in watermelon sugar ... cake

*photo credit, slang editorial

I've been out of town with some friends, but absence makes the heart grow fonder -- and I have missed my kitchen dearly.

A great person once told me that inspiration is born from desperation. Actually, that person might have been Bill Watterson, but I still think he's pretty great, right? Anyway, in consideration of the sentiment, I'd like to add that (on occasion) love can also serve as great source of inspiration. Not my own -- that's gross -- but that of my best pals Siri and Alex. These are the facts: Alex, being a member of previously linked band, has been gone. Siri has missed him. Alex loves watermelons. Siri wants to surprise Alex on his return home with something nice, delicious, and brightly colored.

Thus we have: "In Watermelon Sugar ... The Cake." TA-DA! Probably the most colorful piece of food that I've ever contributed to. Getting the right shade of red was a little tricky, so I'm including this excellent reference for making rainbow cakes -- it will help you maintain a good pigment to flavor ratio.



Funnily enough, the general internet consensus seems to be that recipes like this are best made from boxed ingredients. I feel slightly less bad now about posting something that calls for five out of five pre-packaged ingredients and calling it a "recipe."

In Watermelon Sugar Cake

You Will Need:
basic white cake (store-bought or made from scratch)
red and green decorating gel (betty crocker makes an excellent one)
1 jar of raspberry jam
1 bag chocolate chips
(it's that easy)
Dark green frosting (store-bought or make your own)

To Make:

Prepare the cake mix according to instructions, then stir in chocolate chips to preference. It's good to make sure there's enough that they show up in the batter, but not so many that they overwhelm the flavor and natural texture of the cake. Pour the batter into two, greased 9" round cake pans. Bake and set out to cool. Once the cakes are about room temperature, gently remove them from the cake pans. Slice the rounded top off one of the cakes and slather the surface with raspberry jam. Set the the other cake on top of the exposed/jam-covered surface, and place in fridge until raspberry jam sets (about 20 minutes).

Remove double-layered cake from fridge. Cover in one layer of dark green frosting, then return to fridge. This is known as the "crumb layer" -- and it doesn't matter if it looks messy. This exists just to "hold" the crumbs that will flake off the top of the cake while spreading frosting, allowing you to have an even and beautiful outermost layer. Once the crumb layer has set, spread another layer -- making sure to use even, steady strokes.

Slice open and serve. Oooh and aaah! You've just made Watermelon Cake!

absolute favorites: 1:41 pm Thursday afternoon edition

The new Milk Made flavor: Double Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookie. Described as "fair trade dark chocolate ice cream with chocolate shavings and underbaked peanut butter cookie." Use of the phrase "underbaked" in this context makes my knees tremble.



Vegan chili with grilled tofu hunks from Brooklyn Label. I could care less about my meat and dairy content, but this is a.) served in a huge coffee mug (I've previously discussed my love for this) and b.) totally effin' delicious.

Sigh! Fall....

anything goes now!

There are two ways that sweets are eaten. The first is an anonymous thrust of hand into cavernous box followed by extraction of [fill in the blank chocolate product]. It doesn’t matter what the vehicle of sweetness is, so long as said vehicle arrives in mouth carrying flavor and resulting in endorphin rush. Serotonin will be released, life will go on. But the second way…ah, the second way…that is the one that counts. Imagine:

Some cookies come out of the oven. You transfer them to a plate and set them on the coffee table to cool. They rest innocently between the sneaker collection that is all of your friends feet resting on the tabletop while a movie is watched. The cookies are still so fresh that stream rises from them: fragrant, ghostly, and iridescent with the glow of the television. This is worthy of some attention. One by one, each lounging figure begins to stiffen slowly and rise from the depths of the couch cushions. For a long time nobody does anything else. They just look. Every warm cookie is inspected carefully from afar until one is finally deemed most worthy for consumption based on the merits of its visible nuts, chocolate bits, and golden-hued tan. This cookie, “the one”, is slid delicately from the plate and eaten…very….slowly…. Then the process repeats itself again…and again...and again. The process of cookie elimination becomes suddenly very time consuming, delicate, slow, enjoyable. The cookie has fully surpassed the simplistic and thoughtless rhythm of the grab-and-stuff-in-face; it has become an object of intense speculation and desire.

A really great cookie needs a really great recipe, of course, and this really great recipe comes from David Lebovitz, a bit of a personal hero of mine. We went into this with all possible obstacles against us (not enough brown sugar, and it was hard as a rock, no mixer, stubbornly frozen butter) but we made due by taking a few creative liberties. For example: My friend, Wyatt, took the pleasure of throwing in an entire bag of big chocolate chunks, followed immediately by another entire bag of chopped walnuts. I panicked for a millisecond that there wouldn’t be enough dough to hold all the chocolate and nuts together, but then I was like “Wait a second---listen to what you just said" and realized that I had potentially the best cookie batch EVER now ready to go into the oven. And I was right!

