Thanksgiving can also have tricks and treats

Happy Thanksgiving, American compatriots! If you're looking for something to do with that extra bag of cranberries you accidentally bought, I recommend sugaring them for a pretty table setting/delicious cranberry candy 2-hit combo.



My contribution to the dessert table this year will hypothetically be this Pear Butterscotch Pie from Epicurious. "Hypothetically" because it's in the oven right now, and it's looking a lot more like one of Mrs. Lovett's pies than the thing in Gourmet's picture, and we're out of tin foil so I can't tent the edges of the crust to prevent overbrowning. [Though really, if I manage to not set it on fire I'll be doing better than I have with Thanksgiving dishes in the past. (I apparently only bust out the en fuego accidental for special holiday occasions. It's the best hostess gift ever? It's thematically warm & stressful?)] Will let you know how it turns out!


In the meanwhile, a non-caloric holiday treat: a new episode of Consumerism WOW by Adam & me! Adam picked the things we talked about this month, including but not limited to this shirt design:

Thing #5


Lauren: Your dour demeanor so frequently belies your gleeful mood that you want to reassure people that on the inside, you are super excited about everything. OR you want to trick people into thinking that you’re super excited about everything so they’ll be off their guard for the unequivocal pants-kicking that you’re about to deliver them.

Adam: Well now that you explained about the pants-kicking my success rate at fooling people is going right in the toilet! And hey, I’m not dour, Lauren! I am inscrutably magi-cranky, thank you very much.


Visit Adam's blog to discover his nefarious consumer desires and learn some Science! He sure learned me about rainbows.

recipe: Not Quite Mom's German Apple Cake

Halloween may have super-sneak-ninja attacked me this year, but I had Fall all figured out. The day that the scent of cinnamon brooms battered me at my first step into my local grocery store, I bought some Granny Smith apples, went home, and apropos of no greater occasion than the season made this version of my mom's German apple cake.



If you wanted to be proper about it, you'd use all white flour and all white sugar in this cake to achieve the sweetest richness, and you'd slice the apples thin-thin-thin for galette-style decoration and chewy caramelization. My modifications yield an earthier, more everyday cake for those of us who don't own a mandolin and have come to comfortable terms with the fact that we'll wind up eating leftover cake for breakfast, and will feel better about it if there's a bit of whole wheat flour involved.

Dense and buttery with a bright, tart kick from the apples and a warming touch of cinnamon, this cake is Fall comfort. Unmodify it for a fancy party treat, or try my relaxed version for a laid-back, party-optional sort of thing.


Not Quite Mom's German Apple Cake
Serves 8-12 people.


INGREDIENTS

3 granny smith apples
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup sugar
half a lemon, de-seeded as best as possible

2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup white granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract (or 1/2 vanilla bean, scraped)
2 tbsp bourbon, if you've got it


METHOD

Peel & core your apples, slice them into wedges, and chop the wedges into roughly equal-sized chunks. As you go, place the resulting applebits in a medium bowl, tossing them with a squeeze of lemon juice to prevent browning each time you add a batch. Once all 3 apples are chopped, add the cinnamon & sugar and toss/stir/muss about with your hands to coat the apples. Set aside to macerate (i.e., soak & soften) while you prepare:

A pan! V. important to the cake-making process. I used a 9-inch springform for the cake in the photo, but a larger round or square should work so long as you shorten the baking time. Butter and flour your pan of choice and set aside.

Set your oven to 350 degrees F.

Measure your dry ingredients out into a medium bowl and whisk gently to combine.

In a larger bowl, with an electric mixer on medium speed, cream together your butter and sugar for ~3 minutes or until the mixture has lightened in color and texture (indicating that cake-buoying air has gotten into it). Add the eggs, vanilla, and optional bourbon and beat for another 2 minutes to combine thoroughly.

Add your dry ingredients to you wet ingredients and stir with a spoon/spatula/other nonelectric device to combine. The batter should be shiny and smooth (keep stirring if it's not). Pour it into your prepared pan and wiggle the pan to distribute evenly.

Drain most of the liquid from your apples (they can be wet but shouldn't be dripping) and scatter the pieces across the top of the batter, pressing them in just slightly.

Pop the pan in the oven and bake for 60 minutes. Well, check it around 50 minutes. You're looking for the sides of the cake to be deep golden and pulling away from the pan, for the liquid between the apples to be sizzling merrily, and for little bits of batter to be poking up between the pieces of fruit.

Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan until said pan is handleable, then either remove it from the springform, carefully flip it out of your non-springform pan (using a plate to flip with instead of a wire rack), or simply slice and serve the cake from where it is. Seal tightly and refrigerate any leftovers, which should keep for a week.


*If you leave it in the oven too long, no worries: you can abuse this cake and it'll still come out okay. As long as it's not actually charred, just stick it in the fridge in a tightly covered container overnight and it'll be lovely and moist the next day. When you eat it for breakfast. Because that's what responsible adults who have used whole wheat flour do.


