Post- Bar Triple Berry Buttermilk Bundt

 

Oh heyyyy, y'all.

How goes it?  I'm feeling pretty darn good because I'M DONE WITH THE BAR EXAM (cue triumphant music, angels singing, etc.).  For now at least... let's just say I didn't feel too confident walking out of there on Wednesday.  In contrast with the 10 weeks of studying I did beforehand, the exam-taking experience itself was surprisingly non-stressful.  Perhaps because instead of taking it at the Javits Center I took it at Pace Law School in White Plains... which, as one of my bar-exam-taking compatriots noted, was "like, the Canyon Ranch of bar exam locations."  

 

As far as first-days-of-freedom go, yesterday was pretty uneventful.  I tried to sleep late but woke up at 8:30.  I watched a couple of hours of HGTV (House Hunters International FTW).  I played phone tag with my real estate broker (real life apartment hunting FML).  I went to the mall to get an Iphone and a hat and didn't get either, because I'm not due for an upgrade and my head is too darn big to fit into hats (like seriously, its a problem). With my dreams of taking "candid" Instagram self-portraits in a jaunty new fedora crushed, I returned home, whereupon I watched another couple of hours of HGTV. And then I tried to bake a cake.

Yet once again, my plans were destined to fail, as the infamous (?) *Derecho of 2012* struck, leaving in its wake approximately 15 minutes of strong wind, several hours of rain, and... a power outage.

raspberries and blueberries and blackberries, oh my

Power outages are a lot less exciting than I remember as a kid.  Back then, it was an excuse to light candles, gather in the living room in our PJs, play games, and eat all the ice cream in our freezer "just in case" the power took a long time to come back on and it all melted.  Last night, it was essentially my parents and I sitting in the living room alternating between complaining about the lack of electricity and playing separate games of Draw Something, until one by one our phones ran out of batteries.  Ugh.  But the power came back on around 5 am, at which point my baker's sixth sense woke me up and I ran downstairs to take the eggs and butter out of the fridge so they could come to room temperature by the time I got up for real. 

 

This is probably going to be the last post for awhile, because 1) I am going to be spending the next month recovering in Cape Cod and then hiking my way through Israel (fingers crossed I don't die of heatstroke); and 2) despite becoming an obsessive runner this summer, my sitting-at-a-desk-eating-cookies-and-studying-all-day habit has left me feeling less than healthy. ("it's muscle!" says my mother.  "no it's not!" says my bathing suit).  So cake-baking is going on a hiatus while I eat salad and brush the dust off of my Jillian Michaels DVDs.  But oh man am I glad I made this before stocking my refrigerator entirely with cruciferous vegetables.  Berries are so good at this time of year, and anything with blackberries in it is an automatic win for me.  Add some lemon zest and a lemon-y glaze and this is the perfect treat for a summer evening.  Or for breakfast.

 

I made the cake without modifying the recipe, so I'll just direct you to the original source, Smitten Kitchen: Deliciousness Ahoy!

I have to say I really love this cake- BUT it is seriously impossible to get the cake out of the pan intact.  So it's kind of messy.  And falls apart really easily.  But it's absurdly tasty.  So there you go. 

The dough is really thick, but bakes up light and fluffy

Gently toss the berries in a couple of tablespoons of flour before adding them to the dough

No matter how gentle you are, the raspberries will probably smoosh a bit

So prettyyy

Turns out adding 3 cups of berries to a Bundt leaves it... less than structurally sound

But icing is good at covering up flaws!

Yum Scrum.

 

Olive Oil Poundcake with Lemon and Rosemary

 

This.
Is my new obsession.

Is it a dessert?  Is it a snack? Is it a breakfast?  Uhm... How about all of the above?  It's a little bit sweet, a little bit savory, and, like, totally healthy because it's made with olive oil.

The olive oil makes for a denser loaf, but the effect is counteracted by the light summery flavors of lemon and rosemary.  Serve it plain or with a drizzle of honey and forget all about those bland prepackaged pound cakes you can buy at the supermarket.

 

The preparation is super easy but I highly recommend making it like I did, with the help of your awesome younger sister, while tipsy on white wine, with Paul Simon's Negotiations and Love Songs album playing in the background and all the windows open to let in the warm summer breeze.

Oh yes, I love summer. 