Please, please make these cookies for you and your friends. Each one is a misshapen ball of delicious, just dying to be broken apart with your fingers and eaten in a slow, prolonged swan-song of heavenly pleasure.

Chocolate Chip Cookies via David Lebovitz:

“Great Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (120 grams) firmly packed light brown sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) (115 grams) unsalted butter, cold, cut into 1/2-inch (1cm) pieces
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups (200 grams) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup(130 grams) walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped
Adjust the oven rack to the top 1/3 of the oven and preheat to 300F (150C). Line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
Beat the sugars and butters together until smooth. Mix in the egg, vanilla, and baking soda. Stir together the flour and salt, then mix them into the batter. Mix in the chocolate chips and nuts.
Scoop the cookie dough into 2-tablespoon (5cm) balls and place 8 balls, spaced 4 inches (10cm) apart, on each of the baking sheets.
Bake for 18 minutes, or until pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.
Store at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Make about 20 cookies."


(recipe reproduced without permission, please don’t be mad!)

Summertime Soul, Volume 1

I don't know what I am going to do when summer is over. Frequent, easy, and rewarding access to my neighborhood Greenmarket has completely spoiled me. No longer do I discuss foods in combination with each other("meals" if you will), but rather as entirely independent beings with no need nor desire to maneuver around one another within a single dish.

Whole, fresh heirloom tomatoes straight from the vine. Hunks of unblemished, ripe, yellow mango. Avocado scraped directly from the shell. Peaches, apples, and plums. Eggplants! Does this all sound familiar? It should! If not creative, it is certainly satisfying.

In an effort to recapture the spirit of cooking ambitions past, I recently took all of these things fresh from the Farmer's Market, slapped them together between two pieces of bread, and called it a 'sandwich'. I know that it's borderline ridiculous to post this as a "recipe", but the gooey, toothy mess of delicious that it produced was too good not to share. So, without further ado, let me infringe on your conscious with the Eggplant-Avocado Sandwich.



Eggplant-Avocado Sandwich

You Will Need:
1/2 avocado
Hummus
Eggplant
Tomato
Mustard
1 tbs. olive oil
Salt+Pepper to taste

(That's IT!)

To Make:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Slice the eggplant, brush it with olive oil, and arrange it in a baking dish. Pop it in the oven. Smear your bread with hearty portions of hummus and mustard. Add wedges of avocado and tomato to that, contributing a dash of salt and pepper just for fun. After the eggplant has been baked soft, remove it from the oven and let it cool for a second. Then layer it on top of the avocado and tomato, and smash everything together immediately. With any luck, the eggplant will still be warm when you start to eat.





(If applicable, lay in sunny park during consumption.)

Spoiled rotten, I tells ya!

sugar high

"'I don't want to be a girl, Uncle Tom. I want to be a boy. A girl's all kissing and dolls. I don't want to be a girl. I don't want to.'" -Mary by way of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.

There are very few foods out there that have absorbed as much emotional bankruptcy as the cupcake.They seem to be uniquely capable of assuaging the wounds of the sexually rejected. When the omnipresent “HE” has ceased calling, stopped dropping by, or begun committing whatever other crimes a disinterested man is capable of, the cupcake is a go-to. I have also found them to be an adept tool at combating job loss, parental disagreements, unequivocal self loathing, seasonal blues, and general boredom. Why should the cupcakes role as the ultimate emotional salve be important at this particular moment? No reason! Let's just say that I was justifiably intrigued by an invitation to experiment with cupcake batter from an ambitious wanting-to-open-a-bakery friend. I appeared promptly at her doorstep, aching to lose myself in the girlish oblivion of powdered sugar and flower petals.


For this recipe, you will need:
1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup whole milk
1 tablespoon rosewater
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
A handful of individual rose petals
A bit of powdered sugar

To Make:

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat the muffin tin with cooking spray and set it aside for later. It is important to get this stuff out of the way immediately, as in your emotionally decimated state you may begin to cry irrationally when you realize you have to wait an extra ten minutes before you can start to bake.

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl and set aside. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar. Add the dry ingredients to the large bowl, a bit at a time, and beat steadily until smooth. Bring the milk and rosewater to a boil in a small pan, then add the warm mixture to the batter in a slow stream, beating continually. Stir in the butter and vanilla. Make sure that all the ingredients are well combined.

Pour the batter into the muffin tin, and slide the cupcakes into the oven for about 15 minutes. The time that it takes the muffins to bake and then cool upon eventual removal is perfect for preparing the decorative rose petals. For this part, having a few fresh roses on hand will do the trick just right. Carefully peel the petals off (he loves me, he loves me not, etc). Rinse them with luke-warm water and pat dry. Brush each individual petal with egg whites, using a pastry brush and an extremely delicate touch. Once they are evenly coated, dust them with finely powdered sugar and lay them out to dry for at least an hour. When the cupcakes have finished baking and have been iced, place a few petals atop each frosty mountain for a nice finishing touch.