Don't

Whatever you do, don't click this link.

And if you DO click that link, definitely don't buy the book. I'm warning you.

If you DO buy the book, don't check your mailbox eagerly every day waiting for it to arrive.

When it does arrive, please don't skip straight to page 93. I mean it this time.

By now I'm sure it's obvious: Don't even look at the recipe for Sweet & Salty Brownies, because that sort of behaviour can only lead to more dangerous activities. Next thing you know, you'll have a pot of bubbling caramel on the stove and a bowl of melted butter and chocolate and we probably shouldn't even talk about the fleur de sel that will be involved. That would be scandalous.

For reals, don't even consider bringing those brownies over to your bestie's house for Sunday Supper. Really now, you don't want that kind of reputation.

If you don't do any of those things, you definitely won't get an email the next day (before 10:30 a.m., no less) from your bestie's husband, with the subject, "It is good."

I'm eating a brownie. It is good. That is all.

Nor will you get a follow up email, moments later, with the subject, "Time to put up..."

Enough with the wishy-washy. Let's call it what it is: this is the best brownie I've ever had.

January 10, 2011. Mark the date.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Christmas 2010 was probably my best on record. We celebrated in Waterloo! We celebrated in Brooklyn! And many delightful gifts were exchanged. Santa was particularly supportive of my culinary endeavours this year, leaving under the tree a Le Crueset tagine, copies of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and Baked Explorations, and assorted kitchen gadgetry, including an enormous crock pot. Perhaps the most special of these gifts, delivered not by Santa but directly from Ken's mom, whose mad knitting skillz are to be reckoned with: a biscuit warmer.

Pretty, isn't it? And so, despite a certain Pet of the Week's best efforts to wake us up in the single digits on Sunday morning, we lingered in bed until after 10, at which point we managed to relocate our pajama'd selves onto the couch with coffee and warm biscuits - slathered in butter, and, of course, the infamous crab apple jelly.

My wish for you this New Year is that you wake up at a very reasonable hour some Sunday morning (or, even better, afternoon) and are inspired to make biscuits. I like this recipe because it's quick and oh-so-simple. If you don't have buttermilk on hand, fear not: Just mix almost-a-cup of milk with a tablespoon or so of white vinegar.

And even though you might not have such a lovely biscuit warmer, I'd bet fresh biscuits like these won't last long enough to get cold, anyway.

The Only Thing Better Than A Bunny Cake

Three bunny cakes.

¡Felices Pascuas!

Can you believe we've lived in Buenos Aires for the better part of the past year? ME NEITHER. All of a sudden there are Easter goodies for sale everywhere and I everyone is going on holidays for Semana Santa and it's just like when we arrived last year at this time.

The other day someone asked me what I miss, and one of the things I miss A LOT is my well-stocked kitchen. Guys, I had not one but TWO Kitchen-Aid stand mixers. Here, every apartment we've lived in (and there have been 4 since January) has its own set of kitchen implements, and when we had a brunch party last weekend, I had to borrow dishes and pans and even a whisk. Right now I am not even in possession of a cutting board. It is a sad state of affairs.

And so, on Saturday I'll be on the lookout for a round cake pan, because it's been 3 years since I've made a bunny cake, and that is far too long.

This picture is from 2007. My hair is much longer now.

In case you want to make your very own bunny cake, and may I suggest that you do, here are the instructions I carefully crafted back in 2007.

You need:

• A yummy cake recipe (or a cake mix, no judgments!) - I've made many a successful bunny cake with Epicurious' White Chocolate Layer Cake (omitting the apricot filling) but pick something that's easy for you. Carrot cake makes a sweet brown bunny.
• A round cake pan. You only need one round layer to make the cake, so you can either make two bunnies, or use the rest for cupcakes.
• Frosting (I'm going to recommend homemade for this, but only because I don't know of a store-bought one that isn't sickly sweet - funny that I used to be able to eat that stuff right from the cannister!).
• Coconut (fresh coconut is delish but sweetened shredded coconut in a bag works just as well).
• Green food colouring.
• White paper (regular copier paper is fine) and the pink colouring implement of your choice (a crayon, pencil crayon, highlighter, whatever).
• Jelly beans (for your bunny's eyes and nose, as well as to make a flowery meadow for your bunny).

After you've baked your cake, follow these simple instructions to assemble the bunny.

Assembly:


You should have something that looks like this:



Decoration:

• Frost your bunny completely. The tail can get tricky; my best advice is to be generous with your frosting, and don't be afraid to sculpt the tail a little.