[I previously posted an iteration of this recipe done with pears instead of apples, which is lovely if you have heathens friends who dislike cooked apples.]

review: siggi's pomegranate & passion fruit skyr yogurt

A quick sequel to my review of siggi's orange & ginger skyr yogurt:

I tried a cup of siggi's pomegranate & passion fruit flavor, which has a gram more sugar than the orange & ginger flavor (bringing it to a still-teensy 11 grams total) but just as much protein (a Juggernauty 16 grams). For that one gram of additional sugar and a lack of woody ginger bits, the pomegranate & passion fruit skyr is much less aggressive and more to my tastes than the orange & ginger was. The sour of the fruits in this one blend just perfectly with the (still quite strong!) sour of the yogurt.

The passion fruit is the more forward of the two fruit flavors, and it's very bright on the tongue. (The taste reminds me -- and forgive me this analogue, I blame the '80s -- of the scent of Hawaiian Punch.) That brightness compliments the thickness of the yogurt, making it feel a bit lighter than the orange & ginger did. Not having any bits or pieces of fruit mixed in with the yogurt helps as well, allowing a creamy mouthfeel. (Pro-tip: If you find this yogurt grainy when you first open it, let it sit out for ten minutes or so. As it warms up, the milk solids relax and it becomes more smooth.)

Overall, the orange & ginger flavor reminded me of something sturdy. Like drywall. The pomegranate & passion fruit is much more friendly -- more luxurious [and for $2.50 or more per cup, I want to be pampered, not spanked (personal preference)] and dangerously seductive, budgetarily speaking -- I'm going to be craving these bright flavors again soon. If you're going to plunk down the cash to try siggi's, I'd highly recommend this flavor.

kickstarter and cobbler

My musically inclined friend Juliana, who also blogs at write.play.repeat. and Bear & Honey's Clueless To-Do List, is working on 2 new albums! They're going to be seasonally themed sorts of things, which -- I tell you in case you're unaware that Juliana is an incarnate of Mama Nature via a) the 80s and b) the Internet -- is highly appropriate.


She's using the faboo Kickstarter.com to raise funds, and you should toss monies her way 'cause I really want to hear what she's working on. Erm. And for other, less monkey-serving purposes as well (I guess), like "advancing the arts" or "I want advance-release copies of the albums and/or an in-home concert for myself." You can sample and purchase her previous EP and LP on CD Baby (I particularly recommend "Rattlesnake" from How to Take the Fall), though donating 25 bux on Kickstarter will earn you both of those AND both of the new albums once she's all funded and finished. Just sayin'.


In baking news, I've been making all the cobbler lately -- cherry, blackberry, and peach in just the past two weeks. I think the peach was the most successful -- I grated a maybe 1/4 tsp of nutmeg over the peaches and added maybe 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract while they were mascerating, and yeah. Heavenly.


I've been using a bottom crust from smittenkitchen's apple tart and a biscuit topping (with hard-boiled egg yolks instead of raw!) from her rhubarb cobbler. My only advice if you try this is to prepare a LOT of fruit -- ~3 quarts of cherries, blackberries, or other things that come in quarts, or at least 10 peaches or other pieces of single-serving fruit. Just mascerate whatever fruit you're using in 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar (depending on the natural sweetness of the fruit) while your crust & biscuits are chilling, then assemble, bake, and feel like a rockstar.

recipes: lemon curd and a mango-blackberry tart

Did I mention that I have the best (if slightly self-serving) group of friends ever in the whole Universe?

This was my birthday present. (Thank you, friends!) Having it makes me unafraid of pastry dough for the first time ever, and being unafraid of pastry dough makes it necessary for me to stock lemon curd.

If you've never had lemon curd, it's a bit like a tart citrus version of apple butter -- or like a creamy marmalade minus the bits of rind. It plays with sour-sweet flavors, has a pudding-smooth texture, and is terrific as a spread on toast, waffles, pancakes, muffins, or other breakfast/brunch baked goods -- or it can be used as a filling or glaze for cakes, cupcakes, or dessert pastry. I love tart flavors and generally prefer less sweet desserts, so I think it should be used in all of the above pretty much all the time.

I made a batch of lemon curd a couple weeks ago, meaning to spread a layer of it atop the crust and beneath the fruit (i.e., mascerated mangoes and fresh blackberries) in a pastry based on smitten kitchen's simplest apple tart.* In my pastry-assembling excitement I completely forgot to put the lemon curd in, but I melted 2 tablespoons of lemon curd plus 1 tablespoon of butter to brush over the crust & filling instead of just butter, which worked wonderfully. It was so successful, in fact, that I also forgot to take any pictures of it. I fail as a food pr0nographer.

Lemon Curd
Adapted from Haalo of Cook [Almost] Anything at Least Once, who got it from Stephanie Alexander.
Makes ~12 oz. of lemon curd

INGREDIENTS

4 egg yolks
3/4 cup (150 grams) white granulated sugar, the finer-grained the better (but plain ol' sugar is okay too)

5 tbsp butter (70 grams)
7 tbsp lemon juice (~3.4 oz., or 100 mls, or ~3 lemons' worth)

METHOD

Combine the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and blend on medium-high speed for 3 minutes, until the mixture has lightened to a cream color.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan on medium-low heat, then add the lemon juice and stir to combine. Stir a couple tablespoons of the hot liquid into the yolk & sugar mixture to temper it, then add the yolks & sugar to the saucepan. Whisk constantly until the mixture just reaches a boil (~10 minutes or so, depending on how hot your stove runs), at which point the lemon curd will thicken sort of drastically and separate a bit, turning a brighter yellow underneath a layer of cream/foam.

