mezze in bed!

I plan to ring in 2016 from my bed, fast asleep under the gigantic pile of Middle Eastern cookbooks that eggmom and eggpop gave me for Christmukkah. Maybe I’ll have a bagel dog for dindin! Or something else unhealthy, before we all start our diets. What about you? Do you have plans? Maybe it’s already the new year where you are? (Hi, Australia!)

Eggboy and I spent our last bit of 2015 all over the midwest: hurrying to Fargo for Star Wars on the big screen, driving to Chicago to eat bagels and vareniki with my family, and then stopping in the twin cities on the way home where we watched Garrison Keillor wish us a happy anniversary on air (!!!) and then had one of those long perfect brunches with alex, sonja, yossy, melissa, and sarah… the kind where time gets gobbled up almost as fast as sarah’s danishes. 

Now we’re back for a good molecule of time while I forcibly extract some words to go in my book. If macaroni keep laying at the rate that they are, maybe I’ll never have to leave! I’ll just stay burritoed up in a blanket with the clack clack clack of my typewriter. 

To begin the New Year on a fun note, here is one thing that I have always had extreme excitement for, and will always have extreme excitement for: A cute meal, cutely arranged with cute individual compartments and delivered on a cute tray.

And in bed. Hollllllller breakfast in bed. (My one complaint about Eggboy’s 12am-12pm sugar beet harvest shift this year was that I couldn’t make him breakfast in bed every morning like I did last year when he had a 12pm-12am shift. But that’s ok, now we’ve got all winter, when Eggboy’s existence is devoted to paperwork and fixing tractors on a laid back timeline that doesn’t demand odd hours, so I’m resolving to make more breakfast in bed!)

Or rather, mezze in bed, because this one’s got a middle eastern vibration since it’s the new year and… health! Whenever anyone asks me why I won’t shut up about Israeli and middle eastern food, I tell them it’s because it’s good and it makes eating healthy extremely easy. So here on this tray, I’ve compiled some of my favorite little middle eastern-inspired breakfast bites that are healthy and flavorful and perfect for a New Year’s morning breakfast in bed.

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Labneh // drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with za’atar

Whole wheat pita // make it!

Muhamarra // a toasted walnut and red pepper spread of MAGIC

Kale // sautéed with olive oil and garlic and sprinkled with ararat

Coffee // jazzed up with hawaij

An itsy bitsy bite of tahini blondie 

And a six-minute egg!

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-yeh!

This post was created in partnership with west elm! All of the goodies you see here are from West Elm, including the reason I’ve been getting better than normal sleep at night, bedding from West Elm’s new Coyuchi line! It is beautiful and comfy and makes me want to stay in bed all day. Enter to win a bed set here!

coconut layer cake

every morning now the first thing we do is go out in the snow to check for fresh eggies! the most we’ve gotten in a day is two so far, so i haven’t started blanketing the town in meringue yet. and we’re still sticking to basic modes of preparing them, like scrambling and boiling, just so we can enjoy the newness of this pure eggie perfection before we start scotching them and deviling them and just generally going nuts on them with mayo and the like. my snapchat has become the egg show.

(come play on snapchat! i am molly.yeh over there!)

one macaroni laid an egg in her poop but for the most part they've been really good about going in their little nesting boxes. oh gosh, i just had a thought, i hope our eggs continue to be this tasty because now with all the snow on the ground, foraging around the yard is going to be way more difficult for macaroni. oof. can any chicken parents out there advise on this?

in other news, happy week-before-christmas! if you are not up to your eyeballs in cookie swaps and gingerbread houses and candy canes yet, you're doing it wrong. (right?) so here's some more sugar to add to the madness. it's got coconut coming at it from every possible angle in every possible form by way of coconut milk, coconut oil, coconut flavor oil, shredded coconut, and king arthur flour's sparkly heavenly coconut sugar. it's delightfully dense and magically moist and unlike most of the big honkin 8" cakes that i typically make, this guy is scaled down slightly to a 6" cake to allow for fewer leftovers to be added to the holiday sugar pile. yippee!

