bitterbutton

so, i went to north carolina this summer and saw my grandmother.  she makes cheese rings and they are delicious.  fact, not opinion.  anyways, we were talking and, not suprisingly, i steered the conversation to cheese rings.  and she mentioned that she had always wanted to try dipping them in dark chocolate. 

and so i did and mailed them to her for her birthday.  they were insane! totally fasinating! extra extra sharp cheddar and extra dark chocolate.  maybe the most decadent thing i’ve ever eaten.  like, it takes a lot of richness to phase me and i could only eat one at a time, extra slow.  but, totally worth taking your time on, because they were pretty delicious.

a birthday cake–yellow cake with salted caramel frosting.  that’s a really great frosting recipe–you make caramel first, then combine it with a typical buttercream.  when i made the caramel, i took it off the burner just before the sugar would have burnt–because i totally love that smoky bitterness and i knew it was going to be balanced out with the butter and confectioner’s sugar.  i also added 1/2 tsp of coffee extract and 1/2 tsp of chocolate extract because, well, i bought them at the cake store and was too impatient to hold off using them immediately.

i also bought the fly fishermen and the pine trees at the cake store.  and the extremely-realistic jellybean rocks.  and, although you can barely see it in the bottom righthand picture, the fish hanging out on the side of the cake.  i kind of enjoy that the center of the caketop is empty and everything is clustered on the edges instead.  next time, though, i’d like to replace the plastic trees and grass with their edible equivalents.  still, i was really happy with how it turned out both taste and appearance-wise. 

this one, a compilation of the tips and tricks of all kinds of cookie experts.  most important trick? to let the cookie dough relax in the refrigerator for a couple of days, giving the (butter-encapsulated) flour ample time to absorb all the little particles of liquid it can.   second most important tip? sprinkle the tops with sea salt.  (which, as david leite’s accompanying article states, is much more commonplace among bakers now than ever) 

the same article speaks of untold richness! unparalleled depth! warm caramel notes! bronzed little cookie bodies! and it’s absolutely true.  like, based on these cookies, i’m now firmly convinced that putting anything in the refrigerator for 36-72 hours, with a little excess liquid, will render it perfect. 

this was a thank-you gift, ordered by someone who got stranded in a boat without gasoline.  hence the nautical theme…and the lifesavers.

i bought a donut cutter in order to make the little lifesavers, and then seriously created the perfect “safety orange” in royal icing for decorating.  also, a nice discovery–i used little parchment triangles to hold my icing for decorating, rather than a pastry bag or ziploc, and found that i had greater control over where exactly the icing was falling. 

i iced the leftover lifesaver innards, those small circles, in “beach glass” colors–various shades of blue and teal.

also in the basket, a batch of marshmallows, a batch of graham crackers, and a slab of chocolate for s’mores.  i used lemon zest and vanilla and almond extracts to flavor the marshmallows–and sprinkled the tops with toasted coconut (tropical flavors and a sandy top).  i tried the graham cracker recipe from the Fanny Farmer Baking Book, which was much more delicious and easy than the one i’ve used in the past. 

origami paper, folded and stapled to the top of the packaging, helped to make the look cohesive.  i also braided some ribbon into a rope, anchored a cookie to it, and tied it to the basket.  that was my favorite part.

a few months back, a good friend of mine had a dream she went out on a date with dean cain.  in the middle of the dream date, dean cain’s head turned into a lemon tart.  and then she ate it. 

dreams like that are special and hilarious and need to be commemorated. so i burned dean cain’s image onto a lemon meringue pie with a blow torch.  it was a birthday present. 

but not without help! first, i turned the picture (it was the best google images had to offer. as it turns out, dean cain isn’t so recognizably “dean cain” in silhouette form or without the superman S. who knew?) into a stencil.  i then sweetly asked my husband to cut the stencil out of aluminum, using his company’s CNC router.  then i bought a canister of butane and baked a lemon pie.

torching the image onto the pie was pretty straightforward, although i practiced a bit on an extra batch of meringue.  i needed to perfect my oh-so-artful shadowing. 