If you happen to have the equipment and wherewithal to sterilize and seal jars, you could jar the lemon curd and store it at room temperature for up to 3 months until opened, at which point it should be kept in the fridge (for up to 4 weeks). If, like me, you're better with Tupperware than boiled glass, just seal it up and pop it straight into the fridge. It'll need to sit awhile to set to its proper, jellylike firmness.

I plan to experiment with making all sorts of other fruit curds using this recipe by simply swapping out the juice and adjusting the sugar content -- if you happen to try making any other flavors, let me know how it goes!


*Simpleish Mango & Blackberry Tart
Adapted from Deb of smitten kitchen, who got it from Alice Waters.
Serves 6-8

Follow Deb's excellent instructions on making and refrigerating the tart's crust. In addition to that, you'll need:

INGREDIENTS

4 large red/green mangoes (or ~8 smaller yellow [champagne] mangoes)
1/3 cup white granulated sugar (I'd try less, maybe 1/4 cup, with the yellow mangoes)
At least a half-pint of blackberries (or your other berry of choice)
~4 tbsp prepared lemon curd (optional)

2 tbsp butter (or 1 tbsp butter + 1 tbsp lemon curd)
2 tbsp turbinado/raw granulated sugar (optional but very pretty -- white sugar would work fine too)

METHOD

While the crust is chilling, cut your mangoes into cubes, and stir your sugar into the cubes. Let the cubes sit for at least half an hour, stirring occasionally to redistribute the mango in the syrup. This is called masceration, and it'll help break down the stringiness of the mango and work some of the moisture out of fruit so that you don't wind up with an overly soggy pastry crust.

Once the mango is mascerating, rinse and dry a pint of blackberries. You could also use blueberries, or slice some strawberries into vertical quarters -- use whatever's ripe and sweet and readily available. (You may end up only using a half-pint, so if you're on a budget you could buy less berries -- I just like having extra around to make up for inevitable berry loss due to over-ripeness and snacking.)

When the pastry dough is chilled and the mangoes are mascerated, get out two clean bowls. Use one to drain the mango syrup into (through a fine mesh sieve if you've got a big one, or through a pasta strainer or even a slotted spoon in a pinch) and the second to hold the drained mango pieces. Butter and flour an ~9-inch tart or pie pan (with a removable bottom, preferably), and roll the dough out to ~4 inches in diameter larger than your pan. (I always get lazy when I'm rolling dough out, but you want to roll it enough so it'll come up over the sides of the pan by at least an inch.) Drape the dough into the pan, gently tucking it down into the corners of the pan and letting the edges hang over the sides. Get your oven heating to 400 F.

If you've made a batch of lemon curd, try spreading maybe 4 tablespoons across the crust with a pastry brush or the back of a spoon. Arrange the mango pieces evenly in the crust -- it's okay if you don't have quite enough to fill it. (If you didn't use the lemon curd, you could use a couple tablespoons of the mango syrup to help fill in any gaps.) Spangle the tart with the berries, then fold the loose edges of the crust over the filling. It doesn't need to look perfect -- rustic and tasty is what you're going for with this thing.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter (or 1 tablespoon each of butter and lemon curd) and spread it over the edges of the crust and the top of the fruit with a pastry brush or the back of a spoon. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of sugar over the crust if you wanna make it extra pretty.

Pop the tart in the oven for 30 minutes, coming back to rotate it every 10 minutes to ensure even browning. Mango and berries don't need all that long to bake, so really you're just looking for the filling to be bubbly and the crust to reach a nice, rich golden brown. Once it's out, let it cool for 5-10 minutes, then slice and serve -- whip cream wouldn't go awry with it, but I think it stands really well on its own. If you happen to have any left over, wrap it loosely and refrigerate it. It should keep for 2 to 3 days.

#yogurtpost

So I get this e-mail from a nice lady claiming to have read my review of siggi's yogurt (an unverified claim, but likely) and to be from the Associated Press (which she actually is, I checked. On Google). And she asks if I'd like to talk with her about yogurt. I like yogurt and I like talking, and that's how I came to be quoted in an AP article with a doubleplusgood pun in its title: Yogurt crosses cultures with new styles, imports.

I feel like I should provide you with some new yogurt news now as so to uphold my status as public yogurt expert, but really most of my yogurt opinions these days orbit around my finding everything from StonyField Farms awesomely inexpensive & worthwhile and everything from everywhere else shades of acceptable to inedible. My current obsession is with StonyField's Lowfat Plain yogurt. Very lowfat (2g fat, 1.5 saturated) and yet very tasty plain! No honey or other additions necessary! (Though it sure is berry season, and fresh berries are most excellent in yogurt.) I just wish that more (read: any) of my local stores carried Lowfat Plain more regularly.

Have you made any yogurt discoveries since the last time we talked about my favorite breakfast quick-breakfast-so-I-don't-eat-anyone's-face food?

holidays = food and shopping

Oh, The Holidays! The one time of year that I'm operating nearly at the (ludicrous) speed of my brain. I love the season and am always somewhat relieved when it's over.

