The title of this recipe may be a bit deceiving, cheddar and apple are my main flavors, we also have some grape tomato, chia, and snow peas. Dressed with a white balsamic dressing. I also ended up tossing some roasted chicken on it last minute. The drizzle of lemon, adds just the right amount of flavor.
I don’t know what my problem is, this is the second salad recipe I have posted in, what, a week? And guess what? I ordered a salad today when I went our to lunch. I’m so grown up.
Moist yogurt pancakes that I topped with whipped cream and sweetened stewed rhubarb. Yogurt to replace the whipped cream would be nice here too, but I ended up using all of the yogurt I had in the batter. I love acidic pancakes, weather it be buttermilk, or yogurt. There is no comparison to pancakes made with milk, there is so much more depth to acidic pancakes. I love the flavor of rhubarb, it’s so bright, and wonderful. One of the best ways to consume rhubarb is just like this, stewed with a little sugar. It makes the perfect topping for nearly anything.
I remember eating mounds of yogurt topped with freshly stewed rhubarb at my grandma’s house on early spring days. To date, that’s one of my favorite breakfasts. Or a decadent dessert, by replacing the yogurt with vanilla ice cream.
Every family has a sort-of iconic dish, or ingredient. I think of rhubarb as ours.
Think of this. A whole slice of cookie, and not just any cookie, a cookie that is chewy on the edge, but soft toward the middle. Classic chocolate chip cookie flavor, elevated to the cast iron skillet. The chocolate chips melt down to the bottom almost creating a 100% chocolate crust. The pure butter flavor is mingling with chocolate and vanilla is always a crowd pleaser.
And another AWESOME thing about a skillet cookie: there is non of this stupid scooping out drops of cookie dough onto cookie sheets. I hate that part, normally I make the dough and my mom scoops it onto the sheets. So this fixes that problem.
Anyway, some links:
Got Bill Grander’s newest book for my birthday. Love Bill!
A recipe I wrote for The Nourishing Gourmet blog
Newest blog crush: My New Roots
100 rules for dinner (via A Cup of Jo)
Crepe cones (Via Oh Joy!)
Ok, I thought I didn’t like carrot cake, UM, WRONG! This little missy loves carrot cake. We got some carrot cake cupcakes for my little brother’s birthday from Trader Joe’s. So I went on this carrot cake kick, yeah, yeah. It’s like I can’t eat anything without trying to make a better version at home. It’s a mental illness.
So here’s the jist. We have a spicy cinnamon cake with a superb moist crumb, and flakes of carrot and cocoanut though out. As if that wasn’t enough we have a buttercream that was taken to the next level with a couple teaspoons of cinnamon. And there you have it, your new best friend.
Do you ever have those mornings when you spend over a half hour looking for the attachment for your mixer when you really should be doing homework? Oh, funny you don’t? I do, well I did this morning anyway. Ah! School! Why do you have to be so time consuming? I just want to cook.
Alas, at this time I must juggle both cooking and {gurrr} school.
Oh, this is totally random. But if you’re interested, you can follow me on Instagram. I post a lot of behind the scene pictures, and other life stuff.
If you’ve been reading the blog for a while you know about my infatuation with England. My 2 trips to there are testimony to that. Though my sister gets the honor of being stopped in airpots asking if she has any relation to Kate Middleton, I like to remind her that Kate is not a princess. She’s still just a Duchess. Though when Pippa (Kate’s little sister) released her book based on food and entertaining, I thought maybe we really are leading parreal lives with the Middletons. Oh how I wish that were true. Wouldn’t that mean I end up with Harry?
That whole rant on the Royal Family is to say: sticky toffee pudding is a classic British dessert. I had it several times when I was in England, and the moist cake with a great carmen sauce is divine. This turned out pretty darn good if I do say so. Though I probably would have enjoyed it better with a view of Big Ben, or possibly tucked in a small cafe in Oxford.
Also, I have to admit, this recipe is tweaked from “Kate’s favorite sticky toffee pudding recipe“
Here are a few of the things that give beauty to my everyday life:
My avocado plant that I started from a seed nearly 3 years ago + some store bought flowers that got a wild makeover from a few roadside weeds.
My littlest brother mid-nap. (Some photos of him at 24 hours old)
Some broken sunglasses from Paris that now grace my bookshelf (Ruhlman’s Twenty and Sprouted Kitchen shown) . Currently reading Les Miserables.
