Matzo Crack

matzo crack
Originally uploaded by Ricestein

Lee cribbed this one from David Lebovitz's blog (see: here), and it is completely addictive. Lee has a terrific sweet tooth, but pregnant Jen prefers her snacks savory. And yet, the salty-sweet combination (caramel, bittersweet chocolate, sea salt, and toasted almonds) hooked us both.

Matzo, you have won our hearts.

TWD: Carrot Cake!

Success! Well, mostly. This week's TWD challenge, by Amanda of Slow Like Honey, was for Bill's Big Carrot Cake. I'd been intrigued by this one since I first brought home Dorie Greenspan's book. I love a big, beautiful cake and I've never made a carrot cake at home, although it's one of my favorites.

We baked the three-layer cake in 9-inch rounds, as suggested by the recipe. I checked the oven temperature with an oven thermometer to ensure that the heat was right. I left the cakes in the oven, undisturbed, until it was time to check for doneness. And still, the cakes sank. Just a few mm right in the center, but when we stacked them three-high, the sink was more apparent. This also happened with my 1-2-3-4 cake! What gives?

The taste, however, was extraordinary. We omitted the coconut (I can't stand it) and used walnuts and golden raisins as filler alongside the carrots. With the cream cheese frosting, the final product was delicate and moist and very rich. We served it to friends with homemade vanilla ice cream and iced coffee (this is Tucson, after all). More photos here.

I can't wait to make one of these for my mother's birthday. Carrot cake is her favorite, and this may be the best balance of richness/tenderness I've ever tasted in one.

Cake Friday: Olive Oil & Rosemary Cake with Orange Confit

Olive Oil & Rosemary Cake with Orange Confit

We've had the Babbo cookbook since it was released and for six years it has moved with us. That's three states and probably a dozen apartments. But have we cooked from it? I'm embarrassed to say no. We've been making a serious effort to either use or retire the cookbooks we've collected, so last week, we dusted off Babbo and quickly found the Olive Oil & Rosemary cake. It was love at first sight: a sweet and savory pound cake with six ingredients. The only item we needed to buy was the fresh rosemary and it was on.

The cake was incredibly simple to make, and the end result was moist and flavorful. It was dessert-like but not too sweet (which had its down side: we each ate two slices). We apologize, Mr. Batali. More recipes from Babbo will be made soon.

To accompany the cake, Lee made orange confit from a recipe we found on an old NYT Minimalist video. Here's how it works:

Take four whole oranges and blanch them in a dutch oven of water for 30 seconds. Dump the water and do the same thing again. Then quarter the oranges and put them in the pot with two cups of sugar and enough fresh water to cover. Keep the whole thing at a low simmer (just a stray bubble here and there) for eight hours. You might need to add a little extra water from time to time, to keep the oranges covered. When eight hours is up, you can take the oranges out and let them rest, covered and at room temperature, overnight. The next day, arrange the oranges in the bottom of the dutch oven with two cups of sugar and enough water to cover (again). Keep it at a simmer for eight hours (again). Let them rest over night. The third day: orange slices, sugar, water, simmer. The oranges are quite delicate by the end. They're soft enough to cut and eat with a fork (rind and all); the flavor is kind of related to that of marmalade, albeit with a fuller orange flavor.

We're definitely making this one again.

Cake Friday and news.

1-2-3-4 Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

A Year in the Kitchen has been quiet lately; my apologies. We have been busy with a new project around here... Jen is pregnant! We are expecting our tiny sous chef on September 27.

For the past couple of months, cooking has been limited, to say the least. This is mostly due to morning sickness. Jen hasn't had many cravings (potatoes, icy-cold foods and some chocolate, but that isn't too unusual) but has many aversions: namely chicken and fish. Now that we're safely into trimester two and the nausea has subsided, we're back in the kitchen baking up treats and trying new vegetarian dishes.

To celebrate, we've instituted a new tradition: Cake Friday! We kicked things off last week with 1-2-3-4 Cake, a classic yellow cake from Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. It was relatively easy to make and delicious--very moist, very rich. We used farmers' market fresh eggs and homemade vanilla. We also used her recipe for buttercream frosting, adding in a little bittersweet chocolate at the end. Yum!

Homemade Doughnuts

Frying Doughnuts

We used a recipe in Baking Illustrated for these homemade buttermilk doughnuts. It was pretty simple, and we were able to control the shape pretty well by using a drinking glass and a small water bottle to make the holes. Baking Illustrated recommended frying these in Crisco, but I think that if we had them to do again, I'd use peanut oil. They weren't greasy, but the Crisco weirded me out.

Peppered Balsamic Ice Cream with Fresh Strawberries

Balsamic vinegar + strawberries = yum.

When I came across this recipe in the L.A. Times I just knew I had to try it. Using the mixing paddle on the KitchenAid, I combined a quart of vanilla ice cream with some freshly ground black pepper and a drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar. Served with fresh strawberries and an extra drizzle of vinegar, for good measure.

The vinegar cuts the sugary quality of the ice cream, lending a more sweet-and-sour, yogurty taste.

Banana Bread

I absolutely love banana bread, so when I spied a few soft bananas in our kitchen, I decided to take full advantage. I've been using a modified version of a Better Homes and Gardens recipe for ages, but I recently found a recipe from Baking Illustrated that intrigued me. It called for a generous 1.5 cups of bananas, like my modified BH&G recipe. But Baking Illustrated also wanted me to use a combination of melted butter and plain yogurt in my wet ingredients. There were other small but significant differences as well. The result was a more bread-like bread (vs. the cake-like bread I usually make), slightly less sweet but still tender and moist. I'm converted.

Now, the Baking Illustrated recipe did suggest adding toasted walnuts to the bread. I will confess here that I am not a fan of nuts in banana bread at all. I'm especially put off by the texture of the nuts after they have been steaming inside the bread for an hour. However, I did have a few leftover chopped pecans in the pantry and, in an effort to use everything in the house before our move, sprinkled them atop the bread.


The pecans remained crunchy and nutty, and the baking brought out their natural sweetness very nicely. I also appreciated the contrast between the crunchy texture of the crust and bread's chewy, soft insides. In short, I may never make banana bread without pecans again.