marzipan ma'amoul

in

three great things happened this weekend!

1. i overcame my fear of stranger things. and then binge watched half the season. i stopped being scared mostly because it just became too weird and unreal. if it was any more realistic, i would have never been able to walk from one side of the house to the other at night by myself, but because it's gotten soooo fantasy/sci-fi, and because i do a regular palate cleanser of a few minutes of jane the virgin afterwards, i'm now officially *good*. 

2. i became a scoby mommy! a little while ago, ariel posted about a scoby baby up for adoption so i adopted her and she arrived this weekend. i'm naming her angelica and she's gonna get right to work making me kombucha. i'm so excited. kombucha party! 

3. i was the lunch lady at unglued camp and it was the greatest time ever!!!!! there were around 130 campers and i've never cooked for that many people before ever (except for making wedding desserts), so every day for the past three months i devoted a sizeable portion of time to silently and violently freaking out about it, but it was so much fun! i credit it all to having the greatest helpers in all the land, including but not limited to eggsister (aka avocado anna, because we served avocado party toast) and eggboy, who arrived just in time to scramble and serve 200 eggies to some slightly hungover campers. we also made fancy grilled cheese and tomato squash soup, middle eastern tacos in a bag, and i taught a cake decorating workshop right before lunch so everyone could have an afternoon slice of layer cake. my campers made such stunning cakes! at night we shook our booties to the spice girls and had campfire weenies. and now it's officially been 24 hours since camp ended and no one's dead from my food! win. 

so i guess we can celebrate all this with some cookies, yeah? ma'amoul are like dumpling cookies! the outside is a shortbread dough with a bit of semolina flour in it, and the filling is typically made of walnuts or dates, but because i am marzipan molly and because i have that thing for alliteration we are going with marzipan that's a little cinnamon-y. these cookies are popular across the levant and are often molded with special wooden molds to make intricate designs. i'm mad at myself for not picking one up when i was in tel aviv last month! i did try to buy a ma'amoul cookie at a bakery there though but i was told i couldn't get one unless i got a huge box of them and i was too full on humshuka to think about that. so i came home and made them with some mahlab that i brought back from my favorite spice store. mahlab is a special cherry seed that, when ground to a powder, adds a really lovely cozy almond flavor. it's not necessary in these, but if you happen to see mahlab anywhere, i would recommend picking some up to add to all sorts of baked goods. this recipe makes quite a few little cookies, but i find that they're better after a few days. the filling gets a little chewier, it's a nice contrast to the crumbly cookie. 

marzipan ma'amoul

makes 32

ingredients

2 c flour

1 c semolina

1/4 c sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tb ground mahlab, optional

1 c unsalted butter, softened

1 tsp rosewater

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 c oil

filling:

2 c almond meal

1/4 c sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

a pinch of kosher salt

1 1/2 tsp almond extract

2 large egg whites

 

powdered sugar, for dusting

 

clues

preheat oven to 350ºf. line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

make the dough: combine dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. beat butter in stand mixer with paddle until fluffy. add rosewater and vanilla and mix to combine. then, add dry ingredients to the butter until the mixture becomes a coarse, mealy mixture. add oil one tablespoon at a time until the ingredients come together to form a dough. divide the dough into two equal pieces, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

make the filling: combine all of the ingredients in a medium bowl, mixing well until filling resembles a thick paste, like marzipan. if the mixture is dry, add a few drops of water until you get desired consistency. roll filling into a long log that's about 2 inches in diameter. wrap in parchment or wax paper until ready to use.

work with half of filling and dough at a time. roll half of the filling into 16 balls. divide half of the dough into 16 pieces. flatten the dough into a disc and wrap around one piece of the filling. flatten the cookie slightly and shape, slicing a few decorative slits into the sides as desired. repeat with remaining dough and filling.

arrange shaped cookies on the prepared cookie sheets. bake cookies for 20 minutes. let cool and dust with powdered sugar. enjoy!

