The Decorated Cookie has posted some life-changing decorating techniques on her site today.
When I saw this this morning, I nearly passed out. It was as if I lived in 200 BC and spent my whole life trying to figure out what the circumference of the earth was (just forget for now that they thought the earth was a giant terrarium), tried a bunch of measuring techniques, got all prune-y and sunburned doing it, and then someone just came up to me and said: 24,901.55 miles.
I wish I were one of those bloggers who could refer you to “my pal Meaghen Mountford“, but the truth is she has no idea that I exist and fortunately for her, has never seen me bake. But Meaghen has a book and a website about all things baked, cute and decorated.
And today, Meaghen posted a startling compilation of tips from her readers — you can find it here. Some highlights include mess-free ways to handle the frosting mixing and piping (from Karen’s Cookies), tips on keeping cupcakes moist by freezing them, and — I’ve heard this one before from Melissa V who made the initial cake pops that got me into all of this — adding shortening to the candy coating for cake pops.
And have you heard of this? A KopyKake Projector? I could go crazy with something like this. Nevermind that it will take up half my house — look at all the cute things you can make with it! And you could probably even make up the cost of it by providing tattooing services with it in the comfort of your own home, right? I’m sure tattooing is easy. I have food coloring.
Now, back to sitting around in yoga pants. Happy President’s Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate, I’ll share a picture of the one decent Valentine’s Day cookie that I did with royal icing. Will post about that another time, after I’ve recovered from the royal icing initiation. I’ll just have to eat the rest of the evidence.
The only cookie I'm willing to share publicly. Stamped the paper plate with non-toxic metallic ink.
Today one of my girls was home sick, so we spent a lazy day completely indoors and mostly in the kitchen. Which means we had plenty of time to make stuff. So I decided to try out Ina Garten’s Homemade Granola recipe that my friend Heidi shared with me. She said that it was delicious, and I proved it by having three bowls of it after I made it. Here’s a closeup so you can get a sense of its sweet and nutty delectableness (look it up! It’s actually a word):
And it’s so easy to make that even I, who did this last time I tried to make something with rolled oats, was able to make it:
This happened the last time I roasted oats. I followed the instructions and put them into the oven, took a shower, and came out with the whole house smelling burnt. Please do not shower when you are roasting oats.
Basically, all you do is coat oats, coconut and almonds in an oil-and-honey mixture, roast (you’ll want to turn them every 8-10 minutes to ensure even browning and to prevent the above from happening), and take them out when they’re a nice caramel brown all over. Let it cool, and add in the dried fruit and cashews. I bought some particularly plump dried cranberries and they made the cran-bites especially tasty.
I used a rimmed baking tray for this and mixed the dried fruit in while the granola was on the tray for even distribution.
This was the first time I’ve made granola so I didn’t really mess with the recipe, but I’m seeing a lot of room for experimentation here (Raisins? Sunflower seeds? Tiny doll accessories embedded in my carpet?). After it all cooled (ok, and after I ate about a quarter of it) I put it into an airtight container, and am storing it next to my other cereals. It’s the prettiest of the bunch!
Portrait of granola.
Here’s the recipe, courtesy of Ina Garten via my friend Heidi:
Toss the oats, coconut, and almonds together in a large bowl. Whisk together the oil and honey in a small bowl. Pour the liquids over the oat mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all the oats and nuts are coated. Pour onto a 13 by 18 by 1-inch sheet pan. Bake, stirring occasionally with a spatula, until the mixture turns a nice, even, golden brown, about 45 minutes.
Remove the granola from the oven and allow to cool, stirring occasionally. Add the apricots, figs, cherries, cranberries, and cashews. Store the cooled granola in an airtight container.
Nowadays, everything baked as cute-potential to me. Years of obligatory Christmas cookie baking have pushed me into mastering the shortbread cookie, but I was always a little sad that mine didn’t look cute. Certainly not Amy Atlas-cute. On the plus side, people who got my cookies knew they were definitely homemade.
One thing that has always fascinated/terrified me is fondant. On the one hand, it tastes gross. On the other hand, it looks amazing. Since it looks amazing, I always assumed that I, She Who Was Cursed With Inability to Make Frosting, would never be able to do it. Well, turning 40 has emboldened me and now that I have also successfully made frosting, I decided to give it a whirl. Note: if you do not want to spend a couple of hours scrubbing fondant scraps off the floor after you make it, I recommend that you don’t do this with your kids the first time. Nobody told me that. If I wrote a cookbook I would tell you these things.
