sumac snickerdoodles

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Hii!!!! How are you and how was your Halloween and are you in the holiday spirit yet?? We had such a fun first Halloween with Bernie!! She had a Halloween feast of squash (cause it’s orange!) and then donned her fleece lemon costume to trick or treat at Aunt Ethel’s building where she made friends with a Twizzler, or more specifically the crunchy wrapper of the Twizzler. It fascinated her all night long. Eggboy and I split a tiny box of Milk Duds and then ate spinach salads before going to bed by 9. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Going to bed by 9 is, like, how I get my thrills these days because being well rested is such an excellent high? Also, I’m now filming (season 5!) and my call time in the morning is very early o’clock, meaning I have to wake up six minutes before very early o’clock in order to brush my teeth and then commute from my bedroom to the kitchen. 

It’s gonna be a great season! It includes:

  1. A Passover episode, complete with our new Marian Bull Seder plate that I want to stare at all day long every day

  2. An appearance by one of my all time favorite bands

  3. Hockey, hockey stars (!), broomball, curling, Alana curling, and ice skating

  4. KNOEPHLA!!!!!

I know I say this about every season but I think this season is going to be the tastiest yet. And not just because it has the best mozzarella sticks and gruyere babka rolls of all time but also because Bernie’s cheeks have reached peak deliciousness (thank you to my grandpa and dad for those). 

Enough about me, I am going to talk about my frond Michelle now!!! Her book, Weeknight Baking, came out last week and it has SPRINKLE END PAPERS. And a recipe for one (1!) chocolate chip cookie that is just plain dangerous. And billions upon gajillions of tips for how to bake things in advance or speed things up or spread the work out over the course of a few days in order to make it fit any kind of crazy busy schedule. It’s baking efficiency at its tastiest and I love it. Like she’s even making me feel like I can bake a dang wedding cake over the course of a few Bernie naps. For those of you who liked the bake-ahead tips in this post, this book takes this type of thing to the next level. And all the while it offers deeeelicious ideas like halva blondies (!!!) and excellent styling tips like how to get perfectly straight edges when you cut cheesecake bars. This book is so clever, informational, beautiful, and delicious and I’m a proud kvelling frond right now.

One thing that Michelle and I share, other than the fact that we both have quiet reserved Nordic partners, is a love of sumac. Specifically, sumac in sweets! It’s so bright and fun! I sometimes think of sumac as ground up lemony vinegar, if vinegar were a solid. So like if you’re into lemon sour patch kids, you will like sumac’d sweets. (NY Shuk makes a great sumac, by the way.) Michelle made a delicious move in her book and rolled snickerdoodle cookie dough in a sumac/raspberry magic dust and the world is a tastier place for it. These cookies are sweet, tangy bright, crisp around the edges, and soft and chewy in the middle. They’re sassier than you’re average cookie and so pretty! Look at that natural pink color! I love these. And I love Michelle and Weeknight Baking. Yay!!!

raspberry sumac snickerdoodles

makes about 20 cookies

from michelle lopez's weeknight baking: recipes to fit your schedule

ingredients

for the raspberry sumac topping

1/4 c (1.75 oz) granulated sugar

2 heaping tb freeze-dried raspberries, finely ground

2 tsp ground sumac

for the cookies

2 3/4 c (12.35 oz) all-purpose flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 1/2 c (10.5 oz) granulated sugar

1 c (8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 large eggs

2 tsp pure vanilla extract

clues

position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400ºF. line two half sheet pans with parchment paper.

in a medium bowl, combine all topping ingredients and set aside.

in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the sugar and butter. beat on medium-high until light, fluffy, and doubled in volume, 2 to 3 minutes, using a rubber spatula to scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl as necessary. reduce the mixer to low and add the eggs one at a time, adding the next egg only after the previous one has bee fully incorporated. add the vanilla and beat until just combined. scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl. with the mixer on low, gradually add the dry ingredients and beat until just combined. scrape down the bottom and sides of the bowl once more, and beat on low for an additional 30 seconds.

use a 3-tablespoon cookie dough scoop to portion the cookie dough into balls. roll each in the snickerdoodle topping, covering them completely. place the coated cookies at least 3 inches apart on the prepared sheet pans. bake one pan at a time for 10 minutes, or until the edges have set but the centers are still gooey. the cookies will look puffed when you pull them out of the oven, but will fall and crack into the perfect cookies as they cool. cool the cookies on the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes, or until the edges and bottoms of the cookies have set and feel firm to the touch. repeat with the remaining cookie dough (or freeze it to bake later). serve warm or at room temperature. the cookies can be stored in an airtight container or zip-top bag at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Choose Your Own Adventure Granola Bars

