Carrot Cake Cupcakes

When I was a kid, my mom made carrot cake for special occasions. One year, for an end-of-the-year party with my little brother's tennis team, she decorated the whole thing with frosting tennis balls. Her recipe comes from the Frog and Commissary cookbook, which came from a restaurant in Philadelphia that she used to eat at in college. When I started collecting cookbooks, it was the first one she gave me.

The real cake is this kind of spicy, dense thing, with caramel frosting in between the layers, and a cream cheese frosting on top. If you want to make the authentic version, you can look it up here. But when I've made it in my tiny kitchen, I've made them into cupcakes, left out the caramel layer, and topped the piped cream cheese frosting with a couple tiny homemade marzipan carrots. I leave out the pecans and raisins and instead throw in more carrots than originally called for-- because then it's healthy, right?

This recipe makes about 42 cupcakes. The cream cheese frosting is the right amount if you're piping the frosting just in the middle of the cupcake, but if you like a ton of frosting on your cupcake, feel free to make half again as much.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

1 1/4 cups corn oil
 (or canola, or sunflower, whatever you have) (272g)

2 cups sugar
 (400g)

2 cups flour (280g)

2 teaspoons cinnamon
 (7g)

2 teaspoons baking powder
 (7g) 

1 teaspoon baking soda
 (3+g)

1 teaspoon salt
 (6g)

4 eggs


6 cups grated carrots (almost a kilo-bag's worth of carrots, grated in the food processor)


Cream Cheese Frosting

4 ounces soft unsalted butter
 (100g)

4 ounces soft cream cheese
 (100g)

1/2 pound of powdered sugar
 (225g)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (2g)

Make the cake: Preheat the oven to 350°F (175ºC). Have ready a cupcake mold with the cupcake liners inside (I like to use a silicon form, because then the cupcakes are easy to push out). In a large bowl, whisk together the corn oil and sugar. Sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Sift half the dry ingredients into the sugar-oil mixture and blend. Alternately sift in the rest of the dry ingredients while adding the eggs, one by one. Combine well. Add the carrots. Pour into the prepared cupcake mold and bake for about 20-25 minutes-- keep an eye on the cakes and take them out when the tops look domed, set, and a little golden. If you are not using the cakes that day, they can be removed from the mold, wrapped well in plastic wrap and stored at room temperature. They also freeze really well, frosted or unfrosted.

Make the frosting: Cream the butter well. Add the cream cheese and beat until blended. Sift in the sugar and add the vanilla. If too soft to spread, chill a bit. Refrigerate if not using immediately, but bring to a spreadable temperature before using.

Quinoa, almonds, dried fruit, lentils, rice, a poached egg, and the kitchen sink

This recipe is kind of a non-recipe. Hubby offered to boil potatoes for dinner, so I gently turned him down and pulled together this doctored mix of leftovers. And unfortunately (or fortunately), it disappeared too quickly to take pictures. It's nothing too impressive, but worth remembering for next time there's lentil and quinoa soup in the fridge.

1/2 cup rice
1/3 cup quinoa
2 small potatoes
parve chicken soup mix
3-4 cups water
1/2 cup lentils
4-5 cloves garlic
1 small onion

1 tablespoon olive oil
more garlic :)
1/4 cup quinoa
handful dried fruit
handful chopped almonds
3 eggs

The first step is to combine the first group of ingredients into a soup and eat it for dinner the night before. You can also skip this step and just cook it all together in a small pot, which would take about half an hour to get everything cooked. Make sure there's leftover liquid, that it's not too stew-y.

Toast almonds over low heat in a dry pan until they smell nutty. Then, pour in a bit of olive oil and saute the garlic for a minute. Once it's all sizzling, add in the (cold or hot) soup. Sprinkle on the quinoa and add the dried fruit. Cook 10 minutes uncovered, and add a bit more water if you need to. Crack the eggs, check them, and pour them onto the mixture, shakshuka style. Cover the pan and let cook 5 minutes. Serve hot! some bread would be a nice touch, but not necessary.

Endive, mango, goat cheese and almond salad

This was leftovers night. I just kind of threw whatever we had a bit of onto this endive salad, and it was delicious. You could probably use any sweet fruit, any spreadable cheese, any nut, and it would still work.

For two people, I used:
1 endive
half a mango
whatever was left in the container of goat cheese
a handful of almonds, chopped with a rocking motion
some fresh parsley




And in case this wasn't enough goat for you, here you go:

St. Moritz, goat capital of the world

(This is not factually true)

Nectarine and Chocolate Tartlets

My mother-in-law makes pies everything. Apple pies, onion pies, rhubarb pies, chocolate pies, you name it. So when my husband announced that his parents were coming to visit and see our apartment for the first time, I decided to try my hand at pies, too.

