spring

springtime oreos

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ok as soon as i posted monday’s hotdish, it started to actually warm up outside and morph into spring, signified by the fact that nobody who came over this week needed assistance in the can i take your coat realm. which is a great relief because despite the fact that we’ve lived in our house for almost three years now, we’ve yet to nail down this choreography and half of the time the coats go directly from our guests’ bodies to eggboy’s arms to a hopeful pile on the couch. or a random closet on the other side of the house, or on the homemade hooks halfway down the cave to our basement if it’s not completely filled up with parkas and coveralls. there’s just a lack of space in our welcome area (or maybe an overabundance of shoes?) and the routine is that guests come in, they see this whale drawing, and in a single file they filter through a tunnel to the light and smell of the kitchen at which point eggboy shimmies in to take the coats but then that's the furthest we've rehearsed and it's nearly impossible to predict where the coats go from there.

(apologies in advance for the wrinkles on your coats.)

but the point is i know it's spring because we've gone a week without going through that mishegas. 

spring also showed itself this week at night when we sat down to finally finish the last episode of this is us and it was still broad daylight. ughghgggggh. on the plus side (!), longer days mean that macaroni’s egg production is through the roof and i’ve got matzo, so i’ve been jumping the gun on matzo brei and it feels gr8. 

other than observing spring, this week has included a great big mashup of things: cake baking, cake photographing, brisket over-salting, yogurt testing, meeting for the new town food truck logo, shooting with chantell and brett, planning fargo passover (you’re all invited!! details tbd) and preparing for the cherry bombe jubilee (you’re also all invited!! tickets are still available for their marketplace where i'll be signing motr!). and tomorrow morning i’m driving to fargo to make springtime desserts on north dakota today! i’m excited! i’ll be demoing the little rosemary planter cakes from motr, toasted coconut bird’s nest cupcakes, and these here oreos with pretty pastel fillings that are all naturally colored! here are the colorings that i used:

green: matcha powder, easy peasy. (if you don’t like matcha, you can pull a lily and add a dash of spirulina.)

pink: ground freeze dried berries. berry purée would also work (directions here), but i had fun this time experimenting with freeze dried berries because they make the frosting a little speckled and also the flavor comes through a bit stronger. you could also use a bit of beet juice! 

yellow: orange juice and zest + the tiiiiiiiniest bit of turmeric. too much turmeric makes it taste like turmeric, which isn’t good for buttercream, and the color gets kind of neon-y yellow. so when adding your turmeric, add the smallest amount possible and then increase from there if you want more color.

springtime oreos

makes 18 cookies

Ingredients

for the cookies:

2 c flour

1 c unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for dusting

1 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/4 c unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 c sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

 

for the filling:

1 c unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 c powdered sugar

a pinch of kosher salt

1/2 tsp matcha powder

2 tsp finely crushed freeze dried raspberries or strawberries

zest and juice of an orange

a tiny pinch of turmeric

 

clues

to make the cookies: preheat the oven to 325ºf. line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

in a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda. in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. mix in the vanilla extract. with the mixer running on low speed, add the flour mixture and beat until just combined. it will still be a bit crumbly. pour the mixture onto a work surface and give it a few kneads to bring it all together. divide in half, shape into flat discs, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for an hour (or up to two days).

lightly dust your surface and the top of the dough with cocoa powder. roll out the dough to 1/2 inch thickness and cut out 2 1/2 inch rounds. transfer them to the baking sheets, 1 inch apart (using a small offset spatula helps with this step). re-roll the scraps and cut out more rounds. 

bake the cookies until the tops are no longer shiny, about 20 minutes. cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

to make the filling: with a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat together the butter, sugar, and salt until combined.

divide the frosting equally into three small bowls. add the matcha to one, the berries to another, and the orange and turmeric to the other and stir to combine. 

fill piping bags with each of the three frostings. place half of the cookies on a plate or work surface. pipe a blob of filling onto the tops of each of these cookies and then place another cookie on top, pressing slightly.

refrigerate for a few minutes to allow the filling to firm up. enjoy! store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to a week.

-yeh!

mint coconut chocolate cake

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I needed to improve my cake track record because, you know, there was valentine's day and then in Arizona when I tried demoing tahini buttercream in a 90 degree tent it got all gloopy and ploppy. So I called a quick meeting with my editorial calendar and very subtly changed the words “salad pizza” to “mint coconut chocolate cake.” Because I love using coconut milk in chocolate cake for the rich, almost fudgey texture that it lends, and the super target has started stocking fresh mint again just in time for St. Patrick's Day! And I simply cannot think of a better threesome than coconut, mint, and chocolate.

lemon, feta, mint

peter, bjorn, and john

cheese, tortillas, ketchup

chocolate, tahini, more tahini…?

