ireland

holy smokes, ireland is a dream. it's not leprechauny or saint patrick's day 24/7 (and i'm a bimbo for ever having that impression), it's basically home to what i imagine would be the greatest somersault ever in the history of mankind. because there are endless rolling hills that are covered in the greenest fluffiest grass you ever did see, they're dotted with zillions of huggable cuddly little lambs*, and when you're done with your miles-long somersault, you could probably just brush the dirt off yourself and walk into a pub and make a million new friends because everybody in ireland is the nicest person you've ever met. it's so cozy there, physically/socially/mentally, it's impossible not to be extraordinarily happy, even outside in the rain with an open container of labneh that's getting soupy. it's very hygge. i think i'm using that word correctly...?

*in my somersault fantasy the lambs don't poop. 

the food was another part of my trip that was completely unexpected. i mean, i came for the butter, and i got the butter, which i ate with total abandon. but i also had meals filled with rhubarb, dainty asparagus, gorgeous greens of every kind (even from the sea!), and the most flavorful gooseberries from the gardens of wherever my group ended up. everybody we met had these massive healthy gardens and the way they used them, how they didn't just pluck a few herbs to put on their supermarket things but rather centered their whole meals around whatever was looking ripe that week, made me determined to come home and finally figure out what to do with all of the chamomile, chive blossoms, and other random plants that popped up in my garden without me even asking them to. i also revisited the idea of getting a pet cow to put the butter making skills that i learned at the butter museum to good use. everything i ate in ireland tasted so pure, there was nothing too complicated or frilly, it was just honest and good to the bone. 

my trip and my liver ended at the ballymaloe literary festival of food and wine, which was next level. i spoke a little about it here and here, but to recap: i can't imagine a food festival getting much better than this. ballymaloe is a little like ireland's stone barns in that it has a huge insane garden and greenhouse that grows everything, even nuts and kiwis, for their restaurants, cooking school, and farm shops. during my days at the fest i learned from yotam, francis, and claire, and at night the place turned into a wild face-melting techno club. i loved every second of it. i took notes, obviously, in hopes that maybe one day there will be an eggboy and molly farm litfest of food and wine.

eeep i can't wait to go back. see you at litfest next year??

-yeh!

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one hundred million thank yous to kerrygold for inviting me on this trip!! thank you also to the longueville house and castlemartyr resort for the wonderful hospitality.

olive oil cupcakes with berry buttercream

all normal things this week, it has been a very average (but pleasurable!) week. i worked regular hours, drove to the gym, listened to all of today's top hits on my iphone while i jogged at a medium pace, wore neutral colors, reacted to politics, had salads for dinner, and watched tv before bed. (i was so bored out of my mind for the first game of thrones episode that i'm hate-ignoring the second episode until i finish the second season of how to get away with murder.) 

once or twice a day i looked out my window to chart the growing progress of my rhubarb patch. the leaves are almost up to my knees, so i'm going to give it another week before i pull out my machete. i'd like to make short ribs with rhubarb, have you ever done that?

what else. we celebrated taco tuesday on a wednesday, since it was cinco de mayo eve and the end of spring planting celebration, and we ordered coronas. which was the least normal thing about this week. i don't think i've ever ordered a corona in a restaurant before. am i boring you? is this boring?

the tulips are blooming, i have a bill to pay, and two yellow dresses to drop off at the dry cleaner.

ok bye. 

normal things, all normal things. 

these are deceptively light cupcakes! true, they're filled with sugar and have a 2:1 ratio of cake to frosting, but the flavor of fresh berries, a splash of o.j., and a nice large glug of buttery olive oil makes these brighter than most. (bright. maybe that's a better descriptor than light.) all of these flavors sit so nicely on a canvas of vanilla almond cake for a perfect springtime treat. i used raspberries and blackberries for the buttercream since that's what i had access to, but feel free to use any berry you'd like! (if you have a cute berry bush with some obscure berries to spare, i'll trade you for some rhubarb??) and my olive oil of choice for these is california olive ranch's mild and buttery olive oil, which doesn't overpower and plays so well with the almond flavor in the cake.  

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olive oil cupcakes with berry buttercream

makes 12

ingredients

cupcakes:

1/2 c almond meal
3/4 c sugar
1 c flour
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 large egg
1/2 c california olive ranch olive oil
1/2 c whole milk
2 tb orange juice
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract

buttercream:

1 c fresh raspberries or blackberries or a mix
3/4 c unsalted butter, softened
2 c powdered sugar
a pinch of kosher salt
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or extract

assembly:

fresh berries

clues

to make the cupcakes:

preheat the oven to 350ºf. line 12 cupcake tins with cupcake liners and set aside.

in a large bowl, whisk together the almond meal, sugar, flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. in a medium bowl, whisk together the egg, olive oil, milk, orange juice, almond extract, and vanilla. add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. pour the batter into the cupcake tins, filling them up halfway, and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean; begin checking for doneness at 18 minutes.

let cool on a rack for 5 minutes and then remove to the rack and cool completely. 

to make the buttercream:

purée the berries in a food processor and then press through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. place the berry purée in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and add the butter, sugar, salt, and vanilla. beat until combined. (it will look slightly curdled at first, but continue beating, eventually increasing the speed to medium high, for a few good minutes until combined and fluffy.)

to assemble:

frost the cupcakes as desired, top with fresh berries, and enjoy!

