fresh mint olive oil cake with labneh and honey

This color is real!!! And, no, Kermit was not harmed in the making of this. This is really just a basic olive oil cake that simply has a bunch of fresh mint purée mixed in to give it the most delightfully fresh herbal flavor and of course this bright natural color. It’s inspired by a dessert that Lily, Alana, and I had at The Exchange Restaurant last month that was basically a bowl of crumbled bright green cake topped with yogurt sorbet, a lemony drizzle, and baklava crumble. We ordered it expecting a regular yellow olive oil cake but when it arrived and we saw the color we were like omgomgomg and immediately did that thing where all three of us suddenly block out everything that’s going on around us in order to decipher what’s happening in our mouths and in front of our eyes. We poked at it, snooped around its every nook and cranny, and took very deliberate tastes in order to figure it all out. It’s so good eating with them. The only thing that could have improved such a moment is if one of us had raised up a monocle or magnifying glass. We figured it must have been a few different herbs in there, basil maybe, or parsley even, and then we got on the subject of spinach cupcakes (ew?), and finally had a chat with the server about what all was happening. And it turned out that it was just mint! Which is wild because it didn’t taste specifically minty, the most minty thing about it was that it had a faint version of that fresh feeling you have after brushing your teeth. Past that it was sort of generically herbal, which was cool because it allowed the yogurt sorbet and pistachio baklava crumble to shine through. And above all it was delicious. One of the best most inspiring desserts I’ve ever had. I turned around faster than I’ve ever turned around in my life and flew home and started experimenting with olive oil mint cakes. 

And I came up with this one! It’s a riff on the grapefruit olive oil cake from Yogurt book and it is really fun to make. You might think that the mint purée color would fade in the oven but it stays so bright. Sorry I am like one month late for St. Patrick’s Day, but actually I’m just 11 months early. 

I originally intended to slather this in a classic sweet cream cheese frosting but at the last minute before bringing it to Mackenzie’s birthday party I decided to go deeper into my nod to The Exchange dessert and just use labneh with a honey drizzle and pistachios. I loved it because it was so aggressively not sweet. It was definitely not your typical happy birthday sugary cake though so because of this I was trying really hard to figure out what all of my friends thought of it. The thing about being surrounded by so many nice Midwest people however is that they will not tell you if your cake is bad!! Emily said it tasted *fancy* so there is that?? I’ll leave you with this: when it comes to assembling this cake, choose your own adventure. If you’re hankering for a classic sweet frosting use a standard cream cheese frosting. But if you’re celebrating a sophisticated 30-year-old birthday party then try out the labneh option (as written below)! You can always add more honey drizzles. If you can’t decide, use some of the cake scraps as test bites and concoct your frosting accordingly.  

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Fresh Mint Olive Oil Cake with Labneh and Honey

Makes one 2-layer 6” cake

Ingredients

Cake:

1 c (50g) firmly packed fresh mint leaves

1/2 c (118g) whole milk or unsweetened almond milk

1 1/2 c (190g) all-purpose flour

1/2 c (56g) almond meal

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

Zest of 1 lemon

3/4 c (150g) extra virgin olive oil

1 1/4 c (250g) sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

Assembly:

About 1 1/2 c (338g) labneh

crushed pistachios

honey and/or turbinado sugar

lemon zest

sliced kumquats, optional

Clues

Preheat the oven to 350ºf. Grease and line the bottoms of two 6” pans with parchment and set aside.

Rinse the mint leaves and then ring them out very well. In a high powered blender like a vitamix, blend the mint and milk together until very smooth. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, almond meal, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and lemon zest. In a large bowl, whisk together the olive oil and sugar until combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking very well after each, and then add the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mint mixture in three alternating additions, whisking after each until just combined. Pour into the pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean; begin checking for doneness at 25 minutes. Let cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then transfer it to a wire rack to cool completely. Level off the tops.

Spread half of the labneh on one of the layers and top with pistachios, honey or turbinado, and a little bit of lemon zest, and then place the other cake layer on top and spread on remaining labneh. Decorate as desired with pistachios, honey or turbinado, lemon zest, and sliced kumquats, if using. Enjoy! 

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-yeh!

olympics trip recap!!!

Ok!! I am back from the Olympics, and holy buckets, this has been the craziest wildest ride. I am so excited to tell you all about it!!! First I’m going to reel in the exclamation points because I’ve officially used up my allotted amount for the year but just know that literally every sentence here is said with 12 imaginary exclamation points. 