• Dye the coconut to make grass: Put some coconut and a few drops of green food colouring in a ziploc bag and squish it all around. If you love coconut, keep some white to sprinkle on the bunny. Spread the green coconut around the bunny so that he's resting in a lovely meadow.

• As you may already have deduced, the bunny's ears will be made of paper. I like to make them after I see my bunny so that they're proportional to his stature - chubbier bunny, chubbier ears. (Hehe, I said "chubby.") Cut your bunny's ears out of the white paper, and add a pretty pink hue to the insides. Tuck the ears behind the bunny's head (where you made the notch out of the cake back in Assembly Step 4).

• Give your bunny jelly bean eyes and a nose.

Voilà! Your bunny is ready to be the centrepiece at your Easter table. Not to mention dessert.

Fruit of the Day: Fruta-Pão

The other day we walked past a fruit stand and I noticed something that I had never seen before, something strange and wonderful. I picked it up and the fruit vendor explained, "That's fruta-pão." Literally, breadfruit. He said it's like bread inside. Fruit that's like bread inside? Who ever heard of such a thing? Ken says it looks like a pumpkin and a lizard had a baby.


We sliced it like bread (obviously!) and it really does look and feel like bread inside. It's very spongy and feels starchy, and it isn't sweet but it also isn't bitter. It tastes a little bit like a turnip, and we both thought it needed some accessories to make it a little more delicious. We looked up how it's eaten and discovered that it's usually cooked up with something sweet; roasted or baked with butter and sugar and coconut milk. So I cubed it and poured coconut milk over the top, then added a bit of butter and sugar and sprinkled the top with cinnamon and coconut to make a sort of breadfruit pudding. The texture still isn't quite what I was hoping for, though. Sliced breadfruit definitely isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Update! I finally remembered what fruta-pão reminds me of: yuca. The kind I've had as "fries" in Peruvian restaurants. Fruta-pão has that same denseness and starchy texture. If I ever happen upon one again maybe I'll try roasting it as a savoury side. Or maybe I'll just try to trade it for a mango.
UFF Fruit Rating:

Fruit of the Day: Maçá

I almost saved the starfruit for today's homage to the U. S. of A., but in the end I chose a fruit that I could transform into a delicious American-style dessert to share with all the people here in Salvador who have made us feel so at home.

The maçá isn't a sand dollar, but I guess this close to the beach, everything adopts a certain theme.

Maçá is Portuguese for apple, and this is a Granny Smith imported all the way from Chile. Right now it's peeled, cored, sliced, and nestled in a pie crust with a few of its equally tart, green amigos, and will be served up in about an hour with a scoop or two of the closest thing we could find to vanilla ice cream. (I think it's called "creme" -- I was more than tempted by the coconut flavour, but the American half of our operation is a stickler for tradition. And I think he misses the fireworks today, so who am I to argue?)
UFF Fruit Rating:

Baking in Buenos Aires

In honour of our Spanish teacher Alejandro's birthday next week, I decided to bake cookies. Tyler recently tagged a delicious-looking Smitten Kitchen recipe for me, so a few days ago I decided to give it a go. The only hitch: I couldn't find what I've always considered the most basic of baking ingredients at either of our local supermarkets. The stores only carried artificial vanilla extract, and brown sugar was nowhere in sight. While our package of oatmeal has a recipe for oatmeal cookies with chips de chocolate, I couldn't find those, either.

Since today was a holiday and we didn't have school, we decided to check out the widely-lauded and appropriately-named Jumbo Supermarket. You can read more about Jumbo on other sites, but it was pretty much akin to Wal-Mart or the Real Canadian Superstore. The produce at Jumbo was better than our local stores, but prices were more or less the same and the selection was almost overwhelming. I did manage to find baking soda and settled for artificial vanilla extract and baking chocolate that I could chop into chunks for the cookies, but was unable to find brown sugar, which I suspected would be key to the chewiness factor in this particular recipe. I finally bought a bag of azucar negra, or black sugar. Even though it looked much darker than standard American light brown sugar, it had a similar "sticky" feeling when I squeezed the bag (i.e., it didn't feel as granulated as white sugar).

When I poured the sugar into a bowl to measure it, it looked a LOT darker than I'd expected. Behold:

Sparkly!

Aside from this substitution, the rest of the ingredients were as written, except I measured by weight instead of volume because we have a kitchen scale but no measuring cups or spoons. When I creamed the butter and sugars the resulting mixture was the colour and texture of used coffee grounds, and I was skeptical as to whether the recipe would actually work. To add to my skepticism is our oven dial (the one in the middle). Can you spot what's missing?

