I hope everyone realizes I just use this blog to complain about weird food marketing.

But I also talk about things I make. So first, here are some cookies I made. I was less than impressed with them, and sort of overcooked the first batch but undercooked the second batch. I felt bad taking them into work, but I figured my standards are too high, and I was right, by the end of the day, they were all gone except one (out of politeness issues, I assume. BTW, that link is first when you google "not taking the last cookie." [not with quotes]). Anyway, Lacan notwithstanding (really, I don't think I've ever read him) the recipe was via Baking Bites, from Cindy McCain and scandal. I wouldn't make them again though.



Now to be curmudgeonly. So, I saw this bread at the Safeway. To my discredit, I actually bought it, since I like millet and flax in bread, even though I think "ancient grains" is a terrible name for a bread and not descriptive at all. It's not like this is made out of genetically engineered, previously extinct grains. (Unless it is, which would be awesome. But I doubt it.) I mean, this list is...grains. It's alright though, but sweeter than I like bread.

I made some oat jam squares. I just looked for the original recipe, but I found that the blog has since been taken down. I did once email the recipe to someone though, so I suppose I should post it, with some slight modifications.
(Also, I want to show off the nifty blue pyrex dish I just got from Goodwill.)


(And, I want to freak out my former roommates, assuming they still have me on their RSS feeds...it's only been since, um, October...)

2 1/2 cups oats
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup melted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup jam

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine everything except jam. Put 2 cups of the dough aside, then press the rest into a greased pan (9x9 or 9x13). Spread the jam on, then sprinkle the rest of the dough on top. Bake 25-30 minutes.

(Upon reflection, I used 3/4 cup butter, and it turned out too crumbly, so I should have packed down the top layer, or just used the 1 cup butter as in the original recipe. So instead of taking them to work they are still on my counter...)

summer! birthdays! while i gave my roommate a "choice" for her birthday cake (and it was, i would have baked almost anything), i was heavily leaning for chocolate guinness cake. it's been in my del.icio.us queue since december of 2004. that's three and a half years! luckily, i manipulated/convinced her that this indeed was the cake she wanted for her 24th birthday. i ended up using both the previous recipe and this one. it is basically the same recipe with strange differences in sour cream, butter and cocoa amounts. i split the difference in all of those, i think. and despite having a bad experience with a cream cheese frosting last year, i determined that letting the cream cheese soften up enough would solve most of the problem. i also added a few squares of melted chocolate to the frosting. it was a lot softer than i thought it would be, but firmed up nicely in the fridge. decoration from hagelslag sprinkles. there isn't a lot of beer at all in the cake, and the flavor is very subtle to the point of being almost non-existent, but i'm guessing it does add a lot of flavor somehow, as the cake tastes much more chocolately beyond just adding cocoa powder.
the cake dome fits (barely) in the fridge, but does protect the cake well...it was pretty moist to being with, but it's stayed moist too.

Sooooo, icebox cake. I made it once before in Seattle, and it was Pretty Good. So when I saw The Chocolate Wafers at just the Key Foods near me, I bought a package. Of course, I then let them sit in the pantry until they were (only a little bit) expired. And I wanted to make cream scones too (hmm, I suppose that's another post. So behind. If you people knew how much I was running around trying to graduate and not collapse in the middle of streets...well, you'd be happier with reading about goldfish crackers.) so I figured a pint of heavy whipping cream was justified. I did not make the exciting and pretty cake, but I probably should have taken her advice and added sugar to the whipping cream. As it was, I followed the recipe on the back of the box and made it log-shaped. It was, again, Pretty Good, but like I said, I should have added sugar, and there are strange bits of chewy flakes (sort of like tasteless coconut?) in the cookies, which was sort of weird if you didn't eat a slice fast enough. But I'm mostly proud of the fact that my roommate was able to hold her own as an expert on icebox cake at work, when the subject came up the day after she had some.Whipping cream. Halfway done. As you might imagine, it was sort of messy. Taking pictures was sort of risky.