Prologue, four days before we left Grand Forks: I had just found out from the Olympic Channel that they were looking to have me do a few arts and culture segments in Korea but I had also just found out that my passport was going to be missing the expiration deadline by two weeks! It needs to be valid for six months after traveling from the United States to Korea and mine would have been valid for five months and two weeks. Oy vey! So I immediately flew down to Minneapolis to go to their passport office, crossing my fingers and toes that I’d be able to get a new passport in time, and also carrying Passport shaped cookies to hand out to the office. Duh. That all went swimmingly! Everybody at the office was so gosh darn pleasant, especially in explaining to me that they weren’t actually allowed to accept my cookies, and I was in and out of there with a new passport in an hour. It made me love Minnesota even more.

So then! We quickly figured out all of our details with the Olympic Channel which was bonkers with the 15 hours time difference between Grand Forks and PyeongChang, but we got it done and by Tuesday night we had confirmed flights. Seven hours later, we were on our way to the airport! 

We saw our friend Ben on the plane and I gave him a passport cookie. 

It was a 14 hour flight and my dad advised me to absolutely, under no circumstances, sleep on that plane so that when we arrived at night in Korea, we could just have a good night sleep on their local time and then ideally avoid bad jet lag. It took one movie for me to pass out for half the flight. But we still had time to watch Three Billboards (dark), Ingrid Goes West (also dark), and When Harry Met Sally (classic!), and then also eat bibimbap and a little ice cream sundae and quiche. We arrived just as the sun was setting in Seoul and then drove east across the country, through the mountains, to PyeongChang. 

When we rolled into town, we saw the opening/closing ceremony stadium, the ski jump thing, and a bunch of ski slopes all lit up. Our hotel was in a cute Alps-inspired area at the bottom of a ski hill, right next to the big luge slide. 

Day 1: In the morning we drove the hour or so over to Gangneung, where all of the ice rinks are (figure skating, curling, speed skating, and hockey each have their own arena there). It was the men’s short program for the team figure skating event, AKA NATHAN CHEN LIVE. From the moment he walked into the arena, I couldn’t stop omg-ing, I couldn't believe I was seeing him irl. Even just watching him warm up and skate in circles around the ice was magical and beautiful. Like, imagine Yo-Yo Ma playing scales, even the simplest things were incredible. 

We spent the rest of our day seeing the huge broadcasting center where the TV stations have offices, having our first sit down meal (an amazing sweet beef stew at a little restaurant near our hotel), and then going to the Opening Ceremony. 

My favorite parts about the Opening Ceremony were: the food (spicy rice cakes! chicken skewers! sweet yeasted pancakes!), the drummers, and then screaming my head off when Team USA walked in. “Gangnam Style” was perfectly timed for their entrance. Ooh and then we all lost our minds when the shirtless oily Tongan flag bearer walked in.

Day 2: I interviewed Tara and Johnny!!!!!! We talked all about food and you can see that video here. They were so sweet and I just couldn’t stop smiling the biggest smile. After that, Eggboy and I explored the Gangneung Olympic Park. We ate lunch in the spectator’s cafeteria, where I was really hankering for some bibimbap but it was sold out so I got the lasagna which was fine because it’s the year of lasagna 🤷🏻‍♀️. And then we traded some of our Olympic Channel pins for some gems from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics: funeral potatoes and bologna sandwiches. These pins were made for me. For dinner, we ventured outside of the Olympic park and found an adorable family owned BBQ restaurant where we communicated to the owner via a translation app that you speak into and the lady in the phone translates it and spits it back out. The owner’s mother grew all of the vegetables used in the side dishes and everything was delicious. 

That night we had our very first short track speed skating experience and it was mind blowing. Have you ever seen it?! I thought we were in the future. Or in space. Or in another galaxy. Starlight Express! Their speed and smooth movements were completely superhuman. And what made it even more exciting was that speed skating is huge in Korea, so the place was packed and loud and everyone was going nuts and the South Korean president was there. So were the North Korean cheerleaders. There was so much energy in that building.

Day 3: Sunday broke down into two parts, part 1: watch figure skating, part 2: eat everything at the food market. I can’t possibly imagine a better way to spend a day, can you?? The skating included seeing Bradie’s clean Olympic debut, the Shib Sibs in the sparkliest sparkle outfits I’ve ever seen, and the Knierims’ beautiful long program. I couldn’t stop bouncing up and down, being in shouting distance of these skaters and seeing a lot of the things that you can’t see on TV, like their talks with their coaches, the reactions of their team members as they’re skating, and all of the warmups were so cool. And I got to meet Ashley Wagner, who was so sweet, and explained to me that, yes, all of her super awesome Nike warmup outfits are available to the public.