Had my office party at One Midtown Kitchen, which put together an excellent lunch for us. If you ever go there and they offer you hand-rolled gnocchi with root vegetables, you should take them up on that. (Though beware: they seem to enjoy sneaking bits of delicious meat into things that are ostensibly vegetarian. Like hand-rolled gnocchi with root vegetables. I personally enjoy charcuterie, but I wasn't expecting to find slices of it on top of my vegetarian option.) But yes, I only spilled prosecco on one person, and that person wasn't even my boss. Success!

Went back to Prohibition last night, and found the establishment to be much more -- well, established. They found a rotary dial for their phone booth (which I'm glad I didn't have to deal with after I'd had any drinks 'cause I'd nearly forgotten how those work), turned off the flat-screen, and were operating with comfortable ease. I had a tiny but satisfying bowl of gnocchi (my current obsession?) with a wonderful salty cheese crust (though I didn't detect any of the duck the menu said was in there -- perhaps it got overwhelmed by the cheese?). And Darrell poured me a Gin-Gin Mule (ginger beer and gin with a sprig of mint, warming and cooling at the same time), a whisky cocktail I didn't catch the name of involving lemon juice & peel (very smokey and grown-up), and a new thing made with Aperol and shouju and ginger beer and lemon peel (light & juicy & delicately sweet, one of my new favorites). [Oh, and I think I spied the AJC's John Kessler while I was there -- I managed to not descend upon him in a cloud of fangirl, and am hoping he'll have nice things to say about the place.]

I developed a sudden love for shouju (an airy and slightly sweet rice liquor that goes really well with citrus) at Yakitori Totto in New York City circa New Year's Eve last year. I'd never seen it on a menu before, but it sounded good and came with a variety of fruit juices. Or, more specifically as I discovered, a variety of fruit for the customer to juice. The bemused/amused waiter (who had about as much English as I have Japanese, meaning that we both did a lot of gesturing and apologizing in poor accents) looked at me looking at the fruit, and graciously whisked it away to make something drinkable out of it. (Hurrah for mutual cultural embarrassment.) If you find yourself in NYC, you should go there and order one of everything (or two of everything, as you may find yourself not wanting to share). At the very least, if they happen to have it as a special again around this time of year, try their elegant shiro-kuro goma (white & black sesame) noodle soup.

I thought I had a pretty good handle on shopping about a month ago, 'cause I had about half of it done. And so I stopped for three weeks. Oops. I'm gonna try to write up long enthusiastic things about some of my favorite online merchants later on, but for now I'll just recommend that anyone with some holiday shopping left to do hie to Sock Dreams, Think Geek, New Egg, or Jeni's Ice Cream. All have lovely products and customer service, and get things out quickly. Bless them.

recipe: drunken-raisin oatmeal cookies with pecans and tangerine

I'm a food blog junkie, infatuated with foodie recipe sites, and a sucker for slick, high-production-value cookbooks. And I'm here today to tell you: Sometimes the recipe on the back of the brand-name lid really does work best. For example, my favorite pumpkin pie is the kind you make with a can of Libby and the recipe that's printed on the label. (The first year that my family nouveau & I hosted our See We Are Totally Grownups Thanksgiving, we slaughtered a pumpkin and made the pie from scratch. It wasn't as good.) Same goes for oatmeal cookies -- honestly, the Quaker Oats kids know what they're talking about. They've made some cookies in their time. Trust in the label. It wants you to eat delicious cookies.

....Okay, confession: I don't entirely trust in the label. 'Cause, see, the Internet told me that parbaking the pie crust will prevent sogginess and that simmering the pumpkin and cream together will make a richer filling, and the Internet never semi-rarely steers me wrong. I can never just follow a recipe. This is possibly why I started a food-related blog.

In the case of oatmeal cookies, I mostly just add a few little touches for maximum deliciousity. The base recipe creates soft, chewy, comforting oatmeal cookies. With a few little additions, I wind up with something that tastes like home and warm and the holidays: pecans for a buttery crunch, whole wheat flour for nutty richness, cloves and tangerine zest for tastes-like-Christmas, and whiskey for smokiness & extra moisture [and also 'cause dude, most things about the holidays are better when you (or, y'know, your raisins) are a little tipsy].


Drunken-Raisin [Vanishing] Oatmeal Cookies, with Pecans and Tangerine
Adapted from the inside of the Quaker Oats lid. Makes ~3 dozen cookies.


INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup raisins (dried figs would also be awesome, just chop them raisin-sized)
1/4 cup whiskey (or bourbon -- you want something sweet rather than peaty, I used Jack Daniels)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 tangerine (or orange, or clementine, for 1 tsp of zest)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar (light or dark is fine, I like dark)
1/4 cup granulated white sugar (minus a tablespoon if you like less sweet desserts)
1 stick unsalted butter (we're gonna soften it)

1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups whole oats (regular or quick-cooking)
1/3 cup pecans (we're gonna chop them small & toast them)


METHOD

At least an hour before you start working, measure out your raisins into a ramekin, small bowl, or coffee mug. Add the whiskey and stir. Set aside, and stir whenever it occurs to you that you haven't in awhile. (You could do this the night before, even, if you have way more foresight than I do.) Don't worry, all the alcohol will bake off. No one will get tipsy from the finished cookies.

When the raisins have soaked up some of the whiskey, you're ready to start working. Set out your butter and egg to allow them to warm up a bit.