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coconut cake

makes one 3-layer 6-inch cake

ingredients

cake:

1 c sugar
1 1/4 c king arthur unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 large egg
1 c coconut milk
1 tb lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/4 tsp coconut flavor oil
1/4 c coconut oil, melted but not hot

frosting:

1 c unsalted butter, softened
2 c confectioners'  sugar
Pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1/4 tsp coconut flavor oil

assembly:

4 oz unsweetened shredded coconut
marzipan kneaded with green food coloring
sparkly coconut sugar

clues

cake:

preheat the oven to 350ºf. grease and line the bottoms of three 6-inch cake pans and set aside.
in a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. in a separate, medium bowl, whisk together the egg, coconut milk, lemon juice, vanilla, coconut flavor oil, and coconut oil. add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine.
pour the batter into the cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. begin checking for doneness at 22 minutes.
let cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.

frosting:

To make the frosting, place the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until creamy. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and beat to combine. Beat in the salt, vanilla, and coconut flavor oil.

assembly:

Stack up the cake layers with a layer of frosting in between and frost all over. Place the cake on a rimmed baking sheet and cover it all over with coconut. Shape cones out of the green marzipan to make the trees and roll in the sparkly coconut sugar. Stick em on top and enjoy!

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i used the following king arthur flour products in this recipe: all-purpose flour, vanilla bean paste, shredded coconut, coconut flavor oil, marzipan, and heavenly coconut sugar. thank you so much, king arthur flour, for sponsoring this post!

-yeh!

macaroni's first egg!!!!!!

we hyperventilated for five minutes straight. and then omg-ed for five more. it was the greatest hanukkah present ever in all the land! one teeny tiny egg, too small for most of our egg cups and very lightly speckled. everything we've waited for since june (they grow up so fast!). we cuddled it and stared at it and finally decided that we should eat it ceremoniously, out of the egg cup we bought on our honeymoon.

we wanted a six-minute egg, but with such a dainty little specimen we reduced the time to five and it was perfect. firm whites, a yolk the thickness of honey. and its color! we kvelled so hard, we've never been prouder. is this what having an honor roll student is like? can i get a bumper sticker about all this? 

we spread our little egg onto buttered toast and sprinkled it with salt while the snow came down outside. it was tasty and bucolic af. now we're researching how to bronze the shell so we can keep it on our mantel forever and ever. 

we're so proud of you, macaroni!!

-yay!

grape and ricotta latkes

i’ve just returned from about 40 hours in new york and i feel like a blob that just ran a marathon. not that i would know what a marathon hangover feels like, but when you adjust to a stationary life in a driving town and then briefly return to your city lady semi-roots that are heavily influenced by a complete aversion to riding the subway so you spend a ton of your time walking and eating and walking some more, and because shoe shopping is not your favorite you do it all in terrible shoes that lack proper arch support, you feel a little hurty the next day. it’s ok! i got this new matchy katniss everdeen sweat suit that feels like a continuous hug so i think i’m going to be just fine!

most of my time was spent with the deeelightful humans at apartment therapy and the kitchn for their 10 under 40 maker talk! we built gingerbread houses (here’s the glittery one i built with gaby and 1/2 of sir kensington!) which was easily some of the most fun i’ve had collaboratively building an edible dwelling since sunday school when we made pretzel sukkahs. and then at night we had to give speeches in front of an audience and i did not barf on stage even though i was almost positive i would, therefore i consider the event a success. 

the rest of my time in the city was spent eating bagels with jonah hill (rather, splitting lox with donny and siobhan while we stalker stared across the room at the back of jonah’s head while he drank orange juice), hummus with 1/3 of my bridal party, condiments in the facebook cafeteria with talia, popcorn with lior at the beautiful food52 holiday popup, shakshuka focaccia with a side of triumph at breads (because do you know how many times i have been to breads looking for that shakshuka focaccia and they’ve been sold out???), and a kasha knish from yonah. 

now i am back just in time for the last few nights of hanukkah, so i’m squeezing in one more latke for you! it’s nothing too crazy, just a simple twist on a classic. it’s the same combination of crispy/salty/sweet/creamy elements that you get with the traditional sour cream and apple sauce latke, but i’ve subbed out sour cream for ricotta and apple sauce for grape jam to give you another way to keep the eight nights of latkes exciting.

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grape and ricotta latkes

1. make a batch of ex-boyfriend latkes

2. top them with a healthy plop of ricotta and a sprinkle of salt

3. make a divot in the ricotta to hold the jam

4. fill the divot with grape jam (i'm loving this ancho chile grape jam!)

5. enjoy!

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-yeh!

thank you so much to grapes from california for sponsoring this post!