Shake Shack concrete

I go to Shake Shack a fair amount, but I've never actually gotten a milkshake there, despite its name. Instead I go for the concretes. A concrete is custard (so frozen, but soft) with different toppings spun into it.

There are a lot of toppings to choose from, but I generally go with a Shack Attack, because it is chocolatiest: chocolate custard with fudge sauce, chocolate truffle cookie dough and Mast Brothers dark chocolate chunks, topped with chocolate sprinkles.



BOTTOM LINE: How can you possibly go wrong with this?

Raw Hemp Brownie from Organic Grill

That's no brownie.  It's a Larabar.

Bottom Line:  Though I guess we do like Larabars...

Ben & Jerry peanut butter fudge core

As you probably know--because you are the sort of person who reads a chocolate blog--today is the first day of National Ice Cream Month, which is a real American holiday. Personally I do not need a specific month earmarked to eat chocolate. But, it's as good an excuse as any.

In celebration of this month, I finally tried Ben & Jerry's "core" ice cream.



The idea here is that you have chocolate ice cream on one side, peanut butter ice cream on the other, a peanut butter-fudge "core" running down the center, and peanut butter cups sprinkled throughout. Here's what it looks like.



So, Ben & Jerry's is great. It's not freshly-made or farm-to-table or organic or whatever a lot of the ice creams that we review on this blog are. You know this. It's like $5 or $6 per pint (which you can compare to a brand like, say, Jeni's, where pints cost twice that.

But for easily available, grocery store ice cream, it's great. It's thick and flavorful. They do not skimp on the mix-ins. If you're promised peanut butter cups, you are getting a full allotment of peanut butter cups--which is good, because Ben & Jerry's peanut butter cups are THE BOMB.

I guess I'd say that their mix-ins (peanut butter cups, cookie dough, whatever it may be) are better than their ice cream. I wouldn't eat a bowl of plain chocolate from Ben & Jerry's. Well, okay, I would, because I will eat a bowl of plain chocolate ice cream from anywhere, but it would not be my first choice. But their ice cream provides a totally good foundation for their mix-ins.

I don't know that the "core" ice cream is so much better than just chocolate ice cream with peanut butter cups, or just peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter cups. The fudge in the middle didn't add a huge amount for me: I was more focused on the ice creams. For me the main benefit of the "core" approach was that I got two different and very good flavors for the price of one. But if you were really into the "core" substance, then this pint would be even more appealing to you.

BOTTOM LINE: This is probably my new go-to choice for Ben & Jerry's pints. I'd even put it above Phish Food. Maybe even above Half Baked.

McVitie plain chocolate digestives

My junior year in college, I studied abroad in the UK. During the ten months that I was there, I ate roughly one thousand McVitie's plan chocolate digestives.



To clarify for Americans, I will say that "digestives" are basically cookies, sort of like graham crackers, and "plain chocolate" means dark chocolate.

When I lived in England, I would go through a pack of these in a couple of days. They are just so compulsively eatable. They taste basically like a s'mores only without the warm marshmallow inside--just something like a graham cracker with some dark chocolate coating it. It's not too sweet, and it's not so intensely flavored--it's like the dessert equivalent of pretzels, in that it's kind of plain and you just want to keep eating it.

Fairly recently, McVitie's digestives have become easily available in some U.S. grocery stores. They're only a couple dollars; not even priced like an import. When I first discovered this, I briefly felt like, "This isn't right. I only want to eat these when I am in England." Then I got over it. Now I eat three or four digestives every day.

Since my time in England, McVitie's has refined their packaging, adding this nifty re-sealable top, so you don't necessarily have to eat all the biscuits in one go (though obviously you can if you want to).

And because this is the U.S. and we have laws here, they've stickered the packages with FDA-friendly nutritional information, meaning that now, for the first time, I could find out just how many calories and grams of sugar are in each of these. I mean, I haven't read the label, so I don't actually know. But I could.

BOTTOM LINE: If you're buying a pack of grocery store cookies, I would definitely advocate for these over the Oreos, Chips Ahoy, or pretty much anything else on the shelf. Perfect for tea time, snack time, or coming home from a party at 3am.

Keena’s Gazpacho

A year or so ago, when we opened Delancey, I thought our lives were over and we would never see our friends again. Now that I type that out, it sounds like I was channeling Chicken Little, but my thinking wasn’t without reason: in the restaurant business, you work when other people play, and that complicates almost everything. But as it turns out, our friends are more flexible than I had given them credit for, and like us, a lot of them work odd hours. So over the past several months, we’ve begun to tweak our collective habits. I didn’t know this, but dinner parties don’t have to take place at dinnertime. You can also have them in the daytime. For example, last Sunday, our friends Sam and Meredith invited us over for what we used to call Game Night, and what we now call Game Day.




