the city is different every time I come back. It’s only ever for a day or two at a time, so it’s only ever a glimpse, a quick breath before going back to the grind. Far from being terrifying now, it’s comforting, reassuring, that so many people exist in the world and they’re all doing their own thing. Which is nice to keep reminding yourself of when everyone at school seems to be heading down the exact same path.
Of course there are exceptions. Like the guy in the Columbia bar who told me to start pulling all my university connections in D.C. now and sarcastically wished me luck when I said I wanted to do cultural journalism as opposed to political journalism. Or the guy at the same bar who told my friend to abandon aerospace engineering because the money (equivalent to happiness) was in consulting and investment banking. But, well, if you stick to walking down the street and observing people, without actually talking to them, the sentiment that everyone is doing their own thing is there.
Which is, not really the point. I would never advocate not talking to people, just because certain individuals can be incredibly shortsighted. I guess part of the thing about talking to strangers is running the risk of being insulted and angered. But, we ranted about them on the way home that night and now, a few days later on campus, we’re back to doing our own thing.
So on that note, I made these little custards quite awhile ago. They’re creamy, like a light cheesecake. A red wine reduction poured over the top takes them from grown-up to sophisticated. They’re great if you just can’t decide between the dessert and cheese course. And the wine, well a little extra wine never hurt anyone. Cheers to being 21! And finally being able to buy alcohol for my own baking!
Rosemary Sugar Walnuts
November 6, 2011 § Leave a comment
This may be a bit arbitrary, but one of the things I have come to associate with the East Coast is candied, spiced nuts. I can hardly walk down the streets of New York City without veering towards the carts selling honey roasted mixed nuts (+coconut), even though the dirtiness of the simmering pot of oil ought to deter me. Other times, you just have to mention roasting chestnuts, and I get excited, because it means fall and I never used to have a fall before. Leaves tend to stay on the trees year-round in California.
This year I was afraid we had skipped fall altogether and headed straight for winter. It poured and snowed, and all turned into slush, the other night in Boston. But then I boarded a bus out to the Cape the next morning, and the skies were blue, though the wind was chilly. The little town has the aura of a child’s plaything, abandoned after the summer. Many houses on the street are already empty for the cold months ahead. The few inhabited houses left behind have pumpkins on their front steps and young, fallen trees propped up in their yards, the only telltale sign that it stormed this past weekend. A harsh wind hits your face, coming up from the shore, where only a castaway crabbing net and a couple of seagulls remain sticking it out in the cold. In the evening, you can hear the wind, just from your seat by the window.
I haven’t been out here for over three years, though there was a time I came every summer. It’s quite different being here huddled up inside or out walking alone in a hat and scarf instead of doing front flips on the lawn in a bathing suit and washing sand off my toes under the sprinkler.
I know I just posted a batch of nuts, but i just couldn’t resist these. If the dried figs and fresh rosemary at first seem a bit unexpected, the flavors quickly meld together in a sticky, crunchy heap of irresistible snacking. I followed this recipe, swapping out the sesame seeds for pumpkin seeds, according to the season but also due to a personal dislike for sesame.
Pumpkin Spice Muffins
October 24, 2011 § Leave a comment
I used to hate pumpkin with a passion, the same way I now hate raisins, cooked carrots and orange-chocolate (sorry, I was scrounging for a third hatred). Then one year, I went home for Thanksgiving and spent the first night sitting on the kitchen floor with a blender and my little brother, trying to puree roasted pumpkin for my very first pumpkin pie. I’m still not sure what possessed me to do it, given the icky color of pumpkin pie filling, its oftentimes-nauseating texture and the simple fact that I didn’t like pumpkin. But together, we dutifully made this pumpkin pie and — much to my surprise — I actually liked it, so much that I snuck tiny slivers from the fridge for the rest of the weekend.
From that, the next natural step seemed to be to start craving pumpkin spice lattes come fall. To get excited when seasonal pumpkin pie Clif bars finally hit the stores. To roast pumpkin with nutmeg and browned butter. And to start baking other pumpkin items. Cookies, packed with dried cranberries, white chocolate chips and mini marshmallows, to be devoured on the bus post-race. Fragrant, spicy muffins topped with oat strudel. Which is exactly what these are —
I spent this past weekend in New York City with my mother. We went to the theatre. We dined at Prune, where we started with fresh radishes spread with sweet butter and roasted eggplant with tangy yogurt and ended with an exquisite bitter chocolate pot de crème and mascarpone ice cream topped with caramel croutons which soaked up the excess, melting cream.
We sat at tables that were too small for all the plates, and slurped spicy noodles at a communal table to the loud din of East Village bar-life and dishes being thrown in for washing in open-floor kitchens. We stumbled upon lunchtime food-truck markets and weekend farmers markets. We sampled various pumpkin treats, and I found most of them to be too dry and lacking a certain pop of flavor. The last evening, we gathered together the ingredients in the hotel room and I made these pumpkin spice muffins, which were everything I had hoped for flavor-wise from the baked goods at the market, and twice as cute.
