Gobsmacked on Valentine's Day

OMG, you guys. The best thing ever happened to me on Valentine’s Day.  I know that was more than a month ago but bear with me. Ironically, this best-thing-ever had nothing to do with hearts, love, flowers, boys, diamonds, or anything like that. 

No. 

What happened was: I hacked a cupcake recipe and it WORKED.

Yeah. I’m totally, like, a rogue baker.

What. Up.

Maybe I should get a tattoo.

Ok, I’m being completely absurd but I’m not sure I can sufficiently express the feelings of accomplishment and joy that accompanied this particular endeavor. I want to put this on my resume.

I’m serious.

Here’s how it all went down.

Joy the Baker, one of my favorite cooking bloggers, posted a recipe for flourless Strawberry Cupcakes using coconut flour. Intrigued, I bought the cookbook featuring that very recipe.

I made the Strawberry Cupcakes, as directed. Only problem is the author of said cookbook is militantly anti-refined sugar and so uses agave nectar. Well, I’m not exactly pro-refined-anything but let me tell you something about agave: it is off the charts high in fructose. And guess whose belly doesn’t appreciate fructose?

That would be mine.

So first batch, I made by the book. Second batch, I subbed in granulated sugar and a little extra water.

You can see these specimens below. They were fine but a little odd-tasting and the strawberry flavor wasn't coming through as much as I'd hoped. 

Agave on the left, granulated cane sugar on the right.

Meh.

I felt I could do better.

I found a recipe on marthastewart.com (my go to for baking – her recipes always, always come out perfectly) for Strawberry Cupcakes that seemed to be popular among the commenters.

There were just a few problems:

The recipe made 34 cupcakes, which was about three times more than I needed.

The recipe used all-purpose flour and cake flour.

We’re still not totally clear on what my stomach issues are but one thing I know for sure is that common wheat is not my friend. I can’t eat it. Period. If I do, about an hour later, things get ugly. My stomach hurts something awful, my joints ache, and I become exhausted with this overwhelming feeling that I MUST go to bed IMMEDIATELY, at which point I literally cannot think of anything else.

The only thing I can liken this reaction to is:…

You know when you have a long day of day-drinking? You start at maybe 11am or so? And you’ve done a mediocre job drinking water in between? And around about 8 or 9pm, you just crash?

It’s kind of a little bit like that feeling. The feeling that you just HAVE TO go to bed. NOW. You stop talking to other people. You pass out face down with your clothes and makeup on.

Except, also, pretend someone is stabbing you in the gut. And that every movement of your limbs aches.

Those are just the immediate effects. The lingering gut effects sometimes last for a few days.  I’ll spare you the details.

Needless to say, I’m never willingly eating wheat again. The doc thinks it’s fair to say I have a wheat allergy.

Obviously, it’s been hard for me to admit to myself that I can’t eat wheat. Really hard. I’m sure this sounds petty, but I’m not lying when I say it’s been a bit of an emotional battle. I really love croissants. Always have. Always will. And there are times when all I want is a damn burrito. Just a normal, Chipotle burrito for lunch. Is that too much to ask?

Unfortunately, yes. I went through denial and I’m working on acceptance.  It’s getting better.

But it got a lot better on Valentine’s Day. February 14, 2012 will forever be the Day I Realized That All Was Not Lost in My Baking Future. That I could, and would continue to learn to, make delectable treats that even people with normal, non-angry digestive systems would enjoy.

So here’s what I did:

I took the Martha recipe, cut it in one-third, subbed weirdo flours (white spelt and coconut flour) for the normal all-purpose and cake business, tweaked the liquids and the leaveners, and guess what?

THE RESULT WAS DELICIOUS. I actually wish I had a better word than delicious because I say things are delicious all the time and even though I do eat a lot of delicious foods, these cupcakes…they were sublime.

I couldn’t believe it. I am still scarred by the time I was 12 and made a chocolate cake with olive oil because I didn’t understand the flavor the olive oil would impart vs. regular vegetable oil and my entire family refused to eat it. As much as I’d like to think I was being forward-thinking in my culinary ambitions, the truth was, I screwed up and learned that you can’t just substitute things in baking and expect it to work.

It was a good lesson.

