h o m e * e c o n o m i c s

christmas cookie party

Recently I made my first-ever visit to Kitchen Arts and Letters, a tiny bookstore on the Upper East Side devoted to food and wine titles. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed and intimidated by its bare, no-nonsense appearance when I walked in, but then I realized how much was packed in there, and I heard the clerks intimately discussing a recent attempt at caramel, and I softened right up. A sunny yellow spine with Laurie Colwin's name on it called to me, and I went home with a copy of Home Cooking. Now, I had heard much of Laurie Colwin's days at Gourmet, but I was not prepared to meet a writer of such charm. I gobbled the book up and resolved to read her novels. I am looking forward to making her bread; I already made Marcella Hazan's Tuscan meat roll at her suggestion; and the warmth and easiness of her words about entertaining convinced me to have a Christmas party.

I bought five pounds of butter on Wednesday, started making dough on Thursday, and fed my friends cookies and White Russians on Sunday afternoon. Here are clementines, parmesan-rosemary crackers from Martha Stewart's Hors D'oeuvres Handbook, and the Chez Panisse gingersnaps from Feeding Dexygus Seconds that convinced me to start a blog lo these many months ago now. These ginger cookies are the best recipe I've ever found on the internet. You should make them tonight.

I also made sugar cookies, rice-krispie-treat-style wreaths (with cornflakes instead of rice crispies), oatmeal shortbread, and Mark Bittman's easy cheese-straw-type crackers. Andrew made my favorite brown-sugar-chocolate-chip cookies from Martha Stewart Entertaining. Though he played fast and loose with the measurements, they were terrific...doesn't that just figure?

That's the oatmeal shortbread on the bottom right. I've been trying to convince people to like this Martha Stewart Quick Cook recipe since at least fifth grade--for a school event, I brought "oatmeal shortbread" and Anne brought "yummy bars"--guess which was more appealing to the eleven-year-old crowd? Well, however it looks or the name sounds to you, I'm telling you, this is good stuff--brown sugary, buttery, slightly salty, and really toothsome. In fact, I ate some more just now, even though the word "cookie" has been making me feel sick for a few days.

OATMEAL SHORTBREAD
-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
-Combine 3.5 cups rolled oats, 2/3 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt.
-With fingers or spoon, work in until crumbly 1.5 sticks butter and 1 tsp vanilla.
-Press into buttered 9-inch-square dish and bake 15 minutes, until golden. Note: Mine was not golden at 25 minutes, so I took it out. It was good but could have gone a few minutes more with no harm done.

strangely compelling butternut squash muffins

Last week I cooked from the Babbo cookbook for the first time. I've never been to Babbo, I'm kind of scared of Mario Batali, and I only have the book because I got it for free a few years back. But something made me pick it from the pile, and I got excited about making braised shortribs with pumpkin orzo. Though the dinner was nothing spectacular (cook's fault, I'm sure), the next morning I adapted his recipe for pumpkin cake to make these butternut squash muffins with rosemary, which were so tender and fragrant I ate one after another in a futile attempt to locate the exact source of their irresistible appeal. (Andrew, who was not as enthralled as I was, says I liked them so much because they occupy some weird middle ground between sweet and savory.) Since I had neither cake flour nor canned pumpkin puree, couldn't include the pine nuts, and didn't want to include the raisins, there's a good chance my muffins bore little resemblance to the pumpkin cake. I can't imagine liking them more, though, and they are deliciously autumnal.

-Preheat oven to 325. Prepare a standard 12 muffin tin.
-Stir together 1 cup of flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1 tsp baking soda.
-Beat two eggs with 3/4 cup light brown sugar until very light. Since I didn't feel like dealing with appliances, even small ones, on Saturday morning, I did this with a fork, and it was fine.
-To egg and sugar mixture add 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves. Beat in 3/4 cup olive oil. Stir in the dry ingredients.
-Now you stir in 1 cup of mashed roasted butternut squash. I had this left over from roasting squash with olive oil, salt, and pepper the night before. Consistency need not be perfectly smooth, though it should not be chunky; mine was a little watery, too.
-Bake until skewer comes out clean/top springs back when you press/muffins have achieved muffiness. This took between 20 and 25 minutes in my oven.

monkey cupcakes

Last weekend I went home for a wedding. I judge weddings by the bride and groom's affection for each other and the quality of the bride's cake; happily, this event scored high in both categories.