Pumpkin Spice Muffins
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, via the American club, in Kohler, Wisconsin via Gourmet Magazine
Among the changes I made to this recipe (like adding a topping! and using brown butter!) was making the batter entirely in the small saucepan. Given the minuscule size of the hotel kitchen and the lack of mixing bowls, this made a lot of sense. That said, even if your kitchen is massive, it’s still one less dirty bowl.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 15-ounce can solid-packed pumpkin
1/3 cup butter
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
For the topping:
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons vanilla turbinado sugar
1/4 cup white chocolate chips
3 tablespoons butter
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a small saucepan brown the butter until it smells nutty and you see flakes of amber at the bottom of the pan. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the sugar, eggs, salt, pumpkin, spices, baking powder and baking soda. I added the eggs last, in order to give the butter a chance to cool down a bit first. Fold the flour into the wet mixture, being careful not to over mix. Spoon the batter into non-stick or greased muffin tins, filling each mold about 2/3 high.
To make the topping, combine the oats, flour and sugar in a small mixing bowl. Crumble the butter in with your hands until you reach an even consistency and the oats start to stick together. Add the white chocolate chips and stir to distribute evenly. Sprinkle the topping on each muffin.
Bake muffins for 25 to 30 minutes or until a knife stuck in the center of one comes out clean.
Bacon toffee chocolate chunk cookies
October 18, 2011 § 2 Comments
My life through pictures. Because I’m so tired it’s too difficult to put together a coherent sentence on paper. Well that’s not exactly true because I’m doing it right this moment, but you get what I mean. Midterm week is coming up. Very quickly.
Fortunately, these cookies don’t need much explanation. Bacon crumbles. Sticky salted caramel. Dark chocolate chunks. Made by pounding the chocolate bars on the counter, much to the annoyance of surrounding studying students (hey! I can even form alliterations while zoned-out!). Cookie dough. Chewy, flat, with crunchy bites of crackly bacon toffee. And I just knew you were wondering what to do with all of the leftover caramelized bacon from last week.
If you want to make these, I suggest first making the bacon toffee described in the post below, crumbling (or hacking) it into your favorite chocolate chip cookie dough, and then sitting in front of the oven while the toffee melts into huge, nearly transparent, puddles inside your cookies.
Caramelized bacon apple muffins
October 10, 2011 § Leave a comment
I’ve never had a Canadian Thanksgiving. The first time I really thought of it was when I started getting emails about the Canadian Club’s Thanksgiving dinner for students in the dining halls here at Princeton. Still, in the rush of schoolwork and daily activities, I never actually made it up-campus to one of those dinners. Now I suppose there are many members of my family for whom Thanksgiving in October is a normalcy, but my Thanksgivings have always been in November, albeit very untraditional food-wise. Still there is something very appealing about getting to have two.
Unfortunately, there is no time today to make pumpkin pie, so I’m just going to have to snatch a slice from the dinner on the way to the gym (to be eaten afterwards, I promise). Fortunately, there are still a variety of treats in our room from the latest baking adventures: Caramelized bacon apple muffins (coined breakfast-in-a-bite) and caramel bacon chocolate chunk cookies. It wasn’t hard to get the boys on board with the idea of bacon in everything and while we originally got a couple of odd faces at brunch when we launched the idea, everyone was sold by the next day at dinner. The muffins weren’t even out of the oven when all the fingers and knives in the room started going for the block of bacon caramel left over.
One of things I like most about Thanksgiving is the work that goes in beforehand, the splitting up of the menu amongst people, the chaos of the kitchen with everyone attempting to do their own thing at once, and then it all, finally, coming together in the end in a complete meal. When I first started baking in the dorm kitchen in my sophomore year, people would come for the eating part. Sometimes they would help with the dishes, and occasionally they would watch. Now, we’re staying in on Saturday nights (it’s tough getting old), have the keys to an always-locked kitchen, and while the number of kitchen appliances and utensils hasn’t changed a bit (think almost zero), baking is quickly becoming a group activity. Which makes me very happy.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Caramelized bacon apple muffins
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen‘s blueberry muffins
For the bacon caramel:
1 c. sugar
6 T. salted butter
6 slices bacon
For the muffins:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1-2 medium sized chopped apples (skin on)
To make the caramel:
In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and butter. Crumble the bacon into small pieces and add to the pan. Heat over medium heat until the mixture turns deep, amber brown. Let it simmer just beyond what you feel comfortable with. Remove pan from heat and set aside. The caramel will start to harden while you make the muffin batter; it will likely be very sticky when you start to use it, and if it gets too hard, a sharp knife will do the trick. You will have quite a bit of caramel left over after adding it to the muffins — perfect for making cookies!
To make the muffins:
Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt to the bowl, folding the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. It’s important to not over mix, mix just until the flour disappears. Fold in apples and small pieces of the bacon caramel. Spoon the batter into greased muffin pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a knife stuck in the center of a muffin comes out clean.
