Starting the Week with a Never-Ending Cold

Anthony and I share everything. Last week, he was sick and this week, it's my turn. Although, if I was really being honest, everyone in my office has been sick so I guess I actually am sharing with all my co-workers as well. What a generous bunch we all are.

When you feel like you're living in a virus-infested cloud, time seems to stop, or at least slow down. It's only Tuesday but the weekend feels like it was ten years ago. I can't recall much of what I did except for this awesome checkerboard cake I made for my father's birthday. This project was advanced beyond my baking skill set but I still managed to make a super-impressive dessert. Just imagine how much better it would have been if my head hadn't been pounding.

Now, I'm headed back to the couch for a little more rest before I go back to work tomorrow.  Hopefully, you're making it through the week happy and healthy. xo

The Smushiness Factor

I'm not really on top of trends, food or otherwise, but every single day for the past two weeks, I have come across some awesome article or recipe for s'mores. Why is this makeshift camp dessert so popular right now? Since it's such a basic treat, it's pretty easy to throw in your own twists. No matter what, I think the real attraction is that melted chocolate with warm marshmallows always looks and tastes amazing.

For me, the smushiness of the s'more itself is really the essence of the dessert. The warm, gooey, slightly charred marshmallow enhances the flavors of both the graham crackers and milk chocolate.  Burnt sugar is truly the flavor of summer.

With no campfire in sight, I decided to make my own s'mores bars at home. I bravely turned on the oven in our hot apartment and had Anthony pick up a jar of Fluff. I'd never actually tasted Fluff before and it's much sweeter, and stickier, than I expected.  Our graham crackers were semi-stale but I crushed them up and used them anyway. The directions tell you to wait until completely cool to cut and eat, but seriously, how can you eat a cold s'more? That's a step to be ignored for sure.

The results weren't beautiful but these bars are still tasty.  I immediately thought that the pan looked like a Frankenstein dessert for some reason though. It reminded me of a cartoon mummy with the warm oozing Fluff popping through the cookie crust.  You can't tell me that you don't see it too.

However, this is the one variation that I keep coming back to:

Martha Stewart's Hazelnut S'mores recipe calls for grilled french bread as a base instead of cookies. It's like she has a window that looks straight into my heart.  And I bet the smushiness factor is off the charts. xo




Recipe adapted from Lovin' In the Oven; Hazelnut S'more recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart.

Weekend Recap: Nada Edition

I did not take one photo this entire weekend. There were very few visually-stimulating moments in the last few days, but we did manage to make it through without completely melting. Other than attending a bridal shower for a dear college friend, the highlight was realizing that I acquired five new cookbooks in the past month.

A few were birthday presents.  The Giada book was given to my mother-in-law as a gift and she didn't think she'd use it and passed it along to me. And I won the Baked: Explorations cookbook from Culture Cheese magazine (woot!).  Just looking at the stack makes me immeasurably happy. xo

Weekend Reading

I feel like we should all get prizes for making it through this week. I have no idea why the past five days were so insane but a new week is almost here and for that, I'm thankful. Every year, I find that the weeks after July 4th become a whirlwind. There are lots of weddings and bridal showers and new babies already. Summer always seems like the official season of celebration.

I hope you all have lovely weekends planned. My one desire for Sunday is to go to the movies; I don't even really care what we see but I so want to sit in a dark theater and watch a good film.  Keep cool and if you are looking for some reading material, here are a few of my favorite links from this week. xo
 

• I made these Peanut Butter Oat cookies from Serious Eats the other night and brought the batch to the hospital when we went to see family friends who just had a baby.  I skipped the buttercream and didn't sandwich the cookies, but on their own, they are light and kind of crispy. And since they have oats in them and no butter, I kept telling people that they were healthy.*  

•  Martha Stewart has this #BestSummerEver checklist that I am obsessing over. It makes me want to catch fireflies and eat s'mores every night.

• After reading about Miranda Kerr's favorite iPhone apps on Refinery29, I downloaded 'Squats.' My legs are killing me but I kind of like it.

