Posts filed under 'Dessert'
the calendar is clear
Have you heard? It’s autumn. Officially autumn. There may still be a few heirloom tomatoes resting on your counter, in all their shiny glory. They might even be sitting next to a bowlful of downy peaches throwing off their luscious scent. But, listen, the calendar is clear: it’s fall.
The time for produce that bruises to the touch has passed. Instead, it’s time for fruit that crunches and vegetables that grow beneath the surface and knobby specimens that rumble around the crisper drawer.
brussels sprouts & cupcakes
The other night, while Kevin was out wining-and-dining on the town for work, I indulged. I cooked a pasta studded with brussels sprouts, I watched DVRed episodes of Martha and flipped through old issues of cooking magazines. Okay, so it’s not exactly the stuff of a wild-and-crazy lady, but, let me tell you: it was bliss.
About those cooking magazines—they live under the living room coffee table. They’re piled in stacks and whenever I’m in need of a good read, I run my index finger down their spines and pull a couple, carefully and with all the Jenga-skill I can muster, out of the pile.
easy as pie
The magic of pie is this: one moment your kitchen counter is cluttered with a tin of flour, an empty pie plate, a couple sticks of butter and a pile of fruit. In a couple hours, this rather boring assortment has become a sight to behold (not to mention taste). Into that flour, you cut some very cold, best quality butter. Add a pinch of salt, a stream of water and you have yourself the ragged beginnings of a pie dough. It gets gathered up in a slip of plastic wrap, shaped into a compact disc and stashed in the fridge.
Next, you turn to that fruit. If you’re like me, you only have eyes for apples right now—which is a very good thing when you’ve still got a half-peck of your apple orchard haul waiting to be put to work. If you’re using apples, wield your peeler and wind it along the apples, leaving a curling red ribbon in your wake.
last go-round
I know I should be digging in my heels, clinging to the last vestiges of summer with all my might. I should be slipping out of the office at even the slightest hint of warm sun. I should be lifting the lid of the grill every single night. I should be roaming around farmers’ markets, arms full of juicy tomatoes and fresh corn. I should be giving all the sundresses I own one last go-round.
But I’m just not.
perils of the purse switch
On Sunday afternoon, I visited a little corner of hell. It wasn’t subterranean, it wasn’t all that hot, but hell it was, right there in Lincoln Park, at the corner of Kingsbury and Sheffield. Chicagoans might recognize this location: it’s the site of Chicago’s brand new, super(-duper)-sized Whole Foods—a sprawling spectacle of food and booze and carts and people.
To be fair, I’m kind of a sucker for spectacles and I actually quite this new Whole Foods. But I apparently only like it before the hour of 9 a.m., or some similarly unpopulated hour. I can tell you one thing for sure: I do not like it at the hour of 3 p.m. on a Sunday.
be ours
It’s a conundrum, that’s what it is. Ever since getting back from our wine country redezvous (say that ten times fast), I’ve been hell-bent on cooking and baking. California’s produce enticed me at every turn: in farm stands dotting the shoulder of the roads that snaked through vineyards; on the plates at incredible restaurants; hanging from the trees that innocently adorned people’s front yards (Can you imagine: a lime tree in your yard? I can’t.). It was inspiring—which has it’s upsides, namely the celebration of summer produce that’s been happening in my kitchen.
But it’s got its downsides too. I’ve got a vacation to tell you about! I’ve got a show and tell to conduct! But the kitchen is calling and I can’t seem to sit down long enough to put together a post that does wine country justice.
start your watermelons
Ladies and gentleman, start your watermelons: barbecue season has arrived. Finally. It took its sweet time and left us wallowing in puddles of rain and shivering under sweaters for many weeks, but it’s here now and I’m more than ready to let bygones be bygones. So long as barbecue season agrees to stick around until, say, late September, you won’t hear another weather-related complaint out of me. (What will I write about?)
As (good) luck would have it, we had a barbecue planned on the very first evening that barbecue deigned to grace us with its presence—last Thursday night. After a very cold, damp, gray week, I was more than a little worried about the forecast for our barbecue. Even still, we stocked our fridge with beer on Tuesday and stayed up way past our bedtime on Wednesday making baked beans and toasting bread cubes for panzanella. At work on Thursday, I obsessively refreshed my zip code’s forecast on weather.com, where the chance for precipitation vacillated between 30 and 50 percent all day long. By the time I left work, I had lost all hope that the sun would shine on us as we grilled.
sound advice
You’ve come here for food, I know, not advice. But, still, I have some advice to offer. And, this being my blog and all, I’m going to go ahead and give it to you. So, here goes. When you forget your friend’s birthday by, say a week or so, there’s really only one thing you should do. Make her a cake. And make it good. If your friend, like my friend Brynn, likes coconut cake and chocolate, then by all means, make the very cake you see pictured in this post.
Actually, the whole “make a cake” piece of advice applies equally well in a number of other settings. If you’re so busy at work you can’t see straight, make a cake. If it’s June and the entire weekend was cloudy and cold-cold-COLD, make a cake. If you’ve heard Martha talk once again about Mrs. Milman’s Chocolate Frosting and you finally just have to make it, make a cake, and slather it with Mrs. Milman’s frosting (turns out that Martha, or Mrs. Milman, rather, is on to something because the stuff is unbelievable).
an imperceptible shift
Something changed over the weekend. I’m more rested, my fridge is fully stocked after a week of not much cooking, and I finally shook a nagging cold, but I’m not talking about any of those things. This change was much more impercetible. I slipped from spring—with its hope and newness and unpredictability—into summer. Sweet summer.
I’ve been edging my way to the summer state of mind for a while now, so it’s hard to say for sure when exactly the switch happened. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was Sunday night, as I gripped a juicy burger with both hands and sunk my teeth in. It smelled and tasted like every barbecue I’ve ever experienced—the smoke of the grill, sandaled feet, late sunsets, laughter. Like that, summer arrived.
a cake fit for brunch
I want to tell you about this cake—a lemon cake with buttery lemon curd between the layers and a thick jacket of lemon zest-flecked cream cheese frosting. Its a cake that deserves a gushing essay of its own—wherein I would tell you how fun it was to make and how delicious it was to eat. But I’m just too distracted. You see, we’re boarding a plane in a few hours and heading to Minnesota for the weekend to see my family. And I can’t wait. I’m so excited that I’ve got a case of tunnel vision: I can’t seem to concentrate at work and or to give this cake its due.
The weekend forecast in Minnesota, per weather.com, is currently boasting big yellow sunshine icons. What’s more, we’ve got a full roster of plans: dinner out tonight, a brunch at my sister’s apartment tomorrow, a big home-cooked meal tomorrow night, a trip to the Minneapolis farmers’ market. And that’s just the official agenda: I fully expect to play some heated games of Doodle Dice, to swap recipes with my mom, to talk to my grandpa about his garden, to places bets on the Preakness.