This weekend we went for a hike in the Marin headlands, which sounded like a great idea (right?), except that yesterday I rode my bike for the first "long distance" ride I've been on in over two years. Maybe I should have started small instead of going from 0 to 17 miles? ... Everything hurts.
Good thing the scenery was so nice. ...
The hot pink beet and apple salad from Around the World in 120 Salads is an easy and refreshing Swedish-style chopped salad.
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I've come to the conclusion that I don't make enough dinner salads. I love chopped salads of all varieties, but somehow I never think of making them. Beginning of 2018 resolution? Eat more of the things I love. Like this healthier Dijon chicken salad with a Greek yogurt dressing.
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Apparently I took a little vacation from blogging... it wasn't my intention, but since it's been 11 days since my last post, clearly that's what happened. I've been using my vacation time to see lots of friends and family. And to do a ton of baking (unsurprisingly).
Last year, I started January with a Whole30. That's not my ambition for January 2018, but I am committed to cutting out sugar/sweeteners for the month, plus I'm letting Caleb do all the grocery planning. In light of that, this week's idea post is very simple, veggie plus meat dishes, since that's pretty much what we'll be eating. Yes, it's from a Whole 30 cookbook, but look past that and these should be simple, fast and easy recipes that you can serve with rice or bread on the side if you so desire.
A) Orange Chicken with Cauliflower Rice
B) Fennel Soup with Spinach and Spicy Sausage
C) Garlicky Pepper Beef with Crunchy Cabbage
D) Thai Chicken and Brussels Sprout Skillet
E) Sheet Pan Shrimp with Sesame Broccoli
all from Whole30 Fast and Easy Recipes
I've never felt the slightest bit of desire to make this whiteout cake. There are so many more compelling cakes in the world and in this cookbook. Baked: New Frontiers contains one of my all-time favorite cakes: the lemon drop cake. The red velvet cake is pretty delicious too. I'm thrilled to be baking through Baked: New Frontiers because it gives me an excuse to make the grasshopper cake. But a simple white cake with white chocolate frosting, which is what the whiteout cake is...? Strikingly pretty, but boring flavor-wise (or at least that was my assumption)....
I love molasses cookies. They are one of my very favorite holiday cookies, so much so that there was once a day when the only thing I ate was eight of these molasses cookies.... Because they are so delicious. It's not a day I plan to repeat often, but sometimes, an eight cookie day just happens.
...I've been wanting to make these portofignos ever since Dorie's Cookies was released. It's not every day that I have part of a bottle of port lying around - that's the kind of alcohol most likely to get consumed by my friends and family if it happens to be opened. So when I had some friends over and we opened a bottle of port but it didn't get finished...I was delighted. Time to make these amazing portofignos!
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This Sunday's recipe for sour lemon scones comes from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking as part of the Baked Sunday Mornings cookbook bake-along. I skipped the previous Baked Sunday Mornings recipe for a Cinnamon Mocha because I just couldn't get excited about drinking one, but I've really been looking forward to these sour lemon scones.
I love a good lemon scone. For years, a scone was my favorite breakfast, and an iced lemon poppyseed scone ranked as my absolute favorite. These sour lemon scones aren't as sweet as the iced lemon poppyseed scones you'll find in most bakeries and cafes, and that's a good thing. ...
I confess that any cookbook with a title translating to "to eat copiously and without restraint" is going to grab my attention. I picked up Fress from the library a couple weeks ago and have really been loving the unique flavors in Emma's book. Emma's dishes come from her family history and personal travels, rambling from North Africa to Poland to Israel to Algeria. I haven't actually made anything yet, but my to-make list keeps expanding with every read.
A) Moroccan Stuffed Sweet Potato with Braised Fennel and Tahini from Fress
B) Artichoke, Spinach, and Pistachio Gratin with Pitta Chips from Fress
C) Chicken and Pistachio Meatballs with Cilantro Tahini from Fress
D) Chocolate, Date, and Pistachio Cake {gluten-free} from Fress
E) Sweet Potato Brioche with Orange-Pecan Streusel from Bake from Scratch vol. 1
As always, thanks for voting!
Unlike the espresso chocolate sables, I didn't have any expectations for these little semolina and almond cookies. I picked them mostly because they call for semolina flour, which I somehow have quite a bit of, and also because of the crackled cookie top in the picture.
I told Caleb I was baking two batches of cookies, these and Dorie's portofignos, apologizing that he probably wouldn't like either. I was right about the portofignos (nuts & fruit in cookies aren't his thing), but wrong about these Moroccan semolina and almond cookies. He declared these better than a Mexican wedding cookie (one of his favorite cookies) and more dangerous than my chocolate chip cookies because they aren't as rich so it's easier to eat more of them.