-yeh!

everything bagel galettelettes with tomatoes and scallion cream cheese, and look, i updated my fashions!

in ,

happy back to school week everybody!! i realize that macaroni aren’t old enough for preschool yet and i’ve obvi been out of school for a while, so back to school doesn’t really affect my life too much these days (except that grocery shopping takes way longer now since the school supplies sections are a mega distraction from the vegetables) but this year i kinnnnd of feel like i can join in on part of the fun because my book tour starts this month!!! there will be new people to meet, presentations to give, probably some new buildings to get lost in while i search for the bathroom, and new pens in case someone asks me to sign their book. eeee! note to self: find a cute hello kitty pencil case. 

one fear i have about this whole tour thing (other than no one showing up and just generally letting my inner awkward turtles get the best of me) is looking like the slob that i am. it’s not very hard to look like a slob when all day long you play with cake batter and hang out with a cartoon horse. but just like the molly on the range cover, i want to dress in a way that’s approachable, not slobby, and that also gives a nod to my mighty midwest home and farm. 

so it was actually perfect timing when old navy asked me to define my state style for their super cool 50 styles 50 states project: coziness, layers, knitted sweaters. colors like olive, denim, mustard, and cookie. and movability! because you never know when you’re going to be climbing into a tractor. all of that good stuff, and none of that stuff that i wore in new york when opaque tights and dry-clean-only skirts filled my closet. 

i got to go back to school shopping and try on some of old navy’s new fall things, which i think will be just right for some of the more casual book recipe demo events, one of which i know will be on a farm! 

chantell came over and we took my new fashions for a test run. we fetched eggies, picked tomatoes and scallions from the garden, and then made galettelettes (mini galettes!) for eggboy and the other farmers who were around that day to help with wheat harvest. it was a great day! i even discovered that i like jeggings because, among other reasons, you can climb up a tractor in them. boom! 

these galettelettes are dead simple. they’re for when you’re feeling bagel-y and don’t have any bagels but do have tomatoes, scallions, and a big old batch of everything bagel topping. and if you want to simplify it even more, there is no shame in buying scallion cream cheese (or any savory flavor really). and i’ve used store bought pie dough here, but feel free to use homemade. these make a great brunch, snack, or picnic treat! 

everything bagel galettelettes with tomatoes, and scallion cream cheese

makes 8 mini galettes

ingredients

1 1/2 pounds tomatoes

kosher salt

14-15 oz pie dough (homemade or storebought)

filling:

8 oz cream cheese, room temp

3 chopped scallions

1 egg yolk

1 tb flour

pepper

everything bagel topping:

1/2 tsp dried minced garlic

1/4 tsp kosher salt

3/4 tsp poppy seeds

1 tsp sesame seeds

1/2 tsp dried minced onion

1 beaten egg for egg wash

clues

preheat the oven to 400ºf.

slice the tomatoes. then lay them out on a paper towel and sprinkle with salt so that some moisture drains out of them.

divide the pie dough into 8 balls. roll out each ball into a circle that's 6 or 7 inches in diameter. 

mix together cream cheese, scallions, egg yolk, flour, and pepper until smooth and well-combined.

mix together the everything bagel topping ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

brush the edge of the rolled-out dough with egg wash, spread with filling and top with tomatoes. fold over the edges and pleat. brush the outside edges with the egg wash and sprinkle with the everything bagel topping.

bake galettes for 20 minutes, or until edges are golden brown. enjoy!

 

 

-yeh!

pictured: jacket // jeggings // booties // flats // shirt // yellow sweater // grey sweater

thank you, old navy, for sponsoring this post! go check out the other 49 looks in their #50styles50states project and then post your own state-inspired look with the #50styles50states and #oldnavystyle hashtags! disclaimer: per my sponsor agreement, the product links in this post are affiliate links. 

all photos by chantell quernemoen!

developing the cover of molly on the range

in

as a serial book-by-its-cover-judger, determining the cover of molly on the range was more difficult than picking all of the first day of school outfits from my past, combined. in the beginning, about two years ago while i was working on my proposal, i was really drawn to the idea of something painfully minimal, inspired by the covers of vintage church cookbooks and rose bakery's breakfast, lunch, and tea. when i was little i hoarded plain white t-shirts and absolutely refused to wear any clothing item with a brand label showing, so i suppose this was very on brand. 

this is breakfast, lunch, and tea, the book that made me fall in love with food photography. source: little growing lights

"but, molly, how will people know this is a book about food??"

is a question that was raised by my publisher with the correct concerns that people might think it's a book about cow-wrangling or folk music or go-go dancing on top of a stove range.