And all the more reason why I was absolutely gobsmacked – GOBSMACKED! – by the result of these Strawberry Cupcakes.  

Let me be frank: I’m no cupcake expert. I don’t make cupcakes all the time. Cupcakes, while tasty, are not my “thing.” But I loved the idea of making cupcakes for my friends for the Valentine’s Party I was throwing, and Strawberry Cupcakes seemed just perfect.

And in the end, they were.

Kate's Perfect Strawberry Cupcakes with Strawberry "Ice Cream"  Frosting 

inspired by Martha Stewart Living and The Pastry Queen Christmas

1.  These cupcakes are not gluten-free, just wheat-free. I seem to be able to still tolerate spelt, and by God, I’m going to eat it for as long as I can. But spelt has gluten. Not a lot of gluten, but gluten nonetheless. So be warned.

and 2. It's called Strawberry "Ice Cream" frosting because - you guessed it - it tastes just like strawberry ice cream. Killer.

Makes and frosts 36 cupcakes 

(I'm giving you the full recipe and not the fuzzy-math version as I just made full batch last night for the people at work and the quantities are much, much more normal.)

Ingredients

Cupcakes:

2 3/4 cups white spelt flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill & measure using dip & sweep method)

3/4 cup coconut flour (same deal: used Bob’s and dip & sweep)
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar

3 large eggs

2 large egg whites
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups very finely chopped strawberries

3-4 drops red food coloring, optional (you may want to add this as the fresh strawberries have the peculiar quality of turning the batter a bit blue-grayish)

Frosting:

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 teaspoons Grand Marnier (or you can sub vanilla extract, in a pinch)

3-4 drops red food coloring (optional)

6-8 large strawberries, stemmed, hulled, and pureed

8 ounces mascarpone

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk the flours, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. 

 

2. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, followed by the egg yolk, beating after each addition. You may need to scrape down the bowl in between additions.
 

3. Reduce speed to low. Mix wet ingredients (milk and vanilla extract) in a bowl or pyrex liquid measurer. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in 3 additions, alternating with wet ingredients and ending with dry.
 

4. Add strawberries and food coloring and mix until just combined. Scrape sides of bowl to be sure. 
 

5. Divide batter among muffin cups, filling each 2/3 full.

 

 

6. Bake cupcakes until testers inserted into centers come out clean, about 20 minutes. Let cool in tins on wire racks.
 

7. Once the cupcakes are completely cooled, make the frosting.  Combine the butter, cream cheese, and confectioner's sugar with a hand mixer on high speed until fluffy. Blend in Grand Marnier. Add the strawberry puree and mascarpone and mix on low to medium speed until incorporated. Warning: if you overbeat the mascarpone, you'll cause it to curdle! If you are nervous about this, put the hand mixer down and use a wooden spoon to combine the mascarpone with the frosting mixture.
 

8. Frost the cupcakes using a table knife or pastry bag fitted with a wide tip. Add a strawberry bit on top of each cupcake if you want.
 

Frosted cupcakes will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2-3 days. 

Something Old and Something New

Let me preface this post by saying: I am doing a terrible job on the cadence of this blog. Sorry, really and truly. It's annoying.

You know by now about the Tyranny of the Vegetables, also known as the fall season Capay Valley Farm Box.

I really like the Valley Box because the food is super local and I love eating seasonally. However, two weeks ago, we had a real... incident. The Farm Box gave me bok choy. Two whole bags of it. Ten little heads of bok choy.

I hate bok choy.

I thought I had bok choy on my Farm Box "Do Not Send" list but I guess it fell off, because I found myself unpacking more bok choy than I would ever want, the amount I would want being none, of course.

I also unpacked something I'd never cooked before: delicata squash.

Let's start with my produciary nemesis: bok choy.

Produciary is totally a word, ok? 

When I first moved to San Francisco, bok choy would arrive in the Farm Box every week. Evidently, it grows year round in Northern California. Lucky me.

My primary complaint about this vegetable is that it's boring. It's fairly flavorless. And every recipe I find has it steamed with some combination of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and chile. I'm not that into vegetables that can be cooked only one way. Like so much in life, I grow bored quickly and require new options. I like my veggies promiscuous.

Bok choy is basically the Catholic Nun of vegetables.

