A few days ago I woke up, made a pot of coffee, and then realized, much to my stomach’s unfortunate state of emptiness, that there was nothing to eat for breakfast. Nothing, not even something inappropriate like cold pizza, grilled cheese, quesadillas or other appropriated lunch foods. And so, faced with skipping breakfast and getting straight to paper writing, I took the procrastination route and made cake.
The morning was infinitely better for it, as it soon contained cake. Glazed cake nonetheless.
Have you ever eaten a muffin and realized—much to your secret delight—that it was secretly a ball of cake masquerading as a muffin? This Blueberry Lemon Tea Loaf with Lemon Glaze is secretly a lot of muffins masquerading as a loaf of cake. I threw the ‘tea loaf’ bit in there because it sounds more appropriate for breakfast consumption than a straight-up ‘cake.’ Duh. Some people have tea at breakfast, right? Not me, but gallon-o-coffee loaf just doesn’t sound the same…
The best part about this cake, and keep in mind that there are very many great parts about this cake— the moist blueberries, the tangy lemon zest, the rich moist crumb aided along by a nice half cup (and a bit) of sour cream, the sweet glaze crust on top— is that it is sliceable. Hold on. Sliceable? Take a moment and imagine a slice of toast, very close to the most-perfect-of-all-food inventions. Now imagine a toasted slice of cake. Griddled in a little butter maybe, or perhaps just toasted, with a schmear of jelly or a drizzle of honey.
Yup. It’s time for breakfast.
Recipe on the following page.
Filed under: Breakfast, Cake | 7 Comments
Doughnut Vault.
Hello doughnut altar, you’re just what I wanted to see at eight in the morning. Tangy buttermilk old fashioned, yeasty chestnut glazed, and sweet chocolate with sprinkles. Yup, this is my kind of mass.
At 400 1/2 North Franklin, in a world not so far away, is a little hole of a place. It’s a tiny box of a store front sliced out of bigger, but not any grander buildings, aptly named the Doughnut Vault. White tiles, mellow blue paint, and racks of freshly fried and glazed doughnuts. Get in line, buy a bag or box or two, and be happy you got up in the morning.
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Orange Poppy Seed Cake.
Sometimes cake is complicated. It’s high maintenance. It has four layers, two kinds of filling, and a whipped meringue frosting. It has to be refrigerated. It absolutely needs glitter. Oh yea, and that gold dust as well. Sometimes cake requires Q-tips, skewers, and brushes to assemble. Sometimes, you have to roll the cake, flip it upside down and then hope to St. Pastry it stands up. Against gravity.
Sometimes however, cake comes out of the oven, pops out of the pan, gets a little glaze, and is ready to sit happily on a plate. Sometimes a cake is perfect with just some good-ole baking magic. This Orange Poppy Seed cake is one of those kinds of cakes. The best kind, the kind of cake that’s there in two hours without any fuss.
As a rule of tongue, any baked good that doesn’t require chocolate or brown sugar and still reaches unthinkable levels of deliciousness is special. When something that has fruit and poppy seeds is good enough to be snuck down from the counter in your hands, you know you’ve got the right-kind-of-cake up on the cake platter.
Say hello, poppy seeds. Unlike in some hard little lemon scones, or silly lopsided shortbreads, here in cake-space you really shine. You taste nutty, a little spicy even, and you add a great deal of crunch to the moist, orangey, zest-studded cake crumb. Topped off with a tangy and sweet simple orange glaze, this really is quite a cake.
Take a look. No tricks anywhere from raw ingredients to plate. If there wasn’t time to bake a cake before, if the leveling and stacking seemed a bit much, here’s a cake that’s perfect without. There’s time to bake a cake now, and who doesn’t need a little bit more cake? Cake at breakfast, cake at second breakfast, cake at snack time…
Recipe on the following page.
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Sopa Azteca.
