PI DAY LINKS

i am really craving this lancashire cheese and onion pie for pi day.

and a four & twenty blackbirds oatmeal pie.

and also maybe some marzipan hand pies.

and not to fangirl too hard or anything, but since ashlae posted this photo, i have been checking her blog frequently to see if she blogged about it.

in non-pi day news:

if you live in new york and you don't go to the new music bake sale, we are no longer friends. not even if you make me a cake. ditto for the enchantment under the sea dance.

i want to hasselback all of the things, but first i want to hasselback salami.

yossi and her citrus make me so happy. we are in agreement that citrus fruits are the supermodels of food, right? right?

tahini swirl brownies!

provolone scones!

panda onigiri!

happy friday/pi(e) day/purim everybody!!

-yeh!

the dark side of mini cakes, and how to get rid of it (cake truffles)

i like a mini cake. you like a mini cake. we all like mini cakes, but what happens to all of the cake scraps that we acquire when we make our mini cakes? 

do they dry up like a raisin in the sun?

do they sit in our freezer with no other home? no decoration?

do they get noshed on mindlessly while other of their flesh gets bedazzled and frosted?

no. none of that. they get turned into cake truffles!

(golf clap)

i'm such a bad girl, i still have the scraps of my first round of mini cakes sitting in my freezer, taking up room and tempting me every time i see them. i've thought about tossing them, but i think that would make me an even badder girl. this weekend, i was working on a new mini cake recipe and ended up with those familiar slabs of cake all cut out with holes and decided that they would not be going to waste, they would be repurposed into truffles.

nose-to-tail cake.

cake truffles are fun to make, easy to store, and a party to eat. you can keep them in your freezer for when you're in need of a mini celebration of the i-just-did-all-the-dishes kind or the i-just-feel-like-it-dammit kind.

all you have to do is: place cake scraps in a large bowl and use your hands to crumble them up. plop a big blob of frosting in the bowl and mix with a rubber spatula or your hands. the amount of frosting you need will vary based on how many scraps you have, but if you can eyeball about how much frosting it would take to frost the scraps as if they were a regular cake, that is about the ratio you're going for. if you want to be really systematic, you can reserve some cake scraps and some frosting in case you need to balance it out after you've mixed, but in the end, all you want is a mixture that you can mold into balls and roll around in jimmies and pop in your mouth. nothing too scientific. you can also chill the balls without their jimmies and then dip them into chocolate and/or put them on a stick. store them in the freezer for a quick anytime party in your mouth.

would it be meta to decorate a mini cake with one of these? 

-yeh!

RED BEAN & OATMEAL HAMANTASCHEN

reasons why purim *might* have a shot at making it into my list of top 20 favorite holidays this year (bc do i need to explain again how i'm actually a grandma that prefers the more sober holidays where you eat matzo ball soup):

1. it's slowly becoming a holiday for just reminiscing on my college days when brian and i would sit in his hell's kitchen apartment, nursing our hangovers, eating hamantaschen that his mom sent him, and getting powdered sugar all over our faces. and then probably going to indian buffet.

2. i am a sucker for all of the absurd hamantaschen variations that are all over the internet. you people are nuts and i love it.

3. i got invited to a purim party and i plan on dressing eggboy as johnny weir, while i transform into tara lipinski. (not. but wouldn't that be fun?) i'm looking forward to my first purim party.

this week in ways to asianize a jewish thing, i give you: red bean hamantaschen. (yeah, i am still hacking away at the bigass batch of red bean paste i made for our snow picnic.) i've also made some hamantaschen that are oatmeal filled. they're like a cookie in a cookie and they're chewy and very satisfying. find them both in the latest installment of molly on the range!

-yeh!

FARMHOUSE FACELIFT: KITCHEN, PART 2 + FRIDAY LINKS

i call it: ikea meets grandma meets farm meets the prettiest dinner bell ever in all the land*.

it still needs some shelves, running water, my vintage pyrex collection, basil and rosemary for the hanging pots, and some ballsy men in gas masks to come in and rip up the 1970s laminate flooring that's hiding asbestos (dear lord).

we're starting to think about other rooms in the house now, which suddenly don't seem so daunting now that we're close to being dunzo with the kitchen. as much work as this has been and will continue to be, it's all so fun because it's like playing house but in real life!

*my dinner bell's name is esmerelda, she was a graduation gift from my dad, she's got enough overtones to last a century, and there was a time when i'd sit in a practice room with her for hours practicing orchestra music.

yesterday, some cool dudes came from south dakota to shoot a video for ota + pollen. having that scheduled was a good kick in the rear to really get things going on the kitchen last week. it was a super fun shoot!! they helped me style my matcha green tea peeps by biting off their heads ever so artfully, and the day ended over bigass steaks. i don't think i was as awkward in front of the camera as i thought i'd be (or maybe i was??), although when they asked me to list all the things i like to make, i found myself in a forrest gump situation, listing off every kind of cake i could think of. layer cakes. mini cakes. cupcakes. bundt cakes. upside down cakes. oops.

speaking of cake, i have a ton of cake research to do today (of the ombre kind!), so off i go, but first, some links:

son lux released an ep and one of the tracks features lorde. it's almost too much to handle, it is just so good. it's what i'll be listening to on repeat until further notice.

all of the above photos were edited with the vsco film 05, which includes the choice film of my youth: kodak gold... such nostalgia...

also on the subject of photos, i have been really loving the ones over on vegetarian ventures and dolly and oatmeal.

miso + coconut on a chicken is a combination i need to experience on the asap.

dave barry's manliness manifesto is pretty wonderful. eggboy is using it as a guide for how to grill steak.

the kitchen renovations of a couple cooks and smitten studio have been huge inspirations for eggboy and me.

speaking of a couple cooks, its co-author sonja shared her cancer story this week and it is amazing in the most unexpected way. 

i need this grapefruit in my life.

i don't know what my instagram feed looked like before i started following cococakeland and i don't wanna know.

cat curling.

happy friday, everyone!!!

-yeh!