Chop your pecans to pea-sized-or-smaller chunks, and toast them until fragrant and warm-golden colored. That'll be ~2 minutes in a toaster oven or in a pan on medium heat on the stovetop, ~10 minutes in an oven that's just been turned on and is heating up to 350 (which is what the cookies will bake at), or ~5 minutes in a hot oven. Watch them carefully. If they burn/blacken, start over with fresh pecans. Set aside.

Measure out your dry ingredients (flours, baking soda, cinnamon, and clove) into a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Zest your orange-colored citrus of choice, and if the pieces are more strip-like than granular, chop them fine (a teaspoon is approximately what you get from one tangerine or clementine, or ~1/2 of an orange, if you're not being extremely industrious about zesting). Add the zest to the dry stuff and whisk again to combine.

If you haven't heated up your oven yet, now would be a good time to get that going towards 350.

Measure your sugars into a separate, larger bowl and add your softened butter in chunks. Cream them together using an electric beater on medium for 3 minutes, then add your egg and vanilla. Use a spoon to strain 2 tablespoons of whiskey off of the raisins, and add that to the wet mixture as well. Use that electric beater on medium again for 1 minute to combine.

Add your dry ingredients to the wet ones, and stir by hand to combine. Drain any remaining whiskey off your raisins, and add the raisins to the bowl. Also add the toasted pecan bits and the oats. Stir, again by hand, to combine.

Drop by rounded tablespoon (ping-pong ball sized bits) onto a cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 12 minutes. They'll look a little shiny and underdone in the very middle of their tops, but they'll continue cooking a bit after they come out, so that's okay. Cool for 10 minutes on the pan, then carefully remove them to a wire rack to cool completely. They'll be crumbly while they're still warm, and chewier once they're cool. I'm a chewy-texture fan, so I'd recommend waiting.

If you don't need that many cookies right now, you could refrigerate the dough for an hour or so until it's solid enough to work with, and then mold rounded tablespoons of dough into balls, wrap them in plastic wrap, and freeze in a plastic bag or container for up to a month. (Just let them defrost in the fridge for a few hours before baking, and use the full 12 minutes of baking time to compensate for the dough being chilly going in.)

Store the cookies in an airtight container, and they should last a week. Freshness-wise, anyway. They don't call them "vanishing" for nuthin.


OH HAY, A TIP

If, like I did when I made these, you find yourself without brown sugar but with both white sugar and molasses, you can haz a substitute. White sugar is just brown sugar with the molasses removed. So, to substitute for a half cup of dark brown sugar, use a half cup of white sugar plus 2 to 3 teaspoons of molasses. (I say "2 to 3" because honestly, measuring molasses is an imprecise science. Just get about that much in the mixing bowl, and don't worry about it.)

recipe: sugared cranberries

Last winter I went through a phase where playing with melted sugar seemed like a really excellent idea, and through a simultaneous obsession with cranberries. Of course this happened eventually:


Sugared cranberries. Most recipes I've seen call for maceration overnight, but I prefer my method of gentle simmering -- it jellifies the inside of the cranberries without sweetening them very much, and once you apply the sugar crystal coating, each berry becomes an individual bite of cranberry sauce: a burst of tart, thick jelly contained by the crisp crunch of sugar shell. And they look gorgeous and festive as a plate garnish or table dressing with a warm & wintery holiday meal. Many thanks to Maria @ MommyMelee for the photo evidence.



Sugared Cranberries

INGREDIENTS

1/3 cup granulated white sugar (for coating)

1/4 cup granulated white sugar (for syrup)
2 tbsp water
1 cup fresh cranberries

1/4 cup additional sugar (for syrup)


METHOD

Set out a layer of parchment paper (or a plastic/silicone cutting board) on a flat work surface. Pour the 1/3 cup of sugar for coating into a medium (like, can-of-soup-sized) bowl, and set it by the paper/board.

Rinse the cranberries, but don't worry about drying them. In a 2-quart saucepan (i.e., smallish, but large enough to hold all of the cranberries in a single layer), stir together the water and 1/4 cup of sugar, and place over very low heat. Like, heat setting 1 or 2 out of 10. You'll want it to just simmer, but never reach a full boil. Stir the sugar occasionally until it's dissolved and just beginning to bubble.

Add the cranberries to the melted sugar, and stir gently to coat. Some (or even most) of the cranberries will split a seam in their skin to let steam out, but so long as they're not starting to gush jelly out into the pan, they're not too hot. If any start bursting completely open, take the pan off the heat for a moment and turn the temperature down.

Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring gently and frequently to keep the cranberries coated with the syrup. When the liquid in the pan begins turning pink, add the extra quarter cup of sugar. Continue stirring gently for another 3 minutes or so. You're looking for all of the sugar to be dissolved and the cranberries to look like they can't take much more heat without bursting.

Turn off the heat, but leave the pot on the warm burner to prevent the syrup from solidifying too much while you're working. With a slotted spoon, fish a scoop of cranberries (<10 or so) out of the pan and wiggle it to drain off some of the syrup. Add the cranberries to the bowl of sugar, and shimmy the sugar around in the bowl to coat them. If any of the cranberries are sticking together, poke them apart with a finger or clean spoon (carefully -- hot sugar can be very hot). Once they're coated with sugar crystals, gently pick the cranberries out (they should be cool enough to touch if you're quick) and place them on the parchment paper/board to cool, dry, and harden.

