mexican hot chocolate

i baked our wedding cake today and it was a disaster. it was funfetti cake, the recipe i spent three entire months of this year on! wtf!!!!!!!!!! it could have been worse. it tastes how i want it to taste and with a fat coat of frosting and our little wooden eggs on top, its face will be saved. but basically i tried to get away with using the wrong size cake pans and i'm pretty sure the oven was too hot, so the middles really sank and the edges are crumbly. maybe this cake will be a metaphor for the life that eggboy and i will lead: a little shaggy and rustic on the outside, but happy and colorful on the inside. eh? ehh? i don't know.

 luckily when i was searching for a recipe that would use up all of my leftover yolks (since the sprinkle cake uses a bunch of whites) i discovered that crack pie calls for the exact amount! so in addition to the zillions of cakes that i have already made and the zillions of pies that mum and i are about to make, we will now have crack pie bars on the dessert table. the newly found upper midwesterner in me can now sleep well at night knowing that we will have bars.  

phew.

here's another hot chocolate recipe! consider this hot chocolate week. this is actually the hot chocolate recipe from hemsley + hemsley that inspired my tahini hot chocolate from a few days ago. the first time i made this was about a month ago, when the first snow flurries came down. eggboy requested hot chocolate and we listened to christmas chipmunks on his record player and it was so gleeful, and it only added to the glee that i felt like i had just discovered a hot chocolate secret in this recipe. it's just so rich and creamy without being too sweet. 

the recipe comes from the hemsleys' new book, the art of eating well full. it's a really gorgeous and colorful book and it makes me want to eat all healthy and stuff. i'm even excited about their salads! there's a bone marrow and watercress salad and a cabbage, bacon, and apple salad... yum. but back to the sweet stuff, here's some hot chocolate! 

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mexican hot chocolate

slightly adapted from hemsley + hemsley's the art of eating well

makes 2-4 servings

ingredients

1 can coconut milk or 1 1/2 c almond milk

3 tb cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 tb maple syrup, to taste, or raw honey

a pinch of sea salt

1 tsp or more of ground cinnamon

a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper

clues

for hot chocolate: whisk everything together (using coconut milk) and warm gently in a saucepan before serving.

for cold chocolate: whisk everything together (using almond milk and raw honey) and serve.

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-yeh!

thank you so much to urban outfitters for sponsoring this post! all opinions are my own. you can find hemsley + hemsley's book and those nifty antler mugs at urban outfitters!

tahini hot chocolate

we picked the song for our first dance: the bird and the bee's cover of the bee gees' "how deep is your love." i really really want to listen to it over and over but i'm afraid that i will get sick of it! it's in my head though and sometimes i start singing it, but the lead singer's voice is so high that i end up trying to do it in falsetto and it is so bad. oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i feel like "how deep is your love" should segue into huey lewis and the news' "the power of love" because back to the future, but eggboy is gunning for "boom clap." (such hip, that boy, i can barely keep up.) either way, i can't hardly wait to wiggle my bum on the dance floor as the new mrs. egg.

throughout all of this weddingness, i've been trying my best to be in the holiday spirit as well. we don't have our little tree up yet, but i did kick off hanukkah last night with cauliflower gouda latkes (like these but with gouda instead of feta) and those turkey zucchini cumin meatballs from jerusalem. i topped them off with some sumac greek yogurt and oooooooh yeah baby, sooo delicious.  

in another world, i'd continue on down this path paved with latke nachos, sriracha cheddar latkes, poutine latkes, and maybe the thanksgivukkah brussels sprout latkes, but over these next ten days (!!!!!!!) i've got an entire dessert table to bake, a zillion pies to prep, and vows to write. and come this weekend, visiting family members and a donny to hang out with!!

so here is a simpler wintery festive treat: hot chocolate. until embarrassingly recently, i'd only ever made hot chocolate from a store-bought mix, and that might have been why i phased it out of my life. most of those mixes are soo wildly sweet that i always felt like i'd have to choose between hot chocolate and sufganiyot or some other holiday dessert, out of fear of sugar overload. but a hot chocolate recipe from hemsley + hemsley, which uses coconut milk as the base and just a touch of sweetener, inspired me to revisit my old friend. of course, as with nearly everything in my life, i added tahini. the result is nutty and not too sweet. it's rich in texture, yet subtle in flavor, and crazy easy to make. 

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tahini hot chocolate

makes 2-4 servings

ingredients

1 (13.5 oz) can light coconut milk

1/4 c cocoa powder

3 tb tahini

2 tb honey, or more to taste

1/4 tsp salt

a splash of vanilla extract

a pinch of cinnamon

clues

whisk all ingredients together and warm over medium heat. serve with whipped cream, marshmallows, a cinnamon stick, candy canes... even a little cookie cake*!