The night before the wedding, my sister had promised to host a Monkey Ball to welcome me to town. Accordingly, she baked these adorable and delicious monkey cupcakes, as presented by Tailey the kindergarten classroom monkey and Gonzago the owl:

The cake is banana, and the frosting is chocolate. She used chocolate disks for the ears, tiny M&Ms for the eyes, and vanilla snaps (cut in half) for the monkeymouth. Yum! Thank you, Becca!

If you love monkeys, you will be interested in Monkey Day.

double dip: ginger and cranberry ice creams

The good news is that I finally got to make that gingersnap ice cream (um, minus the gingersnaps). The bad news is that no new stars were born in the ice cream firmament this weekend.

The gingersnap ice cream recipe I lifted from the Times was very different from the two Chez Panisse Desserts ice creams I have made, mainly because it used two egg yolks instead of six. It was still good, don't get me wrong, and I loved its pure gingeriness. But it's hard to go balk to two yolks when you've become accustomed to six: this ice cream was noticeably icier and less smooth than its predecessors. (Besides, when you use the six yolks, you save the whites and have a spa-like egg-white omelette for breakfast the next day, so you see, it's actually quite healthy in the end.) I did not add gingersnaps because he who was dispatched for gingersnaps came back with the wheat-free, gluten-free variety. I nibbled at one, trying to keep an open mind, but it was just not the thing, not the thing at all. Luckily, the ice cream's strong ginger flavor made the fold-in unnecessary. I think it would be delicious with all kinds of fruit desserts.

GINGERSNAP ICE CREAM

-Grate two ounces of ginger into two cups of heavy cream. Add 1/4 tsp salt (N.B. I'm not sure why this needed salt; I have seen no other ice cream recipes with salt, but maybe it brought out the ginger flavor; I couldn't tell) and heat over medium low until it begins to steam, about 150 on a candy thermometer. Turn off heat and let steep for three minutes. Strain, pressing on ginger to extract as much cream as possible.
-Whisk two large egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar until they are pale yellow (about a minute and a half). Slowly whisk in the gingery cream.
-Slowly heat, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches 150 degrees. Cool for ten minutes, whisk in 1 cup of whole milk, and chill thoroughly.
-When mixture is chilled, freeze in an ice cream maker. If you want to add crushed gingersnaps, add them after you've frozen it in the maker but before you put it back into the freezer to firm up. Obviously, you could make amazing, tiny ice cream sandwiches.

See these lovely, ruddy cranberries? I turned them into an oddly foamy, pepto-bismol pink ice cream that muffled their tartness under a blanket of cream. It was OK, but let's just say that I made the ice cream last weekend, it's Thursday now, and there's still some hanging out in the freezer (I realize that I should be inclined to like it because it's a wallflower dessert--apropos of which, was everybody else pained by the moment in the Martha Stewart Apprentice last night when Alexis said, "Dawn, I like you, because I'm always the person everyone on the team likes least"?). I should have taken the hints in Chez Panisse Desserts that this is really a novelty ice cream for the holidays. Oh well. What interested me was that it had NO eggs in it: it's just cooked cranberry puree (from a 12-oz bag), 2 cups of cream, a cup of milk, and a cup of sugar. Because I don't have a food mill, I pureed the cooked cranberries by forcing them through a strainer with a wooden spoon, which made me feel pretty hard core. Grrr. But I think next time we'll try something more conventional, like . . . CHOCOLATE!

Nigella's pear ginger muffins

It has never seemed to me quite right that Nigella Lawson should write for the New York Times. I understand why they'd want her, and I understand why she'd want to do it, but she's so vibrant and seductive, and the Times is . . . not. Nevertheless, my Nigella-worship is such that I'll take her where I can get her, so I was happy to see her back in the food section last week. [Although--I am always surprised to read these "don't be scared of baking" stories, because I thought that even people like me, who will look at a recipe for tomato sauce (seriously), were comfortable following a recipe for cake or brownies. And it's much easier to measure, dump, and stir than to cook a piece of fish just right. Anyway.]

This weekend I celebrated Nigella's return by making her pear-ginger muffins. Andrew liked them very much (I believe the word "toothsome" was used). I thought they were good, with a few reservations: the brown-sugar-crunchy tops were wonderful, and the heat of the ginger was nice, but I don't like chunks of fruit in my muffins, and I thought they needed a pinch of salt.  Four days later they were still moist and fresh-tasting.