Anyway, the fact that I subbed salad for cake did not mean that I was an unhealthy ursula for the rest of the week. On the contrary, this week was one of those wonderful awesome weeks where at the beginning of it I sat down and did dinner planning! I do that once every five weeks or so and it’s just the best, I should really do it more often. I sit with my dinner planning notebook, a very large stack of cookbooks, my notebook where I keep my grocery lists, and the internet opened up to about 30 different good looking recipes, and then I compose four days of meals, leaving Friday open for pizza Friday. This week’s theme was yogurt because did I tell you that I am writing a yogurt short stack book??? It will be out a year from now and I am so excited because yogurt is one of my very favorite ingredients, not just for the flavor and texture, but also because it makes me feel de-puffed. As in, it has the exact opposite effect of eating a bunch of salt.

So we ate farro and kale with yogurt green goddess, yogurt marinated chicken (I am extra excited about this recipe), a yogurt frittata, yogurt on tacos, yogurt fattoush… and on top of all of this we went to the gym every night (!!) so am I feeling like a million bucks and ready to poke fun at it all with a week of schnitzel in Berlin? Maybe so! Or maybe I'll hunt down a vegetable in Germany, which I have never been very successful at since I am always so enthralled by Amerikaners and Brezeln and Döner kebabs, but there is no time like next week to change all of that. Do you have a favorite salad in Berlin? Tell me tell me.

But Molly what happened to the cake?? 

We had one large slice and then I redecorated it by frosting the inside where the slice was taken out so that it could lock in all of the moisture:

And then we brought it over to Emily and Evan the cow farmer along with a hotdish because they have a brand new tiny human in da house!!! Yay! I am like a little bummed that spontaneous gin and tonics and cheesy pickles with Emily at the Toasted Frog have been put on temporary hold, but I am also really getting into this new hobby of making freezer meals for E and E. It's so fun. Expect some more freezer meals up on this blog. 

So this cake is essentially this chocolate mint cake, oomphed up with coconut milk, coconut oil, and a bit of coconut extract. Mint and chocolate are awesome together but I often find I want a bit more richness to support it and coconut does just that. It also makes the cake part dairy free, so if you have a great dairy free frosting or want to mix up a quick coconut milk with powdered sugar glaze, you’ve got an awesome df dessert option on your hands. The cake pictured here is six inches-- this batter is enough for four six-inch layers, but I gave the fourth layer to eggpop as a thank you for driving us to the airport. You could also make a two-layer eight-inch cake. Or 24 cupcakes. You know the drill. 

mint coconut chocolate cake

makes one 2-layer, 8-inch cake or one 4-layer, 6-inch cake (see notes above)

ingredients

10 fresh mint leaves

1 can full-fat coconut milk

1 3/4 c sugar

1 3/4 c all-purpose flour

3/4 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/2 c coconut oil, melted and cooled slightly

1 tsp coconut extract

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 c boiling water

 

frosting:

10 fresh mint leaves

3 sticks unsalted butter

4 c powdered sugar

1/2 tsp coconut extract

1/8 tsp salt

2 tb coconut milk

 

assembly:

food coloring, sprinkles, marzipan, rubber stamps, all optional but all very fun

clues

preheat oven to 350.

grease two 8-inch round cake pans or four 6-inch round cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.

muddle the fresh mint leaves in a saucepan and pour in the coconut milk. bring to a simmer over medium heat, and keep it at a low simmer (lowering the level of the heat as needed), stirring often, for 15 minutes. remove it from the heat, strain out the mint leaves, and measure out 1 cup of coconut milk. set it aside to cool slightly and save the remaining few tablespoons of coconut mint milk for the frosting in the refrigerator. discard the mint leaves. 

in a large bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients. in a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, mint coconut milk, coconut oil, coconut extract, and vanilla extract. (it's important to make sure that the milk has cooled enough so that it doesn't cook the eggs, and that the eggs aren't so cold that they firm up the oil.) whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and then gradually stir in the boiling water. pour into cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking 8" cakes for doneness at 28 minutes and 6" cakes for doneness at 25 minutes.

let cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then turn the cakes onto a lightly greased cooling rack.