(In our world, Sam and Meredith are famous for their good ideas.)




The plan was to play a game called Agricola.




But we wound up with too many people for that, so we broke off into groups: Team Agricola, Team Settlers of Catan, Team Bananagrams, and the wishful Team Naptime, which was quickly disbanded when it was noted that sleeping is not a sanctioned Game Day activity. I played six rounds of Bananagrams and won none. My new life goal is to win once, only once, at Bananagrams. I don’t ask for a lot.




On the upside, we also ate some cheese, and we drank a little beer. Meredith roasted dates. Olaiya steamed mussels in white wine.




And most important for today’s purposes, my friend Keena taught me to make a spectacular gazpacho, which is big news, because I don’t usually like gazpacho. It often tastes flat and tinny, like canned tomato juice, and on a particularly unfortunate day, it can resemble a regrettable attempt at salsa. Keena’s is neither. It’s smooth and almost creamy, an opaque shade of orange, with a whiff of olive oil and a kick of sherry vinegar. The only sad part of this story is that I was so busy getting destroyed at Bananagrams that I downed it before I thought to take a picture.




I’m on the road this week, and my Internet connection is so slow that getting this thing posted has aged me by about a year, but I wanted to say hi. That, and that you should drop everything and make this gazpacho, before the good tomatoes and peppers are gone. It’s going to be a long, hard winter of tubers and crucifers. This is our last hurrah.

Keena’s gazpacho starts with olive oil, which you put in a blender and whip at high speed. It’s an unusual step, and it’s the key, I think, to this recipe. It gives the soup its light, nearly velvety texture, as though you’d sneaked in a dash of cream. When the olive oil thickens and begins to froth, you add garlic, sweet peppers, cucumber, and a combination of yellow and red tomatoes, and then you let it rip along on high for a while longer, until the mixture is smooth enough to be sipped from a glass, if you’re a gazpacho-sipping kind of person. If not, you can spoon it from a bowl. Either way, you’ll want to splash some sherry vinegar into the blender before you serve it, because that’s the spark that gets it glowing.

Keena’s Gazpacho

My friend Keena learned to make this gazpacho from her sister-in-law Margot. But I still call it Keena’s Gazpacho, because she’s put her own twist on it. Here are some notes to consider before you start:

- Keena uses heirloom tomatoes for their flavor and color, and at a minimum, she uses at least one yellow tomato, so that the finished gazpacho has a beautiful orange color. She tells me that when she tried making the recipe with only red tomatoes, it worked fine, but the taste seemed a little flatter and the color was less pretty. Her sister-in-law once made it using all Green Zebra heirloom tomatoes and a yellow pepper instead of a red one, and the resulting gazpacho was a pretty shade of green. Whatever tomatoes she uses, Keena makes this gazpacho in a 7-cup blender, and the size of the blender determines how many tomatoes you can use. She uses as many as will fit in her blender jar.

- Keena likes her gazpacho smooth and sippable, but her sister-in-law garnishes it with diced cucumber and bell peppers, so that it’s a little chunky. You can do whatever you want.

3 - 5 medium to large tomatoes, ideally yellow and red (see note above)
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 - 2 garlic cloves
½ of a green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
½ of a medium to large cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
½ to ¾ of a red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 - 3 Tbsp. sherry vinegar
Salt to taste

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Score an “X” into the bottom of each tomato, and then blanch them until the skin begins to peel back around the “X.” Remove from the water, cool them until they’re not too hot to handle, and then peel. Remove and discard the stems, and cut out the rough spot where the stem attaches. Chop coarsely.

Put the olive oil in a blender, and blend on high speed until frothy. Add the garlic, and process briefly. Add the bell peppers, cucumber, a couple pinches of salt, and as many tomatoes as will fit comfortably into your blender. Process on high speed for a while, stopping the blender from time to time to scrape down the sides of the jar and mush around the ingredients as needed to allow the blender to run smoothly. (The mixture will be fairly thick until the tomatoes are pureed.) Let the blender go as long as you can stand the noise; the longer it goes, the better it will taste and the creamier it will be. Add 2 tablespoons of the sherry vinegar, and process to incorporate. Taste, and add vinegar and salt as needed.

Chill thoroughly before serving.

Yield: about 6 servings

Granola No. 5

This is the fifth granola recipe I’ve posted on this blog. Five. Five! Four more than anyone needs! I cannot be stopped! I’ve turned into your annoying great-aunt, the one who tells the same boring story about Eisenhower every Thanksgiving, over and over and over and over and over. I even have the requisite small crotchety dog and a banana-yellow Formica kitchen, circa 1960. My transformation is complete.