-Preheat oven to 400.
-In a large bowl, mix 1.75 cups flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 tsp ground ginger.
-In another bowl, mix 2/3 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 tbs honey, and 2 large eggs. Fold into the dry ingredients. Fold in 1.5 cups peeled pears cut into 1/4 inch dice.
-Divide batter among 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle 2 tbs total brown sugar over tops of muffins and bake for 20 minutes.

double dip: vanilla and coffee caramel

DID YOU KNOW that Russians are great fans of ice cream? Morozhenoe, it is called, and you can buy it on the street even in November. I once spent five months in St. Petersburg and knew everything was in order the day I walked down Nevsky Prospekt licking ice cream in my long underwear, a turtleneck, two wool sweaters, a babushka shawl, and the beautiful but thin black greatcoat my host mother had laughed at when I arrived ("This is your coat?"). It's not the best ice cream you've ever had, but it will do (as ice cream usually does). A popular flavor is plum.

If you love ice cream, you must try making your own. It is so delicious, so easy, and even if you use expensive ingredients like vanilla beans, it is still cheaper than premium store-bought brands.

This was supposed to be the summer of ice cream for me. In late May, when the air was finally warming up and my apartment was close enough to completion that I allowed myself to start thinking about what it would be like to live there, I ordered a hand-cranked Donvier ice cream maker just like the one my grandmother gave me when I was a little girl. I also ordered Chez Panisse Desserts, which was said to be full of delectable ice cream recipes. Despite my intense (undying, really) devotion to vanilla, I looked forward to inventing new flavors, specifically cilantro sorbet and gingersnap ice cream. The machine arrived; the book arrived; and best of all, the contractors finished up and I moved in to my apartment.

My plans to make vanilla ice cream for my very first dinner chez moi were foiled when it turned out the cooktop did not work and so I could not make custard. I tried to make a frozen strawberries and cream dessert; I tried to make mint ice with great bunches of mint from Andrew's parents' garden; I tried a no-cook vanilla ice cream recipe. It wasn't the same, though, and the summer of ice cream was simply not to be. To add insult to injury, the Lee brothers published a piece in the Times about the joys of making ice cream at home, and they included a recipe for gingersnap ice cream. Boy, was I hot under the collar that summer day.

They finally got my cooktop working in September, so on the second day of fall, I finally got to make my ice cream. When I first tasted it, straight out of the maker, I worried that it was too eggy; when I took it out of the freezer the next day, it has frozen rock-solid, and I worried that it was full of watery ice crystals; but when I let it soften just a bit that second day, it was just right, with a marvelous flavor and a satisfyingly smooth, pliant texture.

VANILLA ICE CREAM from Chez Panisse Desserts

-In a medium saucepan, gently warm 1 cup of half, 2 cups of heavy cream, and 2/3 cups sugar, into which liquid/sugar mixture you have scraped the seeds of a 4-inch piece of vanilla bean [DOES ANYONE HAVE TIPS FOR SCRAPING OUT VANILLA SEEDS? I have done this twice in the past month now and fear that I am ending up with $1 worth of pricey vanilla beans in the trash or under my fingernails. Alton Brown must have some brilliant solution]. Throw in the scraped pods as well. Warm, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves.
-Whisk 6 egg yolks just enough to break them up (save the 6 whites for breakfast the next morning, so you can feel less guilty about the ice cream you had no idea was so yolk-rich until now). Whisk in a splash of the warm cream mixture to warm the eggs.
-Add the now-creamy yolks to the cream mixture in the saucepan. Cook over low heat until the mixture reaches 170 degrees F. Supposedly you can do this by checking whether the mixture "coats the spoon," but I feel so much better with a thermometer (which you can buy at K-Mart, Martha Stewart Everyday, for not much money). "Coats the spoon" means that when you run your finger through the custard on the back of the spoon (with which you have been stirring constantly so as to ensure that you are not making scrambled eggs), it leaves a clear trail. This is a distinction too subtle for me, and I prefer the thermometer.
-Once your custard is ready, strain it to remove the little bits of scrambly egg you have probably accumulated. Put the pods back into the custard and chill thoroughly. Once it is chilled, remove the pods and freeze it howeveryour ice cream maker tells you to.

Gosh, that was good. I know I'm no longer alone in saying this, but the phrase "plain vanilla" has never sounded right to me. Is there anything more luxurious than those bitty black beans? But this weekend, I had to try another flavor, one I had been dreaming of since my Chez Panisse Desserts book arrived. I hadn't planned ahead (like David Lebovitz, I do not grind my coffee at home, and I had no half-and-half), so this is a modified recipe (thank you, Mark Bittman). Andrew thinks it could use a dusting of spice, but I think it is amazing and perfect the way it is. I even overcame my fear of homemade caramel to make this...

