Category: dumb jokes

by Rachel Sally

De Rigueur

A good brownie recipe is like a good pair of heels or a slick black dress.  
 
 
Completely necessary and indispensable to have in your closet recipe box while seducing that hot boy…
 
…Well that analogy fell through.  Brownies are an essential in my closet.  This is a no-judgment zone, okay?  So wipe that smirk off your face.
 
What I mean to say is that they’re classic.  And classic for a reason they are.  
 
And so easy!  They are one-pot wonders, I tell ya.
 
 
And so easily customized!  
 
You like cakey?  Bake them for 5 more minutes.  
 
You like fudgy?  Underbake them by 3 minutes.  
 
You want mix-ins?  Add whatever your little heart desires. 
 
This recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated.  It is foolproof.  I should know, because I’m a fool I’ve baked 4 batches of brownies (that’s 256 of these lil guys) in the last week for a school statistics project.
 
To answer your question, yes, I am always the annoying person who does projects only concerning things I already like.  So… baking projects.  Yeah.
Keep these in your arsenal; I guarantee they’ll come in handy some day.  
 
Nobody doesn’t love chocolate.
 
Classic Brownies
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated
Makes an 8×8 pan
ingredients:
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 tablespoons shortening 
8 tablespoons butter
9 tablespoons cocoa powder
8.75 ounces sugar (1 1/4 cups)
3 eggs
5 ounces flour (1 cup)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
dash chocolate extract, should you be into that sort of thing
up to 3/4 cup mix-ins (chocolate chips?  toasted nuts?  dried fruit?  crushed candy?)
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line an 8×8 pan with two sheets of aluminum foil, creating a sling.  Spray with cooking oil.  In a heavy bottomed saucepan, combine butter, shortening, chocolate, and cocoa powder.  Stir with a wooden spoon until melted and smooth.  Stir in sugar, then increasing your speed, beat in the eggs.  (If you’re a wimp, you can do this part in a stand mixer, but you honestly don’t need to stir for very long, and that dirties another bowl.) Stir in the extracts, then the flour.  Mix only until homogeneous.  Stir in desired mix-ins.  Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 14-20 minutes, depending on how cakey/fudgy you like them.  Check often; a toothpick will come out of fudgy brownies with faint streaks of chocolate and a few crumbs; in-the-middle brownies will produce only moistened crumbs, no streaks; and cakey brownies will come out with very few crumbs.  For cakey brownies, watch carefully because there is a difference between cakey and light and overbaked and burnt.
by Rachel Sally

Ad Hoc

I find myself opening a lot of drafts, trying to figure out what to write, and a lot of times, I just don’t know.  No one told me that putting words down and sending them into the shadowy interspace would be so gosh darn hard sometimes.  
 
 
Yet I love it.  I love challenging myself to be creative, or funny, or sarcastic, or whatever, but to be honest, I’m not funny or creative or sarcastic all the time.
 
In fact, I hardly ever am.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I am whiny not.
The only solution is to wing it.
 
Baking new things and combining new flavors is not my problem; I have an entire document on my phone of wacky flavor combinations that I’m dying to try out (See the cornmeal-fig-pistachio-brown butter combo at the bottom of this post for proof).  
 
 
My issue is that I don’t always know what to say about the food I make, without being super repetitive and annoying.  
 
 
I don’t always have witty things to say.  Really.  I just have to pretend I do.
 
 
So. Um.
These were delicious.  You should make them.  
Boom. Done.
 
And P.S.?  The French word for pistachio is inexplicably beautiful to me.  Pistache.
 


Fig, Pistachio, and Cornmeal Brown Butter Blondies
adapted from smittenkitchen’s infinitely adaptable blondies
ingredients:
1 stick butter, browned
1 loose cup light brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
big pinch kosher salt
3 tablespoons coarse polenta
1/4 cup fine cornmeal
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon white whole wheat flour (can use all-purpose)
1 cup chopped dried figs
1 cup toasted chopped pistachios
directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease an 8×8 pan.  Stir brown butter and brown sugar together, then stir in egg and vanilla and salt.  Add in the cornmeals and flour, and stir until combined.  Add in the figs and pistachios.  Spread into pan and bake until golden and slightly firm to the touch, 30-35 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly, slice, and remove from pan.  Allow to cool completely, then dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired.

by Rachel Sally

Stoned

I’m referring to stoned fruits, of course: those token fruits of summer.  Juicy, sweet, ripe peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, and apricots.

Now that summer has started and these fruits abound, I’m in heaven.  Seriously.  There is nothing better on a summer morning than some plain Greek yogurt with a sliced up white peach.  
Summer is a fruit lover’s dream.  Go to your local farmer’s market and take a look around: you’re sure to find some amazing fruits, right along with the towering piles of garlic scapes and swiss chard.  The other weekend, I picked up some beautiful red and green gooseberries and long, slender stalks of rhubarb, which I combined into an olive/pumpkin seed oil-polenta crumble.  It was divine… In fact, it was gone too quickly for me to photograph (ugh), but I’ll share the recipe anyways.  It’s a keeper, for those times when you might have some gooseberries and rhubarb lying around… Actually, it might be worth seeking out these seemingly esoteric ingredients.  Inquire around your local market, I’m sure you can get your greedy paws hands on some.
As for the tart(s) that are in the photos, they were quick almond-plum-nectarine tarts that I whipped up for a dinner guest.  Slightly sweet chantilly topped them off for a perfectly light summer dessert.  I was lucky that I took photos of them that very night, because the next morning not a crumb was left.  