My mother-in-law took a bite and affirmed, surprised, "It's milchig." (Well, of course. I know who raised me-- the lady who brings chocolate chip cookies to the dentist's office.)

I started with a Julia Child recipe for sweet short paste, threw a bunch of fruit inside, and drizzled the whole thing with chocolate. If that's not enough description for you, here it is broken down. This recipe makes 12 cupcake-sized tartlets.

For the shell:

1 1/3 cup flour, scooped and leveled (210 g)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar (38 g) (I added a little extra-- she calls for 2 tablespoons, 25g)
1/4 teaspoon salt (1g)
11 tablespoons cold butter cut into small pieces (Here Julia calls for vegetable shortening to be mixed in with her butter to make a flakier crust. If you have that, you can use 3 tablespoons shortening and 8 tablespoons butter. I didn't have shortening, so I went with an all-butter crust. You don't miss the flakiness, I promise.)
5 tablespoons cold water (75g)

For the filling:
3 medium nectarines
1 tablespoon sugar (13 g)
4 squares of whatever chocolate you like-- I used a Frey dark chocolate


If you have a food processor, put in all the ingredients except the water into the bowl, give it a good whirr, and then add the water and mix until it begins to mass on the blades. Then do the fraisage, which is when you use the heel of your hand to smear the dough and really get the flour and fat blended. After each smear, gather it up again. Then put it in the fridge to get cold.

I don't have a food processor, so I did it all by hand. After admonishing us to work quickly so we don't warm the butter too much, Julia tell us to place all the ingredients except the water in a bowl and "rub the flour and fat together rapidly between the tips of your fingers until the fat is broken into pieces the size of oatmeal flakes." You'll mix it more later, no worries.

Add the cold water and blend with one hand while gathering the dough into a mass. If you need more water, add it. Then do the fraisage and refrigerate for two hours of overnight, or freeze for about an hour. I left mine in our tiny fridge for 2 days, and it was totally fine when I took it out Sunday morning.


To roll out the dough:
Preheat your over to about 400ºF (200ºC).

I worked on a floured silicone mat, which made the dough easier to handle. If it gets too warm, return it to the fridge for 15 minutes. Roll it out, always away from you, until it fills your mat. If you wanted to make one big tart, you could roll it until it was about 5 centimeters bigger than your tart pan, but I wanted to make small ones. So once my dough was rolled out, I used a glass to cut out circles and then pressed them into my silicone cupcake sheet. Use a fork to prick the bottom of the tarts to keep them from rising. Once all the dough was used up, and the tart shells were in their little cupcake homes, I used cupcake liners, turned them inside out, pressed them into the dough and filled them with rice. If you have pie weights, though, they will probably work better. I usually improvise. When your oven is ready, stick them in for 8-10 minutes, until they start to have a little color. This helps waterproof them a bit.

Meanwhile, pick your fruit. If you have peaches or plums or nectarines, it's probably best to peel them. (probably oranges too.) The easiest way to do this is to drop the fruit in boiling water for 15 seconds, fish them out and drop them in a bowl of cold water, then literally rub them with your hands. The peels should come right off. If it doesn't, you can also use a paring knife to help you. Slice your fruit. Watch your fingers.

Pull your tart shells out of the oven, take out the papers and the rice, and bake for another few minutes. Pull them out again and let them cool slightly.

Julia recommends putting sugar and butter in the bottom of the tart shells, piling the fruit on top, and cooking until they're syrupy. I have no doubt that it would be delicious. However, there's definitely enough butter in this recipe to get by without extra in the bottom. Instead, I put the slice fruit in the shell, sprinkle a little sugar on top, and bake it at 375ºF (190ºC). Julia recommends around 40 minutes for the full tart; I've found that 25 minutes is enough for these tartlets. But my gas oven plays a very hot and cold game with me, so it might be different next time.

For the chocolate drizzle, I took a regular bar of dark swiss chocolate and broke off 4 squares. We don't have a microwave or double boiler, so I improvised a bain marie.I put the chocolate in a little glass ramekin with a lid and put the ramekin in a bowl, then poured hot water around it (careful to keep the water out of the chocolate-- it will seize.) I stirred for a few minutes, put the lid on, stirred, put the lid on, and finally the chocolate was melted. I used a little kitchen brush to dribble chocolate over the whole cupcake sheet, and imagined myself to be Jackson Pollock. Then I popped the tartlets out of the silicon sheet, put them on long white plates, and served them to my surprised mother-in-law.