After searching high and low for a new bok choy recipe that I could make with ingredients I had at home, I ended up adapting a recipe from this Everyday Food one.

Yeah. Soy, ginger, garlic, chile.

Sigh.

Sauteed Baby Bok Choy with All the Usual Flavors

Ingredients
5 heads of baby bok choy, leaves separated and washed
1 tablespoon grapeseed oil
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon ginger, minced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 squirt (maybe a teaspoon?) sriracha


Directions
1. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Prepping the garlic and the ginger.

2. Add bok choy leaves and toss to coat. (Tongs are super helpful when making this recipe.) Cook leaves until they become crisp-tender at the base, about five minutes.

3. Add pepper flakes and sesame oil and toss to coat.

4. Remove from heat and add soy sauce and sriracha. Toss to coat again.

I realize this barely looks different from the photo above but in this one it's sauced with soy and sriracha and it just a teeny bit browner, I swear.

To offset the bummer bok choy (which tasted fine but still BORING), I am happy to announce my new love: delicata squash.

This stuff is fantastic. You don't have to peel it (like butternut, which drives me crazy) and it has a wonderful flavor that's pumpkin-y and acorn-squash-y. I could eat this stuff like candy.

My preparation for the squash was super-simple.

Core.

 

Slice and toss with olive oil and salt.  Roast at 425 degrees.

I finished the squash with a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper, and some grated parmesan. That's the recipe. And it's delicious. Make this! It's so good. This might have to be on the Thanksgiving menu. I may well fly across the country with a few of these stripy gorgeous treats.

Sharing is Caring

I’m a terrible sharer. Know thyself, right? Well, I really am terrible at sharing.

And honestly, I always have been. I remember this moment in kindergarten, when some kid in my class (who will go unnamed because we’re no doubt Facebook friends now) borrowed my beloved box of Cray-Pas – those awesome waxy pastel crayons, and by far my favorite art supply, ever – and broke half of them and gummed up the other half, by, for example, running the light yellow one over a dark purple. I mean, what kind of uncouth barbarian does that to the colors? Ugh.

  

Sharing is something I’ve really had to work on as an adult…for me, it takes active mindfulness to not be fazed when a friend borrows something and accidentally breaks it…or never returns it. My own personal version of therapy for this problem is part of the reason I got a white sofa. If you’re going to be upset about people spilling on your white sofa, you shouldn’t have one. For me, throwing parties and having a white sofa is a lesson in personal development.

I’m not kidding.

I don’t really know what my problem is. Maybe this is all because I was an only child half the time, and a fussily particular one at that. Maybe it’s because the rest of the time I was an eldest child in a house where my personal items – clothing, jewelry, books etc. – were always under threat of disappearance at the hands of an admiring younger sibling.

But as an adult I have come to understand that there are times for being selfish and times for sharing and when four pounds of cured pork shows up at your doorstep, that is definitely a time for sharing. A Tasty Salted Pig Parts Party was obviously in order.

A while ago, Gilt Taste had a steal of a deal on a bunch of delicious cured pork from La Quercia, an artisanal producer in Iowa. You might not necessarily think of Iowa first when you’re thinking of fine prosciutto or coppa, but then again, you also probably wouldn’t think of Iowa as having any ski hills, and yet, I have downhill skied in Iowa. It’s a very surprising state.

Obviously, given the lardo-lonza-coppa-prosciutto bounty delivered unto me by FedEx (and unpacked by dear Meredith while I was on a business trip to no doubt somewhere in the Midwest), I felt compelled to do a vaguely Tuscan theme for the rest of the food. Here was the final menu lineup for the cocktail party:

 

Piggy Parts // Coppa Piccante, Coppa Americano, Lonza, Prosciutto Piccante

Italian Cheeses // Brigante / Asiago / Aged Provolone

Accompaniments:

Assorted Breads / Crackers / Grissini

Melon / Figs / Grapes

Homemade Tomato Jam / Homemade Cherry Jam / Pumpkin Jam from Eataly

Lardo Spread (Which is literally seasoned lard. And it’s awesome.)

Pickled Items // Spicy Okra / String Beans / Olives (All from Whole Foods. I suck at pickling.)