Other than the aforementioned stone fruits, I’m looking forward to a summer bounty of beets, kale, tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, spicy carrots, an overwhelming amount of zucchini, melons, peppers, and squash.  I’m always somewhat surprised when I’m reminded of how bountiful the region where I live really is;  I’m always reminded to be thankful.  What are you looking forward to in your CSA baskets, grocery shopping carts, or gardens this summer?

Gooseberry, Rhubarb, and Polenta Crumble
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups red and green gooseberries
6 small stalks of rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch long pieces
2/3 cup turbinado sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
1/4 cup stone-ground polenta
1/4 cup cornmeal
pinch of sea salt
1/3 cup+ oil (I used pumpkin seed and olive oil, and ended up needing just a splash more)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Toss the gooseberries and rhubarb with 1/3 cup turbinado sugar in an oven-proof dish.  Put them in the oven while you prepare the crumble.  Mix the flour, salt, sugar, and cornmeals in a bowl.  While stirring, add in the oil until the mixture comes together and has a texture like wettish sand.  Pull the fruit out of the oven and top with the crumble.  Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until the juices are bubbling at the sides and the crumble is slightly crisp.

Nectarine and Plum Almond Tart
Bits and pieces from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking
Ingredients:
1 recipe tart dough
4 ripe nectarines
3 ripe plums
6 tablespoons butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
3/4 cup blanched, ground almonds
2 teaspoons flour
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 egg
splash vanilla extract
tiny splash almond extract
Directions:
Press your tart dough into your pan , prick with a fork, line with buttered foil, shiny side down, and freeze.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Bake tart dough for 15 minutes.  Pulse the butter and sugar in a food processor until the mixture is smooth.  Add the almonds, flour, and cornstarch and process, then add the egg.  Add the extracts and process for just 15 seconds.  Refrigerate.  Slice up your plums and nectarines into thin slices.  Remove the foil from the shells, pour in the almond cream, and arrange the slices as you desire.  Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the almond cream has puffed up and become golden brown.  Let cool in pan, then remove to serve.  Serve with fresh chantilly if desired (whip cream with a touch of confectioner’s sugar until soft peaks form).  

by Rachel Sally

Autant de Pêches

“Welcome to my herb garden…”


I planted my herb garden.  I’m very excited.  I have rosemary, basil, sage, French tarragon, oregano, marjoram, thyme, and what seems like endless lavender.  For some reason, I can’t stop singing “welcome to my herb garden” to the tune of this. (Warning: probably do not click if you are not within the age range of 14-32, or have a strong aversion to hiphop.  I’m not age discriminating, it’s for your own good.  Promise.)  
Okay, back to your regularly scheduled program: cake.

 

I don’t know if you’ve discerned this by now, but I lalalove peaches. And nectarines, because they’re the same fruit, minus that one itty-bitty fuzz gene. People always leave nectarines out of the discussion. It’s not their fault they don’t grow facial hair, people, it’s a mutation.  So don’t rub it in.
Anyways, my brother is a peach pie kinda guy (then again, who isn’t… Let’s be totally honest here), and he is always demanding asking for one.  His twenty-first birthday was a few weeks ago, in May, but he was in Korea, so we didn’t get to celebrate as a family.  I fancied the idea of a peach pie cake, but I wasn’t quite sure how I would pull it off, until I saw a recipe in Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar for “pie crumb” and pie crumb frosting that I knew.  Eating a sweet, ripe peach with a dollop of tangy sour cream is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and whenever I do, it brings me back to a certain family vacation to Cape Cod, my mama slicing up white peaches and serving them to me with sour cream while my dad and brothers watched South Park in the other room (Did I mention that my family is dysfunctional?), so I knew I wanted to make a pie crumb frosting with sour cream for a tang.  I made a peach cake, filled with pie crumbs, peaches, and pie crumb frosting, and topped with more pie crumbs.  The slightly tart taste of the peaches and sour cream mixed with the buttery crumbs and sweet cake was top notch, if I do say so myself.  Because sour cream has a fat content similar to heavy cream, you can whip it into a pretty stable frosting.  I will definitely be using this more often to make cream cheesy frostings.  Christina Tosi is a genius: her pie crumbs are to die for.  I made a batch and a half because I knew I would need insurance against my raging snacking habit.  Yum.  

Peach Pie Cake
Bits and pieces from Momofuku Milk Bar
For the cake:
Ingredients:
2 cups pureed peaches
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk powder
3 ounces butter
3 small eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter and flour 2 or 3 eight inch rounds.  Sift the flour, salt, milk powder, and baking powder together.  Beat the butter and sugar together, then beat in eggs one at a time.  Add in the peach puree and vanilla, and beat until combined.  Add in the dry ingredients, alternating with the buttermilk.  Pour into prepared pans and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until springy and golden.
For the pie crumbs:

Ingredients:
320 g flour (2 1/4 cups)
27 g sugar (3 tablespoons)
5 g kosher salt (heaping teaspoon)
178 g butter, melted (1 1/2 sticks)
30 g water (2 1/4 tablespoons)
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add the butter and water slowly, on low speed, until the mixture clumps up.  Spread the clusters out on a parchment lined sheet pan and bake for 25 minutes, or until light golden.  

For the frosting:
(makes enough to frost and fill one four layer cake)
Ingredients:
12 ounces mascarpone
16 ounces sour cream
8 ounces (1 cup) heavy cream
3/4 cup pie crumbs
3/4 cup powdered sugar
Directions:
Blend all ingredients in an immersion blender until thick, creamy, and homogeneous.  The pie crumbs should be broken up into almost invisible pieces.  

To assemble:
Torte the layers.  Frost each with 1/3 cup frosting.  Top with pie crumbs and thinly sliced peaches.  Crumb coat the cake, then put it in the fridge to chill.  Frost with remaining icing, and decorate with pie crumbs.  
Là voilà! Un gâteau de la tarte aux pêches!