COFFEE CARAMEL ICE CREAM

-Warm 1/2 cup ground coffee in 1 cup of 2% milk and about 2 cups heavy cream (I had just under 2 cups heavy cream). When tiny bubbles appear around edges, cover and steep for about half an hour--until the coffee taste pleases you.
-While the cream is steeping, put 1 cup of sugar in a smallish-medium saucepan with 3 tablespoons of water. Cook over high heat until it turns a light caramel color (mine developed a honeycomb of thick-looking bubbles before turning color; is this right?). When the color is right, put the pot in your sink and quickly pour in 1/4 cup of warm water. THIS WILL SPATTER AND HISS. Then it changes consistency. Cook to dissolve the caramel.
-Strain the coffee grounds out of the cream mixture; then stir caramel into cream mixture. Splash a bit of this into your 6 lightly-whisked egg yolks and put creamy yolks back into the cream. Heat to spoon-coating consistency as described above (170 degrees). Add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Chill thoroughly and make ice cream.

This ice cream did not freeze as hard as the vanilla--the caramel kept it chewy, even when it was dead frozen. It is very rich and, I think, extraordinary. I did not even notice the substitution of 2% milk for half-and-half, which leads me to believe that some more experimenting is in order.

 

i heart ina: chicken with croutons and coeur a la creme with strawberry sauce

The reason I just had to go home to see my family is that my parents finally moved into the house they have been building for about a year now. It was an exciting process, but also very stressful--my mother has an incredible eye for detail, which means that she has excellent taste (though she would never praise herself like this, it is true)...and that builders' mistakes do not slip by her. Consequently, they were daily battling these guys about things not done the right way (or not done at all; it did not always require an eye for detail to see what was going wrong). I am pleased to report that the result is really beautiful. Too, I am pleased to report that Becca and I convinced them to break in their kitchen while I was home.

Some people are not fans of Ina Garten, I suppose, but we are not those people. We fondly recall buying the first Barefoot Contessa cookbook because the picture on the front was so appealing. As I remember it (though I suspect I am conflating two memories), we went straight home and made that Nicoise salad on the jacket, which made us believers. My mom appreciates how straightforward and trusty her recipes are. So it was only natural that we would turn to Barefoot in Paris for our first new-house meal; we decided on Lemon Chicken with Croutons and a coeur a la creme.

You will think I am exaggerating, but this meal was rapturously yummy. The bed of onions on which the chicken roasts becomes almost a thick onion gravy, and since you pile everything on top of the croutons, it is a meal in which using bread to sop up juices is built right in. I urge you to try it! And lest you also think we break out the champers every time we cook: this lovely bottle of champagne was a housewarming gift from the builders. Given their fraught relationship with my parents, we worried that it might be poisoned, but so far, we're all still kicking.

the doctor at work

LEMON CHICKEN WITH CROUTONS

As so often happens with Ina Garten, this recipe is mysteriously perfect. I kept checking on the browning chicken, worried that the top would burn by the time the whole cooked. Instead, it cooked in exactly the amount of time she said it would. I don't remember that the meat itself was the juiciest, best I'd ever tasted, probably because the onions and croutons were so good that it was hard to notice anything else.

-Preheat oven to 425.
-Slice 1 large yellow onion; I did thick slices. Put it in the roasting pan and toss with a little olive oil.
-Take your four pound chicken; remove giblets, wash bird, dry thorougly.
-Place chicken on top of onions in roasting pan. Salt and pepper cavity and stuff with 2 quartered lemons. Brush outside of bird with 2 tbs. melted unsalted butter; sprinkle with more salt and pepper.
-She says to truss, but we did not. Roast for 1 hour and 15 minutes
-While the bird is roasting, prepare your croutons.

If you are at all like us, you will pull out a ruler to cut a small country boule into 3/4 inch cubes, thereby making six cups of bread cubes. My mom apologized for handing me the ruler when I began this task, but the truth is, I would have used a ruler even if she wasn't there.
-When your chicken gets out of the oven, let it rest while you make the croutons. Heat 2 tbs. olive oil in a large saute pan until very hot. Lower heat to medium-low and saute the croutons until they are browned--about ten minutes--adding more oil as needed. Sprinkle with 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. pepper.
-Put the croutons on a platter and top with sliced chicken, onions, and pan juices. Try to save room for dessert.