Stuffed Peppadew Peppers // Boursin

Baby BLTs // butter lettuce / heirloom tomatoes / basil mayo / brioche

Crostini Bar

Sauteed Mushrooms / Fontina

Broccoli Rabe Pesto / Fresh Mozzarella

Honey-Roasted Tomatoes / Ricotta

All, served with Grilled Bread

Tirami su

Mini Peach Pies with Amaretti Topping (adapted from here, with this crust)

Baci

Amarettini

Wine / Italian Beer / Campari & Soda

I loved doing the shopping for this particular party because it gave me an excuse to go to North Beach – the "Italian Neighborhood" in San Francisco – to pick up some authentic grissini, Perugina Baci candies, and of course, the Amaretti di Saronno in a new tin from A. Molinari, an Italian deli that's been around for ages. 

Here are some images of the food. I’ve linked the recipes above and included my very favorite Tirami su recipe even though “Tirami su is so passé” (per Mom). Whatever Mom, it’s delicious.

Setting a Tuscan mood with sunflowers. Ok, ok, not really. In truth, I just wanted an excuse to buy flowers.

Peaches, scored and getting ready for their dip in boiling water before peeling.

Peach filling for the mini pies. Are peaches not the most beautiful fruit, all sunny and blushing at the same time? They remind me of the hybrid tea rose Peace, which we always had in the rose garden at home.

I love these amarettini cookies. The best is after the tin has been open for a couple of weeks and they get a little bit chewy. Yum. For the mini peach pies, I crushed them and added them to both the topping and the filling. I had never done that before, and it was a little risky, but I will definitely do it again.

Campari and soda. My favorite aperitif!

Fruits of the season.

MEAT.

I love the ingredients on the lardo. It's disturbing how delicious it is. Delicious enough to consider eschewing butter forever. And I really love butter.

A bad picture of the remaining BLTs.

More meat!

The mini peach pies.

Part of the crostini bar: (clockwise from upper left) honey roasted cherry tomatoes, broccoli rabe pesto, lardo.  The grilled bread (unforutnately unphotographed) was a major hit and so easy. Brush slices of ciabatta with olive oil and throw on the grill pan until they smoke. Done!

Rosemary crostini, ricotta, sauteed mushrooms with fontina.

What was left of the tirami su.

Yum.

I know! You just have to make this, right? 

Ok, here's the recipe:

Vitullo Tirami Su (adapted from The Italian Baker by Carole Field)
 

1 pound 2 ounces (500 grams) fresh mascarpone (get the latest expiration date you can)
3 cups heavy or whipping cream
1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar
Grand Marnier, approx. ½ cup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Ladyfingers – the soft kind, not the crunchy kind. Either get two packages (you can usually get them in the bakery at any big supermarket) or make them from scratch. I recommend the former.
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
½ ounce bar semi-sweet chocolate (optional)

With a handheld mixer or stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment, beat the mascarpone on medium speed until smooth. (DO NOT OVERBEAT OR IT WILL GET CHUNKY AND GROSS.)
Add the cream, 1 ½ cups confectioners sugar, 3-4 tablespoons of Grand Marnier and the vanilla. Beat on high speed until thickened, smooth and creamy. (It should have the consistency of thick pudding). In a small bowl, combine cocoa powder and 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar with a spoon and set aside.

Put one layer of ladyfingers in a 9x13 pan. Brush the ladyfingers with Grand Marnier. (Don’t soak them in booze. The tops of the ladyfingers should be just dampened.)
Spread half the mascarpone mixture on this layer. Sift half of the cocoa-sugar mixture on the mascarpone layer. Add another layer of ladyfingers, brush with liqueur, and spread the rest of the mascarpone on top. Sift the remaining cocoa-sugar mixture on top. If you want to be fancy, grate the semi-sweet chocolate over the cocoa using a vegetable peeler.

NOTE: This is MUCH better if made at least 8 hours and up to 24 hours in advance.
Another note: You can make this in any size pan you want, but I recommend not doing more than 3 layers of ladyfingers or it gets a little overwhelming.

Truffles and Baci in a little piggy bowl.

Seriously, how cute is this?