First, the fondant-decorated cookies!
I started by baking up a batch of shortbread cookies. I felt a little guilty about all the butter that goes into shortbread, so I modified the recipe a tiny bit by subbing the last tablespoon of butter with a tablespoon of NUTIVA Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, which is the coconut oil that I think tastes the best. I’ll paste in the cookie recipe below too. So you end up with a cookie that looks like this:
Now, the fondant prep was so messy and I did it with my kids that I would have required 8 more hands in order to have photographed it. But I will refer you to a great video tutorial (made by someone who apparently does have 8 more hands) on how to make marshmallow fondant. In my research the marshmallow fondant was easier and tastier than traditional fondant. And I have to say, it was pretty tasty for fondant.
Once the fondant is ready, you just roll it out — I used parchment paper sprinkled with cornstarch, both under and over the fondant (so I used my rolling pin over the top piece of parchment) and rolled out til it was about 1/8 inch. After this it’s pretty much like working with Play-Doh. You can color the fondant with a gel paste food coloring — you’ll need to knead it for a while to distribute the color (I recommend wearing plastic gloves for this if you’re not dressing up as Lady Macbeth in the near future). You can cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a knife and then make it stick to the cookie by wetting the back of the fondant like we used to do with postage stamps before sticking it onto the cookie.
Excuse her dirty fingernails.
Fondant cookies my kids made
I also did a few with royal icing that looked so bad that I’m telling people that my kids made them.
And just when you thought you’d be safe from sports on this decidedly unathletic blog, I just have share my favorite internet activity around Jeremy Lin and the ensuing Linsanity. I love Cinderella and underdog stories about Chinese /Taiwanese-American third-string NBA players from Harvard (so apparently do Rainn Wilson and Spike Lee), and this is one of the best. His quiet demeanor and humility just add to the charm:
From Phil Taylor @SI_PhilTaylor (Sports illustrated columnist): I know there are other things going on in the sports world besides Jeremy Lin. But I don’t care about any of them. #nyk #linsanity
Ok, back to the baking. I don’t recall the source of this recipe, which I’ve modified, except that it came from a Christmas cookie exchange years ago and I’ve used it ever since.
SHORTBREAD COOKIES
Ingredients
1 1/3 cups (2 sticks + 5 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tbsp coconut oil (Nutiva preferred)
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
Preparation
Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Use an electric mixer with paddle attachment, and cream butter and sugar on medium speed til light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add salt and vanilla and beat to combine. Add flour one cup at a time, beating on low speed until just combined.
Roll out dough between two sheets of floured wax or parchment paper using a rolling pin. Bake until pale golden, but not browned, about 13-15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Cool completely before decorating.
MARSHMALLOW FONDANT
I got this recipe off of About.com and it’s pretty much perfect.
Ingredients
8 ounces miniature marshmallows (4 cups not packed, or half of a 16-ounce bag)
1 pound powdered sugar (4 cups), plus extra for dusting
2 tbsp water
Food coloring or flavored extracts, optional
Preparation
Dust your counter or a large cutting board with powdered sugar. Place the marshmallows and the water in a large microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 1 minute, until the marshmallows are puffy and expanded.
Stir the marshmallows with a rubber spatula until they are melted and smooth. If some unmelted marshmallow pieces remain, return to the microwave for 30-45 seconds, until the marshmallow mixture is entirely smooth and free of lumps. If you want colored or flavored fondant, you can add several drops of food coloring or extracts at this point and stir until incorporated. If you want to create multiple colors or flavors from one batch of fondant, do not add the colors or flavors now. Instead, refer to step 6 below for instructions.
Add the powdered sugar and begin to stir with the spatula. Stir until the sugar begins to incorporate and it becomes impossible to stir anymore.
Scrape the marshmallow-sugar mixture out onto the prepared work surface. It will be sticky and lumpy, with lots of sugar that has not been incorporated yet–this is normal. Dust your hands with powdered sugar, and begin to knead the fondant mixture like bread dough, working the sugar into the marshmallow with your hands.
Continue to knead the fondant until it smoothes out and loses its stickiness. Add more sugar if necessary, but stop adding sugar once it is smooth–too much sugar will make it stiff and difficult to work with. Once the fondant is a smooth ball, it is ready to be used. You can now roll it out, shape it, or wrap it in cling wrap to use later. Well-wrapped fondant can be stored in a cool room or in the refrigerator, and needs to be kneaded until supple before later use.