• My mouth is watering from this round-up of great Chinese food restaurants in New York. Anyone up for a daytrip?

• These amazing word portraits of fourth-graders from around the world are so touching. It's extremely heartbreaking to see how many kids are really worried about their parents and money.

 


*I don't think that the exclusion of butter made these cookies healthy since the recipe called for a cup of peanut butter but no one seemed to mind much.



Photo courtesy of 100layercakelet

Everyone Loves a Pizza Party

Pizza parties remind me of second graders and bowling alleys.
 

  Our Father's Day celebration was a bit more low-key than an elementary school birthday party but still had a bunch of the same elements: folding chairs, presents, paper plates and a fun cake.  The fathers in the group (along with the mothers) seemed to enjoy the throwback celebration.

Nothing makes me feel more like an old timey housewife than making an icebox cake.  I crushed the vanilla wafers using the bottom of an empty jelly jar and although I consider that being resourceful, I'm not sure others would agree. The cake needed to be chilled a bit longer; it was the consistency of watery custard, which really means it looked great but was not quite appetizing.

You win some, you lose some, right? After a few bites, I was majorly craving a piece of Carvel ice cream cake. I can't be the only one who dreams about the chocolate crunchies in the middle. Mmm, just one more thing typically found at a bowling alley pizza party. xo

Sometimes Imperfect is Perfect

Sometimes imperfect is perfect, like when you wrap birthday presents for your husband but realize halfway through that you've run out of tape and have to finish with bright pink snowflake tape.

Or when you are unable to fit the wrapping paper around said gifts in any sort of presentable way so you wind up patching it up by adding in a side panel of uneven wrapping paper to create the most misshapen and ugly presents ever.

Or when you make a special cake for him based on his favorite dessert, the black-and-white cookie, and the frosting kind of melts off the cake.

And even when you take your husband out for dinner to a new Vietnamese restaurant and you order two different chicken dishes and then the waiter comes out and tells you that they've run out of chicken, the evening isn't ruined.

I try so hard to make sure everything is perfect but in the end, it only matters that I try, not that things actually go according to plan because, honestly, you can't control everything. Anthony feels the same way, which is a good thing since I can't imagine how he could stand to be with me if he truly expected perfection. Cheers to our imperfect celebration, which couldn't have been more prefect. xo

Summer's Kick-Off

For today's barbecue at my parents' house, I made these cinnamon-sugar cookie bars:

This cake tastes just like a giant snickerdoodle cookie. Love. And it looks so much better after my brother plated it like he was at a fancy restaurant. It's fun to have a professional chef in the family to make even the simplest of dishes look elegant.

Also, I came across these awesome seltzers near the checkout at Stop & Shop:

There were a bunch of new flavors but I only bought the Pomegranate Sangria and Mint Mojito. I may be biased since I'm a seltzer-lover but they were amazing, the kind of drinks that are perfect for a warm day, but would also be perfect in a cocktail.

And just like that, it's the end of the long weekend. Summer is here, kind of. xo

Dessert for the Season

This dessert just looks like an Easter treat to me. Carrot cake and a cream cheese semifreddo (which I think is like a soft ice cream) together in sandwich-form would be perfect after a heavy holiday dinner.  Culture magazine also suggests soaking the raisins in whiskey or rum first so this might even be a great boozy treat for St. Patrick's Day. Man, I just love holiday baking...

Via Serious Eats via Culture Magazine

Happy Mondays

I brought a plate of pumpkin pie streusel bars to work today and put them out in the communal kitchen, where they were eaten very quickly by my co-workers.  Sometimes it's nice to be nice, especially on a Monday.

That Trendy Spaghetti Squash

Have you ever had spaghetti squash? I'm not a squash/zucchini person but this fall seems to be the season of the spaghetti squash so I decided to get with the trend. Once I cut it in half, scooped out the seeds and sprinkled with salt and pepper, the only thing left to do is let the squash roast for an hour.  When it's done, I scraped with a fork and wound up with a bowl full of a healthy bizarro version of angel hair pasta. I actually really liked it , although the consistency is odd. Bonus: this is the easiest side dish to make and I believe even the most inexperienced chef can pull it off successfully.