Blargh. Blergh. Nothing gets you down like a cold on a 60-degree day. Thankfully, I have about eight million gallons of soup in my freezer, that old-school, 100-percent fail proof cold cure. But since there isn’t a soup in the world quite as effective at cold-busting than a bowl of sopa azteca, or my bastardized version of it, I just had to break out the soup pot. Again. Seriously, it’s a good thing I like hearty, chunky soups, or I may have forgotten how to chew what with all this soup and ice cream coming out of my kitchen.
Sopa Azteca as I’ve understood and happily slurped down, is a spicy red broth cranked up with chilies, lime, and tortilla strips. Add a bit of shredded chicken, fresh cilantro, a few slices of avocado, and it’s a cure-in-a-bowl. Just the kind of soup to defeat any semblance of the sniffles. My version of sopa azteca however, is a bit different. It’s a bit like chicken noodle soup ran into a rice paddy, ditched those soggy noodles, and crashed into a pile of chilies, avocados, cilantro, and limes. That is of course, reliant upon the fact that soup has legs. Considering the kick to this soup, I wouldn’t say it didn’t…
Oops puns, you’ve gotten in the way of respectable…blogging. With the addition of rice, the normally thin broth of a sopa azteca is turned into thicker, heartier fare. Some would say the homemade fried tortilla strips were a bit of an overkill what with a starch already swimming in the bowl, but you probably shouldn’t feed those kind of people. The avocado, fresh limejuice, and chopped cilantro are absolutely mandatory. They create a bit of a deconstructed guacamole island in soup bowl, and one should never shy away from any form of guacamole. For the ten minutes or less it takes to slurp down this soup, you’ll first forget all about the need for Kleenex or those happy yellow cool burst pills. In fact, thanks to the natural medicinal qualities of chipotle, your sinuses will be cleared up for more than the time it takes to take down a bowl or two of soup.*
*Recall, I am a baker, not a doctor. Medicinal qualities refer to spicy spicy hot hot.
Recipe on the following page.
Filed under: Savory | 1 Comment
Puy Lentil Galettes.
It’s that time again, finals. Or at least, it’s the week before finals, which inevitably is busier than finals week itself. Spring break is two weeks away, and save for a confused bit of snow, Evanston is pretending that it’s spring already. Just in time for a couple days spent studying, reading, and writing away. What a tease.
Thankfully, with finals comes a great old friend of mine, procrastination. This quarter, procrastination has manifested in the form of excessive cooking. Soup making at 9 pm. Cookies as a study break. The casual vol-au-vents homage. After all, nothing prolongs break time like stacking your food in towers. As a bonus, these Puy lentil galettes are both fun to make and eat.
These galettes are essentially a cold lentil-yogurt salad, spiced up with a bit of cumin, sautéed onion and garlic, and smoked paprika. Olive oil and lemon notes bind everything together. Without the pastry disc, it’s a incredibly healthy, refreshing, protein-packed lunch or dinner. With the pastry discs, the protein is still there, as well as a little extra bit of puffed-up love.
Hello vertical procrastination, don’t you look lovely. And tasty too.
Recipe on the following page.
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Samoa Ice Cream.
When you consider my last month of posts, it’s clear I’ve got a problem. A soup and ice cream problem. But it’s not my fault, it’s this gosh darn winter’s fault. One day it’s snowing, the next it’s 50 degrees. One day I want soup, the next only ice cream and beer.
I sweat it’s a balanced diet.
To further complicate things, it’s the start of yet another season. You know, that one where there are tables set up all over town, outside grocery stores and bakeries and coffee shops—my frequent haunts, obviously. The one that brings lots of colorful, little boxes for the price of $4 each. Girl Scout Cookie season. After summer, it may be the best season ever.
Even if it wasn’t pretending to be spring here in Evanston—just before finals week of course—there would be ice cream in my freezer. Girl Scout Cookies demand to be transformed into ice cream. Sitting up in my cabinet, all cute and delicious, they practically beg to be elevated into the most delicious frozen dessert of all. Ice cream, you torment me and claim all my cookies and toffee chunks.
