bagel and lox donuts

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are these weirding you out? do you not want to be thinking about fish while you're eating a donut? i just wanted there to be a pescetarian alternative to those cute-as-a-button burger cakes. and another reason to make donuts. because at some point when i was making 12,000 donuts for adult summer camp and watching bojack horseman the whole time, i trained myself to only be able to watch bojack while making donuts, and to *crave* making donuts whenever i watch bojack. it's a vicious cycle but a really relaxing one because no matter how much i feel like i'm losing my marbles in the thick of book stuff and preparing to leave for my tour, it's nice to know that i'll always have my shit together more than bojack. never mind that he's half horse, half man, and completely fictional, just please go with me.

there are three days until i leave for my tour! and in that time i have to: purchase more pairs of jeggings, get my blonde hairs touched up, think about what i am going to say at tuesday's conference panel, remember to pack my bike helmet so that i can use citi bike in ny, and maybe wax my eyebrows. because i do that now. i also have to do some mega tidying up because right before i leave, all of my grand forks and fargo home slices who were in the book are coming over for a night of pizza and tattoos. (btw, did you enter to get some tattoos yet??)

this is a nice squishy baked vanilla donut that's been dipped in a sweet everything bagel topping--basically sub out the garlic and onion for turbinado or thick decorating sugar--and lightly toasted like a bagel. (i was talking about cake toast with steph the other day, how it should be a common thing, don't you think??) then it gets smeared with cream cheese. you can use cream cheese frosting if you'd like, but i think that between the donuts and marzipan, there's enough sweetness to go around. and the toppings are all made out of marzipan: red tomato slices, green lettuce leaves, green capers, purple onions, and salmony salmon which will get the streaks in it if you don't knead the food coloring in completely. the whole thing is fit for a sunday bagel brunch of your sweet tooth dreams!

bagel and lox donuts

makes 12

ingredients

1 3⁄4 c flour

1 c sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1⁄2 tsp baking soda

3⁄4 tsp kosher salt

1 large egg

1⁄2 c buttermilk

1⁄4 c flavorless oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1⁄4 c water

toppings:

marzipan kneaded with food coloring for lox, tomatoes, lettuce, capers, onions

poppy seeds, sesame seeds, a pinch of kosher salt, and turbinado or beige decorating sugar

for serving:

2 tb canola oil

cream cheese or cream cheese frosting 

clues

preheat oven to 375ºf. grease two donut pans and set aside.

in a large bowl, combine dry ingredients and whisk to combine. in a separate bowl, combine wet ingredients. add to dry ingredients and mix until batter is smooth.

add batter to donut pan and bake donuts for twelve minutes, until edges begin to turn golden brown. remove from oven and let cool.

shape marzipan. cut into circles for tomatoes, smash into oblong shapes for salmon and lettuce, roll into little balls for capers. to make the onions, just brush a bit of food coloring on the edges.

in a small bowl, combine poppy seeds, sesame seeds, a pinch of kosher salt, and sugar. dip cooled donuts in toppings and press down slightly so the topping stick.

when ready to serve, slice donuts in half, and fry each one in the canola oil so that they look toasted. spread with cream cheese or frosting and top with marzipan shapes. enjoy!

-yeh!

p.s. have you entered the two molly on the range giveaways that are going on right now? preorder the book and then head over here for sesame cardamom sprinkles and here for tattoos! 

sugar beet sugar cookies + a #mollyontherange tattoo giveaway!