to make the frosting, muddle the fresh mint leaves in a saucepan and add the butter. melt the butter and heat over medium low for 15 minutes, stirring. strain out the mint leaves and then add the butter to a large metal bowl. place the bowl in an ice bath and use an electric mixer to beat it until it becomes pale and fluffy. (alternatively, you can let it sit overnight at room temperature, allowing it to firm back up.) beat in the powdered sugar, coconut extract, and salt, and then add 2 tablespoons of the reserved coconut mint milk. when creaming the butter, it may look a little grainy and congealed, but keep on beating it, and add a bit more coconut milk if you'd like, which will help smooth it out. 

to assemble the cake, mix in some green food coloring to the frosting if you'd like. spread a layer of frosting between each layer and then frost all over the sides and top. top with additional frosting decorations and sprinkles. to make a little marzipan label, cut out a marzipan square and then use rubber stamps brushed with a tiny bit of gel food coloring to stamp out your words! enjoy!

-yeh!

cake stand by anna wallace! 

marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen

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ok i have come closer to achieving my third my new year’s resolution, the one about having one or two more hangovers than i did in 2016! i had a hunch that it was going to happen this weekend when i landed in louisville and the first person that i met said that the best local food to have in louisville is… bourbon. and then i found myself surrounded by all sorts of super hilarious awesome food writers who were ready for a party and then molly on the range won an iacp award (!!!), and so did ingredient by my new bff ali and so did harvest and honey and food nouveau and alanna's book, and and--here are all the winners! so bourbon was in order. funny faces too. and goofy boomerangs. promises were made to make other people’s wedding cakes, plans were started for a pickle farm visit outside of berlin, it was the silliest, it was the best time ever, i got two hours of sleep on sunday night and it was a-ok.

before this weekend i had never been to a big conference except for the percussion conference that i went to in high school, and i was so nervous about meeting all of these new people whom i have admired and fangirled over for such a long time. but then everybody was *so* nice and welcoming and supportive of one another and it made me so gosh darn grateful to be part of this community. ugh i am getting so mushy!!!! but look i even got a neck scarf selfie with sweet dorie:

so let’s cover some things with sprinkles!!!! purim is coming up this weekend and eggboy and i will be in arizona for the tucson festival of books. so i was thinking that my purim costume could be to just get a tan on our friday hike and be the tan version of myself? i’ll keep thinking... are you dressing up? can i interest you in a schnitzel costume? 

these marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen are not too far off from the bakewell tart in that the filling consists of a thin layer of jam and and a frangipane-type almond concoction. the result is a chewy nutty cookie that also gets some crunch by way of a small sea of sprinkles. i’ve made these now with a couple of different dough recipes— the one from the breads bakery book, which is buttery, light, and almost flakey like a pie crust, and the one from leah koenig’s modern jewish cooking, which yields a denser oil-based cookie (there’s no need to get out a stand mixer) and is graced with some nice citrus flavor. the recipe below focuses on the filling, which can be used with one of those two dough recipes, or your favorite go-to hamantaschen dough recipe.

a bonus: if you have any marzipan filling leftover, you can bake it into chewy little gluten-free, dairy-free, dare i say passover-ready cookies! 

marzipan sprinkle hamantaschen

makes about 30

ingredients

for the dough:

1 batch of hamantaschen dough from the breads bakery book or modern jewish cooking (or feel free to use the dough of your choice)

for the filling:

2 c almond flour

1 c sugar

1/4 tsp kosher salt

2 large eggs, separated

1 tsp almond extract

a tiny splash of rosewater, optional

All-purpose flour, for dusting

lots of sprinkles (I use a mix of sanding sugar and cylinder sprinkles)

6 tb raspberry or cherry jam

clues

Make your dough, and refrigerate it for the amount of time listed in the directions. 

Preheat the oven to 350º. Line two baking sheets with parchment and set them aside.

To make the marzipan filling, in a large bowl, combine the almond flour, sugar, and salt. In a separate small bowl, combine the egg whites, almond extract, and rosewater, if using. Add this to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until combined. It always seems like there won’t be enough liquid at first, but keep on stirring until it comes together into a dough. (If you’re preparing this in advance, at this point you can wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for up to two days.)

On a work surface, roll out the marzipan until it is 1/4” thick, dusting with additional almond flour or all-purpose flour if it gets sticky. Cut out 1 1/2” circles with a round cookie cutter, or if you don’t have a 1 1/2” cookie cutter you can simply roll little balls by hand and flatten them into circles. In a small bowl, make an egg wash by whisking together the egg yolks and and a splash of water. Brush the marzipan circles with egg wash and dip them in sprinkles so that the tops get evenly coated. Set aside them aside.