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I know a lot of people who say they prefer box mix brownies to homemade brownies. I've never understood those people, but I'm willing to admit the Ghirardelli triple chocolate box mix brownies are pretty delicious.
With a relatively small amount of flour and minimal leavener, these brownies from the Vanilla Bean Baking Book are ultra-fudgy inside with a delicate crackly top. Everything people love in a classic box brownie, but these are better than box mix brownies, and they are practically as easy to make.
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My expectations for Dorie's espresso chocolate sables were incredibly high. Coffee and chocolate are two of my favorite things, especially in combination. Shortbread (sables are a French shortbread) is simple, but executed correctly they are one of the most compulsively eatable cookies.
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Last week was all about cookies, this week apparently I'm all about salads and healthy-ish soups. It balances out, right?
Thanks for voting!
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The majority vote from last weekend's Cookie Ideas post was for these snowy-topped brownie drops from Dorie's Cookies. It's a weird name for a cookie, I have to admit, although the name worked out pretty well within the context of a work event this week. Basically, Dorie's snowy-topped brownie drops are a brownie cookie. She took her Classic Brownie recipe, added a bit more flour, and rolled small rounds of the dough in confectioner's sugar, ultimately yielding a crackly crusted cookie with an ultra-rich chocolatey interior. Think - all the best parts of a super fudgy brownie, with extra chunks of dark chocolate folded in, and baked just long enough to barely set the outside. These snowy-topped brownie drops are extremely decadent, and you'll think that you can only eat just one, but after eating another one or two, you'll discover you were wrong. As a bonus, they pair fantastically with vanilla gelato or as the cookie base for an ice cream sandwich.
...Christmas is one of my favorite holidays, and seasonal cookies are one of my favorite things. As probably everyone who reads this blog knows, for the past couple years, I celebrated the season by baking cookies for my co-workers every work day leading up to Christmas, aka the "12 days of cookies". It's that time of year again, and thanks to Black Friday sales and generous PILs, I have a shiny new KitchenAid Pro 600 to make absurd quantities of cookies.
Friday isn't the "traditional" ideas posting day, but I've also missed several Saturdays, and I'm planning to get started with the cookie dough baking tomorrow. So this Ideas Post is all about cookie ideas. I have so many sticky notes in Dorie's Cookies that it's almost like I want to bake all 300+ kinds of cookies she describes.... every cookie I've made so far from this book has been somewhere on the spectrum of good (multigrain chocolate chip cookies) to outstanding (molasses-ginger cookies).
If you're new to reading this blogging and wondering why you're reading about cookie ideas instead of cookie recipes, the answer is I semi-regularly poll people for their opinions on what recipes I should make next. So these votes will translate into posted cookie recipes (soon)!
Vote for what cookies ideas I should try first!
A) Snowy-topped Brownie Drops
B) Pecan-Butterscotch Shortbreads
C) Maple-Star Anise Cookies
D) Zan's Birthday Cookies (German Chocolate Cake translated into cookies)
E) Pistachio-Berry Slims
F) Espresso Chocolate Sables
G) Coffee-Cardamom Cookies
H) Coconut-Lime Sables
I) Old Bay Pretzel-and-Cheese Cookies
J) Honey-Blue Cheese Madeleines
K) Bee's Sneeze Nuggets (lemon, ginger, honey, black pepper, gin flaky cookie/biscuits)
L) White Chocolate and Poppyseed Cookies
M) Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies
N) Double Ginger-Molasses Cookies
O) Ms. Corbitt's Pecan Cake Fingers
All from Dorie's Cookies
Smitten Kitchen is the only food blog site I trust so completely that I'm willing to send people (friends/coworkers/family) to Deb's site without having necessarily tested the recipe myself. There's not a single recipe I've ever made from SmittenKitchen.com that hasn't been a smashing success.
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I've been anticipating the dark chocolate raspberry truffle assignment from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking for months. These dark chocolate raspberry truffles are part of a truffle trio in Baked: New Frontiers. The trio includes a dark chocolate honey truffle, which sounded too sweet to me, a milk chocolate almond truffle, which wasn't going to win any fans in my immediate family, and this dark chocolate raspberry truffle. The dark chocolate raspberry mochas at the coffee shop in downtown Santa Rosa were my second favorite coffee drink after the White Cow (white chocolate and almond syrup), so the flavor combination seemed like the obvious choice to me. I found myself with some excess heavy cream not too long ago and considered starting these truffles, but then chickened out and made the lemon poppyseed cake from Sweet instead.