I’ve been making granola regularly, at least once or twice a month, for something like fifteen years. I’ve gone through several recipes and versions, from the lowish in fat - a tragic notion that, I now believe, goes against the whole concept of granola - to the intricately spiced, thoroughly nutted, and generously sweetened. For a while, this 2008 version was the recipe that I hewed most closely to. It’s simple, solid, and though it does involve chocolate, I don’t know, it still feels like a sensible breakfast to me.  (And I’ve decided that there are far more dangerous delusions to harbor.) Two years ago, I found the Early Bird recipe, and then I got on a roll with that. But before long, I started to wish it were less sweet, and then I made the batch size larger, and then I started making it without the seeds, because I never seem to have any, and before I knew it, my slow paring-down and tweaking had shaped it into something else entirely.



I wasn’t going to write about it - I will remind you: FIVE GRANOLA RECIPES - but Brandon keeps nagging, asking me if I’ve written about it and why not. He thinks it’s the best yet, and maybe he’s right. My mother is also hooked on it, so that’s something. It’s the only granola I’ve wanted to make for the past year, if not longer. It’s deeply toasty in a way that verges on savory, rich enough to make me look forward to breakfast but not too rich for everyday, and most importantly, it has the strange, mystical ability to make coffee taste even better than it already does at seven o’clock in the morning.

Like the Early Bird recipe - and like my friend Megan’s wonderful Marge Granola - I use olive oil for the fat component, because I like the savory quality it brings. In the sustained heat of the oven, its grassy, vegetal flavors mellow out, so there’s nothing remotely salad-y tasting going on in the finished granola; the olive oil just gives it a deeper complexity than other vegetable oils can. And while you could maybe use less oil than I do, I like that it’s satisfying enough to stay with me for a few hours, and I like the way the oil helps the oats and nuts to crisp and crackle. Do what you will.

Also like the Early Bird recipe, I don’t use any spices. I like to keep it quiet, to leave room for the gentle, warming flavors of toasted nuts and oats. I also use maple syrup as my sweetener, but unlike Early Bird, it’s the only sweetener I use. And while it does look and sound like a lot of maple syrup, it’s less sweetener per cup of oats than almost any other granola recipe I’ve tried. I should also add that I used to sort of choke when I thought about using anything more than a tablespoon of maple syrup at a time, because it’s so whoppingly expensive, but its flavor really does make a difference, a dusky sweetness. At Delancey, we mail-order maple syrup from Stannard Farm in Vermont, and it’s wood-fired(!), dark and very subtly smoky. The way I feel about it borders on the evangelical.

As for the dry ingredients, there are the usual rolled oats, and whatever combination of nuts shows up in my cabinets that day, and a decent dose of kosher salt, and always some big flakes of coconut, the kind that crunch like wafers. And I measure the oats and nuts by weight, so it’s easy to throw together quickly with no measuring cups and, YES! YES! GOD YES! fewer dirty dishes and spills. I’ve even managed to make a batch of this granola with June around, weighing and stirring and slipping it into the oven so fast that she hardly had time to get feisty and start hanging on my legs, yelling EEEEEEAT. I can’t say that about much else.

P.S. I wrote a lot of this post at Delancey, where "Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car" was playing on Spotify. And before that, it was "Uptown Girl." I don’t really have anything to say about that, other than yeeeeeeow, it was great.


Granola No. 5

You can use any nuts you like here – or even seeds, if you want to. That’s the beauty of measuring by weight: as long as you use about 400 grams in all, it doesn’t matter which nuts or seeds you use or how much of each. I most often use almonds and walnuts, which I coarsely chop, but I also like to throw in some pecans now and then.

About kosher salt, take note: I use Diamond Crystal brand, which is less salty than Morton. If you use the latter, you’ll probably only want to use about 1 ½ teaspoons.

600 grams (6 cups) old-fashioned rolled oats
100 to 150 grams (about 2 to 3 loose cups) unsweetened coconut chips
400 grams nuts (maybe 3 to 4 cups? see headnote), chopped if you like
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 cup (240 ml) maple syrup, preferably Grade B
2/3 cup (160 ml) olive oil

Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven, and preheat to 300. Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment.

Measure the dry ingredients into a large bowl, and stir well. Add the maple syrup and olive oil, and stir to evenly coat. Divide the mixture between the two prepared sheet pans, spread it out, and bake, stirring the granola and flipping the pans once or twice, until golden brown, about 40 minutes. I generally check on the granola every 15 minutes as it’s baking, and I gauge its doneness by color: in particular, I’m looking for the coconut chips to toast and for the whole mixture to achieve nice, even browning.