This recipe makes 8-10 standard-size muffins.
Ricotta-topped Skillet Bread
October 6, 2011 § Leave a comment
This morning, I didn’t hit the snooze button. The air was still frosty when I stepped out the door and when I stopped at the light, running down to the lake, I noticed that I could see my breath. There were just a couple of people out on the path this morning—a few middle-aged women, one of the cross country boys, an elderly man sitting on the side of the canal, bike parked. He was fishing in the green canal behind the lake and passing him the first time, I briefly wondered what exactly he was hoping to catch in the mucky water. When I passed him for a second time on my return, he was pulling a tiny fish from the water and dropping it in a plastic bucket. Call me overly sensitive maybe, but it was a sad moment, though he was perfectly cheerful as he waved hello. The fish was so minuscule that it couldn’t possibly have more than a bite of meat on its skeleton and the hooking and dumping of it in the bucket seemed so needless, so arbitrary, and I couldn’t help but think about how awful it would be to start one’s day by purposely killing something.
That said, I kept running. It was a beautiful, chilly morning — the sun was out, crisp leaves crunched underfoot and to top it all off, the Canucks’ season opener is tonight. I was planning on getting into the kitchen sometime this weekend, but events seem to be getting in the way. Things are starting to catch up to me, both running and school-wise. My first 20 miler of this training round is this weekend (P.S. if you have any Philadelphia eating recommendations, please shoot them my way!) and I need to finally make my way through the Faulkner novel that will make up most of my junior paper. In my room, I’ve flipped the 2012 calendar I recently bought to October 2012 and started using it anyway, just to keep myself organized. Sure, the dates are two days off, but it was a necessary move.
If I could be in the kitchen right now, I would be making something like this cornbread. I started with this recipe, but quickly flew in all different directions. I used half quinoa flour and half white flour instead of whole wheat flour. Sweetened ricotta from the local Italian grocery replaced the pour-over cream. A couple of handfuls of flax seeds added a whole lot of chew. I omitted the cooked quinoa. I halved the sugar, but if I were to make it again, I would add it all back. I ate it from the skillet, with a healthy drizzle of wildflower honey.
Spiced Nut Snack Mix
October 3, 2011 § 1 Comment
Below my feet, the yellowed leaves crunch, and the air is crisp, fresh, reminding me of that scent one gets standing on top of a tall mountain. The heavy last summer heat has slowly melded into fall. I was writing a short story the other day for my fiction writing course this term, the first work of fiction I have started in a very long time, when I realized just how much timing and setting changes a series of events. I was piecing together a character out of bits and pieces of interactions I had had with various people in the past year; it felt more natural to pull from memory. There was something terrifying about the thought of people reading my fictional story, even though I lay a lot of things out to complete strangers on this blog weekly. There is still a knot in my stomach when I think about going over the story in workshop tomorrow afternoon, in a room high up on the 6th floor with glass walls, allowing you to look out over the entire campus when you’re supposed to be paying attention in class. The mind wanders — perhaps that is expected in a creative writing class.
We’ve been talking a lot about loneliness in class, how it is easier to feel sympathy for a schoolteacher in Russia, taking a trip through the mud in a cart and longing for her superior to notice her, than it is to feel sympathy for the 30something divorcee who muddles about at home, unknowingly in love with her best friend who is busy chasing after young actresses. We’ve also been talking a lot about vapidity, superficiality and, on the flip side of things, interiority. It kind of makes me wonder if people are as generally unhappy as they are made out to be in novels. And then I think about the very little things that make me happy and I think that it cannot be possible that everyone is drying up out of loneliness inside, maybe just the writers of the world.
Note: As it turns out, I needn’t have worried so much about the story. We made black tea and the professor brought in a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts from the train station. And then we sat around and talked writing styles and the necessity of placing yourself firmly in time, all the while looking out of the window, feeling on top of the world.
Spiced Nut Snack Mix
Adapted from David Lebovitz
This recipe is infinitely adaptable. I tried this version with pistachios and broken pieces of waffle cone, but you can literally throw almost anything in the bowl and it will come out delicious. I served the mix as a topping for homemade chocolate and hazelnut ice cream.
2 cups mixed raw nuts (I used a combination of cashews, almonds and pistachios)
1 tablespoon (15 g) butter, salted or unsalted, browned
3 tablespoons (45 g) dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon chili powder
1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon fleur de sel
2 cups (100 g) small pretzel twists (for a saltier mix) or butter cookies, broken into small pieces (for a richer mix)
Spread out the nuts on a baking sheet and roast for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F, flipping once. In a mixing bowl, stir together the browned, melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, chili pepper and maple syrup. Once the nuts are toasted, add them to the liquid sugar mixture and stir until they are completely coated. Stir in the salt. Then mix in the cookie pieces or pretzels. Spread the nut mixture back on the baking sheet and roast for 12-18 minutes, flipping or shaking every couple of minutes to ensure even toasting and that the sugar is not clumping. Remove the tray from the oven and let cool completely.
Soufflé Days 