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-yeh!

thank you, california olive ranch, for sponsoring this post! 

los angeles

hello from the air! i am en route from los angeles to maui with alana, who is asleep already, lily, who is crying about hunger games, and stephanie, who is dusted with a pleasant coating of furikake due to a minor snacksplosion upon boarding. i can’t blame her, we were up before the sun to catch our flight after a very wild night of meat, gossip, and backstreet boys sing-alongs in koreatown. my stop in los angeles was entirely too short but i managed to squeeze in time with loved ones and some very meaningful firsts—some more overdue than others:

1. my first bite of spam. wow! spam musubi packs a deceptive amount of satisfaction into one compact delight. it’s, like, fried baloney sandwich satisfying and upon first bite it shot straight to the top of my list of things i’m most excited to experience in hawaii. 
2. my first time subbing out the bagel in my bagel and lox with *wait for it* a freshly baked popover, c/o karen. it was a textural revelation since lox and popovers require a very similar amount of energy to be exerted in order to bite through them. i would do this again, absolutely.
3. my first visit to canter’s!!! you didn’t tell me they had beaver mustard! what a jolly condiment. ordering a pastrami sandwich and an egg cream so far from new york made me a little uneasy, but from the comfort of a big squishy booth and over talk of paparazzi and time travel, i slowly settled in for a proper first canter’s experience. 
4. my first shaved ice. which also jumped right to the top of my hawaii list. so fluffy, so sweet, so perfect with black sesame mochi bits hidden throughout. 
5. my first time going directly from an 85-course korean barbecue carnivorgy to an alta california taco obligation where no menu item was left unordered and no hyperbolic shouts of joy were spared during the passing of the chorizo vampiros. 
6. my first spork tattoo sighting. should i reconsider my decision not to get a tattoo in hawaii?
7. my first dollar taco. small but extraordinarily mighty. 
8. my first gjusta, my first olive & june, my first boozy push-up pop (!!!).
9. my first time meeting adrianna, karen, lynn, and kelly, who are all every bit as wonderful as their internet presences suggest.
10. my first zankou chicken garlic sauce, which looks like nothing but tastes too good to be true.

phew! i am off to go have some seconds now. seconds of water, because getting dehydrated on a plane is a fear that i have. thank you, los angeles and all of your lovely people, for a perfect pre-hawaii weekend <3 <3 <3

-yeh!

rhubarb simple syrup + a giveaway

i did a terrible thing last year: when eggboy pointed out that our house came with a very large, very low-maintenance, very beautiful rhubarb patch, i went out, did my thing, enjoyed a lot of blintzes about it, and then despite how many times i told myself that i was going to continue to have my way with all of that rhubarb, i did not. i used next to none of it. i neglected it and it died.

i have lived with this guilt for one year.

so the other day when i was working with all of the eggs to put in our little garden and saw across the yard that our rhubarb had sprang up, i ran as fast as i could safely run while carrying scissors to collect a very large armful of it. (it was more of a trot.) eggsister and i immediately dipped a stalk in sugar and ate it as if it were nature's fun dip, and then i chopped some up for rhubarb water to make this simple syrup. later, eggboy blew my mind by informing me that rhubarb is a vegetable and not a fruit. am i the last person to learn that??

i've been making cakes with it and giving away bouquets to everyone that crosses our path. celeste even took some on her road trip back to portland. (that's her in the photo hiding behind the big fat leaves, don't eat the leaves!) and once i'm all rhubarbed out, i am going to chop it all up and freeze it for the year. i'm feeling good about our little rhubarb patch. real good. 

i like this syrup because it allows you to experience rhubarb in all of its celery-ish sour glory without much other schmutz there to salt its game. sometimes i worry that rhubarb gets bitter about always having to share the spotlight with strawberries, you know. i like adding this to soda water and cocktails... what else do people use simple syrup for? snow cones? snow cones!!!

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rhubarb simple syrup

makes about 4 cups, which is a lot of simple syrup, i know. there's no shame in halving this.

ingredients

2 pounds rhubarb, chopped

water

3 c sugar

a squeeze of lemon juice

clues

place the rhubarb in a large pot and cover it with water. bring to a boil, and then simmer it for an hour. (if you have the time, i like letting it cool overnight to really make sure that the rhubarb flavor is extra strong, but if not that's ok.)

strain the water into a bowl or large measuring cup and discard the rhubarb. measure out three cups of the water and pour it back into your pot. if you're left with more rhubarb water, you can discard it, or you can add it to the pot, just make sure that you have equal parts sugar and water.

whisk the sugar with the water and bring to a boil, stirring, until sugar has dissolved. stir in the lemon juice and let it cool.

serve with soda water, cocktails, snow cones, or whatever else you'd like!

enjoy!

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ooh and do you see those fun coasters in the photos? they are from small gunns, a really awesome san francisco-based company! this week i'm giving away one small gunns linen set: a table runner, six coasters, and six napkins. to enter this giveaway, leave a comment with 1) your favorite use for rhubarb, and 2) your favorite color of these linens. i'll choose a winner next week! open to u.s. residents. update: this giveaway is now closed.

-yeh!

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thank you so much to small gunns for sponsoring this post! for 30% off of your next order, use the code: sprinkles. for more ways to connect with them, check these out: instagram/facebook/twitter/newsletter.