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i covered portland in tattoos this weekend! it was the least i could do in exchange for being filled up with my favorite candy in the world, tahini drenched toast from alon shaya, and shakshuka so beautifully covered with hawaij that it nearly brought me to tears. and tahini semifreddo with sumac on top! (note to self: find a more uses for sumac in dessert) oh, it was a delicious weekend at feast. it was my first time, but i had michelle to lead me around and drive us to tusk in a little cozy coop when our feet got squishy in the rain, and jonathan and todd to film a bunch of it. we made a cute stop motion and a candy covered cake and something that required a scissor lift but that video hasn't been released yet so idk what that was about. there were also lots of photo booths:

and a nacho cheese fountain! 

and a person walking around in a costume that was either a bed bug or godzilla (??) or something of that aesthetic... 

so tattoo sleeves seemed appropriate and i felt extra cool and *in* with the chef crowd when mine started to fade and look like real tattoos. if you're wondering what the heck these tattoos are, they are all of lisel's illustrations from molly on the range! they include the following:

-a burger

-a recipe for hawaij

-a cake

-pizza dough ingredients

-a handy dandy "#mollyontherange" which is probably going to make it onto my forehead at some point during my book tour

-and a sugar beet!

michelle wanted to give herself a sugar beet sleeve but i told her we had to save some to give to you guys (it still looks good though, no?? that is her arm and picture with the boba tea up top!) mr. beet has been called a turnip, a parsnip, a nondescript root vegetable... but no, he's a little white beet that's modeled after all of the beets that eggboy is about to pull out of the ground in just 10 days when harvest starts.

i can't believe harvest is almost here!! this will be kind of a weird one since eggboy will become completely nocturnal and i'll be in and out for the tour. i'm bummed that i won't be able to be around every day to restock the little table in the workshop with homemade treats for all of the farm workers, but i've started filling up our deep freeze with some things that eggboy can defrost and put out for everyone. 

day 1 is going to be these sugar beet sugar cookies! they are a super simple sugar cookie, iced with an even simpler glaze, and decorated in a way that caters to my clumsy inability to do detailed work. i have no idea how people in those instagram videos make celebrity faces with icing (!!). but for these i just pulled out every green sprinkle i own and mixed up some edible water color paint and went to town. i'm having trouble finding an online listing for my cookie cutter, but if you google "carrot cookie cutter" some similar options pop up.

happy almost beet harvest, everyone!! 

sugar beet sugar cookies

makes 16 beets

ingredients

cookies:

3 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1 c unsalted butter, softened
1 c sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 large egg
confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

icing:

3 c powdered sugar
1/4 c whole milk + more as needed

for water color effect:

a few drops of food coloring
a splash of vodka

sprinkles, for decorating

clues

preheat the oven to 350ºf. line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. in a large bowl with an electric mixer or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugar on medium high until pale and fluffy, 3-4 minutes. reduce the speed to medium and add the extracts and egg and mix to combine.  reduce the speed to low and then gradually add the dry ingredients and mix to combine. pour the dough out onto a clean work surface and give it a few kneads to bring it all together. divide it in half, wrap half of it plastic wrap, and refrigerate it while you roll out the first half. (alternatively, you can make the dough in advance, wrap all of it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight.)

dust your work surface and a rolling pin with confectioners’ sugar or flour and roll out the dough to 1/4” thickness. cut out sixteen beets with a cookie cutter.

use a small offset spatula to transfer them to a baking sheet, 1" apart. re-roll scraps and repeat with the remaining half of the dough. bake for 10-12 minutes, until the bottoms are lightly browned. let the cookies cool on the pans for 5 minutes and then transfer them a wire rack to cool completely.

icing:

in a small bowl, mix together sugar and milk, adding more milk a tiny bit at a time until it's spreadable/pipeable. 

assembly:

add icing to a piping bag and ice cookies as desired. for the watercolor effect, mix together the food coloring and the vodka and brush onto icing that is fully dry. don't worry, the vodka will evaporate! decorate other cookies as desired with sprinkles. enjoy!

if you've preordered molly on the range and would like to win a sheet of #mollyontherange temporary tattoos, leave a comment here! we're giving away 30! open to u.s. residents. enter now through pub date (10/4) and have your preorder receipt ready for if you win!