Okay, not the best picture I've ever taken. And sort of disturbing. It really looks much better once you cut it (On the angle, of course).

I had a little bit of leftover cream left, so I shook it in a small plastic tub and made butter like I did when I was younger.

(The buttermilk's the best part!)

I have abandoned all of you to lists upon lists, and no pictures. I haven't had any time to write up or link to any recipes, so here's all the pictures from the last month.

My new food processor and hummus in the making. Angst chicken and blurry carrots and onions. From the leftover chicken and stock, chicken noodle soup and tortilla soup. This lemon tart recipe ended up making two tarts, which was good, as there is a LOT of butter in every part of it. Some, I think , could have been omitted with no problem. I don't think I would make this again, or at least without a lot of revision. It's not bad though, as evidenced by my eating it constantly.

Icebox Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been meaning to post on this since the 10th, and I've managed to eat them all in 3 or 4 batches since then. They originally started as baked-in-the-car cookies, but given that it's December and I don't have a car, I used the slice-and-bake recipe. Which is, admittedly, very convenient. The first time I baked some, they had a very chemically, plastic-y taste. The next time I made them, after they had been in the freezer for a few days and I let them thaw before I baked them, came out much better. I'm assuming it's just the extra time left in the freezer, or maybe I hadn't gotten *all* the wax paper off the first time, but they were fine ever since. They are better right out of the oven as they harden considerably the next day. Which is maybe the point, you can just make fresh cookies whenever you want. But those Pillsbury cookies in the tube are, um, probably better. Tube cookies are better than a lot of cookies, actually. Nevertheless, we forge on.

Here the roll of cookie lies, letting cold air out of the freezer.

Again, in forced perspective.

An unbaked, perfectly circular cookie. They don't spread out much like drop cookies, as one can see by comparison with the first picture.

mmm, millet

I made the no-knead bread a few days ago. I've made the basic recipe 2 or 3 times before, so this time I used 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour to replace some of the white flour, and threw in sunflower seeds and millet. I've been obsessing about millet since college, when the dining hall (hi pierce!) occasionally had this awesome bread that had about 10 billion types of seeds and grains in it. So I hunted down millet in Seattle (seriously, New York has something against bulk foods...maybe it's a law?) and brought it back to New York for this express purpose of making myself bread. And it's very enjoyable bread. Now I just have to figure out what all those other seeds were.

The obligatory somewhat gross pictures of the baking process: right after mixing the dough together. And after about 20 hours. It should have taken less time to get the little bubbles on top of the dough, leading me to believe I should have bought new yeast. Or at least used the unopened packet. Cooked and all. A slice of bread. Sadly, the resolution is not quite good enough to see the tasty sunflower seeds and millet.

i like polygons, okay?

i can feel your disappointment. i'm disappointed in myself, really. but i tried! i tried to find a sugar pumpkin to make pumpkin pie from scratch with. i went to three stores! so, you (and i) should really be disappointed in new york city and their terrible supermarkets and groceries.
so, i went back to my old tried and true friend, libby's pumpkin. which still took me four stores in my neighborhood to find.
this is also a story about how i can't, for the life of me, roll out a pie dough to fully cover any sort of pie dish. i think this may have to do with the fact that my chopping board is too small, the width of saran wrap is too short, and cookbooks don't actually know what 1/8" actually looks like. however, i should also know to just make a recipe and a half whenever i make pie dough. whatever, at least i actually had shortening (helloooooo crisco) to put in it this time.


as for the filling, i deviated from my normal libby's pumpkin side-of-the-label recipe, because, as i said, i was GOING to eviscerate my own pumpkin. alas, there's always thanksgiving. i used this recipe, which is probably still the same as most other pumpkin pie recipes. and turned as just as delicious. it made a bit too much for my pie tin, so i put the overflow in its own ramekin. because if there's anything i love, it's ramekins, squirrels, and geometric shapes, all neatly represented in the next two pictures. again, i know, we're all disappointed in me. i should have tried to get them all in one shot.

mmmmmuffins.
actually, not so much, which is probably why i've taken so long to post this. i think i wanted something more fluffy and not as moist and dense as these. they weren't bad, but i didn't eat about half of them. i may have been picturing one of the most perfect muffins i had at my high school cafeteria and was also orange and chocolate.

but pictures, anyway.