Coat the remainder of the cranberries in sugar, a scoop at a time. If towards the end of the batch you find the sugar crystals clumping instead of coating the cranberries evenly, just pick out the clumps of syrup and add a couple tablespoons of fresh sugar to the bowl. The sugared cranberries can be eaten/used as garnish as soon as they're cool enough -- maybe after they've been out of the pot for 10 minutes -- but if you want them to last for a day or two, allow them to dry for at least an hour on the sheet.

You can proceed this way through an entire bag of cranberries, using fresh sugar each time -- a 16 oz bag contains about 3 cups, or 3 batches. You want to keep the cranberries in a single layer in the pot, though, so that they cook evenly and thoroughly -- don't be tempted to cook a double or triple batch all at once.

It's best to store the sugared cranberries in an open container in a cool, dry place that's out of the sunlight, which may melt them. Do not store them in the fridge -- the moisture will make them melt for sure. You can seal them in a plastic baggie or container if you wish -- just put a layer of parchment between the cranberries and the plastic. Even so, the sugar coating may begin to melt after a few hours. Should the coating melt, you can reapply it without doing any particular damage to the cranberries -- they won't look as pretty the second time around, is all. They should keep for 2 or 3 days (if you can avoid eating them all, piece by piece, absentmindedly).

If you're the sort of person who hates wasting anything, you could add a few tablespoons of water to the remaining (pretty-in-pink) syrup in the pot, heat it and stir to dissolve, and pour it into a sterilized jar/bottle for use in tea/coffee/cocktails during the holiday season. It shouldn't have much if any flavor from the cranberries, and should last at least a month if you store it in the fridge until it's needed.

recipe: banana-pecan-date bread

Baking is one of my coping mechanisms. It keeps me busy, and then I get to eat/feed other people comfort food. My project for the evening was a riff on my friend's family banana nut bread recipe. The dates add a tangy sort of contrast to this sweet, homey quick bread, and the pecans are sweeter than the traditionally used walnuts.

The only real secret to any quick bread recipe (y'know, anything you can put in a muffin tin/get to rise without yeast) is to not work the batter much at all after you add in the flour. You really only need to get the flour wet -- mixing it too hard will create too much gluten and make your bread/muffins tough. And nobody likes tough muffins.

Banana-Pecan-Date Bread

INGREDIENTS

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas, sliced
1 tbsp vanilla

1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped
1/3 cup dried dates, pitted and chopped small

METHOD

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Spread your pecan bits out in a pan and stick them in the oven until they begin to get fragrant -- 5 to 10 minutes, depending on how fast your oven heats up. (You want them to get a little deeper in color, but be careful not to burn them!)

Meanwhile, butter & flour a bread loaf pan. Yes, even if it's nonstick!

Measure out your dry ingredients (flours, baking powder, salt) into a bowl and combine them by stirring with a whisk. (You could sift them together if you're more motivated than I am.)

In a separate bowl, combine the butter and sugars. Hit 'em with an electric beater on low-to-medium speed for ~2 minutes, or until the mixture increases in volume and lightens in color a bit. Add the eggs, vanilla, and bananas, and beat for another minute or so on low-to-medium, or until the bananas are pretty well mashed up and mixed in -- smallish, pea-sized chunks are okay, but you don't want pieces much larger than that.

Now, my friends, it is time for the dry ingredients, so put that mixer down. Gently stir your dry mixture into your wet mixture, juuust until it's incorporated. A couple dry spots are okay, 'cause after you gently stir in the toasted pecan bits and the chopped dates, you're gonna leave the batter alone for five whole minutes. Five! Just set the bowl down and walk away. (I know this because Alton Brown knows this.) While you're checking your Twitter page, the flour will be busy soaking up some extra moisture without creating any of that nasty tough-muffin gluten.

When you come back, pour the batter into the prepared pan (you'll notice that most any flour pockets will have disappeared, and the batter will have some air pockets in it -- this is a good thing) and pop that sucker into the oven! It'll take an hour or so to bake -- check it at 60 minutes, and leave it for another 5-10 if it's not a deep golden brown yet. Let it cool in the pan for a few minutes (to let it finish cooking & solidify a bit), then turn it out onto a cooling rack and let it sit for another few minutes (for the same reason) before slicing and devouring.

recipe: orange-chocolate-raspberry yogurt cake

The whole thing where the word "cake" doubles as a synonym for "simple" makes me feel like a complete lamer sometimes. 'Cause folks, sometimes cake is hard. There are electric beaters involved, and patience and delicacy are as necessary as those eggs that oh-hell-you-didn't-beat-enough, and after it comes out of the oven people expect you to do something fancy with it. I secretly despise complicated recipes and making things pretty -- my favorite desserts are hearthy, homey things that look a mess and taste ethereal, like the music nibblins of the spheres.

This loaf cake comes together in two bowls, no electric gadgets necessary, and the "decoration" involves stirring and then pouring. And having leftovers means that you don't have to fix breakfast.