Allow to cool completely, then transfer the granola to airtight containers. Eat with plain yogurt (my favorite), milk, or on its own. You can store it at room temperature for a couple of weeks, easy, but if you use it more slowly than that, consider freezing some of it.

Yield: I’ve never actually measured, but probably about 3 quarts.

Italian Plum Jam

In early September, a kind reader in north-central Idaho left me a comment. Her name was Michele, and her Italian prune plum tree was promising a bumper crop: did I want some? This kind of thing does not happen all the time, or ever, so I said (yelled) yes. That is how it came to pass that last week, a box showed up on our stoop, containing almost ten pounds of plums cushioned in bubble wrap. I hauled it to the table and let it sit there for a couple of days, admiring it like an expensive flower arrangement, patting it softly like June’s head, before getting down to work over the weekend, freezing a pound of halved plums for cakes later on and turning the approximately eight pounds that remained into my favorite, and simplest, jam.

I’m not crazy about most jams/jellies/preserves that you can buy at the supermarket. Either they’re too sweet, too far removed from the fruit they once were, or they’re the type that markets itself as low-sugar, which usually means that the flavor is flat, vaguely brown-tasting. Bah. If I happen to be in a market that has high-end, small-batch jam, like June Taylor, that’s a whole other story. That stuff is incredible: clean-tasting, softly set, full of bright fruit. (Santa Rosa Plum and Tayberry Conserve!!!) But it’s also so expensive, so so so expensive, that I can’t bring myself to use it in my, or my child’s, peanut butter sandwich. I feel more inclined to use it as currency than to actually eat it. That’s why, whenever I can, I try to make jam. I can make it exactly the way I want it. And the satisfaction! THE SATISFACTION!

I am not a jam expert. I am also not a canning expert. But almost ten years ago, my friends Kate and Margot taught me their favorite jam formula, which Margot learned from an older family friend in Italy, and between it, a few other recipes I’ve tried, a few cookbooks I’ve read, and trial and error, here’s what I’ve figured out.

1. I like jams that use a 2:1 fruit-to-sugar ratio. When you’re measuring it out, it looks like a terrifying amount of sugar, but stay strong, hold firm, because most of the time, it will yield a jam that’s just right. The sugar not only preserves the fruit, of course, but it plays a big role in drawing out its flavor. Use too little sugar, and the flavor and color will be dull. Jam is not a place to go on a no-sugar diet.

2. This is a personal thing, but: the best jams are the simplest. You can fancy them up with tea leaves, hibiscus flowers, spices, blah dee blah, but my goal in making jam is to taste the fullest flavor of the fruit itself. The only things I put in my jam are fruit, sugar, and fresh lemon juice. God, I’m a cranky old lady. I annoy even myself.

3. To check my jam for doneness, I like the saucer test, which I describe in the recipe instructions. Read on. (I should also mention that the jam below looks more liquidy than it actually is. It was sort of sinking into the yogurt. Anyway, the photo above is a better representation of the consistency of the jam, if you want a visual aid.)

In short, THANK YOU, MICHELE AND GARY! Kindness like yours is a too-rare thing. We’re going to be eating your plums, in this jam, which is really your jam, all winter long.

Italian Plum Jam

Note that you’ll want to pit the plums before weighing them. You’re doing this recipe by weight, and you don’t want the pits to mess up your 2:1 plum-to-sugar ratio.

Also, listen: I know the instructions that follow are long. I wanted to go into as much detail as possible, because I understand that jam-making can seem mysterious. But once you’ve tried it, I doubt you’ll need to read the instructions again. Jam-making is a very tactile thing, all about watching and listening and prodding, and I get better at it, more instinctual, every time I do it.

Oh, and: My current breakfast of choice is a spoonful of this jam stirred into a bowl of plain whole-milk yogurt.

Ingredients:
1 kilogram (2 pounds 3 ounces) pitted and quartered Italian prune plums
500 grams (1 pound 1 ounce) granulated sugar
Juice of ½ lemon

Equipment:
A Dutch oven, or similar
6 (8-ounce) canning jars, with lids and rings
A rimmed sheet pan
A couple of clean kitchen towels
A few saucers
A large pot for boiling the filled jars
A rack that fits inside the large pot
Tongs, or a jar lifter

Instructions:
Combine the plums, sugar, and lemon juice in a Dutch oven (or other wide, deep pot of similar volume), and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours, until very juicy. (If your schedule makes this tricky, don’t worry: you can let the mixture sit longer, if needed. I’ve let it hang out for up to 4 or 5 hours.)

