Archive Page 2
Crack Pie.
It hard to pin down, just exactly, what is so addictive about Crack Pie. The name, for one is particularly attractive in a bad kind of way—the way in which you feel like you’re doing something naughty ‘Oooo I’m doing Crack! Or at least, eating something called Crack…tee hee hee.’ It’s the square-bakers kind of foray into hard drugs, the excessive consumption of sugar and fat, dangerous in that the aftermath consists of bloated stomachs full of ecstasy and a requisite crash on some kind of soft surface.
Did Crack Pie bring about these things? Well, yes. But, as a lightweight baker, in general I lack a threshold cap on my judgment of how much—exactly—I can consume before I fall into a sugar coma. With everything, I always believe I can eat more than I really can or should, often resulting in me clutching my stomach in a sort of I feel like I am going to explode but please, Sir, can I have some more?
In general, I am a chocolate and ice cream type of girl. Fruit desserts, stay away. Cake? Not going to get me swooning. Cookies post-oven? Just not as enticing as cookie dough. But a bar of chocolate, dark, rich, and thick when it melts in your mouth? Alright. For that reason, I did not expect, exactly, to be blown away by Crack Pie. It not necessarily a beautiful dessert. But it’s good. It’s really good. Imagine the texture of an underdone lemon bar, minus the lemon, with the malt and brown sugar and caramel flavors pumped up. Throw in sweetness to the extreme and a crunchy oatmeal sugar crust, then make it cold, chill it out. It’s delicious, yes it is. And the most interesting thing is, it disappears, without you even knowing.
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Avila Beach.
The best way to go about an excessively long drive it seems, is to stop so frequently that you trick yourself into thinking that you’re not driving for a very long time at all. It comes to the point where you begin to lie to yourself, just so that the traffic, the endless traffic seemingly disappears. Or at least seems new every time it starts to back up.
“What, this traffic? It’s the first I’ve seen the entire drive down.” Lie. Though if you stop between every clog-up, technically it can be the first. When you begin to lie to yourself, that’s generally the time a new roadstop comes in handy.
And when roadstops happen to be down a long windy road that eventually end at the beach…though often times you’re tempted to just stay and lounge and never reach your intended destination.
Somewhere below San Louis Obispo and above Santa Barbara off the California 101 is Avila Beach, about a twenty block town lining the beach. And every Friday between 4:00-8:00p.m. there is a beachfront farmer’s market, with spicy or grilled mahi-mahi tacos courtesy of Pete’s Pierside Cafe. And yes, after lounging on the beach, eating tacos and drinking ridiculously delicious and overpriced mochas while enjoying local sugar confections like toffee and peanut butter dreams, the car is not less attractive than it was before. But there is excessive motivation to get to the next beach location. Or the next stand or truck selling fish tacos.
*So, in the completely anonymous honesty the internet allows, I will admit that I discovered Avila Beach while reading Sunset Magazine. Now, Sunset for the under 30-set is a little disconcerting, mostly because you do not have enough money or necessarily the patience to execute any of the activities, crafts, or dinners the good people at Sunset tell you to do. With lovely pictures all taken mysteriously around sunset. Also, Sunset is quite literally porn for the California-starved. It brings to mind a moment when, sitting in our living room at school in Evanston a commercial came one promoting California travel. My LA roommate and I rewinded, and watched it again. A commercial. Maybe I will use Sunset to interject much needed California when 20 degree and below weather is getting me down. Confession number two: I was reading Sunset will I was supposed to be working. Don’t worry, it wasn’t mine. I just happened to be within range of a well-stocked waiting room.
Filed under: Savory, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Manhattan Beach Creamery.
SoCal, I love you. And yes, it does feel a little bit like cheating, but really, how could I not? You have beaches, long, wide, hot and next to clear blue water. The waves are never too big, just perfect for body surfing and floating. Sometimes, it’s true, you do have foggy days, but they’re always just foggy mornings, burning off just around lunchtime. Everyone is tan, everyone is pretty. And the fish tacos, the ice cream, the brunches and the outdoor patios that seem constructed simply for lounging outside at all times of the day and night, just eating, drinking and napping. Oh yeah, and you seem to have all rights to the sun.