The best part of the party was actually that I sliced my right index finger pretty aggressively with a huge serrated knife while slicing some of the coppa, just minutes before guests were due to arrive.  I managed to clean up the trail of blood leading from kitchen through breakfast room to bathroom and grab some gauze for my finger before anyone arrived, but I knew the finger situation was a bit dire…it wouldn’t stop bleeding…

Despite personal injury, here's why it was the best part: part of the reason I absolutely love and adore my friends is that when they showed up, I was able to easily hand over the entire party to them (while I made a quick trip to the ER for wound irrigation and assessment of whether stitches were necessary) without batting an eyelash. When I got back from the ER an hour or so later, the party was in full effect and everyone was having a good time. It was kind of awesome.

Big thanks to Jeff for letting people in the door, and Rayleen, Britta, and Blake for ensuring everyone was welcomed, well fed and wine-d in my absence.  And of course, even more thanks to Meredith for accompanying me to the ER and not making fun of me for flirting shamelessly with Dr. McDreamy…er…McDermott.

It was a good party.

The Essence of July

When I was growing up, we had a cherry tree in our backyard. I think it was accidentally planted there.  It clearly did not belong.

It sat by itself, overshadowed by a gigantic mulberry tree. 

This cherry tree looked like it belonged as an illustration in a Shel Silverstein compendium. It was a sad little tree. It was also not what you'd call prolific, maybe because it was depressed. I don't know. At best, it would produce two, maybe three cherries each summer. Obviously, I would climb the tree and eat them. I wasn't a rough and tumble kid, but when you are as short as I am, you develop pretty good climbing skills. I happily scaled that tree each summer to command my miniature harvest.

Now, of course, I just walk down the hill to Whole Foods (although to be fair, I do scale a rather steep hill on the way home). Or, if I'm really lucky, the harvest gets delivered directly to my door via the farm box. No need to climb a tree.

I love this recipe because it takes such wonderful advantage of the cherries that always remind me of the lushest, sunniest part of summer. (Well, the lushest, sunniest part if you don't live in San Francisco.)

At this point I am going to have to provide you with some sexy glamour shots.

So pretty on my stripy dishtowel!

Brown Sugar Cherry Cakes

from Martha Stewart

Prep time: 15 minutes

Total time: 40 minutes

Yield: 12 cakes

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for muffin tin
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup packed light-brown sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for topping
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons low-fat buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
60 cherries (about 11 ounces), pitted

Just buy a cherry pitter. You'll thank me.
I have heard of some MacGyver trick where you can do this with a paperclip. But seriously, just buy a pitter. It pits olives, too, making it multfunctional, which I prefer if at all possible because otherwise you end up with one tool for each job and there's no more room in the drawer. Not that I have that problem.

Directions
 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 12-cup standard nonstick muffin tin. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
 

2. With an electric mixer, cream butter and 2/3 cup brown sugar until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. 

3. Add eggs, one at a time; beat until combined. Beat in buttermilk and vanilla, then flour mixture.
 

4. Spoon batter into prepared tin, filling cups about 1/3 full. Place 5 cherries on top of each; sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar.

Cherried up and ready for the oven! I actually cut the cherries in half because I couldn't figure out how five whole cherries could fit in each muffin cup. 

And because I cut them in half, I actually used six halves in each muffin cup. This worked well.

5. Bake until cakes are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. 

Ok, at this point I am a little bit freaking out. These things look like they are going to spill all over my oven. Fingers crossed...

Let cool 5 minutes in tin.
 

And we're good! So far...

Run a knife around edges; turn out of pan, cherry sides up. (Martha's not clear here, but this means upside down. The cherries sink to the bottom when the cakes cook.)  Serve warm, with ice cream, if desired.

Unfortunately, the cakes maybe could have used a little more butter in the muffin tin. They kind of broke apart. I wouldn't say the wheels fully came off here, but we definitely got a flat. Next time I'm using cupcake liners.

Ah well, they still tasted great.

That's what counts, right?

I didn't serve mine with vanilla ice cream, but I would strongly suggest that's how you serve them. Or, if you want to be fancy about it, you could try ginger ice cream. Haagen-Dazs makes a good one.

In other good news, I'm almost caught up on the blog backlog! Hooray!

Just a few more posts and I'll be back to posting the near-present rather than the far-past.

