Revani (Turkish yellow cake in simple syrup)

I realize I’ve been light on poetry lately. Something about the weather makes me feel un-literary and pro-food. Or perhaps I’m just trying to squeeze in some last-minute baking before the summer heat makes baking intolerable.

I think I forgot for a moment that I live in New England, where it’s almost always cold enough to bake. We get maybe one oppressive heat snap a year; otherwise, baking is always on the table, figuratively and literally. I have such a weakness for lame puns.

Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

So, cupcakes: I’m at a loss as to why I had a bee in my bonnet to whip up a batch. I don’t think I’d ever actually made cupcakes before, which is a touch odd when you consider my willingness to tackle layer cake on a semi-regular basis.

I lifted this recipe (making only minor changes) from Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. In the pros side, we have excellent chocolate and malt flavors and luscious, light-textured frosting. In the cons side, we have the fact that the frosting didn’t yield quite enough for all the cupcakes – which was my fault in a way for being generous in its application, perhaps, but I think of a cupcake as primarily a small frosting vehicle, so recipes should be written accordingly – and the fact that, while flavorful, the whipped cream-based frosting doesn’t bear up to extended time in the fridge as well as a traditional buttercream would have.

This was only a problem because this recipe makes 18-24 cupcakes (depending on how full you fill the tins). I was hoping for only a dozen and presumed that was the standard quantity for cupcake recipes. Live and learn, eh?

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is another cookie that I just sort of threw together. And I did it for you, gentle readers: I was hankering for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but I wanted something new for the blog. I had a full container of oatmeal in the refrigerator and thought to myself: self, why not make a new, healthier cookie that contains the aforementioned craved ingredients with an added healthful bonus?

These really are delightful. Because of the oatmeal and peanut butter, they’re also relatively un-guilty as cookies go – I’m of the school that believes there’s nothing to be feared from butter and sugar in moderation, and if you add healthy fats (in this case, peanut butter) and whole grains, then it’s practically health food. (Not really. Don’t go telling your doctor you only eat these healthy peanut butter cookies you found on a blog, so they couldn’t *possibly* be causing your raging diabetes …)

This is in contrast to the cupcakes I made over the past weekend, which have absolutely no redeeming nutritional qualities but which are also delicious. I’ll post that recipe next.

ee cummings

So spring is here, the weather is lovely, and all I want to do is wander about outdoors and stare at blossom-laden trees.  Here's a whimsical poem in honor of spring by ee cummings.  He seems never to have taken himself or his art too seriously but remains an excellent poet all the same -- perhaps all the more. 

 

Bonus points to anyone who can identify the little lame balloonman.

Orange Almond Cake

Please ignore the crack. I didn’t drop it, exactly; it flopped onto the counter in a funny way as I was attempting to ease it off my cooling rack. The resultant break did nothing to diminish the flavor of the cake, nor my enjoyment of it … but it did make photography a bit of a challenge.

This was so tasty I had to share it anyway. It’s a first for me in that it’s a gluten free recipe. I didn’t make it for that reason – neither I nor the husband need restrict our intake of wheat protein – but rather, because I thought this might combine the virtues of Shaker Lemon Tart and amaretti in one recipe. It calls for whole oranges and ground almonds. You bind it with egg, sweeten with sugar, and leaven with baking powder. I added a bit of vanilla, but that’s it. Really, this is a ridiculously simple conceit for a recipe.

This cake is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Clementine Cake. I love clementines, but I love them raw; I can’t imagine eating them baked into something. Oranges, on the other hand, are heaven in all sorts of confections.

Banana Bread (traditional)

I think of this as my traditional banana bread recipe, but it’s actually quite atypical in its way. It’s loosely adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but we’re talking about a pretty aggressive adaptation. Mostly, I just really like his suggestion of adding dried coconut to the batter.

Vegetable Tart

I bought a new tart pan a while back, and at the time, I had been concerned that this was a frivolous and superfluous kitchen indulgence. Did I really need it? Would I ever use it?

When I married, I didn’t know what size tart pan was standard and registered for (and received) a shallow 11” tart pan. I learned shortly after the wedding that 9” is the norm
and I’ve been kicking myself ever since, though, of course, most tart recipes are adaptable to either size.

Anyway, I bought a 9” pan, and it’s been in near-constant kitchen rotation since I made the ($8) splurge.

John Berryman II

One wonders if his morose attitude contributed to his eventual suicide.  He appears neither a bored nor boring figure in photographs.

Gougeres Two Ways

So this is going to be an oddity of a blog entry. I’m showing pictures of one version of gougeres, but I’m going to recommend a non-depicted recipe that I made two days before. Both were done in a bit of a rush – one for a friend’s birthday party, and one for a French-themed dinner with some other friends. I only had a moment to photograph the second batch of gougeres, but I thought the first one was better.

Gougeres, if you aren’t familiar with them, are a pate a choux-based French cheese pastry. They taste rather like the most decadent cheese bread rolls imaginable. Pate a choux is the same pastry used to make éclairs and chouquettes. It’s quite the versatile combination of flour, water, eggs, and butter.

Both versions of gougeres were plenty tasty. The main difference is that version #2 deflated slightly after I took them out of the oven, whereas version #1 stayed fat, puffy, and round even after being hastily stuffed, still a touch warm, into a paper bag and thrown in the passenger seat of my car.

I’m all about fancy presentation like that.

Oatmeal Bread with Apricots and Almonds

So this is a very rustic, very slapdash loaf that I threw together to get rid of some near-stale almonds and dried apricots. And it works! This loaf is delicious.

On occasion, I fall victim to ill-advised Trader Joe’s impulse buys. A cupboard full of almonds and dried apricots was the fruit of such impulsive purchasing (pun … intended?). I thought they might be a nice change from endless permutations of cinnamon raisin bread. Plus, so much white bread was starting to make me feel a bit unwholesome and doughy, so I wanted to make something a healthier.