Sweater Weather

Ah, fall. The air grows chilly, the wind is brisker, the leaves change colors, rainstorms abound.

Almost...none of this has happened. We had rain yesterday, but it felt more like a quick summery shower with some thunder and lightening thrown in. In my desire to hasten autumn along, I made this apple cake, which is less like a cake and more like an explosion of apples barely held together by a custard-like cake binder. The recipe is from the New York Times, and for some reason, I have a paper copy of it. Thanks to the good people at the Times, who have recently seen fit to open their archives to all, we see that it was published September 22, 2004. This all leads me to believe I probably bought the paper in the airport on the way back to the start of my third year of college. Which why would we be talking about now, since I made the cake a few days ago? Right. Here are all the apple slices in a bowl. This was sort of a pain. Here are...all the slices in a pan! (Not to be confused with previous photo.) But really, this is much more apple than cake. It is also...slightly too full, as I discovered when I was settling down to read my chemistry textbook while it was baking, only to be interrupted by the smoke alarm going off. Repeatedly. The very high ceilings of the apartment mean that this involves me jumping up and down a lot trying to wave the smoke away. Thankfully, roommates were not home. Although the smoke alarm did go off the next two times the oven was used, when they were here. On to other things that probably appall my roommates, this is the carnage leftover from peeling, coring, and slicing five apples. Which I cleaned up promptly, of course. And, the finished cake. The issue with the smoke alarm meant I took it out of the oven about 10 minutes before I would have normally, but the apples are nicely caramelized, and the cake was halfway between cake and custard. All persons partaking of it approved.

Fluffy! (Pancakes, not a dog or anything)

I made lemon-ricotta pancakes a few days ago, as you can see from the lists below, but I didn't take any pictures until yesterday, since when I did make them, my roommate and I sat at the kitchen table and basically ate them as soon as they came off the stove. They didn't need any accompaniment (although I did put some syrup on a few, as the chicken and waffles from the day before reminded me that I might like syrup after many years of finding it unappealing) and had the right amount of citrus. They were, though, somewhat bland. We decided they either needed some sort of berry jam...or bacon. Maybe both. I settled on yogurt and honey, obviously.


I used this recipe, but with more flour instead of hazelnuts, and I certainly didn't strain the ricotta first or make the lemon sugar the day before. I also added the juice of a lemon, and if I make them again, I'd use oil instead of butter because I think it sort of solidified when added to the cold ingredients, although there might have been some curdling due the the lemon too.

Chickpeas in the form of falafel probably make up the best food. Ever. Assuming, of course, you fry them and don't bake them. (Seriously, why would you decide to do this?) I also have a fondness for chana masala, probably borne from frozen meals, which is kind of sad, although it's really very good for what it is. (Frozen Indian food.)
Which is to say, something named Popcorn Chickpeas is going to haunt me until I make it. With that recipe and another similar one, I made half a can up. It is...sort of terrifying to make. Granted, only three chickpeas total decided to exuberantly leave the skillet, but you could tell a lot more wanted to. I suppose I should have been clued in by the 'popcorn' part. After that though, I threw in some chopped garlic, cumin and salt and pepper and couldn't really stop eating it until I was done, even after I started to get kind of sick of them. It would make a good party snack, not that I've ever thrown a party in my life. But maybe it's time to start. (hint hint, roommates.)