If you want to add coloring or flavoring to your fondant, flatten it into a round disc. You might want to wear gloves to avoid getting food coloring on your hands during this step. Add your desired amount of coloring or flavoring to the center of the disc, and fold the disc over on itself so that the color or flavor is enclosed in the center of the fondant ball.
Begin to knead the ball of fondant just like you did before. As you work it, you will begin to see streaks of color coming through from the center. Continue to knead until the streaks are gone and the fondant is a uniform color. Your fondant is now ready to be used or stored as outlined above.
A friend invited me to join her Mormon moms workout group that meets on Monday and Friday mornings, and I went today for the first time. Apparently Mormons like to go uphill really fast and leave Presbyterians like me with poor cardiovascular conditioning in the dust. Then they do a bunch of pilates before doing it all over again (somehow finding a way to go uphill both ways). Then, to spite me, Nike+ didn’t synch all my data and now I’ve been robbed of getting Nike Fuel points for a game that I don’t understand.
For this I deserve to eat.
This is super easy and great for entertaining. (I just wanted to write that because Barefoot Contessa does — I have no idea if this is great for entertaining but it is easy.)
I buy the langoustines from Costco, and they’re already cooked and frozen so I just thaw them in a mesh strainer. I’m sure I’m supposed to say that you should do this in the refrigerator but that’s not what I did. Oh, and langoustines are basically really small lobsters. I was going to link to a picture but I think it’s best not to see what they look like before you’re going to eat them.
Once your langoustines are defrosted, chop up some garlic and tomatoes and heat up your olive oil, on medium to low. You’ll want to put the garlic in there to cook for about a minute, so that they just start to look slightly golden but don’t burn. Try not to salivate into the pan. Turn off the heat and add in the tomatoes and langoustine, stirring. Add salt and pepper.
If you want it to taste even better, add in a half of a dried red chili pepper while the garlic is cooking. The pepper seeps into the oil slowly and gives it a nice, warm, rich flavor.
Cover and let it sit for a bit for the flavors to meld. While you’re waiting, boil the linguine. Drain, toss the sauce with the linguine, garnish with parsley, and eat those carbs. You deserve it!
LINGUINE WITH GARLIC LANGOUSTINE SAUCE
Ingredients
9 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 pound langoustine tails (pre-cooked, drained and thawed)
1 ripe tomato
1/4 cup parsley, minced
8 oz (1/2 pound) linguine
(optional) 1/2 of a dried red chili pepper or 1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
Heat oil in a saute pan over medium to low heat. Add in garlic (and optionally, the chili pepper) and cook for about a minute, til it begins to be a very light golden hue. (For a milder spice, substitute paprika for the chili pepper.) Off the heat, and stir in tomatoes, langoustine, salt and pepper. Cover to allow flavors to meld.
Boil the linguine and drain. Combine with prepared sauce above, stir in parsley and serve.
A date has been set for the EPIC BAKING DAY and I must continue to prepare. First, by purchasing more / larger pants with elastic waistbands and then determining the number of 30-pound bags of sugar I need to buy from Costco. And I know this doesn’t make sense here but I just have to say that I LOVE HUMMUS. People sometimes ask me* what my favorite hummus is, and I have to say that it’s the Trader Joe’s Smooth and Creamy Classic Hummus. Man, I love that hummus! I’ve been eating it by the tubful in my pantry (and then telling people that my jeans are tight because I put on 10 pounds of muscle over the holidays). It’s really good with tuna, and shepherd’s pie, and on whatever other leftovers I don’t want to taste in particular. Sometimes I wake up at night in a sweat thinking about it. It’s that good.
I’ve been feeling bad that this blog on the whole presents more problems than solutions. So I thought I’d start sharing some things that people might find kind of useful, like…how to make brussels sprouts!
I belong to a CSA and this means that sometimes making dinner is kind of like being on Iron Chef, without all the fancy cooking stuff and the chefs. I’ve always liked brussels sprouts but they never really blew me away, and I never looked forward to them the way I look forward to hummus. Until The Day My Friend Carol Made These Brussels Sprouts. Here’s how you do it:
First, you cut the sprouts in half.
and then chop up some garlic. My mom peels garlic by using a meat hammer and squishing the cloves, so that’s what I’ve done here. It works well and it’s quick, if you don’t need the whole clove to stay intact. After you’ve squished them out of their skins, chop them up. I forgot to take a picture of that part.