If you said a temperature setting, you're right! I set it somewhere in the middle and watched the first 2 batches of cookies very carefully to figure out the correct baking time.

And...? Success! I'm happy to report that we have a delicious batch of (very dark) chocolate chip cookies. We think they taste delicious; I'll let you know what Alejandro thinks.

Christmas Cookies!

Christmas Cookies!
Originally uploaded by hickswright.

I didn't take any pics of this year's Christmas Cookie-Baking Festivities, but as it was one of my finest showings I'm very grateful that Tyler did! At one point I had not one but TWO KitchenAid stand mixers whirring away. Good times. If you haven't yet made the Chocolate Toffee Cookies over at Smitten Kitchen, hie thee to the kitchen! And save a couple for me, because they sure didn't last long around these parts.

Treats!

A couple of weeks ago I finally made good on my promise to pay it forward: Brianna, Kajal, and Tyler were all recipients of Chocolate Chip Cookies 2 Ways: The heavily-blogged NYTimes recipe (which I have to admit, totally lived up to the hype), and Martha Stewart's Thin & Crisp variety (very different from the NYT recipe, and also very delicious).

Tyler's now playing over on his blog, and there's still one comment up for grabs. I suggested he gift a pack of postcards showcasing his amazing photography, and he's also an excellent baker. So if you're a blogger, you might want to head on over to leave a comment for Tyler!

Kwanzaa Celebration Cakestravaganza

A few days ago, Brianna IM'd me a link, which I unfortunately clicked.

Go ahead, click it. I dare you.

I watch the Food Network a lot. It's like my porn. Nine times out of ten, when The Boyfriend comes home later than me, I'm sitting on the couch, eating something of questionable nutritional value (hi bag of chocolate chips!), and watching FoodTV. I can watch just about anything on that channel, but should Sandra Lee's show "Semi-Homemade" come on air, I'm out. I'm all for convenience, but come on Sandra! A few weeks ago (while searching frantically for the remote control to END THE HORROR) I glimpsed her scooping out the insides of a pumpkin pie and a cheesecake, and mixing them together to make a pumpkin cheesecake filling. It was just wrong.

Now, in all my years of using the World Wide Web, I've seen some crazy shit - however, I don't think I've seen anything quite like Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa Celebration Cake. It's offensive and wrong on so many levels. For one, the recipe includes a store-bought angel food cake, corn nuts, and canned apple pie filling. Those things DO NOT GO TOGETHER. (Frankly, canned apple pie filling doesn't go with anything, although when we were grocery shopping for Project: Kwanzaa Celebration Cake, Brianna charitably suggested that a non-baker might use it to bake an apple pie. She's nicer than me.) Next, the recipe is on FoodTV.com, Now, I know Thomas Keller isn't exactly vying for a slot on the Food Network, but there are some respected, reputable chefs who contribute, and what exactly do Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck think of the "food" that Sandra "cooks"? Thirdly, look at her, and think hard about what this woman knows about Kwanzaa.

Let's look at that cake again:


WTF?

Anyway, we decided to get together and create this culinary delight. A quick stop at Key Food and $20 (we also bought ice cream) yielded the necessary ingredients. (Brianna had the more reasonable ingredients at home, like vanilla, cinnamon and cocoa. Somewhat surprisingly she also had corn nuts, which is good because we actually couldn't find those at the grocery store.)

I sliced the angel food cake in half and placed the bottom on Brianna's grandma's silver platter. (We really are just that classy.) Brianna mixed up the frosting, and despite my protests and the recipe CLEARLY stating that we should use a large bowl, she insisted upon adding the mix-ins directly to the frosting cannister, claiming, "That's how Sandra would do it." Spillage was minimal. We then frosted the cake (Sandra doesn't use a crumb coat) and got to the fun stuff: Canned apple pie filling. 21 ounces of it.

"There's no way this is all going in that hole."

"Make it fit. Come on, just jam it in there."

Hehe. That's what she said.

Next came the fun stuff: pumpkin seeds, popcorns, and corn nuts.


Why, Sandra? Why? What compelled you to put corn nuts on a cake?

Three Jim & Gingers later, we had assembled our masterpiece. Either Sandra's cake (and thus her hole, heh) was much bigger than ours, or she was daintier than her recipe called for with those toppings, because, dudes, look at this thing:


(We forgot the candles.)

We actually did taste it and then rinsed our mouths with turpentine, because turpentine was less offensive to our taste buds than store-bought vanilla frosting mixed with cinnamon and cocoa. Then we drank some more bourbon.

Photographic evidence is available on Flickr.

Brianna's recap of our cakestravaganza is on Random Access Babble.