Hey, It Worked for Me When The Subject Was Moby Dick

Can someone please explain to me what the hell happened to the entire month of April?

I can't believe it's May. And not even the beginning of May. Pretty much mid-May. In my head it's still March. I was walking home from work today and for a moment, I actually thought it was March. Concerning.

Sorry, dear readers, about the lack of posts last month. I got a new job, quit my old one, took a vacation, and then started the new job. I've been traveling to glamorous places (Wisconsin! Las Vegas!) each week since I started the new gig.

Despite being busy and out of town a bunch, I actually did a lot of cooking, so I'm going to give you the Cliffs Notes version of April 2011, all in one handy blog post. If it was good enough in high school...

Christine and Kevin hosted a cocktail party competition to determine the signature drink for their wedding.

Many options to choose from!

I'm not much of a cocktail maker, so I volunteered to make the snacks. I read this great recipe in one of my old Martha cookbooks that used muffins as the bread of a sandwich. That lady is so smart! I made muffins in my new-ish muffin pans using a bunch of fresh (oranges from the farm box) and dried (apricots, cranberries) fruit that I had on hand. 

You can't tell from the picture on the Sur La Table site, but the finish on the pans is actually pretty dark. And in my bottom-heated gas oven, by the time the muffins were fully-baked, they were also burned.

Crap. Effing nonstick muffin pans. 

Once I tossed those which most closely resembled Kingsford charcoal briquets, I had a few fewer muffins than I'd hoped for. Luckily, not all of them were inedibly burnt. Some were just, er, medium-well done. This isn't the first time this has happened with these pans. But it is the last. Bye bye muffin pans. Next time I won't cheap out and will suck it up and get those Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch ones. They are supposedly the bees' knees, according to my trusted equipment advisors at America's Test Kitchen.

Despite the charring, the sandwiches actually came out pretty well. I love this idea and am looking forward to making other muffin-and-sandwich-filling combos. I think my cheddar and green onion savory muffins would be delish with turkey and a chipotle spread...

These were little ham sandwiches on orange-apricot-cranberry muffins, with spicy whole grain mustard. They were a huge hit with all my ham-loving friends. HAM!

Mini muffin sandwiches weren't going to cut it in terms of soaking up cocktails, so I also made a caramelized onion and blue cheese rustic tart.

For this, I splurged on some Dufour puff pastry. It is made with real butter and it is incredibly rich and indulgent. The tart ended up being pretty salty but it made a nice counterpoint to the mostly-sweet cocktails. 

For the third and final snack item, I made some roast beef and avocado mini-sandwiches on the Acme Bread herb slab. They were unexpectedly outstanding. The combination of the beef and the super-lemony avocado spread was a hit - everyone gobbled them up (including me). They were so good I was actually craving them afterward and made them again two weekends later for an Easter picnic. They are perfect picnic fare.

But that wasn't all. The cocktail competition was the night before Meredith's birthday so I made an apple cake to celebrate. Why apple cake? In truth, I had a ton of apples in my fridge from various farm boxes over the course of the spring and I needed a way to use them up!

So many apples!

 Because the recipe was kind of like a tarte tatin, it was built in the pan upside down.

First, the brown sugar-butter layer was smoothed across the bottom of the pan.

Apple slices added. 

Batter poured over the top and baked until golden brown.

The pan had to cool for fifteen minutes.

Then we came to the moment of truth.

I put that yellow serving plate upside down over the top of the cake and then flipped the whole thing to invert the cake on the plate. Then I prayed to God that it would unmold in one piece.

And it did! Voila! I am a baking genius! No, seriously, ridiculous arrogance aside, this was a real and true moment of culinary joy for me. Sometimes I find baked goods to be incredibly fickle - especially the first time I'm trying a recipe - and I could not have been happier that this ended up so beautifully. I'm fine with ugly food when it's just for me, but for a birthday-cake-like item, I just think the food should look a little more like a gift and a little less like a pile of slop.

This was adapted from this Bon Appetit recipe. I served it with gingered whipped cream and added extra ginger to the batter as one of the birthday girl's favorite ingredients is ginger. I would absolutely repeat this receipt and am already looking forward to Fall's apple bounty.

I love it when food is this beautiful.