in order to keep everything looking good, i did have to figure out a way to prop the stencil just above, but not touching, the pie.  after exhausting my collection of little glass jars and nearly everything else unmeltable in my kitchen, i finally wrapped books in tin foil and stacked them on either side of the pie.  i rested metal skewers on the books, and rested the stencil on top of those.  it worked and nothing was set ablaze.

i can sort of explain the genesis of these cookies, but not exactly.  1) i was trying to think of foods that can be shaped to look like other foods.  like those dessert nachos and edible paper you see everytime there’s a mention of molecular gastronomy in print.  2) i was also thinking of people that spend lots of time making patterned things out of polymer clay. like beads and picture frames.  3) and finally, as always, i was thinking of my favorite craft book of all time: making miniature food and market stalls by angie scarr.

 + +  =

i made two batches of green tea shortbread (basically following this recipe, except i used coconut extract instead of almond), but added half as much matcha to one batch as i did the other.  this made for two distinctly different shades of green dough.  i bought the matcha in a japanese food store, and i did catch a snippet of english on the label that said “baking”–but i was surprised at how electric green the dough turned out.  other matcha projects have been less vibrant, but still as awesome.

i rolled the light green dough into a cylinder and the darker dough into an 1/8in. sheet.  the dark green dough was rolled around the cylinder and trimmed.  i rolled this new combo-cylinder in sanding sugar, to offset any bitterness the tea might have caused. i sliced it into 1/8-1/4 in. rounds, topped the cookies with sesame seeds and baked in a 325 degree oven until they were done.  and cucumbers were born!

these were a fortunate accident. i was trying to do something completely different, involving both sugar cookie and chocolate cookie dough, and smashed the two doughs together after getting annoyed.  my temper tantrum just happened to create a nice marbled dough the exact color of an airedale terrier.

(image courtesy of the airedale terrier club of canada)

a paying catering job!

i filled tiny cookie jars with tiny (homemade) cookies–and used those as a business card.

and made sandwiches and cookies.

and arranged a platter of tiny fruits (lady apples, mini pears, and little bananas).

and put fresh herbs in amongst the chips.

and made decorative toothpicks for the sandwiches with my own bare hands.

the menu:

• roast beef with caramelized onions, arugula, and lemon-basil aioli on ciabatta
• tuna with black olive dressing, hardboiled eggs and blanched snowpeas on baguette
• smoked turkey and white cheddar with cranberry mustard on sourdough
• tomato, avocado and swiss with cilantro-lime dressing, on whole wheat
• sesame peanut cookies
• dulce de leche rice krispie treats
• homemade “oreos”–crisp chocolate cookie with lemon/white chocolate filling

and all went according to plan:

two things:

1) if ever i were to be encapsulated in a cookie vingette, it would probably look like this picture.  it’s all there–forest creatures, ruled notebook paper, tiny things, and sugar, fat and flour.

2) about 3 or 4 months ago, i was waiting in line for a cup of coffee.  and was, as i’m apt to do, thinking about cookies.  and i decided that i wanted a cookie spoon.  and then spent some time trying to invent strategies on how to make one (my personal favorite crackpot idea:  shaping biscotti dough into the shape of a spoon, for the first stage of baking.  then slicing off spoons like a lumberjack for the second stage.  and i eventually decided on the obvious and easy solution–i bought a spoon-shaped mold on the internet.  however when i was in line, i was so amped about the spoon that i sent my first and only text to myself–”cookie spoons and coral meringue.”  and now i can check one of those off.

incidentally, that’s ceramic notebook paper! fishs eddy, one of my favorite places to covet placesettings ever, has these amazing platters shaped like paper:

after visiting them a dozen times at the store, i finally caved and bought one.  and it rules. ha. a pun.

roll-out peanut butter cookies!  i used this recipe and added a little nutmeg and cardamom to the dough.  the recipe calls for cornstarch to be used in place of a small amount of flour–i’m assuming it helps absorb some of the oiliness of the peanut butter and makes a more tender roll-out dough.

i topped the cookies with white and black sesame seeds before baking; they added a different level of nuttiness and went really well with all the spices. 

i love the hot pink nonpareils as an accent to the natural look of the sesame seeds. 

yeah, i did use tweezers to hand-place each sesame seed and hot pink sprinkle.  it didn’t last long.