Then toss the sprouts together with the garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper in a baking tray, and broil for about 10 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the sprouts turn a bright green and some of the edges start to carmelize.
and that’s it! This is the ONLY brussels sprouts recipe that my family will eat. Enjoy!
*Ok, in this case, people = me.
CARMELIZED BRUSSELS SPROUTS WITH GARLIC AND OLIVE OIL
Ingredients
1/2 pound brussels sprouts, halved
3 large or 5 small cloves garlic, chopped
1/8 cup olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
Prepare broiler.
Toss the brussels sprouts with the garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Place on a baking tray and broil. Check after 4 minutes and toss the sprouts to ensure even exposure to heat. Pull the sprouts out after they’ve turned a brilliant green, and some of the outer leave have begun to carmelize, between 6-10 minutes. Season as needed with additional salt / pepper.
So I’ve basically lost my voice from screaming because Bakerella — THE BAKERELLA — commented on my blog. As if I couldn’t love her more, she actually read my post and…her favorite color is turquoise.
Now that Danielle and I are all Hollywood and are basically just waiting for an invitation to bake with her, I decided to take a baby step toward cake pops and to bake some cupcakes on my own. If you’re training for a marathon, you build up to it. Are you in fifth grade and would you like to read about baking? If so, this is the site for you!
The challenge: Double-Maple Cupcakes from Cooking Light. Except that I made them single-maple because I wanted to use buttercream frosting. I was first introduced to these cupcakes by my friend Christine, who is appropriately Canadian, and who baked them and brought them to work. They were the most fabulous cupcakes I had ever tasted, and I wanted to eat all 18 of them but had to just smile politely as co-workers passed them around and helped themselves to what could have been added to my portion.
Here is what I learned from this baking experience:
1. If you put a several cups of flour in the bowl of your KitchenAid mixer that you have used twice since you purchased it, and then turn the dial to High, you will distribute flour all over yourself and the kitchen. I also used a dough paddle which may have been wrong.
This would be an inappropriate picture for a food blog.
2. After you have done 1, you may no longer have the correct proportions of ingredients in your batter, and sometimes when this happens, your cupcake may actually throw up.
Cupcake barf. Unretouched photo.
Overall, though, most of the cupcakes that were not unwell turned out pretty normal looking.
The ones that didn't throw up.
And they frosted up nicely.
I know there are gaps in the frosting. Don't judge me.
So if you want to try this at home, here are the recipes (with instructions on how to make barfing cupcakes above):
DOUBLE-MAPLE CUPCAKES from Cooking Light: Ingredients
1/2 cup granulated sugar
5 tablespoons butter or stick margarine, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon imitation maple flavoring
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup 1% low-fat milk
1/4 cup maple syrup
Frosting:
3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons butter or stick margarine, softened
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon imitation maple flavoring
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups powdered sugar
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350°.
To prepare cupcakes, beat first 4 ingredients at medium speed of a mixer until well-blended (about 5 minutes). Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Combine milk and 1/4 cup maple syrup. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with milk mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture; mix after each addition.
Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups lined with paper liners. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened (but not melted!) Ideal texture should be like ice cream.
3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
up to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream
Preparation
Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.
With all this talk recently about Santorum and the presidential election, there’s only one thing on my mind: CAKE POPS. Take a look at the Kermits below (by the amazing Bakerella). They are MADE OF CAKE. On a stick. That is what a cake pop is: cake on a stick, and apparently, incredibly, magically manipulated to look like Muppets.
Image courtesy of Bakerella
I know, I know, I’m a little slow on the uptake. It’s just like years after Brad Pitt was named one of People Magazine’s Sexiest People and I finally saw A River Runs Through It and started telling people, Hey, that Brad Pitt, he’s kind of cute!
This all started a few weeks ago when I was at a baby shower. Melissa V decorated the shower with Very Hungry Caterpillarstuff like little trees with caterpillars in them made of pom poms and other stuff I would never think to do (she also makes full-size nativity sets for plays and has a lot of children, which I would never do either), including:
Some cake pops I did not make.