"also, we want to put your face on the cover!"

well, hmmm. i wanted something timeless, and maybe something that you could even put on your coffee table as eye-popping room decor, and with my goal of becoming a blonde in 2016 already in the works, i did not consider a brunette 26-year-old kind-of-puffy-because-i-had-just-spent-a-year-recipe-testing-layer-cakes me to be a timeless image for the cover. 

so i did some noodling around on the internet and decided that a very empty cover with a few homespun illustrations of cooking-related objects and chickens could be nice, timeless, and informative. with my publisher, we narrowed down our list of illustrators and started doing mockups. i loved folk-y, earthy illustrations that didn't feel at all trendy or too flashy. i wanted something that would be ok getting a little roughed up by soy sauce splatters and mustard stains. i was very excited about this.

but still, i was told, my face would be going on the cover!  

oof da!! how would that work? how could a photo with an illustration look timeless and minimal and not like a third grade art project? we looked at various book covers that had done this recently, like the portlandia book. it worked for portlandia, but i definitely didn't see it working for molly on the range. i wanted to really try it though and see how it could work, because maybe there was something i was missing, so we even went so far as to hire an illustrator to do a draft, complete with super adorable chickens, loaves of challah, and an egg cracked open at the bottom of the cover. it was so fun but in the end it simply didn't mirror the content of the book. 

i became more and more eager to figure out a cover that would welcome you. there was a lot of back and forth with my extremely patient publisher, and then i think it was at a barnes and noble in phoenix where i slowly began to see things from their perspective, re: my face on the cover. as eggboy, eggpop, and eggmom perused the american history, agricultural business, and novel sections, respectively, i placed myself in the cookbook section and judged covers. love and lemons made me want to go to the farmers' market and buy vegetables, home baked made me want to cream some butter with some sugar and eat a slice of cake and then learn to take pictures like yvette and oof. the books with smiling faces on the cover made me want to knock on those people's doors and sit in their kitchens while they not only cooked whatever they wanted to cook for me, but also talked to me about their stories and thoughts behind whatever they were cooking. and that's what this book is, it's narrative. one day i'd love to write a book about cakes or baking or one very specific group of foods, and for that, a cover with no face would make more sense i think. but molly on the range is you coming into my home and me telling you about my ex-boyfriends and the real eggboy story and farts, it's one side of a theoretical pen pal-ship, and the recipe selection has a little bit of everything.

so i said to my publisher, ok let's put me on the cover, but please can it be minimal. 

they obliged, but by this time the cover design was already way, way late, so we scrambled for inspiration. we loved the kinfolk table and this and that, and wanted to make sure it was as warm and happy as possible. i booked chantell to come that week, picked up a white background from a farm down the road (made new friends in the process!), and altogether tried to stop eating salt in an effort to look my best. luckily (!!!) the sprinkle cake that appears on the last page of the book was still in my freezer and ready to be a cover model. 

we had three wardrobe options:

the first one was eliminated almost immediately because it was too holiday-specific. and between the second and third one, it was collectively decided that the blue chambray shirt was more farm-y and timeless. bingo! so they airbrushed out my fly away hairs and away we went! 

lisel jane ashlock's hand lettering for the subtitle gave it a kind of homespun quality that i love, and rae ann, my book designer, took to my obsessive requests for "a slightly more brownish grey/maybe more black than grey/maybe a little lighter but still really dark" font color with the patience of a saint.  

and there it was, just like that!

it truly took a village and i am so happy with it! it was far from what i expected when i began writing the beast, but i feel that it represents me and the feeling that i want you to get from this book.

we weren’t finished though! we still had the spine and back cover to do, but it was a total walk in the park compared to the front cover process. it was almost like this, verbatim:

"molly, what color spine would you like?"

"yellow yellow!"

"ok! and how about the back cover?" 

“can it be blank… like literally nothing except for maybe a blurb or a chicken?”

“nah, let’s put a photo on the cover. something that will tell people that it’s not exclusively a cake book.”

“oh. ok sure, what the heck!”

“how do you like these?”

“hotdish! perfect.”