I was also able to use my new apple slicer, which I bought six months ago at a Pampered Chef dem (I didn't know what else to buy; $100 for a terracotta-like sheet pan that I'll never use didn't seem like a logical purchase).  It took me almost a half hour to cut up the apples for my apple crisp but the results were delicious and tasted just like autumn.

Currently, I'm sporting a huge bandage on the top of my right hand due to a mishap involving a hot oven and an even hotter Pyrex casserole dish filled with apple goodness. I'm calling it a battle scar and just patiently waiting until it's healed so I can stop applying neosporin.

How was your weekend? xo

Entertaining, a.k.a. Everyone loves Cookies

We don't have people over often.  Our apartment is just too small to entertain large groups (we actually still have boxes in a few corners from when we moved in about a year and a half ago--shhhh....).  My father's birthday was last week and since it fell on a Wednesday, we celebrated on Sunday.  Anthony and I dug out the folding chairs and invited everyone over to our place.  We had a simple lunch of baked pasta, and my brother made a pie, but the hit was the batch of chocolate chip cookies that I baked that morning.  Initially, I had planned to make ice cream sandwiches using the cookies but people weren't really interested in assembling their dessert.

In retrospect, the cookies were probably too soft to stack with ice cream anyway.  Lesson learned: I didn't need to fuss so much with the pasta and the salad.  I just need to make sure I always bake fresh cookies when expecting company.  xo

Get Baking: What Sounds More Delicious Than Something Called Cookie Butter?

I hadn't heard of cookie butter until a few months ago.  I was aimlessly walking around Trader Joe's one night and decided to buy a jar just to see what it would taste like because it sounded so delicious.  In case you've never had it, cookie butter is the consistency of peanut butter but tastes like gingersnaps and graham crackers (or the Belgium cookie speculoos).  It's the kind of thing you can eat little by little by chipping away at it a spoonful at a time.

Last Sunday was unofficially bar-dessert day.  I not only made a batch of peach crumb bars but I also used the cookie butter to make frosted speculoos bars with this great recipe from Butter Me Up, Brooklyn. 

Note: I was going to substitute in nectarines for these peach bars, but for some reason, the nectarines were all moldy inside.  Inside and around the pit.  Fruit can be unpredictable, even if you did just buy it (thanks, Stop & Shop!) so I improvised and used apricot preserves.  If I were to make these again, I'd make sure the layer of preserves was thicker, but I loved the crust and the crumble on top, which are coincidentally the same dough.

                                    Yup, here I am letting all of the hot air from the oven escape while I take a photo.

The speculoos bars wound up being a hybrid blondie-gingerbread cake concoction. Somehow, I baked them too long. I think they were a bit dry but they paired perfectly with a cup of coffee.

The frosting was very sweet, almost too sweet for me, but interestingly enough, it didn't taste that sugary when it was spread on top of the speculoos bars.  They complimented one another perfectly.

If you can, pick up a jar of cookie butter.  I'd love to try some different flavor combinations, like cookie butter smeared on celery sticks.  Thanks to Brown Eyed Baker and Butter Me Up, Brooklyn for the great recipes.  xo

Tea Time

I came across these cookies on Pinterest and I am in love.  They are shortbread cut into the shape of a teabag, complete with string detail for the tag.  They are just so creative and would be absolutely adorable for an afternoon party.  What do you think? 

It was really hard to find an original source for this but I think I tracked it down to this awesome French site.  (via Le Petrin)

Sunday Breakfast, Now With Crunch Berries

Today was the first Sunday in months that I didn't have to get up at dawn to meet someone or do something for someone.  I celebrated by making a huge pot of coffee and pouring a large bowl of Captain Crunch cereal. 

This was much better than the last time I had Captain Crunch.  A few months ago, I accidentally bought a box without crunch berries.  I cannot express how disappointed I was when I saw that I had an entire bowl full of yellow rectangles.  The berries really make all the difference.  xo

P.S. I've been craving rice krispie treats so I made a batch this afternoon and somehow messed them up.  They are hard and brittle, and I can't believe I ruined the easiest non-bake dessert recipe out there.  I rule.