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One of the questions I get most these days is how my cooking has changed now that Bernie is around. The answer is that I have a whole new appreciation for quick one-bowl recipes, recipes that require minimal chopping or actual heating, and anything that can sit nicely and well-behaved for 10 minutes if at any point I need to drop it and feed Bern. This is because, unless Bernie is having Grandma or nanny time, she is most likely attached to me. Her bouncer and play pads are cool and stuff but she is often over them after like five minutes so I have to use that time strategically and schedule it for the 10 seconds when I need to put something in the oven or chop up an onion. Or another scenario is that I plan to do all of my vegetable chopping for the next few days while she’s napping so that when she’s awake and on me, I can sail through salad assembly without the use of a knife. 

Logistics aside, cooking has also gotten way more exciting because have you ever seen a baby smell a piece of freshly baked pita for the very first time?! Or stick her face in a pluche of basil for the first time?? The facial expressions are solid gold. I also sometimes try to explain everything I’m doing to her, which kills two birds with one stone: I can rehearse my Girl Meets Farm lines and also encourage her communication development beyond singing Baby Beluga over and over. 

Some other things I’ve learned include that the sounds of the stand mixer and blender are soothing to her, the site of the water running is fascinating to her, if she’s ever a little fussy I can step outside to get some herbs from the garden and that immediately calms her down, and that she wants to hold anything that has a crunchy wrapper. So if I need to carry a lot of things from the fridge to the counter, I can put the bag of spinach in her hand while I carry the lemon and parmesan, and 50% of the time the spinach will actually make it to the counter!

If this all sounds fine and dandy, trust me, it was a learning curve! Remember the first thing I baked after Bernie was born? Making those cakes required 5,000 breaks, hours and hours, and I still had to forego my obsessive desire for perfect ganache drips. Which is fine. This is still one of my favorite cake photos ever. But slowly I learned this new way of doing things and I’ll continue to learn, especially as Bernie becomes old enough to help in the kitchen (or to decide that she wants nothing to do with helping in the kitchen)!

One of my faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaavorite pieces of baby gear during this adjustment to life with Bernie has been my Solly Wrap. I’ve been looking forward to this partnership with them for forever because, well, if you follow me on Instagram you know that she practically lives in it. For her first few months, it was her guaranteed happy place. I wouldn’t leave the house without it because if ever she woke up in her stroller a little cranky, I knew that I could put her in the wrap and calm her right down (even when she wasn’t in it, I’d wear it on me to the grocery store so that I could plop her in it at a moment’s notice). For a while during maternity leave, I would go walking with her at the gym every single day and she would nap the whole time while I listened to Unorthodox. I loved those afternoons sooo much. And then where was she when I made my first postpartum loaf of challah? In her wrap. 

Once we discovered this wrap, time in the kitchen got so much smoother and more enjoyable for both of us! I just love having her on me and she loves it too. I honestly can’t sing enough praises about this thing. It’s become my new go-to gift for new parent fronds. 

So today I’m sharing a recipe that I have made countless times with Bernie in her wrap. It’s a one-bowl, lightning fast recipe for granola bars that can be made with whatever nut or seed butters, dried fruit or nuts, chocolates, seeds, and other mix-ins that you have on hand. And they’ve got oats and flax to aid in lactation! All of the ingredients are easy to keep in your pantry for whenever you get a free moment to throw these together, and these bars keep for a while in the fridge or freezer. They’re nutty, chewy, filling, and perfectly sweet. I’ve eaten so many of these and Eggboy has too! (Think he’s started lactating? Lol) The only steps I obviously don’t do while Bernie is in her wrap are putting them in and taking them out of the oven and then chopping them into bars. But everything else is wildly easy and after making these one or two times you’ll probably memorize the ingredient amounts. And by the way, this recipe is page one of her cookbook. 

My favorite combos are: cashew butter + dried apricots, almond butter + a broken up white chocolate bar, tahini + roasted pistachios + crumbled marzipan or halva, and peanut butter + dark chocolate. For these pictures I couldn’t decide, so I added all of the nuts! And candy coated chocolates.

So for all of the new parents out there who just want to bake a darn thing, this one is for you!! 