-yeh!

p.s. molly on the range tour dates are out!! click here for more info. many of the events are ticketed, so be sure to get those while you can! and i am so excited to have deb from smitten kitchen and phyllis from dash and bella joining me at a couple of the stops! 

everything i ate in santa ynez

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between my new bojack horseman obsession, a lifelong love of marzipan, and this desire to compare everything to summer camp, i am almost positive that the santa ynez valley was made for me. it's this cute area in the mountains in california, just past ojai, that consists of five itsy bitsy towns, all adorable in their own way. there are vineyards and roadside bakeries in farmhouses and, in one of the five towns, a teleportation device that brings you straight to a small danish fantasyland, complete with windmills aebleskivers. and by teleportation device i just mean that it was built that way, to be cute and danish and disneyland-inspired. on my way back from the la jolla summerfest, i stopped through santa ynez for a couple of days with lily and alana and we had the gosh darn loveliest time! here is just about everything we ate and drank:

fluffy hot pancakes, breakfast quesadillas, and a 2:1 ratio of coffee to hot chocolate in the mountains after a sunrise horseback ride, past coyotes and deer! my horse was called goose. he did not get along with lily's horse, blackjack. but i don't blame blackjack because goose kept farting in his face. 

just enough marzipan at olsen's bakery. which is to say that every single thing we got there had marzipan and i was in heaven from my spot standing on top of a chair photographing everything. that's one great thing about traveling lily and alana: standing on chairs to get an overhead marzipan shot in public feels less weird.

my very first shrub! at mad + vin at the landsby hotel. we had one of those long nice sunday meals where you have nowhere to be until the late night bonfire out back. it included lily's first fondue and a round of shrub cocktails. (shrubs are my new favorite, and i came straight home and bought two bottles of vinegar about it.) and the landsby hotel is right in the middle of solvang, it's great. being there is like being in an ikea if ikea had just received four promotions and a collection of quirky llama paintings.  

big plump gnudi and a table of other tasty things in the tiny tiny town of los alamos at a restaurant called pico, which occupies the old town general store. the entire town was one block, i wanted to put it in my pocket and take it on home. instead i put the leftover gnudi in a box and took that on home.

wine. ok i am trying so hard to understand wine. it's become a dire situation, because this is 10x harder for me than high school calculus. we visited beckmen and sunstone and i loved learning about the harvesting process, seeing what it takes to make biodynamic wine, and hearing about how many different types of grapes can be grown in the valley--all things that appeal to the agricultural side of things--but when it comes to tasting wine, it's like fashion, i am like whaaaaaa halllllllllp i'm mellllttttttinggggggg. 

aebleskivers! at solvang restaurant. girl, if the next time i see you i have gained 500 pounds it's because i've finally given in and bought an aebleskiver pan. 

peanut butter pie, baby corndogs, boursin on the porch, and a poolside cookie at alisal ranch. alisal is like being at camp, but fancy camp! it's this big old ranch with chickens, horsies (including my friend goose), pigs, and a very old goat named goatie. and you get to dress up for dinner and there is no cell phone reception! it inspired me to start choosing my vacation spots based on where i can get no cell service because out of all the ways to relax, that is an increasingly important one. i loved alisal, it made me feel like a kid. alana said it reminded her of dirty dancing and that sparked a conversation about the borscht belt, which is one of my most favorite conversation topics. so yes, i'll definitely be back there one day.

biscuits out of a dutch oven made over hot coals by our friend in the cowboy hat! this was also at alisal but it was so cool that it deserved its separate list item. lily and alana and i woke up really early one morning to go take pictures of the fog and the horsies and suddenly the world smelled like freshly made biscuits and butter because suddenly 20 feet away, there was a man making biscuits. it was magic.  

a stunning tasting menu at a beautiful b & b in a town that consisted of a b & b, a church, and a schoolhouse. that's it! it reminded me of the town near me that consists of a grain leg, a church, and a strip club. but this was better for obvious reasons, not the least of which was the roasted corn soup that made me want to make a hot tub of roasted corn soup.

solvang's famous hot pretzels that come with a little cup of cheese. it was like eating o.g. auntie annie's and we got em fresh out of the oven. it was the perfect road trip snack for our drive back to l.a.