Yes, cake pops. The picture is blurry because I was high on sugar and shaking from all the cake pops I had. I would never have given them a second thought except that they were DELICIOUS. I kept eating them. I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
A late night Google search on cake pops invariably led to a visit to Bakerella, and hours ogling her photos (she takes gorgeous photos, which means she is doing with one hand what I cannot do with two. I am a bad baker. I’m an excellent eater, and I like my own cooking, but there is something about baking that compromises my ability to function. A few weeks ago I made some dipped truffles I was going to gift, and my husband said, “Uh, you can’t give those to your boss.” I would have been mad except that they did look like sad, decapitated snowmen after a nuclear war.). I had a full-on night of dreams about cake pops (mostly about how I made them for one of my kids’ birthdays, and when they were unveiled there would be gasps and some people would actually pass out from the awesomeness and a spotlight would shine on me, suddenly cueing R Kelly’s I Believe I Can Fly). Then I had to post about her on Facebook. And that’s when I found out that my friend Danielle is obsessed with her too. Danielle can actually bake and has even made cake pops. And ebliskiver, but that’s a topic for another time. Anyway, this is what went down:
ME: So I was reading her FAQs and she’d like you to ask for permission to use her pictures SO I EMAILED HER! What if she writes back!!! Do you want me to ask her what her favorite color is???
DANIELLE: WHAT IF SHE DOES WRITE BACK!?!?!? PLEASE forward it to me so I can be starstruck!!!! It’ll be like you are famous along with her. Ask her what her favorite NON-baked good food is. Like does she eat steak? Or stuffed mushrooms? Or….Nachos?
ME: SHE WROTE BACK!!!!! She actually typed letters back to me that were addressed to my email address!!!! Here it is. Don’t faint.
On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Bakerella wrote: Sure. Thanks for asking.
Bakerella
DANIELLE: Ok, so basically you’re famous. Seriously though. My heart is kind of beating a little faster than normal bc of her email to you. Did yours, too, when you saw her email in your inbox??????? Who else can we have you email? WHO ELSE?!
ME: Selena Gomez?!? E.T.???
Then it basically degenerated into a conversation about feelings regarding Justin Bieber (who I happen to love). But THEN Danielle went to the store and BOUGHT US CAKE POP DECORATING STUFF! YES, we are going to make cake pops!!! This is important because I cannot do this alone. This is not going to happen for a couple of weeks, but be prepared. It is going to be EPIC. Like we are optioning movie rights now.
Maybe Bakerella could link to me when she needs to show what could go wrong if you screwed up her recipes. In case you thought I was joking about being a bad baker, let me share this photo with you. I even took it with a fancy camera and a pensive angle, but these are carrot muffins and, like snowflakes, no two look exactly alike. In fact, they’re not even near the same size or shape.
Nothing says "professional" like muffins that are baked from containers of the same size but come out totally different
So Bakerella, thanks for letting me use your pictures. They will make this site a happier place. Oh, and she has a bookout too — we’re going to be using it as the basis for our epic baking endeavor.
I love breakfast. I love eating, and breakfast is the first thing you get to eat every day. I love bacon. Eggs. Butter. During the week, though, breakfast is a lot less fun. For me, it’s a rushed time, and with my new job I am usually on a call with an international group of people at an ungodly hour. I need to be able to prepare something that can be done in increments as I hit the mute button periodically, and it needs to be quickly consumed. But it also needs not to be disgusting. I’m a snob like that.
So here’s a little meal that my friend Patricia suggested. It’s actually surprisingly good. You’ll need (the stuff I took an ugly photo of with my cell phone):
Almond milk (about a cup or so…though I don’t usually measure so you might have to experiment here); I’ve tried unflavored as well as vanilla and they both work fine
1 Banana
1 Avocado
Whey (I don’t really know what this is except that Little Miss Muffet ate them with curds in a nursery rhyme) — but at Patricia’s suggestion I got MRM brand 100% all natural whey in Rich Vanilla
(optional) Flax oil
All you do is slice up the banana and avocado, add in about a cup of the almond milk, a squirt of flax oil and a scoop of whey, and blend (I have a handy little Braun hand blender that makes this easy). You can add in ice if you want it to be more smoothie-like, but I’m happy with it so long as everything else is cold. The whey protein makes it filling — unlike with smoothies, this one tides me over til lunch. There you have it — healthy liquid breakfast!