“ok actually we like it but think that the tray would be more descriptive of the book’s contents.”

“umm hmmm errrrrrrm. ok”

“this good?”

“yes, perfect.”

and just like that, molly on the range was dressed and ready for the first day of school and beyond. phew!! and i've gotten the sweetest feedback from you guys! so thank you for that. just one more month until she hits the shelves! eeeeeeee it’s almost here!!!! 

-yeh!

(please preorder if you haven’t already!!)

choose your own adventure bloody marys

in , ,

throughout my year of making molly on the range, i had a lot of shoot days where my primary task was taking a few options for beauty shots of the five or six dishes that were on the schedule for that day. most of the shoot days fell in the winter, when the days are extra short around here, so that was silly and took a lot of advanced planning, but in general it wasn't too unlike photographing a blog post. there was more pressure knowing that the photos would get put on paper, however at times it was actually physically easier than shooting a blog post since i knew there wouldn't be much room in the book for many more angles and process shots, beyond one final beauty of the finished dish. 

but! there were also a few different kinds of shoot days that involved people (!) and festive wardrobes (!) and entire party setups, captured by chantell! we had a bonfire, a harvest party, a dumpling party, a brunch party... they were much bigger productions than blog posts and there were a lot of moving parts to coordinate, like humans and props and making sure all of the humans showed up in seasonally appropriate attire (which didn't necessarily reflect which season it actually was. for example, don't ask when we shot the holiday party... the answer is not "around the holidays.") it was a lot like planning a real party! so fun. a little more stressful because if something went wrong i couldn't just spill the punch bowl, call the cops, blame it on the neighbors, and get it out of my life. these were parties that'd live on in physical form. 

one of my favorite parties was our brunch party, modeled on our town brunch club. brunch club member emeritus kristin came up all the way from minneapolis, eggsister came from fargo, farmhouse pottery sent such gorgeous props, and we ate so many of my favorite recipes from the book. (i've strategically included a few preview shots of these up above but the little labels depicting what they are are hidden because those are secrets until the book comes out! #october4 #pleasepreorder) bloody marys were obviously involved but sadly the recipe didn't make the book. 

so here they are now, in honor of sherrie's end of summer #drinkthesummer party, which you all need to check out because i am thirsty and needing to pee just looking at these titles: salty melon slush, garden tonic punch, and jalapeno watermelon cooler to name a few!

i think i make a good bloody mary because savory drinks excite me sooo much. it's like cold boozy soup and--bonus!--you get a serving of vegetables. this recipe is fun because it gives you a good base recipe which you can spice up based on whichever fancy hot sauce you have hiding your fridge. and then depending on what hot sauce that is, that's what you call it. harissa bloody mary, zhoug bloody mary, sambal oelek bloody mary, sriracha chipotle obscure-hot-sauce-in-an-unmarked-bottle-that-you-found-in-your-bag-after-a-long-night-of-tequila-in-tijuana* bloody mary... the world is your hot sauce oyster and impressing your brunch guests is just a few shakes away! 

(*this is fictional, it never happened, stop worrying, mum)

choose your own adventure bloody marys

makes about 6 servings

ingredients

4 c tomato juice

1 c vodka

4 cloves garlic, smashed

1 1/2 tsp celery salt, plus more for garnish

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp ground caraway seeds

1 tsp ground horseradish

1 1/2 tsp worcestershire sauce

1 tb lime juice

black pepper 

hot stuff ***

garnish:

celery stalks

lime wedges

pickles 

bacon

***This is the essence of this recipe, what makes it. Open up your refrigerator, find the fanciest spicy situation that you have, and then add it to taste. This will be the title of your Bloody Mary. Harissa Bloody Mary. Sriracha Bloody Mary. Zhoug Bloody Mary. Sambal Oelek Bloody Mary. Or a combination.

clues

In a pitcher, mix together the tomato juice, vodka, garlic, salt, sugar, caraway seeds, Worcestershire sauce, lime juice, a few turns of black pepper, and hot stuff. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired. To serve, give 6 glasses a celery salt rim job and distribute the mixture evenly. Garnish as desired with celery stalks, lime wedges, pickles, and bacon. 

-yeh!

molly on the range is out october 4 and you can pre-order it now!