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*the mini cookie cake in these photos was made using hampton creek's just cookie dough. omg you guys, it's so good. it's dairy free and egg free so obviously, yes i've been eating it raw with a spoon. for the mini cake, i baked some in my mini cake pan with sea salt on top and it was magical.  

-yeh!

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thank you so much to hampton creek for sponsoring this post! all opinions are mine mine mine! 

an apple picking party

fall is here!!! fall is heeeeeere!!!! holy root vegetable, i am so excited. 

clearly i've already gotten into the spirit of things, but here's a scientific fact for you: fall isn't fall until you've picked an apple from a tree. (right??) like, you can eat all the pumpkin spice things you want, but you mustn't forget about the apples. 

in the past, my annual apple orchard trip has coincided with a trip home to illinois, but this year i figured there would probably be some hardcore apple orchards in the middle of all this rural business, so i conducted some research on the best places to go apple picking around grand forks. 20 minutes of failed googling later, eggboy came in from the fields, laughed really hard, and then directed me to the two fairly large apple trees in our backyard. apple picking parties are a thing here explained cathryn. 

oh.

...cool!!!!!

so rather than having our regular brunch club, the ladies and i became the most hipster versions of ourselves, took a picnic out to my backyard, sipped some wine, and picked a ton of apples. it was perfect. we talked weddings and miss america, we ate cheese and more cheese. we took moody photos of handfuls of apples. (good thing one of us had a fresh manicure.)

and then we retreated inside, away from the buttercream-loving bees, put on the sufjan, and stretched our definition of proper caramel apple coatings...

here was our menu:

for noshing // brown sugar challah, jam, baked teddybear camembert with raspberry preserves, and a bunch more cheese

for dessert #1 // sprinkle cake

for dessert #2 // caramel apples with coconut, toasted sesame seeds, sprinkles, sea salt, and smoked sea salt

for sipping // kendall-jackson avant chardonnay

for supper // chicken with apples + chardonnay 

i highly recommend an apple picking party, even if you don't have an apple tree. make friends with someone who does! or grow your own. or trespass. (don't trespass.)

-yeh!

thanks so much to kendall-jackson avant for sponsoring this post!!!! all opinions are my own!

gummy bear sangria

reasons to celebrate right this very moment:

1. gummy bears exist

2. so does this carrot twitter feed

3. harvest started yesterday

4. it's been sweater weather here all week!

5. school has begun??

6. the two year anniversary of my first date (this date) with eggboy is tomorrow

7. i bought a can of pumpkin and did not feel premature about it

8. there are oodles of apples growing in our backyard

9. benedict cumberbatch won an emmy

so let's make drunky bears and put them in sangria because we all know that gummy bears + fruit > only fruit. ok?

you can take a lot of liberties with this. feel free to soak your bears in any kind of booze you want. here is a handy drunken gummy bear guide. if you prefer another fruit to apples, go right ahead. i like juicing some fruit and using the juice in addition to the cut up fruit, for more flavor. (this juicer from williams-sonoma is the one i use!) red wine is fine to use, although it might be difficult to see your little bears with that. i like using wine that's not too sweet, since there's already a lot of sugar involved with the fruit, fruit juice, and gummy bears. oh, and the wooden skewers topped with gummy bears do double duty: they're cute, and they help to fish the fruit and bears out of the bottom of the cup.

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gummy bear sangria

ingredients

1 1/2 c gummy bears

about 1 1/2 c vodka

1 bottle white wine

1 c apple juice

1/2 c to 1 c fizzy water

2 large apples, sliced

1 lime, sliced, plus more for garnish

clues

place your gummy bears in a jar or container, reserving a few to stick on top of some wooden skewers for serving. pour enough vodka in to cover your bears, cover the container, and let them soak at room temperature for eight hours, or overnight. 

(...you'll then have gummy bear infused vodka and vodka infused gummy bears and you might wonder if that's inception or osmosis or both or neither (?))

strain the gummy bears, reserving the vodka for another use. you may even want to add some of that vodka to your sangria to make it extra extra boozy. 

in a large pitcher, punch bowl, or hipster jar (sorry, i didn't have anything else...), combine your drunky bears, wine, apple juice, 1/2 cup fizzy water, apples, and limes, and stir. taste and add more fizzy water, if desired. chill and/or add ice for serving. serve with lime slices and wooden skewers topped with gummy bears. cheers!!!!

-yeh!