Treats for appetites of every size
Barrister’s Ball (aka Law School Prom) feels like the beginning of the end of law school. We have one more week of classes, then exams, then we graduate, and I’ll never be a student again. Which is pretty crazy. I’ve made it almost 27 years into my life by being an almost perpetual student. So you’ll forgive me for getting sappy over the next couple of weeks.
Another week, another of Ottolenghi’s Sweet recipes. This time, in looking for something fittingly sophisticated for a book club meeting, I settled on a cookie that looked rich in spices and like it would pair equally well with tea or red wine, depending on what road the night took. Plus, the contrasting colors make for an impressive display, which never hurts when you’re laying out a spread of food for guests.
What do you do when your boyfriend asks you to pick up his root vegetable CSA? Google carrot recipes, thinking you’ll be able to get through them quickly, and realize that even carrot-based recipes don’t use enough carrots to make a dent in your bag of produce. Guess that means I’ll have to make carrot cake for Easter! (Also, if you can think of any other carrot recipes, any at all, please send them to me. Doesn’t have to bae a baked good!)
It’s Spring Break! And Spring Break means fun baking. This week I tackled another Ottolenghi recipe: Tahini Halvah Brownies. Ottolenghi uses tahini a lot, and I am yet to meet a recipe of his where I wish he didn’t. For example, I rarely eat banana bread without some tahini, salt, and honey these days. And his hummus is very tahini forward, which I firmly believe is for the best. So when I saw these brownies, with their swirls of tahini across the top, I knew they’d be one of the first recipes in his baking book that I tackled.
This weekend I decided to bake something exciting. I had the time. I had a book club (which meant it would disappear quickly). I hadn’t made a cake in far too long. Also, Cate made it a couple weeks ago and I got jealous. So I pulled out Ottolenghi’s Sweet cookbook and found the most colorful, interesting looking cake I could: Lemon Berry Stripe Cake.
I’ve been promising Erik cinnamon rolls for a couple of weeks now, and since this is one of those rare weekends during which I’m actually in Cambridge, it seemed like the right time. Now, these are not to be confused with cinnamon pinwheels, which I’ve made before. Those are more of a cookie than pastry. Cinnamon rolls, on the other hand, are a yeasted dough (more on that later), and are meant to be a lot cakier. And they’re meant to be iced, but since Erik was calling the shots, we didn’t go that route.
After that disappointing night, here’s a quick post for you.
Last week, I baked my first recipe out of Sweet, but did so down in DC with Cate and Jonathan. This week, I baked my first recipe out of my own copy of Sweet, and did so here in Cambridge, during a much-needed weekend without travel. I had originally planned on making Torrone, but decided to wait on that. Then, I thought I’d make Ottolenghi’s peanut butter s’more cookies, but again decided it seemed a little too involved. Finally, I settled on Rugelach: impressive looking, but not overly time-consuming. And, as luck would have it, they got one of my …
Finally out of the Christmas cookie posts! And this week, I’ve got a great one, out of Ottolenghi’s new cookbook: Sweet. I have many of his cookbooks, and really have never gone wrong with his recipes. But I never would have known about him if not for my college roommate Cate, who spent the past couple of years in England. When I went out to visit her, she brought me to one of his restaurants, and later got me a cookbook.
The last of the Christmas cookies: candy cane whoopie pies. If you read my blog often, you know that for family events with my mom’s siblings, I try to make something gluten free. Usually, this means flourless cake or haystacks or something of that sort, which on their own don’t have flour, but this year I decided to try to use an ingredient I see pop up a lot in gluten free recipes: xantham gum. This stuff is supposed to help mimic a recipe that would otherwise call for flour, so if you want to make something recognizable as a …