Orange-Chocolate-Raspberry [aka Anything] Yogurt Cake
Adapted from smitten kitchen, who adapted it loosely from Ina Garten

INGREDIENTS

Cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (coarse/kosher/sea salt always preferred)

1 c. plain yogurt (I used nonfat, lowfat might be better)
3/4 c. white sugar
3 eggs (extra-large preferred)
2 teaspoons grated orange zest (~1 orange)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 c. fresh raspberries
1 tbsp additional flour
1 c. chocolate chips

Glaze
1 orange-worth of fresh-squeezed juice (~1/3 c.)
1 tbsp sugar

METHOD

Grease and flour a loaf pan (8 1/2 by 4 1/4 by 2 1/2-inch if you've got it) -- yes even if it's nonstick. (The way I do this is: Take stick of butter. Rub across bottom and sides of pan to coat lightly. Put down stick of butter. Use fingers to spread the applied butter evenly around the surfaces and into the corners. Wipe off hands. Get a good couple pinches of flour and sprinkle them around the pan, probably working over the sink. Tap & turn the pan to coat the butter evenly with the flour, and then tip extra flour out of the pan. Then: TADA, your loaf will release, well, like buttah.)

Get your oven preheating to 350°F!

Measure your flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine. You could also sift them together if you were feeling less lazy than me.

In a second, larger bowl, whisk your yogurt, sugar, eggs, orange zest, vanilla, and oil together until smooth.

Whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients in maybe 4 small batches. Once smooth, stir in the chocolate chips.

Toss the raspberries with the extra tablespoon of flour (so they'll bleed less!) and then gently-gently fold them into the batter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for ~50 minutes... this cake will dry out fairly easily, especially if you've used nonfat yogurt, and it won't brown very much, so start checking at ~45 minutes and probably don't let it go longer than 60. A toothpick or skewer inserted into the middle should come out pretty clean when it's done, but if you bake by sight like I do, you're looking for a light golden color, nothing deeper.

Meanwhile, just barely simmer the orange juice and extra tablespoon of sugar in the smallest saucepan you ever did own, until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is clear. Set aside.

Let the cake cool off for 10 minutes after it comes out of the oven, and then turn it out onto a cooling rack. If you want to make your cleanup process easier, set the rack on top of a cutting board, baking sheet, or strip of wax paper/tin foil/plastic wrap. Slowly spoon the warm glaze over the top of the cake -- it'll be runny, so a gentle drizzle is about the right speed. (If you're feeling industrious, you can use a toothpick/skewer to poke a few dozen holes in the top of the cake to give the glaze places to go.) You could alternatively reserve the glaze and drizzle it over individual servings of cake just before passing them around.

I think this cake is terrific warm, but it's just as nice once it's cool, and possibly even better once it's been chilled. Which you should always do with baked goods that contain fruit if you want to store them for more than a day.

You could put just about anything into this cake... next time, I'm thinking I'll try chopped strawberries instead of the chocolate chips & raspberries, and lime zest & juice instead of orange. But yes. Just use 1.5 cups of Delicious Stuff, and some kind of citrus zest & juice. And up to an extra 1/4 cup of sugar if your Delicious Stuff is a sorta tart fruit. Tell me what you do and how it came out! And if you take pictures, send them to me and I'll link and/or post them.

recipe: tree-candy crumble

Summer = tree-candy. Every time I eat a piece of fresh, seasonal fruit, I'm a little stunned by how completely awesome it is, in non-Ninja Turtle senses of the word that I don't generally utilize. I like fruit best raw & straight, but acknowledge that nearly everything is more rad when a stick of butter is involved. And since I'm the unofficial dessert chef for my friends' movie days, the result of all of the above is that I make a lot of crumbles around this time of year. They're simple & quick to toss together while everyone, for example, perfects a St. Germain cocktail recipe or watches The Amazing Screw-On Head, they're adaptable to any tastes and whims, and they feel fresh and light for being such a comforty food, which makes them perfect on hot summer days.

My hero Deb posted a crumble recipe awhile back (hers was strawberry-rhubarb), and it's far superior to all other crumble recipes I've tried, yielding a perfectly tender, moist, crispy crumb that's just-sweet-enough. You can put any kind of fruits you please under it, but I've had particular success so far with rhubarb-mango and raspberry-blueberry-lime. For best results, use whatever is Nature's current equivalent of Hot-Fresh-Now in your area.

Tree-Candy Crumble
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Yields 4 to 8 servings depending on deliciosity and whether you're serving boys.

INGREDIENTS

Topping
1 1/3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Zest of one lemon (or lime, or 1/2 of an orange)
Pinch of salt (if you like salty baked goods)

3 tbsp. sugar
3 tbsp. brown sugar (or demerara sugar, or turbinado/Sugar in the Raw)
1 stick unsalted butter, melted (aka 1/4 lb. or 4 oz.)

Filling
Juice of 1 lemon (or lime, or 1/2 of an orange)
1/4 to 1/2 c. sugar (to taste & depending on sweetness of fruits... can always sprinkle a bit more on top of crumble if it comes out a bit sour)
3 to 4 tbps cornstarch
Pinch of salt
4 to 6 cups of fruit (depending on depth of baking dish)
[For rhubarb-mango I used 2+ cups of rhubarb, sliced lengthwise and then chopped into 1-inch pieces, and then 2 red mangoes cut into slightly smaller pieces, and 1/4 c. sugar. For raspberry-blueberry I used 1 quart of each berry and 1/3 c. sugar.]

METHOD

Get your oven heating up to 375.