Turning Thirty: Let the Festivities Begin

I'm turning thirty years old on July 6th so for the next five weeks, I'm embracing life and trying to do at least one new and/or enjoyable and/or spectacular thing per day. Click here for more Turning Thirty posts.

Thursday was Anthony's 30th birthday (he's a Flag Day baby!) and we celebrated in a low-key way.  I had tried to arrange a small surprise party at a hibachi restaurant but I wound up spilling the secret and he told me that he would rather have a night at home and perhaps dinner out on Friday night.  Since his request was so modest, I tried my hardest to make those two nights as perfect as possible. 

After we both got home from work on Thursday, I made a few favorite dishes for dinner and then unveiled the cake: a Gameboy-inspired confection with lego-shaped candles.  It came out pretty cute, considering I'm not a pastry chef.  We opened a few presents, watched a little television and talked about how excited we were for Friday night's dinner.

Anthony's birthday dinner was fondue at the Melting Pot.  Neither of us had ever been and we were really looking forward to it.  Our meal consisted of four courses over two hours, served by the perkiest, most adorable waitress.  Every booth is like a little private hideaway within the restaurant so our dinner was super intimate and cozy.  I loved that the cheese (a combo of swiss and gruyere) and chocolate (a s'mores combo with marshmallow and graham crackers mixed in) fondue was made right in front of us using the electric burner right in the middle of the table. 

For the main course, we got a tray full of meat and seafood that actually needed to be cooked in the boiling broth that was brought to our table.  It was surprisingly fun to spear the meat and wait for it to be done.  There were tons of sauces to try and dip into, and everything was delicious (it was the first time that I had lobster tail!). 

And for dessert, Anthony even got to make a wish before we chocolate-dipped the fruit, pound cake, brownie squares and rice krispie treat bits.  (By the way, there is a ton of steam from the fondue pots on the table so it was like Anthony and I were staring at each other through a cloud all night!)

Happy birthday to the best fiance in the entire world.  I know that our next decade together will be just as wonderful as the past ten years together have been. xo

Turning Thirty: Buffalo Chicken, Meatball Shop-style

I'm turning thirty years old on July 6th so for the next five weeks, I'm embracing life and trying to do at least one new and/or enjoyable and/or spectacular thing per day. Click here for more Turning Thirty posts.


I'm never home for daytime television, but last week, I randomly caught ten minutes of the Rachael Ray Show and since then, I've been obsessing over the recipe that the dudes from New York's Meatball Shop were making with her.  I've been dying to go there, and apparently, these buffalo chicken meatballs are one of their best-sellers.  After dreaming about them for three days and then finally making a batch, I can see why.  Anthony and I gobbled them up so fast, and I can't wait until lunchtime tomorrow when I get to eat the leftovers in a sandwich.

And they were easy to make, too.  My least favorite part was heating up the Frank's Red Hot with some butter in a pan before you add it to the other ingredients.  When hot, the mixture has an intense odor and will definitely make your eyes tear.  It actually reminded me of when I clean our coffeemaker with hot vinegar and the stench invades my nose and the apartment for days. 

Sidenote: Anthony seems to think that the reason the meatballs tasted so great was because I used hot sauce that expired in September 2010.  This was not deliberate but it wound up being the secret weapon because it really fortified the flavor. We may be on to something.

Also, it's worth mentioning that I made an out-of-this-world lemon poundcake for my grandparents' 62nd(!) wedding anniversary.  In fact, it was so good that tonight, I made another one to bring to work.  I'm happy to not only use up the rest of the buttermilk (I hate wasting ingredients) but also, to find a lemon pound cake that so closely resembles the slices that are sold at Starbucks (you know which ones I mean, right?  They have thick white icing on top and are delicious).  This recipe from Fine Cooking really exceeded my expectations, considering I came across it by googling "lemon" AND "buttermilk."