Even though we were trying to save room for the food market, we got so hungry during the skating and needed a snack, which, at the ice arena concession stand, meant our options were Pringles or bunless hot dogs. Lol. We ate so many bunless hot dogs throughout the various skating events that I'll probably associate live figure skating with bunless hot dogs for a really long time.

After the skaters crushed it, we went to the Gangneung Central Food Market and ate a bunch of tasties!! Olympic Channel posted a facebook live of their editor Marc and me eating some of the most popular things there. Check it out here.

On Sunday night, my friend from college June visited!! It’s been at least like six years since we’ve seen each other, way way too long. June is the best! <3 <3 

Day 4: More skating!! And I really shouldn’t have worn mascara because between Mirai nailing her long program and Adam being his stunning self, I was so weepy. It was amazing. The Shib Sibs, of course, were totally great and clean, and then what happened at the end was that I was completely won over by Virtue and Moir, from Canada. I mean, I’ve always known they were good, but usually when they’ve been on TV in the past, I’d be busy tweeting about the Shib Sibs or, before that, Meryl and Charlie. But seeing them live, they had this globe of energy around them that radiated throughout the arena. They didn’t just compete, they performed, and I couldn’t not fall in love with them right then and there. (And like, they’re definitely in love irl, right?? right?!!!)

In the afternoon, we went to the Olympic Village to interview Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureaux who are on the Team USA hockey team and from Grand Forks!!! I’d heard their voices on the local radio station tons of times but never actually met them so I was soo excited to meet them. They were so nice and cool and they also love cheesy pickles :) Watch the full interview here. 

I tried so hard to sneak into the dining hall when I was in the Village, I desperately wanted to see what the athletes were eating and show all of you but only the athletes were allowed in and I’m really awful at trying to sneak into things. But I was able to see the Village snack shop where I found coleslaw flavored popcorn, chocolate bamba-y things, Emmental cookies, and things called “mayo shower potato sticks.” Obviously I bought them all and so far I’ve only tried the mayo shower potato sticks, which were light crunchy salty sticks that tasted like mayonnaise and onion, I loved them.

That night we ate BBQ with Ben and Josh in Gangneung. We talked about all of our hot takes on the ice skating and ate spicy crab and bulgogi.

Day 5: On Tuesday we explored Yongpyong, another area in the mountains, where the alpine skiing takes place. The Swiss hospitality house is there, which is set up like a little Alpine village where you can eat Rösti and Raclette and shop for Swatches. And the Swedish hospitality house has a Swedish meatball stand set up outside, it's so cute. The Team USA house is there too but we weren’t allowed in because we weren’t athletes and finally that was our cue to start brainstorming sports that we could try to qualify for in the next Olympics in. Do you think that Pita from Tonga would want to be on a Curling team with us?

I made a new friend, Rosie, who is competing in the cross country 30k on the last day!! She told us to go to the cross country sprint that night so we put on all of our layers of clothes (it was so windy!) and made our way to the other side of the mountain that was right outside of our hotel window, which required a whole lot of schlepping against the wind. We thought, “ok, we’ll cheer on the Americans for a few events and then we’ll go warm up and get bbq in town” but then when we arrived, it was like we had found the best party in PyeongChang and we never wanted to leave. The K-pop was blasting, the Norwegian fans were decked out in Viking outfits and being rowdy, everybody was drinking, and we found pork buns at the concession stand!! It was totally insane. And I suddenly felt really short because the place was packed with really tall Scandinavians. Eggboy, who is half Norwegian, blended right in and we cheered for the American and the Norwegian skiers. It was so fun, it made me want to go to Norway and also learn how to cross country ski.

We ate late night dumplings that night, it was the best Valentine’s day eve ever.

Day 6: We visited our new friend Brett, who is a nutritionist for the ski team and their chef, Adam. We learned about how the skiers eat (lots of good fat and protein!) and what they have on their birthdays (healthier cupcakes). And Adam told me about a corn dog casserole that he made a few Olympics ago for one of the athletes. I’m going to make it.

Then we ate bulgogi pizza and booked it to the airport! I slept almost the entire way back and now we’re home. We avoided norovirus, which I attribute to excessive usage of hand sanitizer and A+ hydration, and terrible jet lag, which I attribute to limiting my coffee intake (sounds counterintuitive, but my quality of sleep and ability to fall asleep when it was night time in Korea was suddenly remarkable).