Dust your surface with more flour, if needed, and roll out your hamantaschen dough until it is 1/8” thick. Cut out 3” circles, re-rolling scraps as needed. Brush the tops with egg wash, place a 1/2 tsp jam in the center and then top with a marzipan sprinkle circle. Fold the edges up to form a triangle shape and pinch the corners firmly to seal. Place on the baking sheets, 1” apart and bake until the bottoms are lightly browned, begin checking for doneness at 13 minutes. Let cool slightly and enjoy! 

(And if you have any marzipan leftover, bake the circles by themselves (with or without sprinkles) for about 8 or 10 minutes, until the edges are lightly browned. Let cool and enjoy!)

-yeh!

whipped yogurt cheesecake with roasted rhubarb

in , , ,

sometimes in the spring i forget that i'm in practically canada because right now it's mid-70s and sunny and there are outdoor vintage tractor auctions about town, but then the sun sticks around shining bright like a diamond until quarter to ten and i'm reminded how essentially arctic we are. pros: i can photograph with natural light literally until 8:30pm, so i feel like i can get so much done. cons: i can photograph in natural light literally until 8:30pm, so i just procrastinate the day away. 

oof!

luckily my non-urgency to get home and photograph this weekend led to a lovely bit of time spent in fargo! we had pizza night at rhombus and then crashed at eggsister's spankin new apartment, which is so exquisitely decorated with vintage furniture and homemade blankets. i forgot what life pre-ikea looked like, but life in fargo is still exactly that, and it has so much personality. in the morning we ate bagels at the new great bagel place, visited our favorite coffee spot, and then bopped into unglued and zandbroz and fowler's before going back to the bagel place for some brisket for the road home. it was like we were regular city folk!

now i'm just noodling around, doing some laundry, and trying to get my ducks in a row re: book stuff! did you see the cover?? i'm so excited about it. now we're determining what the spine and back cover will look like.

anywho, shavuot is coming right up this weekend and on shavuot it's customary to eat dairy. cheesecakes and blintzes are traditional, but this year i took a route that requires a little less maintenance and went for a no-bake cheesecake parfait jar thing and topped it with an easy peasy roasted rhubarb that's inspired by claire. the thing is practically idiot proof and it can be made a day in advance. i used a biscoff cookie crust, but feel free to use a graham cracker crust, an oreo crust, a pretzel crust, or, i don't care, a gummy bear crust (?). (with more gumption i would have used the tahini oreos that have been in my fridge for months and that should have spoiled by now and they seemed ok but i was still chicken.) the filling here is just a basic fluffy cream cheese/whipped cream delight that's got some added tang by way of yogurt. it comes together in minutes and it's not too sweet. the rhubarb is though! because rhubarb is so sour, it needs an ass ton of sugar. oh and if you need some rhubarb, come over, my patch is bursting with glee. that's it. happy shavuot!

whipped yogurt cheesecake with roasted rhubarb

serves 6-8

ingredients

crust:

24 biscoff cookies or similar
3 tb coconut oil

cheesecake:

1/2 c cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 c powdered sugar
1/8 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
1/2 tsp rosewater, optional
1/2 c plain full fat greek yogurt or labneh
1/2 c heavy cream

roasted rhubarb:

1 lb rhubarb, chopped into 1” pieces
1/2 c sugar
zest of 1 lemon
1 tb vanilla bean paste or extract
1/8 tsp salt

clues

To make the crust:

Blend the cookies in a food processor until finely ground. Add the coconut oil (it doesn’t need to be melted) and pulse until the mixture clumps together. Distribute the mixture between serving glasses and then use a muddler or the back of a spoon to pack it down firmly. Set aside while you make the filling. 

To make the cheesecake:

In a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat together the cream cheese and powdered sugar on high until smooth. Beat in the salt, vanilla, and rosewater (if using), and then add the yogurt or labneh. Beat on high for a few seconds until combined and smooth. Add the heavy cream and beat on high for about another minute until the mixture holds stiff peaks. Distribute the mixture between your serving glasses and then chill for an hour or overnight. 

To roast the rhubarb:

Preheat the oven to 325ºf. Spread the rhubarb out on a rimmed baking sheet and top it with the sugar, lemon zest, vanilla bean paste or extract, and salt and cover with foil. Roast for 15 minutes covered, and then roast for another 15 minutes uncovered. Let cool. (Store this in an airtight container in the refrigerator overnight if making this the day before.) And then spoon on top of the cheesecake directly before serving. Enjoy!

 

-yeh!