Now, of course, it’s only an affair, because it’s NorCal that’s truly the best. But splitting my time perhaps? Joint custody? Maybe a 60-40 divide of my time? Ideally SoCal weather and NorCal everything would combine with the addition of excellent, excellent beaches. California at it’s best.
Unfortunately, I do not appear to have geographical land-bending skills, so I’ll never be able to fully execute my plan of folding California so San Francisco and SoCal magically mash together in a most likely devastating but obviously awesome plan of redistricting. So I guess I’ll have to settle for the occasionally trip down south. And fish tacos. And frozen yogurt.
Filed under: Ice Cream, Uncategorized | 3 Comments
Since Ice Cream Week was a little heavy on the sugar and the calories, I thought that I’d lighten things up with a Chocolate Cake. With Ganache and Praline Topping. Because, you know, sugar and butter and cream and chocolate are so outside the realm of what I do.
Change is good. Mixing things up. Since I rarely try anything with a little fat and sugar, a moist Chocolate Cake topped with rich and buttery ganache in addition to sweet and nutty Pecan Praline seemed like the perfect thing to stud an otherwise healthy summer.
Oh, wait. What’s that you say? Ice Cream isn’t healthy? It’s not a vegetable? Oh.
Well, hey, at least I restrained myself from throwing the cake in an ice cream maker.
Not that it’s necessarily a bad idea….
Recipe on following page.
Filed under: Cake, Chocolate | 7 Comments
As it turns out, there really is not such thing as Ice Cream Week. Yes, from Sunday, July 25th through Sunday, August 1st—until the very last hour of August 1st when this is being written—it was “Ice Cream Week,” but on Bakelist. Only on Bakelist to my knowledge. This came as a surprise to my mother who, when faced with 4 quarts of homemade ice cream and absolutely no where to put it let alone not enough mouths to shove it into, discovered that “Ice Cream Week” was the sole creation of me. Her daughter who finally figured out a way to fill a freezer full of ice cream and use the ice cream make successively for an entire week.
How you ask? Well, it’s easy. Decide, on some lone Sunday—or really any day works—that it’s “Ice Cream Week!” And then make ice cream, for a week.
Filed under: Chocolate, Ice Cream | 2 Comments
Ton Kiang, Dim Sum.
Although it is Ice Cream week, and despite the fact that yes, most of what I have consumed over the past couple of days has been said ice cream in its many different incarnations, I have eaten other things. Other things of a familial branch that does not contain the frozen, the custardy, the chock-full-of-butter-toffee-and-shaved-chocolate variety. Shocking, and not just during Ice Cream Week.
Dim Sum is a fantastic things, at first somewhat confusing. Who are these people swooping around with trays, pausing at every table? Where are the menus? Can we take everything? Should we take everything? Thankfully, due to my family’s fondness of eating almost everything, my childhood was filled with Dim Sum. Absolutely filled, stuffed in every corner by pork buns, pork pastries, shrimp dumplings, taro balls, chive dumplings, spring rolls, jok, egg tarts, sesame balls…
Everywhere. Dim Sum everywhere.
Ton Kiang, located on Geary in San Francisco, is the favorite Dim Sum location. Everything is fresh and, most importantly, the baked cha siu bao (baked pork buns) are delicious. So delicious. We go, we eat, and then we take more pork buns home. Everything is just as delicious, but there’s just something about the perfect pork bun. It may just be that I like pork, that I like barbeque sauce, that I love sweet yeast bread. But all those things together? Oh Ton Kiang. Mmmm…. pork buns.
Filed under: Savory | 1 Comment
Alright, so ice cream three of Ice Cream Week. At this point, after Pistachio Ice Cream and Almond Ice Cream, I can’t really make a 100 percent guaranteed claim. I just can’t, it doesn’t make sense, and chances are that tomorrow I will find a new ice cream, a better ice cream, an ice cream I’m sure is eaten by the gods and the very, very fortunate.
But this Coconut Ice Cream, man. Today it is the best ice cream I have ever made. I promise—though obviously my promises about ice cream are fleeting. But I think, I’m almost entirely sure, that I cannot, that I am not capable of making a creamier, a more delicious, a more perfectly balanced ice cream. Sure, I’ll try—I’m going to try tomorrow. But I have little hope because, you see, this ice cream is perfect.