And there it is! I truly didn’t think it’d be possible for my excitement for the Olympics to grow, and yet here we are. It’s so cool watching the broadcasts now from home and being able to spot the seats that we sat in, and of course our new bffs Tara and Johnny hehe. 

For more of my photos and vids, check out the Olympics highlights stories on my Instagram. And of course, I cannot thank the Olympic Channel enough for this insanely awesome opportunity!!! Check out their site for tons more Olympic vids and pics :) 

-Yeh!!

february adventures

luckily my effed up valentine’s day cake experience didn’t dictate the tone for the other parts of february because i squeezed in so many fun adventures for such a bite sized month! i got to hug old friends, eat schnitzel with cool new ones, play loud music, and jump a whole delta airline status!!!! i like you, february. come back again soon. 

let’s make a list:

photos 1 & 2: i spent a whole entire weekend at the grand forks ice arena watching the synchronized ice skating sectionals competition and i only left to get jimmy johns across the parking lot. i got to cheer on my old team!! it was sooo fun! it was sad when they didn’t win but the team that beat them was from north dakota so i still got to kvell. eggboy joined me for a few of the divisions but he got a lil bored so he left and did taxes.

photos 3-14 &16: i went to canada! which is a thing that you can do quite successfully in february if you live in the north pole already. my first stop was toronto where i stayed at the *coziest* bed and breakfast, ate at fat pasha, gave a couple of tahini covered #mollyontherange demos with hillel students and at their palatial jcc, and made ras al hanout hotdish on the marilyn denis show. i tried to make a ketchup joke because i thought that canada was the land ketchup, but either i’m incorrect about that or my delivery sucked? come on, ketchup chips, ketchup on mac and cheese, right??

in montreal i stayed with my bb and lead monkey bread inspiration, talia, in an apartment filled with hudson’s bay stripes and st. viateur bagels. we ate poutine and smoked meat and wore patagonia quarter zips for a majority of the time. my friends from the wandering chew put on the most magical #mollyontherange dessert party at the museum of jewish montreal. so many wonderful humans came out and we all ate so much sugar so naturally we needed to disco it off after. also in my two days there we managed to have one of those late-night perfectly boozy meals at maison publique, followed by some thick babka and schnitzel the next morning at hof kelsten. 

photos 15 & 17: kittsona, the town boutique, put on a cookie decorating #mollyontherange signing. i substituted the almond flour for hazelnut flour in these cookies and they were so tasty.

photos 18-22: conrad is a beast of a pianist and the last time we performed together, he was seven and soloing with our youth orchestra and i was 13 and putting on lip gloss and waiting for my triangle note. so it took a while, but we managed to perform together again in aspen this month with the aspen music festival! i decorated dobos torte and made cheesy spätzle while he played beethoven and jason eckardt music. from now on i only want to listen to beethoven while being covered in chocolate frosting. 

photos 23-28: proud of myself for not exploding from happiness during my 36 hours in new york, but somehow the stars aligned and i found myself in selfie distance from my all-time favorite podcast hosts, my all-time favorite ice dancers, three of my all-time favorite college homies, and i made my all-time favorite food on the today show. i also acquired a pair of comfy cool shoes called blog. i also got to eat hummus with rob and brian and they didn’t even fart when i was in the room. such mensches they are.

photos 29-36: then i went to florida! my friends george and sam have a new music group that was playing a david t little quartet (and u know how i love the loud music of david t little), so i dusted off my vibraphone mallets and brute forced some notes out. it was such great fun. i also got to see my tampa family and my old roomie and eat some fresh tomatoes which are in season down there, which felt so weird but so awesome! 

not pictured: eggboy and i went to see the town choir perform in a warehouse, it was so hip, it was like we were in brooklyn! i made suuuuuuuch a good chicken and dumplings (here is the recipe, next time i’m going to start with 2 tsp salt in the stock and work my way up and maybe not use the whole 4 tsp that it calls for). i acquired a love of matcha lattes and neck scarves. ooh and i watched this lucius, over and over and over.

tomorrow i leave for kentucky for the iacp conference! i'll be leading a cake workshop, talking on a panel, signing #mollyontherange, and seeking out the best kentucky dance clubs!! see you there??