No idea how long these stay fresh for, but they're delicious for at least an hour after they come out of the oven. :)

Zaatar bread

Last time one of my friends was in Israel, she picked up a giant container of za'atar for me. I've been trying to figure out what to do with this mix of thyme, sesame seeds, and sumac, and came across a recipe for Manouche, a flat bread with an olive oil and za'atar topping.

Kids, it is delicious. Salty and earthy on top, soft and chewy inside. Not quite like what you buy in Mahane Yehuda, but it scratched the itch I had for some good za'atar.

Here is the recipe I used, heavily adapted from Chicho's kitchen.

Ingredients: 
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Scant 1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup water
1 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp active dry yeast


For the topping
1/2 cup Zaatar mix
1/4 cup olive oil

1-2 tbsp salt (because I like my za'atar salty!)

Bloom the yeast in the water with a half teaspoon of sugar. 
In a separate bowl, mix the oil with the flour and salt. Slowly mix in the yeast-water mixture. Knead for 10-15 minutes or until the dough is soft and elastic. Cover and keep aside to rise for an hour.
Begin forming the bread by flattening out balls of dough and spreading them on a tray using the tips of your fingers, about 4 or 5 inches in diameter and about half an inch thick. Top with the zaatar mix and let sit for 15-20 minutes to rise a bit, then bake in a preheated oven 15-20 minutes at 400ºF (200ºC).

Eat! Enjoy!

Vegetarian Caldo Gallego

It's starting to get cold, and I finally made my way to the local Sunday farmer's market. Beautiful beets! Colorful carrots! and ... Kale. I keep hearing about it but wasn't sure what to do with it. Then I thought, Caldo gallego!

With my kosher dairy kitchen, though, the traditional heavy-on-pork recipe wasn't going to work. So I put together a much less disgusting vegetarian version with all the best parts of caldo and none of the pig.

1/2 can already-cooked navy beans

1/2 onion, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2-3 small carrots, cut in medallions
5 cups vegetable broth (not chicken/beef broth)
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
5 big leaves of kale, stems and center ribs discarded and leaves chopped into big strips (in place of grelos)
1/2 tablespoon butter (instead of solid pig fat)

Cook onions in oil in pot over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add broth, salt, pepper, and simmer, uncovered. Add butter. Add carrots and cook for 3-5 minutes. Add beans. Stir in kale and simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until kale is tender, 12 to 15 minutes. Season soup with salt and pepper.



Eat! Enjoy!

Baked Carrot Almost-Fries

I have yet to master the art of making crispy carrot fries. I'm actually not sure that it can be done-- maybe there's too much moisture inside the carrot to get the kind of crispness you get with Kale chips (or maybe the key is the frying)? But watching RuPaul's Drag U at the gym today inspired me! I decided that when a diva wants her baked carrot almost-fries, she gets her baked carrot almost-fries!

First, get a bunch of super beautiful carrots from a farmer's market, wash well, and cut off the end bits.

Then, try to figure out if any of the carrots could be made to look like an animal or a person. Do you see any in the picture above? RIGHT!  The split carrot was just waiting to be made into a real girl!

Check out this stylish carrot lady

Wasn't that fun? Dry your carrots well and toss them with olive oil and salt. Stick them in a preheated 375ish degree oven and bake for 15-20 minutes. Then take them out:

They'll be sweet and salty and as melt-in-your-mouth as carrots can be.

Eat! Enjoy!

Hello!

So here's the deal.

I make food that I like, and then I forget how I've made it. So this blog is kind of a recipe book, kind of a photo album, kind of an easy way to share ideas with friends, and also kind of something to do while I adjust to life in Switzerland. The first few recipes are from my time in DC; after that, I've switched from cups to grams and from ºF to ºC.

Here are some things you should know about me:

1)I try to get as few things dirty as possible.

This is because I try to wash as few things as possible, too.

2)My automatic preference for everything I cook is to make milchig.

I kept a dairy kitchen in DC, and have never really cooked meat, so the idea of making something parve when it could be full of butter and cheese is kind of a foreign concept to me. My husband, however, disagrees, so I'm working on it. But in the meantime, I lean pretty heavily towards dairy.

3)Most of the time I forget to take pictures while I'm working.

Who wants to pick up a nice camera with sticky hands? Not me.



Anyway, read! Enjoy!