The birthday festivities continued on Sunday with a mango tart, from this Gourmet recipe, because mango and coconut are two more of the birthday girl's favorites.

This doesn't look like much, but it was highly delicious. Another keeper recipe. It's actually really light because the mousse is thickened with unflavored gelatin, making it the perfect brunch dessert. I topped it with diced fresh mango. The crust is coconut, which has a nice crunch. I think this is a perfect special treat for Spring. 

I wasn't kidding about having a lot of apples, either. After that apple cake was done, I made applesauce with even more apples that I had in the fridge. It's so easy, and this is a great basic recipe. (I failed to photograph it but it looked just like normal chunky applesauce so just use your imagination for this one.) Seriously, applesauce is idiot-proof. And tastes 1000% better than the stuff you buy in a store.

Unfortunately, the recipe makes about four cups of applesauce. That's about three and a half cups more than I'd want to eat. A search for recipes using applesauce turned up this gem from Martha (God bless her and her perfect baked good recipes).

I brought the cake into work (my old job) on my second-to-last day as a going away/thank you gift for my lovely co-workers. They were the kind of people who made me laugh hard every day at work, and for that, I thought they at least deserved a little cake. It got fairly well eaten up before I got to snap a picture of it. This recipe is seriously great, with plenty of moisture and a chewy, not-too-dense crumb. It's a fantastic breakfast cake. And if you ask me, there's not enough breakfast cake in life.

Before taking off for Monterey, I hosted a little cocktail party at my place so my Dad and Stepmom could meet my friends. It was a good time, and because we were busy doing touristy things that day, I just pulled together a few oldie-but-goodie recipes to feed the masses.  I didn't even photograph them because you've seen or heard of them before: White Bean Dip, Spicy Spinach Dip, a couple of platters of cheeses and cured meats and fruits, my classic guacamole recipe, some olives, some nuts, and assorted chips and crackers.

Then we took off for Monterey, where this guy greeted us for the happy hour glasses of wine we had while overlooking the water. He reminds me so much of my Sammy the Seagull print from Wayne Pate, and of Scully the Seagull who like to perch outside my kitchen window in Boston.

Easter arrived just days later. Last year I made Easter Bunny Biscotti, which was just as tasty as I remembered from my childhood. This year, I planned to make the biscotti again along with the Easter Lamb Cake that Nana always made.

As you can see, the Easter Lamb got off to a bad start as it got stuck in the mold (despite my buttering and flouring every bit of it). Rats.

I thought I could cement the little lamby together with frosting and toothpicks - like a day camp art project or something - but no dice.

Still life with semi-lamb-shaped coconut cake.

Allow me to provide you with another angle of the carnage.

Massive baking fail. It's hard not to make a sacrificial lamb joke here, but I will dig deep for self control and refrain.

I firmly believe that one of the secrets to success in life is knowing when to cut your losses. And it was not hard to figure out that time had come to lay the lamb cake to rest. And that the bunny biscotti was just not in the cards.

Trying to salvage my last few hours of effort, I decided to just repeat the cake I'd made - in cupcake form. The coconut cake itself was truly delicious - I used Ina's recipe from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and paired it with the coconut cream cheese frosting that she also uses as a companion to the cake.

I scrapped the lamb (we ate it while dyeing Easter Eggs that night) and baked up some coconut mini cupcakes, which I frosted with either pink or yellow cream cheese frosting and made little green grass nests (sweetened flaked coconut mixed with a few drops of green food coloring), topped with a few "Easter eggs" (Jelly Belly jellybeans). I'm so happy with how they turned out. They tasted fantastic and looked super cute. 

I love this.

 While I worked on the cupcakes, Mer and CC and Nell dyed eggs.

The mugs have dye. We tried to match the tablets to the mugs but the Paas dye tablets are often quite stealthy and appear quite different when dry than when dissolved. So it was a little confusing... We discovered that a chilled, dry rosé was a lovely accompaniment to the process. Definitely a new tradition.

And then it was Easter. And I got sick. Disgustingly snottily sick. I went through three large boxes of Kleenex. In a single day. I sounded awful and looked worse. I was so sick that I missed my first day of work at my new job. I don't think I've had that ugly a cold in at least five years. Such a bummer. So glad it's over!

And that whirlwind, my friends, was April.