But it’s worth it.
Since Samoa’s are practically a perfect cookie, they need little else in a batch of ice cream. No fudge swirl or chocolate flakes here. Just a simple, homemade caramel base for chunks of cookie to happily float in. The caramel plays off and complements the sweet caramel of the cookies, and large chunks are the perfect size for ice cream bliss. Yup, these current seasons are all right. Samoa Ice Cream and spring weather in February? Best winter quarter, ever.
Recipe on the following page.
Filed under: Ice Cream | 2 Comments
Hello soup. Yea, you in the bowl, I’ve got a question…how did you get to be so wonderful?
You’re hot, flavorful, and everything good about a meal, distilled into one perfect bowl of sustenance. Yea, you’re pretty great.
I’ll admit—although I generally love to live in seasonal denial—that it is currently winter in Chicago. My response to winter? Besides irrational napping, soup, lots of soup. Blended soups, creamed soups, soups with cheese, soups with beans, green soup. Enough soup that my freezer is full of stacks of Tupperware with frozen soup. I’m a soup addict. Rarely do I use a plate at dinner. (Joke…probably.)
This week, I ventured into the realm of the ridiculous soup: the Bread Soup. Why bother dipping a piece of buttered toast into the soup, when you can add the bread prior during simmering, so it thickens the broth and become a wonderfully squishing, spongy dumpling? Really, why create extra toasting and buttering steps. You’re already eating a flavorful, big bowl of soup for a meal. Throw some bread in there. (And if that’s not enough, all soups, even bread soups, go great with an extra piece of buttered and salted toast.)
Alright, so bread soup, or ribolita, isn’t that odd. It’s an Italian staple after all, and who am I to argue with Italian tradition, or grandmothers? Yotam Ottolenghi’s bread soup is, as always, Mediterranean-inspired. It’s really more of a soup-stew hybrid. With the addition of sautéed fennel, mashed chickpeas, and a healthy dollop of fresh pesto, this is a bread soup with legs. Hearty legs that kick out the winter blues and leave you full after just one bowl. That’s my kind of soup.
Recipe on the following page.
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Black Currant Tea Ice Cream.
Black Currant Tea Ice Cream. Ice cream for mild winter! Not to late to make for a special Valentine…
Click here for the recipe, and to read more.
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Spicy Cauliflower Soup.
“Soup tastes like dirty water. (So does tea.)”
For some, soup is a paltry imitation of a real dish. Much like how chicken and turkey are a lesser form of protein than beef, pork, lamb, and fish in my eyes. To be fair, those who think soup is simply a waste of a bowl of food, a few vegetables and scraps of meat in a broth that is a few too many steps away from a meal probably are eating the wrong kind of soups, as I had been unfortunately eating the wrong kind of poultry.
The wrong kind of soup. You are all familiar with this sad, clear, liquid broth. The description of ‘dirty water’ is not far off, unfortunately. But here’s the thing, for all the wrong-kinds-of-soup out there in the world, there are four or eight or sixteen right-kinds-of-soup. Most of which are just as healthy, if not healthier than their watered-down counterparts. And on days like today, when Chicago decides to entertain the thought of winter, a hot bowl of thick soup is really the perfect complement to sub-freezing temperatures.
Start with a vegetable puree, and go on from there. Vegetables, once sautéed with a bit of onion, carrot, celery, and spice, simmered down with a bit of broth, turn velvety and luscious when pureed. It’s the flavorful and less-artery-clogging alternative to lapping up a bowl of cream. (The casual bowl of cream.) In the case of this Spicy Cauliflower Soup, it’s the hot, wonderful balance of cumin, coriander, and the savoriness of cauliflower, blended to a creamy finish that make it a meal. Finished off with a drizzle of olive oil and there it is, the absolutely perfect bowl of soup. No dirty water to be found.
Recipe on the following page.
Filed under: Savory | 1 Comment
Tags: spicy cauliflower, vegetable puree
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