Choose Your Own Adventure Granola Bars

makes 18

Ingredients

1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed dairy milk or sweetened condensed coconut milk

1/2 c (128g) unsweetened nut or seed butter (I love cashew butter, almond butter, and tahini the best!)

1 tb vanilla extract

1/2 tsp kosher salt

3 1/2 c (280g) quick cooking oats

3 tb (45g) flax seeds, or a mix of different seeds (chia, millet, sunflower, etc)

1 c (112g) roasted salted nuts

3/4 c (120g) dark chocolate chips or candy coated chocolates

Dried fruits, optional

Clues

Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line an 8” x 8” baking dish with enough parchment paper so that it comes up the sides and hangs over by 1”. 

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the condensed milk, nut or seed butter, vanilla, and salt. Add the oats, seeds, and nuts* and mix to combine.

*Alternatively, you can add the nuts in the next step by pressing them into the top of the granola bars when you add the chocolate chips. This is what’s pictured and it’s just a different lewk!

Scrape into the baking dish and spread it out evenly. Press the chocolate chips and dried fruits (if using) into the top. Bake for 25 minutes or until lightly browned around the edges. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes then remove to a rack to cool completely. Chop into bars. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for a few days, in the refrigerator for up to a week, or in the freezer for up to a few months.

-yeh!

photos by chantell and brett quernemoen

Thank you SO much to Solly Baby for sponsoring this post and also just for existing. You guys are the best and I love you. Fronds, here is a discount code for 15% off anything on the Solly site: MollySolly15 (code expires November 4th)!

green shakshuka pizza

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Well this has been a weird few weeks! It’s the middle of October and I am sitting at my kitchen table, eating a Chrismukkah cookie, looking outside at a blanket of snow, and the sun is out and Eggboy is putzing around inside the house. The middle of October typically means sweaters not parkas, tiptoeing around the mud in socks with sandals, and only ever having Eggboy sightings at random times in the middle of the night since during the days he’s harvesting sugar beets. I guess the Chrismukkah cookie things remains the same though because Emily’s cookie swap is just two months away and I’ve got a title to defend. 

Beet harvest, which is supposed to start every year on October 1st, has yet to start, due to the weather, and as of yet, the fate of the beets is totally unknown. They’re in the ground still and we don’t even know if they’ll ever make it out of the ground. Each day brings so many questions. What do the fields look like after yesterday’s weather event? What will they look like after tomorrow’s weather event? When did I start referring to storms as “weather events”? What will the beet processing plant do? Should I continue stocking our freezer with baked goods for the drivers?? This whole situation is totally unprecedented and confusing.

And another thing that this weather has screwed up?? My trip to New York this past weekend :(!! I’d been looking forward to it for FOREVER and had been building my dumpling tolerance, rehearsing my hotdish demo, and also had all of these plans in place for Bernie’s first nights away from both me and Eggboy (assuming he’d be harvesting). But then on Friday there was a perfect storm of getting sick and the blizzard. And then I was glued to my couch (cuddling with Bernie, at least!!) watching the Mighty Ducks. It was a major bummer but then seeing Bernie’s face on her first sled ride cheered me way way up. 

The weather, the snow, the harvest, the flights!

Anytime life is weird like this, I try to maintain some sense of sanity by working extra hard to eat greens. My green smoothie in the morning, spinach salads at lunch, a few extra piles of kale in my quesadillas, all feel even more important because if life is gonna be weird, I at least want to try and feel not as weird physically. Yes I still stress eat the extra Chrismukkah cookie, but I strive to balance it with an extra pile of kale so that I have the energy to deal with all of the unknowns.

And pizza night is no exception! Sure, there is the salad pizza route. But now that’s snowy, Eggboy and I have been craving more of a hot situation. Enter: green shakshuka pizza. A gigantic pile of greens on a bed of chewy pizza dough and melty mozzarella with runny eggs, all brightened up by a sprinkle of salty feta and drizzley drizz of tangy yogurt. And obviously za’atar. (If you’re the kind of person who likes ranch on their pizza, try yogurt + za’atar!!!) There are so many delicious flavors and textures up in here that strike the perfect balance of healthy-ish and doughy cheesy comfort. It’s also pretty because look @ that oozy egg!!!!!