While the fruit is hanging out, wash the jars, lids, and rings in hot, soapy water, so that they’re perfectly clean, and then put the jars (upright) on a rimmed sheet pan. Lay the lids and rings on a clean towel to dry completely. Put a few saucers in the freezer; you’ll need these later, for testing the jam.

Shortly before you begin cooking the jam, preheat the oven to 225°F, and slide the sheet pan of jars into the preheated oven. It will need to stay there for 30 minutes to sterilize the jars. (I find this oven method easier than boiling the empty jars, because I used to always splash boiling water everywhere when I was lifting them out to fill them. But do whatever you prefer. Or, you can entirely skip this sterilizing-before-filling step, because, as it turns out, safety experts no longer consider it necessary. When in doubt, this is a great resource.)

After you put the jars in the oven, take out a large pot, place a rack inside of it, fill it with water, and set it over high heat. (I use a round cooling rack; Marisa uses a silicone trivet; and you can also use a folded dish towel, though it tends to float until you put jars on top of it.) The pot must be large enough to hold 4 or 5 jars in a single layer, and the water should be deep enough to cover the jars by 1 or 2 inches. You’ll want it to be simmering by the time the jam has finished cooking, because you’ll use it for processing the filled jam jars.

When you’re ready to cook the jam, place the pot of fruit over medium-high heat, and bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Soon, you’ll notice a pale-colored foam rise to the surface. Use a spoon or a skimmer to remove as much of the foam as possible. Keep the jam rolling along at a boil, stirring frequently to prevent scorching, and keep an eye on it: first it will be very juicy, and then it will start to cook down ever so slightly, the texture unifying, the color darkening, the surface glossy. Around this point, maybe 20 minutes into cooking, it will probably also start sputtering like lava when you stir it: be careful! That scary sputtering is how I know to start testing the jam for doneness. It probably won’t be ready on the first try, but it’s good to get a feel for it.

How to test for doneness: In general, the setting point for jam is 220°F, so you can test by taking its temperature as it boils: when it hits 220°F, it’s generally ready. However, that said, pectin-rich fruits set at a slightly lower temperature, so if you always just sit back and let your jam go to 220°F, you could wind up with a too-stiff jam. I prefer to use a more tactile test for doneness: the saucer test. Here’s how to do it:

Take the pot off the heat while you test it. Take 1 saucer out of the freezer, and dribble a little jam on it, maybe a silver dollar-sized puddle. Return the saucer to the freezer for 15 seconds or so, so that the puddle of jam is neither warm nor cold. Then remove the saucer from the freezer, and sweep a fingertip through the jam: does it feel like it’s developing a certain solidity, as Marisa explains, so that your finger leaves a trail? Or, on the other hand, is the jam still runny, so that it quickly runs to fill in the trail? If it’s the latter, the jam isn’t quite ready, so return the pot to the heat, stirring, and test again in a few minutes. The jam is ready when your finger just begins to leave a clean trail. Another indication is that when you tilt the saucer, the jam slides very slowly, not quickly. It won’t look like jam, per se, quite yet - it’ll be softer, gloppier than that - but it will continue to thicken as it cools. (When in doubt, err on the side of undercooking, I’d say. You can always use it as a syrup on pancakes! You’ll nail it next time!)

When the jam is ready, remove the sheet pan from the oven. Working carefully – the jars and the jam are very hot! – use a ladle to divide the jam among the jars, leaving ¼ inch of room at the top. (A batch of jam will probably fill 4 jars, and maybe 5, but I like to sterilize 6 jars, just to be safe.) Wipe the rims of the jars with a clean, damp cloth to remove any drips. Put the lids and rings on, taking care to screw them just until they are snug (not crazy-tight). Use tongs or a jar lifter to carefully place the jars, standing upright, on the rack in the pot of simmering water. Bring it up to a boil, and boil for 10 minutes. Remove the jars (carefully!) with tongs or a jar lifter, set them on a rack, and leave them alone to cool completely. As the jars cool, you may hear little pops: that’s the lids sealing. When they’re cool, press each lid lightly to make sure it has sealed: it should curve downward very slightly in the middle. Properly sealed jam is safe to store at room temperature, but refrigerate after opening.

Yield: 4 or 5 (8-ounce) jars

Carrot-Coconut Soup with Chile and Lime

My mother has been in town since early this month. We don’t often get this kind of extended time in the same place, and I’d forgotten what a good cooking collaborator she is. She makes sure our wine glasses are never empty. She cleans up as she goes. She doesn’t mind deveining shrimp! I could go on and on. I bow down.