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The chai sugar cookies from Little Flower Baking take the best parts of a warm chai tea and a soft sugar cookie and roll them into one perfect lightly spiced cookie. As all sugar cookies ought, they have soft, pillowy interiors paired with slightly crispy edges. It's the combination of cream cheese, butter, and grapeseed oil (a light, neutral oil) that achieves this textural balance. A chilling period in the freezer immediately prior to baking gives the cookies time to set up so that they attain the appropriate loft and the rich, warm chai flavors. ...
How has it been over a month since my last "Idea" post?
I swear, the move-out/in process will cease to be an excuse behind my tardiness very soon, but apparently these things take longer than I expected.
It’s been so long that I’ve accumulated an absolute mess of marked recipes I want to try. By rights, this should be a Smitten Kitchen week because next Saturday a friend and I are going to her book signing in Santa Cruz.
Unsurprisingly though, I have not managed to restrict myself to just the one cookbook.
Recipes for previous votes are coming soon! Or a discussion of massive failures (like that baked falafel).
.... just as soon as I locate my kitchen notebook.
Thanks for continuing to read and vote.
A) Seared Short Ribs with Quick Kimchi and Sesame Salt from Dining In
B) Grandma-style Chicken Noodle Soup from Smitten Kitchen Every Day
C) Caramelized Cabbage Risotto from Smitten Kitchen Every Day
D) Triple Bean Vanilla Bundt Cake from The Artful Baker
E) Portofignos from Dorie's Cookies
F) White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies from the Duchess Bake Shop
G) Bake Sale Winning-est Gooey Oat Bars from Smitten Kitchen Every Day
This Shaker fresh herb bread is the first of two things of made from the Harvest Baker so far, and significantly less work for a better tasting end bread product than the other item (the cheddar and veggie-o-saurus).
...I am a huge cookie snob. You should probably know that about me. I like peanut butter cookies, but they've never been my favorite kind of cookie. Too often they're too sandy, too dry, and generally, pretty unappealing. I felt that way about all peanut butter cookies until I encountered Ovenly's recipe for gluten-free peanut butter cookies. The recipe in Baked New Frontiers in Baking for peanut butter cookies with milk chocolate chunks leans more towards "typical peanut butter cookie" than towards Ovenly's, so I didn't go into this Baked Sunday Mornings recipe with high hopes.
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When the recipe schedule was posted for Baked: New Frontiers, I was really excited about this classic apple pie. I haven’t made a “true” pie from any of the Baked cookbooks yet. Last Thanksgiving I made the sweet potato pie, but it used a gingersnap crust and although it was delicious, the oven I baked it in was so horrendous that I never wound up posting about it because my pictures are pretty terrible. [The oven did not heat evenly – I had a ripple effect, partially burnt crust, and a underbaked filling dilemma.]
Anyways, back to Baked: New Frontiers and the classic apple pie. After reading the recipe through a few times, I decided the Baked team has gotten much more precise when writing recipes over time…. these instructions have at least one gaping hole (and I wish I’d planned out my baking timeline better).
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Beef and broccoli used to be my favorite dish to order in Chinese restaurants. Last spring, the beef and broccoli from 101 Recipes You Can't Live Without was the winner of a Vote for a Recipe post, but I never posted the recipe because neither Caleb nor I were especially happy with the outcome. I've been (very slowly) testing other renditions of beef and broccoli, and this version from Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge is the first that's been worth posting.
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Caleb moves to San Francisco this week!!!
That's really all I need to say, right? He specifically requested that I try my hand at baked falafel and homemade gyros. It took some hunting and the best book I found is called Delights from the Garden of Eden. It's out of print and when I checked it was being sold for $999 used. Luckily, the SF library is the best library.... anywhere.... and they have copy for me to borrow.
Made in India is also here as an option because I love cooking Indian food and it's a cookbook of the month pick that people have been raving about.
Thanks for voting!
A) Oven-roasted Chicken Tikka from Made in India
B) Chicken in Pickling Spices from Made in India
C) Slow-cooked Lamb and Spinach Curry from Made in India
D) Baked Falafel from Delights from Delights from the Garden of Eden
E) Shredded Roasted Meat (Gyro Pitas) from Delights from the Garden of Eden
F) the Pregnant Chicken from Delights from Delights from the Garden of Eden
Welcome to the Tastiest Book! I'm so thrilled you stopped by. I'm cooking (and baking) my way through my cookbook collection, sharing my experience with which recipes worked and which flopped. Meet Kat...