I am using Our Family yogurt and mozzarella here, two reliable staples in my fridge that I turn to regularly on pizza night. And if you’re coming to my Our Family event in Fargo on Saturday, give me a shout!!! Can’t wait to see you :)

Green Shakshuka Pizza

Makes one 12” pizza

Ingredients

2 tb olive oil

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and finely chopped

1 tsp sweet paprika

6 oz kale, stemmed and coarsely chopped

4 oz spinach

2 tb veggie, chicken stock, or water

Kosher salt

Black pepper

Crushed red pepper

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 lb pizza dough (storebought or homemade, I love Jim Lahey’s dough)

All-purpose flour, for dusting

6 oz Our Family mozzarella, shredded

4 large eggs

4 oz crumbled feta

Our Family plain Greek yogurt, za’atar, and chopped flat-leaf parsley, for topping

clues

Preheat the oven to 425ºf with a pizza stone if you have one. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, jalapeño, and paprika and cook, stirring, for a minute, and then add the kale and spinach in a couple of batches, allowing it to wilt slightly in between so it doesn’t overflow the pot. Add a good pinch of salt and cook, stirring often, for 7 minutes. Stir in the stock or water and cook for 5 more minutes. Add a few turns of black pepper, a pinch of crushed red pepper (or more to taste), and the lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly while you roll out the pizza dough.

Roll out the dough on a lightly floured piece of parchment into a 12” round. Sprinkle with the mozzarella and then use tongs to transfer the kale mixture to the pizza (discarding any excess moisture that’s in the skillet). Create 4 wells in the kale mixture and crack in the eggs, taking care not to break the yolks. To ensure that the yolks don’t break, I like to crack the eggs into a separate little bowl first and then pour them on the pizza. That way if I break I yolk while cracking the egg, I can use that egg for something else. Sprinkle on the feta. Carefully slide onto the pizza stone (if you don’t have one, slide it on a baking sheet) and bake until the egg whites are firm but the yolks are still runny; begin checking for doneness at 10 minutes. 

Top with dollops of yogurt and sprinkles of za’atar, parsley, salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper and enjoy!

-yeh!

photos by chantell and brett quernemoen

thank you, our family, for sponsoring this post!!

a sprinkle and rainbow apron collab with enrich and endure!!

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Sprinkle aprons and rainbow aprons are here, y’all!!! *Throws sprinkles in the air* (*Gets money’s worth out of the Roomba*) I’ve been scheming with my fronds at Enrich and Endure about this for what seems like forever, so I am extra super duper excited that they are finally here! I first became obsessed with Enrich and Endure four years ago when I got the sweetest note from the co-owner, Sarah, asking if she could send me an apron. When it arrived, I immediately fell in love with the quality, the color, and the feel, and it became part of my permanent uniform. It was too beautiful to think of as just a utilitarian kitchen linen, it was more than that, more like a well-loved dress or something! Over the years I’ve collected more and more colors to add to my wardrobe and they now take up like half of my closet. I wear them frequently on Girl Meets Farm, at events, on this here little blog, and anytime I’m making a mess which is pretty much always. Whenever I think up outfits to wear for blog posts and the show, my aprons play a central role. So when Sarah and her brother and co-owner Lorcan, brought up the idea of collaborating I obviously said yasssss. I’m not a clothes designer but I know that I like sprinkles and rainbows (did you know I like sprinkles and rainbows? :-P) so we immediately knew that one of the aprons had to have sprinkles. Aoife Scott designed the perfect pile of sprinkles to hang out subtly on the shoulder and pocket of an oatmeal crossback apron. This one is elegant and soft spoken with just a dash of whimsy and color, and it’s sooo comfy. No waistband = you can eat more dumplings.

For the other apron, we wanted to go with their classic apron shape, it is SO flattering! Sarah and Lorcan sent me a bunch of swatches of their linen to choose some colors and they were all SO PRETTY that I couldn’t decide, so I chose them all and named her rainbow. Ms. Rainbow is loud and spunky!! The overlapping pocket is inspired by this cool sweatshirt and it’s the perfect size for lip balm, sprinkle tweezers, a tiny tube of harissa, etc. I also love that the two straps are different colors so they look like a puzzle when they’re tied. 

These are all made in Ireland with gorgeous high quality Irish linen and I know you guys are going to love them!!! They would make perfect gifts for the holidays!!! Buy the rainbow apron here and buy the sprinkle apron here, and hurry because quantities are limited! I’ll also be posting a giveaway on my Instagram soon :)

Enjoy, fronds!!!!

-Yeh!
photos by chantell and brett quernemoen