At my reading in Madison last week, someone asked me to talk about a few of my favorite cookbooks. The ones I mentioned were The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, All About Braising, various Nigel Slater titles, and Every Grain of Rice, and because I am long-winded, my answer wrapped up, blah dee blah blah, about twenty-five minutes later, on the topic of everyday cooking, which I usually do without consulting a book. In truth, I pointed out, I only cook two or three "real" dishes a week - and by "real," which is a very arbitrary word, I mean things that involve more than 10 minutes in the kitchen. I only very, very rarely make more than one "real" dish at a time - say, this favorite Sichuanese beef-and-celery recipe plus a side of braised bok choy.  Usually, even on a good day, it’s just the beef and celery, with some rice from the electric rice cooker. I can’t remember the last time I made a meal that involved three different, recipe-based dishes on a plate.  Most of the time, my home cooking is very simple and quick: scrambled eggs and a salad dressed in the vinaigrette I always keep in the fridge, a bowl of soup with some cheese and bread or crackers, or rice topped with whatever’s in the crisper drawer and a fried egg and hot sauce.

Later, when I was sitting at a table, signing books, someone expressed surprise that I "cook" so little - that, for someone who professes to love cooking, that I don’t actually do a lot of it. I sort of bumbled through an answer, and a week later, in the wake of much online discussion about domesticity, feminism, and the joys and headaches of home cooking, I’m still thinking about how to explain my thinking.  But I think what it comes down to is this: maybe we’re setting our standards too high for what it means to cook at home, to do home cooking? I mean, I love to cook, but I also believe it is totally okay - even good, even great, even elegant - to serve scrambled eggs for dinner. I have no qualms about feeding myself, my child, and my husband (and even company) a pot of vegetable soup that I made earlier this week, with some cheddar and purchased bread. I love to cook, but like everybody, my life is full. I’m tired at night. I hate deveining shrimp. I love to cook, but I love to cook two or three times a week, and not much more than that. The rest of the time, we eat leftovers, or we eat something that I (or we) can make in a few minutes. It’s still home cooking, and we’re still eating good food, and there’s real pleasure in that. That’s what I care about.

This soup is one that I’ve made probably a half-dozen times, adapted from a recipe that I found last year in Bon Appetit. You’ve got to peel and chop the bag of carrots, but after that, the soup coasts to the finish line by itself, and a single batch will cover a week’s worth of lunches or a couple of dinners for a small family. The photos I took of it were sort of lackluster, but you can picture it. The soup is anything but. It’s pumpkin-orange and velvety, laced with a creeping heat that leaves your mouth tingling. I like it with sharp cheddar and a pile of Triscuits.

Happy weekend.


Carrot-Coconut Soup with Chile and Lime
Adapted from Bon Appetit and the Clayburn Village Store & Tea Shop in Abbotsford, BC

½ stick (57 grams) unsalted butter
2 lb. (910 grams) carrots, peeled and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
Kosher salt
4 cups (950 ml) chicken broth
1 ½ to 2 (13.5-ounce) cans unsweetened coconut milk
About 2 Tbsp. sriracha, or to taste
Lime wedges, for serving
Fresh cilantro leaves, chopped, for serving, if you feel like it

Melt the butter in a large (5-quart) pot over medium-high heat. Add the carrots and onion, season with a couple good pinches of salt, and cook, stirring often, until the carrots are softened, 15-20 minutes. Stir in the broth, 1 ½ cans of the coconut milk, and 1 tablespoon of the sriracha. Bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are very soft and the liquid is slightly reduced, about 45 minutes. Puree in small batches (remember: hot liquids expand!) in a blender. (Or, my preference: puree right in the pot, with an immersion blender.) Check for seasoning, and add more salt and/or sriracha, if you like. (I usually add 1 more tablespoon sriracha.) If you’d like more richness, stir in the rest of the coconut milk, and then reheat as needed.

Serve with a generous squeeze of lime in each bowl, and top with cilantro, if you have it.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Raspberry-Ricotta Cake

I believe in everyday cake.

I may have remembered to floss four times last week, up from my usual count of zero. I may have had avocado toast one sunny morning at Vif, with za'atar, aleppo pepper, preserved Meyer lemon, and celery(!). I may have even rediscovered R.E.M.'s superlative Green after forgetting about it for twenty years and then sung along loudly and with feeling to "World Leader Pretend" and got goosebumps during the bridge like I used to when I was seventeen. But nothing makes me feel like I'm really living, really doing it up right, like having a cake on my kitchen counter on a weekday.

About a week ago, my friend Shari posted a photograph of a cake on Instagram and declared, "New favorite, I think!" Instagram has more shots of cake than there are particles in the Milky Way galaxy, but then again, you may remember that Shari is the person who, six years ago, introduced me to sweet potato pound cake. Her opinion is not to be questioned. And as I studied her photo, I realized that her cake, pale gold and splotched with berries, was from a recipe that I had read and dog-eared only the night before, as I thumbed through the March issue of Bon Appétit: a simple, single-layer cake enriched with whole-milk ricotta and spiked with frozen raspberries. Ding ding ding!