Filed under: Chocolate, Ice Cream | 6 Comments
Almond Ice Cream.
I have only met one ice cream I didn’t like. Cold Stone Creamery’s Mint flavor ice cream tastes—no matter how much I want to enjoy it, to keep my perfect ice cream record— like the frozen custard version of Crest toothpaste. It even has an eerie, dull pastel minty-teal like color. And as much as I want to adhere to the “all ice cream is the creamy cool incarnation of perfection,” Cold Stone’s frozen toothpaste just doesn’t do it. But that is the one ice cream in my entire life I have not liked, that I would not finish a scoop of. Generally, even if I don’t love the flavor, I’ll finish it on principal. Because it’s still delicious.
Early Gray Tea ice cream with a heavy bergamot aftertaste? Done.
Amaretto Cherry? Gone.
Orange Chocolate Chip Custard? Moose Tracks? Blue Moon Ice Cream? Finished, licked clean.
Filed under: Ice Cream | 2 Comments
Pistachio Ice Cream.
This is the best ice cream I have ever made. It is definitely among best ice cream I have ever eaten and considering the amount of quality ice cream I have consumed in my life, the amount of frozen custard, gelato, milky ice cream, nectar of the gods delivered from a carton that has lined my stomach over the past twenty years, to be among the best, an ice cream has to be pretty good.
In general I go for the chocolate-toffee-coffee variety of ice cream. Maybe a caramel swirl, some chocolate chunks, a little Oreo or chocolate wafer here, vanilla highlight maybe. Cherry Garcia, Mint Chocolate Chip on the rare occasion. But thus far, it’s been chocolate and coffee, sometimes together, sometimes apart. I know what I like. Or at least I thought.
Most surprising about pistachio ice cream and my new found addiction is that it’s green. A pale, slightly earthy green. Secondly, pistachios. Not the most beloved nut in the family. But somehow, somewhere between being ground into butter and churned into ice cream, pistachios go from being the green, slightly misshapen sibling of the golden macadamia and almond to some of the best ice cream I’ve tasted. The play of the slightly salty pistachio and the sweet cream is phenomenal. It’s so good that, with a fudge swirl ready to go into the ice cream machine, a taste of the unaltered ice cream dissuaded me from adding chocolate.
It didn’t need chocolate.
Filed under: Chocolate, Ice Cream | 8 Comments
Basil Dip.
Sometimes dreams do come true, in this case, Basil Dip, essentially pesto that is acceptable to scoop up with chips—or spoons—and eat with no guilt. Or at least no awkward stares questioning why the little girl is scraping flakes off the frozen pesto block. What can I say? Basil, garlic, parmesan, and more fat? Just this side of addicting.
Basil Dip, all the flavor of pesto, mixed in with low-fat cottage cheese for a delicious, slightly neon colored mass that’s perfect on just about anything. At first, the cottage cheese threw me. That slightly curdy, watery white cheese-wannabe? Really? That’s going to taste good? But it does, it really does. It is mostly likely the fact that the cottage cheese is blended until smooth and impregnated with delicious pesto flavor. Creamy delicious pesto flavor.
That way, when you eat it with the spoonful, you can pretend you’re eating flavored cottage cheese. Which you will be. But you can’t tell. It’s just like you’re eating pesto from a spoon, but socially acceptable.
Basil Dip (Creamy Pesto)
2-3 cups fresh basil leaves, washed and dried
2 cloves garlic
1/3 cup good olive oil
¼ cup toasted pine nuts
1 cup (8 oz.) low-fat cottage cheese
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
½ a lemon, juiced
½ teaspoon kosher salt
1. Add all the basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, lemon juice, and salt to the bowl of a food processor and blend until smooth. Add the cottage cheese and process until smooth. Remove Basil Dip from bowl and put in a Tupperware, refrigerating for further use.
For Pasta:
Use ¼ cup basil dip for every serving. Make your favorite pasta, strain out most but not all of the cooking liquid, and stir in the basil dip with a splash of milk to loosen the sauce up. Return to heat just until the dip has melted and combined with the milk. Serve with parmesan.
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