Olive Oil Poundcake with Lemon and Rosemary
 from Dinnerlove.com

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced

 

Preheat the oven to 350˚. Grease a loaf pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, and grease the parchment paper as well.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.If you don't have a sifter, try stirring all the ingredients together with a knife (I don't know why this works, or if it does, but it's something my mom taught me to do.)

 

Beat together the sugar and the olive oil in a large bowl.  Add the eggs on at a time, beating until just incorporated. Add the vanilla, lemon zest, and rosemary.

Oh hello, vino

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just incorporated. Pour into the pan.

 

Bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

 

Let cool for approximately 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool on rack.  Serve with honey, butter, jam, or with absolutely nada- it will still be yummy. 

Lemon Roasted Chicken

Hello again! I'm back from another long hiatus.  In my defense, I've been quite busy lately. First of all, I GRADUATED (woowoowoo!).  Accordingly, I was kept busy with a lot of dinners, and parties, and dinner parties, and graduation parties, and let's-party-for-no-specific-reason parties, and somewhere in there I did a ton of work to ensure I actually graduated.  In addition, there was a little bedbug situation in my apartment (I <3 NYC...) that had to be dealt with.   So not much cooking has been done recently, in part because 99% of my belongings were trapped in giant plastic bags while my apartment was treated.  On a related note, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the general public for wearing the same three outfits repeatedly for the last two months. 

 

At any rate, I've finally moved out of the old apartment and will be spending the summer studying for the bar exam at my parents' house. This is horrible news for me but excellent news for this blog because I have never had such a strong motivation to procrastinate in my entire life. Also, my parents seem willing to accept home-cooked meals in lieu of rent, which fits perfectly into my (non-existent) budget.

I reverted to being vegetarian recently (my temporary dalliance with animal proteins died a sudden and painful death brought on by a late night viewing of Food, Inc.), but yesterday was my Dad's birthday and he's the sort of guy who believes if a meal doesn't have meat, it's not actually a meal.   (And if it doesn't have red meat, then it's a "healthy" meal.)  So I made an exception for him and made this lemon roasted chicken.  Since it met Dad's definition of "healthy," we were all able to eat copious amounts of birthday cake afterwards.  

The recipe calls for boneless chicken breasts with the skin still on, which I had to custom order from the butcher at our local grocery store, who somehow interpreted my request for "4 chicken breasts" as "the breasts of 4 chickens,"  meaning not days after deciding to be vegetarian I walked out of the grocery store with the single largest purchase of meat I have ever made in my entire life.  Lovely. But I'm told it was yummy. 

Lemon Roasted Chicken

 Adapted from the Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken breasts, boneless, with skin
•  1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 small onion (the original recipe calls for 3 tbsp of minced garlic)
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• zest of 2 lemons
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp minced fresh thyme leaves
•  kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mince the onion into small pieces.  Warm the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat.  Add onion (or garlic) and cook for a couple of minutes (do NOT let it brown).

Remove saucepan from heat and add wine, oregano, thyme, lemon zest, lemon juice, and 1 tsp. kosher salt.  Stir gently until combined.

 Pour the sauce into a 9 x 12 baking dish.  

 Place the chicken, skin side up, on top of the sauce.  Brush with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Cut the remaining lemon into wedges and stick the wedges in with the chicken. Place the baking dish in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until the chicken is done.  The skin should be nicely browned- if it is not, stick the pan under the broiler for a couple of minutes.

Raw chicken.  With skin.  Eeew.

 Remove from oven and cover tightly with aluminum foil for 10 minutes to seal in the juices.

 Serve with basmati rice or couscous, drizzled with the pan juices. 

Yum Scrum!

Bird's Nest Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Oh, hello again friends. If you celebrate Easter, what did you do today? Spend time with family? Enjoy the sunshine? Eat good food? Spend time in the sunshine with your amazing family while eating good food? That's what I did.

I also started the day off with obscene amounts of matzo brei because, hey, I have one parent who is Jewish and one who is Catholic and my taste buds don't discriminate. I swear I'm not eating again until Thanksgiving.

yummm

You know what else I did today? Spend absurd amounts of time playing Draw Something.

I had been under the impression that Words with Friends and Draw Something only worked on Iphones. False.  I mean, this is just way too much fun. Seriously. Too. Much. Fun. This article was never more timely.