So I picked up some ricotta over the weekend, and on Monday afternoon, when I found myself with a free half-hour, I made a cake. This is a cake that you can actually throw together, not just in word but in deed: there's no mixer required, just a spatula and a whisk and an arm. The batter is thick and rich, like a mousse, and bakes up light, pillowy, terrifically moist. (I know everybody hates the word moist now, but I don't mind it. British recipe writers seem to be into damp, but that usually reminds me of basements, or other people's towels, or the point in a day at the beach when your bathing suit starts to itch.) A few people on the Bon Appétit website have commented that they would reduce the sugar, but I wouldn't: it's just right, especially against the tart shock of the berries.  If anything, I'd up the amount of raspberries by a third or half - or, whoa, hey, maybe try it with frozen sour cherries instead? Ricotta and sour cherries. That's doing it right.

Happy weekend.

P.S. If you've got time to make your own ricotta, do. There's a recipe in Delancey, and what you don't use for the cake, you can use on crostini, on toast with jam, in pasta, on pizza, stirred into eggs, you name it.

P.P.S. More everyday cakes here. And this looks a little more involved, but man oh man.

P.P.P.S. Earlier this week, I wrote on Saveur.com about one of my favorite things, the seven-minute egg.

P.P.P.P.S. Luisa started a good discussion about food magazines, and I'd love to know what you think.

And this P.S. thing is getting ridiculous, but P.P.P.P.P.S. My favorite (ancient) photograph of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe.


Raspberry-Ricotta Cake
Adapted very slightly from Bon Appétit, March 2015

1 ½ cups (210 grams) all-purpose flour
1 cup (200 grams) sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs
1 ½ cups (325 grams) whole-milk ricotta
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup (100 grams) frozen raspberries, divided

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9-inch round cake pan (I used springform), and press a round of parchment paper into the bottom.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, and kosher salt. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs, ricotta, and vanilla until smooth. Gently stir ricotta mixture into the dry ingredients until just blended. Then fold in the butter, followed by ¾ cup of the raspberries, taking care not to crush them. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing it evenly, and scatter the remaining raspberries on top.

Bake the cake until it is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Let cool at least 20 minutes before unmolding. Cool completely before serving.

Yield: 8 servings

How to make moist banana bread recipe, Banana bread

Banana cake is made with fully ripe bananas, mashed into a paste. Banana cake is often moist and sweet like any fruit cake. however most of the banana cake recipe that are conventional style yeast cake.

Ingredients  for making banana bread: 

1. Cooking oil spray
2. 125ml (1/2 cup) milk
3. 300g (2 cups) self-raising flour
4. Pinch of salt
5. 1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
6. 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
7. 215g (1 cup) caster sugar
8. 2 eggs
9. 110g butter, melted, cooled
10. 1 tsp vanilla extract
11. 1 cup (about 3 bananas) mashed ripe banana 

procedure for making banana bread: 

1. Spray the 20cm square cake pan with oil to grease. Preheat  the oven to 175°C . Line with non-stick baking paper. Combine the milk and vinegar in a small jug. Set aside for 15 minutes.
2. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl. Add the sugar and stir to combine. Make a well in the centre. 
3. Whisk the eggs, butter, vanilla and milk mixture in a separate bowl. Add to the flour mixture and stir to combine. 
4. Add the banana and stir until just combined. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Set aside in the pan for 10 minutes to cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
5. To make the lemon icing, stir the icing sugar, lemon juice and butter in a bowl until smooth and combined. Spread over the cake and set aside for 15 minutes to set.

How to make chocolate cup cake recipe, cup cakes

chocolate cup cake is a small cake designed to serve a single person , frequently baked in aluminium cups. As with the large cake decorations like sprinkles,icing and frosting is common with chocolate cup cake.

Ingredients for making chocolate cup cake :

2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 ounces melted unsweetened  baking chocolate

Chocolate Cupcake Recipe Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
• Line cupcake pans with paper liners.
• Combine all ingredients into large mixing bowl.  
• Mix at low speed for 30 seconds, and scrape bowl.  Mix at high speed for 3 minutes.
• Fill liners 1/2 to 2/3 full of batter.  
• Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.
• Cool 10 minutes in pans then remove from pan, and place on wire racks to cool completely.
• Frost when chocolate cupcakes are completely cool.