In a deep-dish pie plate/crockery thingy/pan/what-have-you, add all your filling stuffs (fruit, citrus juice, sugar, salt, & cornstarch). Toss to combine -- I feel that hands are the best mixing implements throughout this recipe, unless like some bakers who shall not be named (IT WAS ME OKAY) you nicked your finger while zesting your citrus, in which case tossing cut fruit + citrus juice with your bare hands will hurt like a proverbial mother.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together your dry topping stuffs (flour, baking powder, optional salt, & citrus zest) and then add the sugars and melted butter. Mix (again, hands are the best tools here) until topping is holding together in clumps.

Sprinkle the topping in variable-sized clumps evenly over the fruit filling. Pop in the oven! Go watch half a movie! You'll be looking for the filling to be bubbling up through the crumb in places, and for the crumb to be golden and browning here & there -- 40 to 50 minutes, depending on exactly how much fruit you've got in there and how soft the fruit was to begin with.

Refrigerate any leftovers and dare yourself to not eat them for breakfast.

NOTES

The next time I use rhubarb, I'm going to try macerating it in the sugar for 30 minutes or so before mixing it with the rest of the filling stuffs to help even out the sweet/tart flavors in the final product -- I ended up with sharp pockets of tart on that one, which wasn't BAD but was a little startling.

Combinations I want to try include pear-rhubarb, apricot-cherry, plum-other plum, raspberry-peach, and, later in the year, apple-cranberry. Am also contemplating (maybe in single-serving ramekins?) spreading a layer of lemon curd between the fruit and topping for extra punch.

Poke me if you have any consultationary questions! Am always happy to help.

recipe: clementine cake

Over my blissfully long weekend, my roommate and I had a few friends over for analog games and I decided to try out the clementine cake recipe that smitten kitchen posted a couple weeks ago. It's the sort of recipe that's irresistible to me… whole citrus! Ground almonds! Addition to my gluten-free repertoire! Whole citrus!

It didn't come out edible in time for said friends to try it -- the suggested cooking time was pretty wide open, and I was using silicone bakeware for the first time ever, so it needed a bunch longer in the oven than I thought it would -- but it came out pretty well eventually!

It's dairy-free and gluten-free, and tastes really sharply of citrus, and is extra rad with chocolate ganache (which I've never tried to make dairy-free, but I'm certain is possible with nondairy cream and butter substitutes, as most high-cocoa chocolate contains no milk solids). Bitter is one of my favorite flavors (and emotions!), and when you do this cake +ganache, it has my new favorite trifecta O' bitter: citrus, almonds, and chocolate. The texture is really fluffy-light and creamy with a bit of grit from the almonds -- something more like a flourless torte or a cheesecake than a cakey cake texture.


Clementine Cake
Adapted from smitten kitchen, who adapted it from Nigella Lawson

INGREDIENTS

5 whole clementines (rinsed and stems removed, but that's it)
5 eggs
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder
2 1/3 cups almond meal or ground blanched almonds (250 grams, or 0.55 lb)
1 c. plus 2 tbsp white sugar (225 grams, or 0.5 lb)
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp rum, brandy, or bourbon (optional)

Optional ganache:
4 oz. semisweet chocolate (113 grams)
2 oz. heavy cream or coconut milk (4 tbsp, or 57 grams)


METHOD

Place your clementines in a pot, cover with water (enough so that they're floating an inch or so off the bottom), and heat to a boil. Turn the heat down to a steady, strong simmer and cook for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. (This will remove most of the bitterness from the fruit.) I used a lid with a steam escape, and liked the result… I never had to replenish the liquid, and the fruit unbitterified fairly well. If you don't have a steam escape lid, just crack the lid a bit? After the 2 hours, drain the clementines and allow to cool.

Now is a good time to measure out the rest of your ingredients.

Halve the clementines and remove any seeds, then blend (or chop) very fine. I opted for pretty much complete liquification in my blender.

Now is a good time to preheat your oven to 375, and butter a 9" round cake pan. If you're using a springform, line the buttered bottom with parchment paper and butter the paper. (For the strictly non-dairy cake, other methods of greasing would work fine.)

Beat your eggs (you want a good froth, but not stiff peaks -- ~3 minutes with an electric beater, or ~8 with a whisk). Whisk together the sugar, ground almonds, and baking powder, then gently mix that plus the clementine gunk into the eggs -- you want to preserve some of the foaminess.

Pour into your prepared pan, and bake for 35+ minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean. If you notice a lot of browning on top but the insides are still sticky around 30 minutes, cover with tinfoil and continue baking. (Using a silicone pan, set on a baking sheet for stability, I probably could've gone all the way to 50 minutes before it was done. Using a metal springform, it was ready around 37 minutes.) Allow to cool as completely as possible before removing from pan.


MAKIN' IT FANCY

To make ganache the real way, set your chocolate in a double-boiler over low heat. Separately, heat cream to nearly boiling (ie, steaming, and bubbling just a bit), and then pour hot cream over chocolate and stir until melted and smooth.

To make ganache the easy way, dump everything in a small bowl and microwave for maybe 15 seconds, and then stir until melted and smooth. (It won't temper correctly with the easy way, so it won't have quite the same texture or shine, but it'll still be yummy.) While the ganache is warm, pour evenly over the cake and spread with a spatula to coat the top and sides. Cover and refrigerate to set the chocolate.