Some British & foodie links:
Loving the blog: a la mode
Another lovely photog blog
The Queen & Kate on the Tube in London
honey & jam, a wonderful food blog
Of course, Pippa Middleton’s book
A whole food and vegetarian blog, Cookie + Kate
The Mayflower Pub is where I had my last British Sticky Toffee Pudding.
Love this blog name: The Crepes of Wrath (!)
Have I ever told you how much I HATE mayo? Oh, I have? Well, sorry you will hear it again. I really do HATE it. Why does it smell like that? And do you even know what’s in it? I have even tried to make homemade a couple of times, but every time it breaks, and is ruined. So, apparently it hates me too. But I’m ok with that.
Anyway about this recipe…
Crisp broccoli and carrot is tossed with dried blueberries, giving it a wonderful sweet surprise. Dressed in a sweet-acidic dressing and topped with crunchy almond slices. This would be a perfect paper plate BBQ side dish.
Eggy shells with sugary-crunchy top, filled with whipped cream what has been spiked with blackberry jam. Um, yes, you did just read that sentence right. I love putting a little kick of something unexpected in the ordinary. Just by looking you would think that those are just normal innocent cream puffed guys. But no! Those are infused with my mother’s homemade blackberry jam. Giving you a chic little number that is sure to impress.
I remember making cream puffs with my grandma when I was little. Every time I make a choux now, I always think of that time in her kitchen: We had just added the flour to the hot milk, and the directions said to cook it until there was a film on the bottom of the pot, and that should take about 3 minutes. Well, ours had a film within a minute. My grandma, leaning over my shoulder and giving the mixture a good stir said, “well aren’t we just ahead of the class”. I don’t know why that one memory stuck in my head above all the other cooking adventures my grandma and I had. So if your choux dough is done before 3 minters, remember you are just ahead of the class.
I think this is the first salad recipe I have ever posted. I am not much of a salad girl, though as I get a little older, the appeal of ordering a salad at lunch date with friends does often win over a heavy order of fries. Trying to eat more salads, trying to read more, you know all things that are good for you. The journey of growing up.
Some friends of our brought a balsamic, strawberry, and spinach salad a few summers ago for a mid-summer dinner. That was my first interaction with the combination of balsamic and strawberries. What a magical pair they make. This is my own spin on that salad. Featuring chunks of brie, and a spin on the classic balsamic vingerette.
This salad features strawberries, chunks of brie, toasted walnuts, chia, and a perfect white balsamic dressing. The strawberries and the brie on the same fork-full create this grown up kind of cream and strawberries.
For your weekend:
Look at this! My best friend sent me a macaron themed birthday gift. I am obsessed with this macaron pill box. She also made(!) me macaron coasters.
You can order custom made macaron coasters from this etsy shop.
These reusable herb bags are adorable.
If you live in Portland. I love the coffee shop Stirling, in the Pearl District. It’s the kind of coffee shop you feel like you’ll run into JGL while journaling in the corner table.
Del Popolo is a mobile pizzeria in San Fran. Beautiful! (via Oh Joy!)
Holy waffle cake!! (via Cupcakes and Cashmere)
Sometimes I have good ideas. Wrapping pears in pastry was one of my good ideas. It’s further proof that you really can wrap anything in pastry and turn it into one of those, “oh my, why is this so amazing?”, kind of dishes. I got the idea from this cafe, though what I actually ended up doing was far, far from the original idea. It’s basic, yet has a showy quality about it. Just a basic pastry wrapped around a half of a pear, baked until golden, then topped with the luscious combination of whipped cream and maple syrup, to add a crunch I tossed on some walnuts.
Oh how they got their name. I was making them, and my mom said, “Oh, I didn’t think you would be swaddling the pears. How cute.” Hence swaddled pears, I think it’s quite an appropriate name. (My mother is kind of a all things baby nerd)
I turned 19 on Saturday. And of course, I made my own cake, don’t be silly why wouldn’t I? The recipe if from Julia, Child, Julia Child that is. My brother gave me Mastering the Art of French Cooking a couple of Christmas’ ago. Honestly, I hardly ever cook from it, but every time I use it I wonder why I go so long with out cracking the pages of this marvel of a book.
A life lesson on my 19th birthday: cook from Julia as often as possible.
I would say this is a closer relative to a torte then a cake. Think thick, creamy, cake with a layer of incredibly fluffy frosting that when it’s sliced though, it leaves a layer of chocolate smudge of your fork. I (of course) had a second slice for Sunday afternoon coffee, and it was just as good if not better the second day. The flavors had time to intertwine, and the texture turned to a pudding-cake cross.