Easy recipe for making strawberry coffee cake

There is noway getting around the truth that strawberries make things pink, which has given me an obsession with strawberry flavor. we have so many pink foods out there but one pink food outruns other pink foods i.e, Strawberry coffee cake 

Ingredients for strawberry coffee cake : 

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups chopped fresh strawberries
•  FILLING strawberry coffee cake :
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• Directions for making strawberry coffee cake : 

• Take a bowl, whip the butter and sugar. Add eggs, mix well. mix flour,baking powder and baking soda. add creamed mixture alternatively with sour cream. Add vanilla. Fold in the strawberries. Spoon half into a greased and floured 10-in. fluted tube pan.
• preheat the oven .Mix the filling ingredients and sprinkle the half over the batter, top it up with remaining batter and filling.Bake at 350° for 50-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.let it cool down for 15 mins before removing from the tray.Yield: 12-16 servings.

How to make creamy cheese cake recipe

Basically cheese cake is a desert, usually on a crust or base made of biscut, consisting topping with soft fresh cheese.This smooth finely baked cheese cake filled with smooth creamy cheese .

Ingredients for making creamy cheese cake :

Base :

140g of biscuits, crushed into fine crumbs
85 mL melted butter
1 tbsp. of sugar

Filling :  

3 300g packs of soft cheese (full-fat)

250g of sugar, golden caster

3 tbsp. of All purpose flour

1½ tsp. of vanilla extract

2 tsp. lemon zest, grated

1½ tsp. of lemon juice

3 eggs (Large) and 1 yolk

284mL carton of sour cream

To make the sour cream topping:

142mL carton of sour cream

1 tbsp. sugar, golden caster

2 tsp. of lemon juice

Procedure to make creamy cheese cake :

Prepare heat the oven to 160° C (for fan), 180° C (for conventional), or setting on 4 (for gas). Use parchment paper to cover bottom of spring form pan.

Mix melted butter,sugar and biscuit crumbs. layer this mix onto the pan to form a crust. leave to bake for 10 mins. let it cool.

To make the filling, oven should be set to 200° C (for fan), 240° C (conventional), 9 (for gas). Cheese should be mixed until it is thoroughly softened and creamy in consistency, and then mix in the flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt.  Add into the mixture your vanilla, juice, and grated lemon zest. These should be whisked into the mixture and then proceed by adding the eggs individually.

Move on to your sour cream. Whip this until it is smooth and creamy. Take 200 mL of this and bring into mixture as well. Set the remaining sour cream aside for use later. Combine together all the ingredients in the batter until mixture is light and airy.

Spread a layer of butter over the spring form pan’s sides and transfer onto a baking sheet. Transfer the filling into your pan, making sure that the top is level and smooth. Bake in oven for around 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes have elapsed, reduce the temperature to 90° C (fan), 110° C (conventional), or 1 (gas), and continue baking for another 25 minutes. Check your cake by giving the pan a gentle shake and you should see the filling making a slight wobble. From here, you can choose to leave your oven closed if you’re going for a drier cheesecake, or open it for a more creamy result. Let cake cool while remaining in oven for about 2 whole hours.

Use the leftover sour cream with the sugar, lemon juice, and 142 ml carton of sour cream to start working on your topping. Mix all of these together and then spread evenly on top of the cake. Keep this refrigerated overnight.

Dark chocolate cake truffle recipe

Nothing can get better than this.Dark chocolate and cream, when they come together to form divine.Dark chocolate truffles they melt in u r mouth like sugar candy.

Ingredients for making Dark chocolate truffle :

• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2/3 cup cream
• 9 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped 
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preparation for Dark chocolate truffle

1. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with aluminum foil . Place the grated chocolate in a large bowl.

2. take a saucepan and place the cream and mix it until bubbles appear around the edges. pour the cream on top of the chocolate and allow it to soften and melt the chocolate  for a minute.

3. gently stir to incorporate the cream and chocolate. Add the vanilla and stir until well-mixed, but do not stir too vigorously or you will add air bubbles.

4. cover with cling wrap and allow it to cool to room temperature. Once cool, refrigerate until it is firm enough to spoon, about 2 hours.

5. Using a teaspoon  form small 1-inch balls from the mix and place them on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining ganache. Return to the refrigerator to chill for another hour.

6. Place the cocoa powder in a small bowl or pie tin. Dust your hands with cocoa powder and place a truffle in the cocoa, rolling it until it is coated. Roll the truffle briefly between your palms to form a round shape, then place it back on the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining truffles.

7. If you have different varieties/shades of cocoa powder, you can experiment with rolling the truffles in two different cocoas, creating stripes or dots of different colors. Truffles can also be topped with chocolate shavings. Store the truffles in an airtight container in the refrigerator, and bring them to room temperature before serving.