I’m taking this week between Christmas and New Year’s off from work, and I am very, very happy. I think that one of the things that contributes most to one’s quality of life is the ability to sleep until one naturally wakes up, as well as not having to scream at people to brush their teeth and comb their hair and eat breakfast while packing their lunches in order to get them sent off to two different schools. It’s times like these that I fantasize about moving to a cozy mountain cabin, free of television, where we’d subsist on the land and the land alone. With my stamina for physical labor we’d surely starve, but what is food when you have love? (As a side note, for Christmas my very kind husband (who apparently does read my blog after all) surprised me with the LV Tivoli PM…spectacular! So even though the mountain life might be quiet, the deer probably couldn’t fully appreciate the Louis, so maybe we’re better off being part of society after all.)
This week I’ve been thinking that although I wouldn’t make a very good stay-at-home mom, I would indeed make quite a good stay at home person. There would be thousands of activities I could explore, none of which need to be revenue-generating: I could paint movie sets, knit hats and experiment with butter all to my heart’s content. This week, I did something that I never usually get to do: watched movies. I watched The Devil Wears Prada (I told you, it’s been a long time since I’ve watched a movie), which was basically like my experience on Wall Street but with more attractive people and nicer clothes, and Julie and Julia, which I really didn’t think I’d like but which I found quite entertaining. I love to cook. And even more, I love to eat. But lately I’d been feeling like all the new cookbooks I’d seen were recycled variations on everything I’ve already tried. The best go-to cookbook I have is The New Best Recipe from Cook’s Illustrated, which, aside from providing the best recipe for cooking well-known recipes, gives you scientific detail, and results of kitchen testing, resulting in a fascinating course on cooking. For entertaining, I love Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home from which all my dinner party greatest hits are spawned. But after watching Julie and Julia, being properly and overtly influenced by the media, I flipped through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and it’s far flung from the cookbooks of today — no pictures, just recipes. But in looking through it, it did pique my interest — Julia (and Simone and Lisette) did do her own kitchen testing a la America’s Test Kitchen, and it can’t hurt to have the classics. She also provides helpful and effective substitutes for French ingredients that can be found in American grocery stores. I’ve linked above to Amazon, which currently has a great deal going — a 2-volume set, hardcover, for $39.98 (56% off list price). So at that price, the risk is pretty low, and should pay for itself with a single use (think at least $100 for a party of two to dine on anything close), so go ahead — follow my lead –and buy lots of butter.
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To your right is the Louis Vuitton Tivoli PM bag. It will be the next handbag I purchase, especially since I apparently missed the boat already on the Kooba bag that was specially designed for an HSN segment co-promoted by Lucky magazine. The TV event starts on Friday but it looks like it’s already sold out online…(sigh) if only everyone else had bad taste.
Speaking of bad taste, I noticed today that everything I ate today left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth (Cheerios — bitter. Strawberries — bitter.). I was getting worried since I recall hearing (from a marketing person, not a doctor) that one sign of brain tumor is altered taste perception (although I think she said something like you could taste colors, or maybe she was talking about a different experience altogether). Anyway, I went to my Primary Care Physician (the Internet), and found a forum where people posted about the same symptom — and they had all eaten large quantities of pine nuts! Flashback to Monday night — my daughter and I chowed down on a bag of Costco brand pine nuts after dinner, squirrel-style. Apparently this can last for days — like possibly five or so days.
Back to the Tivoli. I actually went to the LV store to try it on, and I LOVE it (especially after my friends were selling me on how practical it is — “I spilled a Tall Latte on it and it wiped right off” or “Your kids can drop an ice cream cone on it and it comes right off”) except that you can’t put it over your shoulder. Well, here’s the screwy part: I LOVE how bags look when you can’t put them over your shoulder, because I like the look of satchels, but I always try to put a bag over my shoulder (two kids), so I fear its impracticality. However, I tried on the GM version which you can put over the shoulder, and it’s not quite as cute and is a tiny bit too ginormous for me. This is why I don’t yet own a Tivoli. Or do I need both?
, which is the coconut oil that I think tastes the best. I’ll paste in the cookie recipe below too. So you end up with a cookie that looks like this:
— you’ll need to knead it for a while to distribute the color (I recommend wearing plastic gloves for this if you’re not dressing up as Lady Macbeth in the near future). You can cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a knife and then make it stick to the cookie by wetting the back of the fondant like we used to do with postage stamps before sticking it onto the cookie.
stuff like little trees with caterpillars in them made of pom poms and other stuff I would never think to do (she also makes full-size nativity sets for plays and has a lot of children, which I would never do either), including:
out too — we’re going to be using it as the basis for our epic baking endeavor.
100% all natural whey in Rich Vanilla
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