I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  One of the highlights for me was when I was at a Starbucks this weekend with a couple of friends and did my absolute best to ignore the middle-aged man meowing like a cat from a table in the corner.  Yes, he was meowing like a cat.  I love people.  Happy Monday! xo

Turning Thirty: Casual Friday

I'm turning thirty years old on July 6th so for the next five weeks, I'm embracing life and trying to do at least one new and/or enjoyable and/or spectacular thing per day. Click here for more Turning Thirty posts.

Sometimes, it's okay to eat dino nuggets for dinner.

And it's always okay to make a batch of blondies the night before a lunchdate with a few of your favorite people.

If I had to use a hashtag to describe tonight, it'd be #casualfriday.

Christening the Kitchenaide

Anthony bought me a Kitchenaide for Christmas.  Did I tell you that?  Four months ago, I unwrapped the most beautiful gift, a mint-green retro mixer for our countertop.  I have wanted one of these glorious machines for as long as I can remember so obviously, I ripped it out of the box and started using it right away, baking up all sorts of treats.

Except that I didn't.  You see, Anthony and I weren't supposed to buy each other expensive gifts for Christmas this year.  We are saving for a wedding, a wedding that is almost exactly one year away.  But he knew how much I wanted one and how happy it would make me, after I stopped being mad at him, of course.  I considered returning it, but couldn't do it.  So I made a special spot on the counter and have looked at it fondly every day since December 25th.

And then on Friday night, I decided that I needed to use it.  I christened the Kitchenaide to make sugar cookies for Easter.  I should have mixed the ingredients together a bit more, but in less than two minutes, I had an entire batch of dough ready to chill then bake.  It was the true meaning of baking efficiency.

I'd like to say that I'm going to use it all of the time now, but I'm not sure yet.  In a way, it still seems too pretty to use.  What I do know is that every time I look at it, I smile.  I also feel like I should be waxing it up nightly so that it stays shiny.  It's one of the best gifts I've ever received, and I'm glad I didn't return it.

Cookbooks Galore

There are so many great-looking cookbooks that have been recently published and even though I know most of them would wind up on a shelf barely opened but once a year, I still want them all.  Some of my favorites:

 Pie It Forward by Gesine Bullock-Prado: I have Bullock-Prado's Sugar Baby book and I love it.  This one looks just as good.

Joy the Baker Cookbook by Joy Wilson: This is such a great food blog that I just know that this will be a fantastic cookbook.
 

Cupcakes, Cookies and Pie, Oh My! by Karen Tack: This book is from the Hello, Cupcake! people and I have fallen in love with the sheep cupcakes covered in marshmallows.

 

Marshmallow Madness! by Shauna Sever: I've wanted to make marshmallows for a while but the stickiness factor has always deterred me.  This cookbook features so many varieties of the fluffy treat and I kind of want to make them all.

Hello, Jell-o! by Victoria Belanger: Although Jello grosses me out a bit, how kick-ass would it be to make miniature versions of fruit out of this jiggly substance?

 

Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson: This cookbook doesn't even come out until August 2012, but it's filled with recipes that were popular in the 1950's aka 'vintage.' I'm a sucker for nostalgia and classic desserts.

Do any of these cookbooks look good to you? Am I the only collector of cookbooks?

Getting to the Bottom of Macarons

Truth: I've never tasted a macaron.  You know the ones that I'm talking about, those beautiful round treats that come in every color imaginable and are displayed in front windows of French bakeries.  In fact, for the longest time, I thought they were coconut patty-type treats (those are apparently a different type of macaron, aka macaroon).  According to this Martha Stewart recipe, they mainly consist of sugar, egg whites and almond flour.  Sounds too easy for such a beautiful result, right?

Macarons are the 'newish' thing in New York City, and even though I've seen them at a bunch of different places, I love the ones from the Macaron Parlour.  They are so cheerful and the flavors are really interesting (I'd love the try the 'smores or tiramisu variety).  The Macaron Parlour is opening up a shop on St. Mark's Place this summer but until then, their goods can be found at the Hester Street Fair, Lily O'Brien's or even on Etsy.  The next time I'm in the city, I'm going to track down one of these macarons and try them for myself.

Images courtesy of Macaron Parlour