Anywho, I did take some time off from finding creative ways to draw (among other things) a cyclops, a tomato, an apron, and vomit to share these Bird's Nest cupcakes with my family. The banana cupcake recipe is from Baked, while the buttercream and topping situation is courtesy of yours truly. These guys take a little while to prepare if you are doing everything from scratch but you can try to shorten the time needed by buying premade icing and pre-toasted coconut.

I must say, the cupcake recipe was fantastic, and the finished product is adorable. I will definitely be making these again.

Bird's Nest Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

• 2¾ cups all-purpose flour
• 1¼ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup (4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• ¼ cup vegetable shortening, at room temperature
• 1¾ cups granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1½ cups mashed very ripe bananas (about 4 bananas)
• ½ cup buttermilk
• 1 batch of chocolate buttercream frosting (see below)
• 1 bag of shredded coconut
• 1 bag of candy eggs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two 12-cup cupcake pans with paper liners.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.

Beat the butter and shortening together until creamy. Add the sugar and vanilla and continue beating until fluffy. Add the eggs and beat until just combined. Add the bananas and beat until just combined. Then add the flour mixture, alternating with the buttermilk, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.

Fill the cupcake tins about three-quarters full.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 20 minutes. Remove the cupcakes from the pans and place them on the rack to cool completely.

For the chocolate buttercream:

Mix 2 sticks of butter (room temperature), 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, 3 cups of powedered sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 4 tablespoons of heavy cream or half and half until creamy and soft.

For the coconut:

Spread shredded coconut on a baking sheet and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, until browned. You may want to stir the coconut around once or twice during baking to make sure it browns evenly.

It will go from this:

To this:

Now, on to the decorating!

Spread each cupcake with icing.

Using your fingers, press coconut around the edge of the cupcake, leaving a space in the center clean. Place 2 or 3 candy eggs in the center.

So, so cute. And tasty. Success!

Passover Fresh Fruit Tart

Happy Pesach everybody!

About a week ago my bestie Ilene and I went to a "Passover Sides and Desserts" class at the Institute for Culinary Education here in NYC. We were both seeking inspiration for new dishes to bring to our respective Seders this year. During the 4+ hour class we made: chicken soup, herbed matzo balls, salmon gefilte fish, matzo polenta with mushrooms, Passover rolls, potato kugel, a chocolate torte, a strawberry hazelnut macaroon torte, and this lovely fresh fruit tart that I am sharing with you today.

Fresh fruit, tangy raspberry sauce, and an almost marzipan-ish cake... yum scrum

My original plan was to re-make it for my family's Seder on Friday, but the truth is the combination of a killer hangover (Thursday night was... uhm...epic) and a lack of faith in my ability to transport it safely up to Stamford, CT made that impossible. I did make it on Saturday though. And it was deeeelicious. It is kosher for Passover, but seriously its so good and so simple there's no need to limit it to those 8 days of the year. Besides, dessert is non-denominational.

Passover Fresh Fruit Tart

Ingredients for the Almond Cream Cake:

• 1 cup blanched almonds
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 stick butter, at room temperature
• pinch kosher salt

For the toppings:

• 10 oz frozen raspberries, thawed
• fresh fruit and berries (I used banana, orange, raspberries and strawberries- you can also use pears, apples, etc.
• 5 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/4 cup apricot preserves

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9 inch round cake pan and line with parchment paper; grease the parchment paper. Pulverize the almonds in a food processor, then add the sugar and process until combined. Add both eggs and process for one minute. Add the butter (cut into small pieces) and the salt and process for another minute (or until no chunks of butter are left). Place in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until browned (in my experience this takes no longer than 20 minutes).


Cook in cake pan on wire rack for 20 minutes, then remove cake from pan and cool entirely.

In the meantime, wash and chop up your fruit. Berries and oranges can be placed directly in the refrigerator, while bananas/apples/pears should be tossed with 2 tablespoons of the lemon juice before they are put in the fridge to prevent browning.

Blend the thawed frozen raspberries in a blender until smooth, then strain the mixture to remove the seeds.


When the cake is fully cool, spoon the raspberry sauce over the cake (you may not need to use all of the sauce).


Arrange the fresh fruit on top.


In a small saucepan, melt the apricot preserves and 3 tablespoons lemon juice over low heat.


Using a pastry brush, gently brush the apricot preserves over the tart.



Serve with a little extra raspberry sauce for added flavor and prettyness.


Voila! Enjoy.