My sister just went off to college, so I felt obliged to send her a care package of zucchini carrot bread.


I also made one zucchini and carrot muffin so I could test it and make sure the bread was edible. I devoured this before photographic evidence could be taken.
I should mention here that I have a special fondness for zucchini carrot bread, as I had it while staying at the Sheraton in New Orleans when I was seven. I recall it was in their standard bread basket in just about every meal. It was delicious, especially as there was no way then I was going to eat frog's legs. It was at some computer trade show, I remember them unveiling some sort of new Macintosh.
I have a terrible propensity for baking bread for too short of a time such that it's either uncooked in the middle or comes out of the pan in more than one piece. This is clearly unacceptable for a gift. I think I baked it around an hour? It came out fine, with only a little knife work, and packaged up nicely.


It turns out, while my sister likes pumpkin bread and banana bread, she's not so much a fan of carrot bread. Sigh.

Our freezer is similar to Mary Poppin's bag; it holds all sort of things, more than would seem to logically be able to fit in it. I had a roll of phyllo dough leftover from CONNECTICUT (I have a distinct memory of throwing it in my car straight from the freezer in my old apartment and driving straight to this apartment, about a 2 hour drive on the best of days). My other roommate had a package of frozen spinach, so it was logical to make spanakopita. I was vaguely worried about this, as I've had spanakopita I've liked and disliked before, and I'm not a huge fan of either spinach or feta. So I decided to half the recipe, and cut the phyllo into two, making a small thing of baklava. Because I was pretty sure I wouldn't screw baklava up. Now, I was having a really awful day, and was devastated when I realized I rushed and cut the phyllo dough into half the wrong way. But I calmed down, and cut it in half again to lay the pieces side by side. Which worked out just fine, as butter and sugar and dough and walnuts tends to do. Had I been thinking properly, I probably would have chopped up the walnuts finer (they were in 'baking bits' from Trader Joe's) but it still worked out fine. I halved this recipe and made it in an 9x9 baking pan, with room leftover on the sides. Also, the butter is just used for brushing the dough, and 4 tablespoons in a halved recipe was more than enough to douse everything.

So, I'm not too busy to bake, but I am too busy to write about it.
Continuing the freezer purge, there were two pie crusts left, and my roommate requested I make apple pie from them. I can never remember what recipe I used the last time I made apple pie, and I knew I needed to make a smaller recipe than 6 cups of apple, so I looked at Baker's Illustrated, as usual, and a recipe from Baking Bites. I actually wrote the recipe down as I was making it, just in case it turned out to be the best apple pie ever. It wasn't, but it wasn't bad. The apples cooked down a lot, and also sort of lumpy, so I think I could have arranged them more compactly in the pie and fit more in, but my roommate had no complaints.
Apple pie is so much easier when you don't have to make the crust pie


Thaw frozen crusts for about 15 minutes. While thawing, slice 1 granny smith apple and 1 and a half golden deliciouses. Mix with 1/4 cup white sugar, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, a scant tablespoon flour, 2 dashes of salt, 2 dashes of nutmeg and a 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon. Let sit for 15 minutes or so. Place in pie crust and dot with a tablesppon of butter. Press down the other pie crust gently and place on top, using fork tines to seal the edges. Cut slits in a super cute and decorative way, and place in 425 degree oven for about 15 minutes, then 45 minutes to an hour at 375 degrees, until filling is bubbling. My crust got pretty brown quickly and had to be covered with foil, so watch it.

Then, realize you actually have an extra apple, some strawberries, and leftover crisp topping from a previous berry pie. Throw them together in a pie tin and also bake for about 45 minutes in a 375 degree oven.
Decide there wasn't enough butter or juice so it's not very browned or all that good. Offer to roommates anyway, and realize that three pies divides up into three people very easily. Really, I had one small slice each of apple pie and the apple-strawberry thing, and almost all of the berry pie, and each of my roommates staked out their own pies.