…as in bacon PLUS scrambled eggs PLUS cheese all up in the business of a buttery, flakey, scone.
You probably assumed from the title that this is a diet scone.
Oops! Just kidding. I thought we were talking about carrots for a sec.
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Me and baking fought several battles today. I failed like whoa in the first round, but I won big-time in the second round.
I was experimenting with using this incredibly dark black cocoa powder that I picked up on an spice and bulk goods adventure and mixing it into a one bowl brownie recipe that could be packaged up for all your gift giving needs.
Round one. The butter separated and the batter never came together. It was lumpy and tasted like what it looked like – coal. The oven temperature got accidentally knocked down to 200. Fine, that one was totally my fault. The batch went straight into the trash.
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This summer we went to a wedding in New Jersey. We hit the road with every seat belt clicked in our Zipcar and a box of rosemary apricot bars baked by my friend.
Then we hit the traffic. I am not joking when I say we sat in the car for two hours and only moved four city blocks.
Fueled by my inner snack monster, and the fact that I need to run around every hour, we took our chances by racing into the nearest store while the car idled on Broome Street (still with driver – don’t worry mom!). The minute we opened the door, we realized that we were in an Asian market with no idea what the contents were of any of the packages. Having 0.067 seconds to shop can be along time, and I now know from experience that if you just grab the cutest packages you’ll be fine. We hopped back in just as the car turned onto the the Holland Tunnel.
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Saturday went something like this: a bloody mary, brunch, the farmer’s market, witnessed a LARP battle, another bloody mary, baked a cake, and made a video about baking the cake.
What do Brooklynites love? That day.
There are probably a few questions in there, like what is a LARP battle? It is this. We stumbled upon one taking place in Prospect Park but I have to admit, as entertaining as the armor made out of take-out container lids were – I was more focused on what I was going to do with my bag full of farmer’s market pears.
Anther question: where is the video? Coming soon my friends, just you wait.
In the meantime, this cake is pretty much fall in a 9-inch round pan. There is brown sugar caramel sauce, perfect pears, and a gingerbread spice cake that bakes up like a dream. I promise you will be seeing a hillside of multi-colored tree leaves just from the smell alone that comes out of your oven. Unless you live in Brooklyn, and then I can promise you will see a slight change of color in the six inches of ivy growing on your fire-escape that you can only see from that one perfect angle in the bathroom.
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Baking does not only makes friends but baking makes man friends. Show up to a party with a plate of brownies, and tell me that you didn’t get a phone number or three.
This cake made me a super special man friend.
After a few too many happy hours, it was time to step it up and make dinner together. I received a romantic email that was something along the lines of hey, yo, wanna make dinner tomorrow?
Being a lady I waited the appropriate amount of time (in this case, it was roughly 9 hours) to respond. But I began to prepare immediately. I made lists. I went to three grocery stores to find truffle salt. I decided I would also make cake.
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Answer: Soup dumplings.
Wow, pretty wild. Let me explain.
I met a friend for dinner in Chinatown a few weeks ago and we ended up at Joe’s Shanghai – a place famous for soup dumplings. They are exactly what they sound like, and to make them, the broth is frozen into an ice cube (hungry yet? Nothing hits the spot better than a broth ice cube!) but when the dumpling is cooked, the frozen center melts to become a yum-sauce soup on the inside and a delicious dumpling on the outside.
I started thinking – what could I freeze and stuff into some sort of baked good, that would then become even more amazing when baked? Peanut butter. Yes! A swirl of peanut butter in each bite of cookie! My brain is trying to comprehend all the other things that can be frozen and baked into treats. These are just the beginning…
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I am in serious denial about the fact that it is kind of just about almost time for winter breakfasts. Even though I’ve finally said goodbye to iced coffee and it snowed (!!) in Brooklyn today. I am not ready for oatmeal. Oatmeal is a middle of winter sort of breakfast.
These muffins are like your transitional coat, you know, the wool blazer of breakfast treats. A compromise muffin of sorts.
But before things get too weird, this isn’t just an oatmeal muffin. It is a toasted oat muffin. Can we talk about that for a second? Toasting the oats gives these muffins extra special flavor. You have to preheat the oven anyways and just a few minutes in the oven is all it takes. The flavor intensifies, the color deepens and the oats really shine.
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If my memory serves me correct, my French grandmother never made French onion soup from scratch. She did however make three things better than anyone else I knew. Granted I didn’t know too many people when I was seven, but she was famous for her pie crust, her gravy, and her boxed macaroni and cheese.
Her boxed macaroni and cheese was the best I’d ever tasted. She used the FULL amount of butter! And CREAM! Both really made a difference to my young taste buds to which only skim milk was the norm. She also let me watch anything I wanted on cable TV, unlike the glorified toaster oven of a television that we had at home that only got channels with the correct amount of tinfoil. But I never got to watch it anyway because I was too busy tending to the worm bin and making the family supply of homemade tofu.
Now that I have a small amount of free time in the afternoon, I feel it is only right to tackle the haphazard yet tidy post-it list system I keep of things to make. French onion soup has been floating around there for a good long while now. Since I am also considering changing the name of this site to Budget Me Up Brooklyn and onions are on the cheap – it was time for soup. I did not want to mess around so I went straight to The Master.
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I learned how to make browned butter the hard way. I spent a few too many times fanning a blaring smoke detector with kitchen towels, cookie sheets, brooms, junk mail, couch cushions – should I keep going? You get the idea.
But when all my cookie sheets were back to where they belonged, and after all that burned butter gone bad was forgotten, I did it. I browned a perfect pan of butter, and now I put it in everything I possibly can. Good thing it makes almost everything better. It is also a great shortcut for when you want cookies but have no patience to wait and let your butter come to room temperature. Double score!
What I learned for browning butter is to keep a medium low heat, use a wood spatula to really get the butter bits moving around, and to not try and paint my nails while doing this. Focus is key. And butter.
We’re doing this.
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Things started off all normal and fine with the peanut butter, but I bet you weren’t expecting the curry part at the end, huh?
But don’t go a worrying – these don’t taste like Indian take-out. You can just almost barely place the curry – it is more a hint of something that you can’t quite figure out, so you should probably have another one, and then oh man, where did the whole plate go type of thing.
It is a nice easy way to update a classic, but if it sounds too scary these peanut butter cookies are excellent without. The extra sugar roll and peanut garnish is of course optional, but since these cookies have some warmth from the curry, it is nice to have a li’l extra bit of sweet crunch.
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