-yeh!

hawaii

we went on a vacation! we left home when it was 20 below and arrived in the magical land of hawaii, where it was 100 degrees warmer. it was sunny the whole time, as if mother nature had just set the weather on auto pilot and fell asleep. it was perfect hiking weather, perfect papaya-for-breakfast weather (squeezed with calamansi!), perfect sitting-by-the-water-turning-off-my-phone-reading-a-book-and-not-looking-up-until-a-man-rode-by-with-a-mai-tai-delivery-bike weather. we listened to the la la land soundtrack, ate donuts before supper, and sat on the beach with moses and alana with buckets o’ poke from the little kahuku superette.

it was exactly hawaii.

i acquired a new favorite hobby, floating. i learned the joy of lying in the water and looking up at the sky with no thoughts and fears aside from the possibility of my bum getting nibbled by fishies. and eggboy discovered the wonders of shave ice and haleakala. we watched the sunrise each morning with coffee and the newspaper and observed a nightly bedtime of like 8pm. we made a chinchilla friend in moses's mom's garden. i miss the spam musubi and the pineapple. i came home with a musubi mold though so watch out, i’m going to musubi everything. 

on the road to hana, instead of stopping to turn around where the road “ended” we just kept on going, and let our jaws drop at maui showing off. our phones didn’t work on that road, and the lighting was different, i felt like we were on another planet or in another time. the world could have gone all brigadoon on us and, nope, we wouldn’t have known.

it was such a wonderful trip. i'm officially one of the tannest humans in grand forks and i'm ready to get back to work but also counting the days until we get to go back to hawaii :)

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here were some of the places we loved most on this trip (to add to the list of places i loved on my last trip to maui and oahu):

koko head cafe // an adorable brunch spot with dumplings, bibimbap, congee, and a french toast that we didn’t get but it looked so epic that i’m regretting that we didn’t get it.

diamond head market // the site of eggboy’s first spam musubi! and, ugh, their scones are sofa-king good.

rainbow drive-in // nothing prepared me for how good their plate lunch would be. we got the mixed plate. i couldn’t stop eating it. even though i’d just had a malasada. even though i knew it’d probably give me a belly ache. so good. 

surfjack hotel // a super cute hotel in waikiki where we stayed for the first few nights! it is really hip but not painfully hip. just right. especially for an afternoon of playing jenga with alana and moses by the pool.

royal kitchen // jade brought us some of their manapua. sooo soft and doughy and good.

four seasons at ko’olina // a dream. we screamed when we walked into our room and saw the view. the beds were clouds, the service was flawless, the pools and laguna made me love going in the water. and all of the food was delicious, especially the pandan mochi donuts at la hiki. and there were poolside cake pops! i want to go here again and again and again. a huge mahalo to kim for making our stay there extra special!!! 

kahumana farm // an organic farm that employs homeless families and people with disabilities and supplies produce and eggies to a bunch of restaurants on oahu. so many things grew there that i’d never even heard of, and they had an awesome aquaponics setup. 

haleakala national park // eggboy and i did a lazy thing: instead of waking up at 3am to join the crowds for the sunrise, we slept in, drove up to the summit in the morning sun (what a pretty drive!), and then hiked the day away on the sliding sands trail. it was quiet and stunning and lovely and we weren’t exhausted like we’d have been if we woke up for the sunrise, so 10/10 would recommend this. on the way back down we stopped in the cute town of makawao for a smoothie. note to self: next time go on a day when komoda's bakery is open! 

paia flatbread company // we went here for pizza night and looooved the pesto pizza. the place reminded me of our town pizza parlor. quirky and fun! 

old lahaina luau // our first luau! we loved it. 

hana ranch burger truck // tasty burgers on the hana highway!

the road to hana // would definitely recommend. and i have some tips: the rental car company tried to get us to upgrade to a four-wheel drive for it but eggboy rolled his eyes and was like really? which made me a little nervous but it ended up being 100% fine in our two-wheel drive. eggboy's a good slow driver though, so it was a smooth ride, free of car sickness, and yeah, some of my favorite parts were after the highway ends. past that, it's gravel-y and narrow at times, but it's not too bad. they tell you to really load up on snacks and gas in paia before hitting the road, so we pretty much cleared out the mana market as if we were gearing up for the apocalypse. but in reality, we went through about 1/3 of a tank of gas and there were taco trucks, farm stands, and barbecue stops the entire way to hana lol. i'm not mad because you know how i feel about cute road snacks, but just so you know for future planning, you're not gonna die if you don't fill your backseat with bread before you leave. 

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-yeh!