my first bread pudding

20 minutes before people arrived for our last minute Labor Day BBQ, I still didn't know I was going to make this. But we didn't know how many people were going to show up/ if we were going to have enough food and we'd had these two loaves of stale sourdough in the fridge for about a month so, you know, transitive property.

I adapted this recipe from one I found on grouprecipes.com. I used a higher baking temperature to begin with, so that the top formed a nice crust. I also subbed dried cherries for raisins and eliminated the meringue topping altogether. For my next round, I'm going to try adding fresh stone fruit and maybe brulee the top.

SOURDOUGH BREAD PUDDING WITH CHERRIES

INGREDIENTS

1 large round loaf of stale sourdough bread, torn into rough chunks
1 cup dried cherries
4 Tbs. butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
6 eggs - yolks
1 cup sugar
1/3 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
6 cups milk
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 425°. Combine bread, cherries, and butter in a baking dish, mine was a large round tin. Sprinkle on cinnamon. In a large bowl mix well the egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, salt, 1 tsp vanilla, and milk. Pour over bread, make sure to get the pieces at the top too. Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350° and continue baking for 20 minutes, or until the custard appears to be absorbed. Remove and let cool.

Leftover rice

They say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Better yet, I'd say that when life gives you leftover rice and you're out of other things to eat for breakfast, make rice pudding. Much less elegant, but  much more filling.

No bread, no cereal. This morning, the situation looked grim. I made tea, worked for a bit, and avoided the thought of making breakfast. I googled "rice breakfast," thinking I might do something Asian with the leftover rice from last night, maybe throw a poached egg on top of some fried rice. The first results turned out to be rice pudding, which I was lucky enough to have the makings for.

I threw together what amounted to be probably a cup or so of leftover rice, a cup of milk, and a hand full and a half of raisins into a pot, cracked one egg, and stirred it well. For sweetness, I dripped in a few tablespoons of maple syrup (though honey or white sugar would probably do the trick), and sprinkled in a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. I brought it to a boil, stirred some more, and let it simmer for maybe 5-7 minutes. This is a really satisfying breakfast for very little work. Sweet, hearty, and it warms the cockles. Great for the winter, especially if it happened to be winter outside!

S'more cake from Nickel Diner

As if by mandate, Aaron and I rose at the crack of 7:15 to get to the Nickel Diner downtown, for early morning bites and photos of their famous s'more cake. "Nickel Diner's Blowtorched S'more Cake: How Best to Celebrate National S'more Day" is a short suggestion for tardy celebrators of the unofficial holiday.

S'more cake, Dutch-angled because it's so intense.

Lily's birthday cupcakes, part 1

Baking mini chocolate cupcakes for Lily's birthday parties has become something of a personal tradition. I do it partly because it's sweet, but mostly because I love when her friends say, "You made these?!" with surprise, before pounding down another three or four tiny creme cheese frosted cakes. Of course, I did make them. But I had help.


You see, the secret to Lily's birthday cupcakes is boxed cake mix with double pudding. I know there are those who find this to be a cop out, those who'd rather spend a lot of time and money to make a decent to good cake because it helps them see themselves as better people. But I say with total earnestness that I believe in boxed cake mix because, after all, it's about baking better cakes. Yes, Uncle Duncan (Hines) and Aunt Betty (Crocker) are the originators of my "secret" "family" recipes, and I take no shame in admitting it, because if they got cake so incredibly right, which again, is so much better than your Aunt Sally, why mess with it? Note: I feel this way about Heinz Ketchup as well.

When I was little, Nancy Silverton and her kids used to be at all of the family birthday parties. The gatherings were almost always pot-lucky, always a little pastiche-y, and everyone contributed their specialties. So when it came to dessert, my mom would bake a cake (from a box), cousin Licia would make the creme cheese frosting, and Nancy would frost the cake (because it requires artistry). As my mom likes to tell this story, at the first of these parties, Nancy's kids (who already had pretty refined palates, as you can imagine) took just one bite of the dessert collaboration before their minds were blown by its perfection. "Why don't your cakes taste like this?" they asked their mother, the world-renowned baker.

Boxed cake mix is simple and delicious. But perfect creme cheese frosting is a little more demanding of its maker. However, since I must get down to real work, I'll save that for Part 2 of Lily's birthday cupcakes.

Hamantashen on JST

It feels thematically acceptable, even appropriate, to file this post according to Jewish Standard Time, which measures time by (often gross) approximation. Indeed, according to JST, posting on hamantashen almost a month after Purim is actually timely.

When people ask my co-baker Rebecca to tell them the story of Purim, she says, "Glad you asked," and dives right in. I do not. Despite the "Esther saves the Jewish people from the evil Haman" part, I can't shake the fact that it is essentially a story of a Jewess who tricks the king into marrying her. (What a stereotype.) So, I'll leave it to wikipedia to fill in the details if you're interested.

For our purposes, it's only really important to know that the featured cookie is named after Haman, the one who ordered the Jews to be killed and depending on who you ask, the triangular cookie is an approximation of either his hat or his ear. However, Becca and I are partial to the hat camp because we are logical people and the idea of triangle ears is absurd.

RECIPE:
Dough:
3 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
10 Tbs. butter, cut into cubes
2 eggs
2 egg yolks (reserve whites for egg wash)
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Egg wash:
2 egg whites, lightly beaten with 2 tsp. sugar

TIPS FROM BUBBIE:
-the less you handle, the better
-careful pinching
-roll out thin

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a Cuisinart, pulse several times. Add butter, pulse and then process. In a small bowl, beat eggs, yolks and vanilla. Pour egg mixture into bowl, pulse and mix (bottom up) for 10+ seconds. Refrigerate in a ball for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease pan and line with parchment paper. Allow dough to warm for 20 minutes.

Roll to 1/8" thick, cut circles using a 3" round cookie cutter. Place 2 tsp. of filling in the center and brush perimeter with egg wash. Lift dough to partially cover filling. DO NOT PINCH!!! Seal. Brush tops with egg wash. Bake for 15-18 minutes.

Cool and nosh your heart out.

NOTES: Becca thought it would be a great idea to add a little almond extract, so we substituted 1/2 tsp. vanilla for 1/2 tsp. almond--excellent call. We noticed that the more generous we were with the egg wash, the prettier the cookies turned out. Also, the cookies made with the 3" circle were huge, so we made some of them smaller and although I preferred them that way, the fact that only a few remained by the end of the day suggests that they were so delish that nobody else really cared.

Strawberry Coconut EXPLOSION

In honor of the great Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Alana and I made an MLKcake (almost one too many Ks). If you said to me, "Aaron, make me the whitest (racially) cake you can think of," I'd probably make this cake. This was the first cake I've had a hand in.

We got the recipe from here after troving some food blogs. I left out the coconut pieces in the cake because it seemed like overkill. Coconut frosting, coconut topping, AND coconut pieces in the cake. Neh. This frosting is also really, really sweet, and good lord, we have way too much left over. Cut everything in half, and then, add even less sugar. The coconut milk is so sweet already that I don't think its really necessary. Emma noted while we were making it that the butter in the frosting is just for show to make the frosting more malleable. Whipped cream might be good in between the two layers, kind of like a shortcake but...actual cake. I like this texture for decorative purposes. If you're not concerned about that, then you could probably cut some of the butter too.

Other than that small stuff, this was good, good cake.