-yeh!

thank you so much to visit santa ynez valley for inviting us to explore this gem of a place!! all accommodations were provided by visit santa ynez valley, alisal, and the landsby. and all opinions are my own and i would 100% recommend a visit to this area! 

brazil nut cookie dough cups (vegan) + a #mollyontherange preorder sprinkle giveaway!

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a real live copy of molly on the range arrived late last week and i shrieked so loudly, almost as loud as when a fox tried to take a macaroni in his mouth. it was so wild and unexpected, i thought i was unboxing my new business cards and sprinkle envelopes from chelsey, but nope, it was a book! my book! the thing that's going to classify me as an author and qualify me to wear elbow patches! i carried it around with me, to seattle and eastern washington and back, and then last night we used it to make fried rice even though i didn't really follow the recipe. i was mostly just curious to see if i'd used butter or oil (it was butter, thank goodness) and then let the page sit open next to me while i chopped all of my onions. i tried to get onion juice on it as an inaugural stain. 

i'm getting off track: there are three are exactly three weeks left to preorder and that means three preorder giveaways!

first up, magic sprinkle mix! throughout the life of this book, i've dreamt of a sprinkle mix. something with rainbows, various sprinkley shapes, spices, sesame seeds, and salt. a seasoning mix on its own that's as tasty as it is colorful, and something naturally colored, like the sprinkles i keep in a jar on my open shelf. so working with india tree, who makes my favorite naturally dyed sprinkles, i developed a mix that is exactly that! it's got cardamom, black sesames and white sesames, smoked salt, and a secret mixture of their sprinkles that extends beyond their carnival mix. i am so excited about it and if you see me between now and the end of my tour, there's a chance i might have one of these bad boys for you:

why hand out business cards when you could hand out sprinkle packets?? (all of the credit for this idea goes to one of the cool dudes behind the hare's corner, who i met in ireland and instead of giving me a business card, he gave me a little packet of seeds! it was so cute.) aside from the little packets though, there are also six jars of this magic sesame cardamom limited-edition sprinkle mix up for grabs to those who've preordered molly on the range! details on how to enter are at the bottom of this post. 

first i want to show you how i've used them, on these here cookie dough cups that are vegan and inspired by the brazil nut cookie dough bars in anna jones' new book, a modern way to cook. i had never bought a brazil nut before, but when i did, eggboy flipped out! he loves them! anna's recipe calls for blending the nuts with some sugar and coconut oil and adding chocolate chips, and it tastes just like raw cookie dough, it's dangerous and addictive. in order to let these sprinkles shine through, here i've instead coated this dough in chocolate for a fancier peanut butter cup! 

brazil nut cookie dough cups

makes 12

ingredients

6 oz (or 1 heaping cup) brazil nuts

2 tb sugar

2 tb coconut oil (solid)

2 tb maple syrup

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

12 oz dark chocolate

sprinkles, for topping

 

 

clues

place the nuts, sugar, coconut oil, syrup, salt, and vanilla in a food processor and pulse until the mixture comes together into a dough-like texture. it may still look crumbly but if you squeeze a bit in your hand, it should hold together. dump it out onto a work surface, divide it into 12 equal parts, and then roll them into balls and flatten them. set aside.

line 12 muffin tins with paper liners and set aside. 

melt the chocolate in a double boiler or microwave until smooth and then spoon about 1 teaspoon chocolate into the bottom of the liners. stick in the freezer for a couple minutes to firm up slightly. place a disk of filling in each muffin liner and then top with the remaining melted chocolate so that it covers the filling completely. top with sprinkles and let harden in the freezer. enjoy!

if you've preordered molly on the range and would like to win one of six jars of limited-edition #mollyontherange sesame cardamom sprinkles, leave a comment here with what you'd use them on first! open to u.s. residents. enter now through pub date (10/4) and have your preorder receipt ready for if you win!