COEUR A LA CREME WITH STRAWBERRY SAUCE

This is a dessert my mother has wanted to make since she clipped a magazine recipe for it as a girl. She bought the mold years ago, but we didn't make it until just now. I have always been curious about it, too, since I of course cannot resist anything that requires special equipment; special equipment shaped like a heart--forget about it! I did not suspect that it would be so heavenly--it is like a crustless cheesecake, thick and sweet and beautifully vanilla-y. I want to pile it on gingersnaps to make mini-cheesecakes. Ina made raspberry sauce, but we made strawberry. You have to make it the day before you're going to eat it, because it sits in the refrigerator overnight; theoretically, it is draining, but ours released barely any liquid at all.

-Using the paddle attachment of your stand mixer, beat 12 oz. room temperature cream cheese with 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar for 2 minutes at high speed.
-Scrape down bowl and change to whisk attachment. On low spead, add 2 1/2 cups cold heavy cream, 2 tsp. vanilla, 1/4 tsp. grated lemon zest, and the seeds of 1 vanilla bean. Then beat on high spped "until the mixture is very thick, like whipped cream." Now, I don't think of whipped cream as "very thick." Ours definitely got thicker than whipped cream--peaks held themselves indefinitely--which may have been too thick, but the result was amazing.
-Line your heart-shaped mold (or a 7-inch sieve) with cheesecloth and pour in the mixture. Put it over something to drain (as you can see, ours came with a heart-shaped draining dish--fancy).
-Refrigerate overnight, unmold, and serve with...

STRAWBERRY SAUCE
-Put 1/2 pint of strawberries, sliced, into a small saucepan with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer for four minutes.
-Pour the cooked fruit into a food processor or blender with 1 cup strawberry jam and mix until smooth.
-This makes more than you will need for your coeur. It is also quite sweet, which did not bother me one bit.

so I'm not a food stylist! trust me, it tastes great

crisp-off: three fruit crisps go head to head

   

fruit and butter: that's what I'm talkin' about

Today there is a story in the Times about a 646 pound catfish caught in Thailand's Megkong River. You must follow the link to see the picture of this monster; doesn't he look like something Paul Bunyan would have rasseled with & et for dinner?

They used to feed us fried catfish sometimes at camp. At that point in my life fish was on my do-not-eat list, unlike, say, chicken-fried steak and apple crisp, a glorious all-brown meal that was a favorite with everyone in the Chow Hall. When I started cooking for myself after college, one of my happiest discoveries was that crisps are super-easy to throw together and pretty much impossible to mess up. Though I've never made a crisp I was unhappy to eat, if I'm eating that much butter, I'd like to maximize my pleasure by making the best crisp possible. In the past few weeks I have tried three different recipes. Two notes: A) I judge a crisp by its crumble, not its fruit; B) I don't have pictures of these really because, let's face it, it is a delicious dessert but not a photogenic one. It should go without saying, of course, that these were eaten with vanilla ice cream.

1. RHUBARB-STRAWBERRY CRISP from Chez Panisse Desserts

Andrew made this one (as I made a chocolate cake) for his birthday dinner. I think it's late for rhubarb, but we found some at the Greenmarket and decided this was the perfect thing to do with it. We made two changes to the recipe: we could not use the 1/2 cup walnuts, though that sounds divine, because someone is deathly allergic to nuts, and it was his birthday; and we threw in the optional strawberries. It was very good, but it could have used more topping. We should have made it in a smaller dish, but all we had was a 9x13" Pyrex.

Cut 1.5-2 pounds of rhubarb into 1/2 inch thick slices. You should have about 6 or 7 cups. If you want, add half a pint of sliced strawberries. Toss the fruit with 3/4 cups sugar and 3 tbs flour. We tossed it right in the baking dish, which should have been a 9-inch round one.

For the topping, mix 7/8 cup flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 4 tsp white sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon. When you have mixed these, rub in 1/2 cup softened salted butter "until it looks crumbly." [At this point, you could mix in 1/2 cup toasted walnuts chopped into 1/4 inch pieces.] Spread the topping over the fruit and bake at 375 for 45 minutes, until the fruit is soft and bubbly and the topping brown and crisp.

I had never made a rhubarb dessert before. I liked it better than apple. But the next crisp I tried had more to offer...

2. APPLE-STRAWBERRY CRISP from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

   

This, in my opinion, is the winning crisp, thanks to the fact that the topping uses brown sugar only, not white. This made for a toothsome, slightly sticky, darker-tasting topping. It also incorporates oatmeal (as does the next one--come to think of it, since we did not use nuts in the first crisp, perhaps we should have thrown in some oatmeal). Yum. Deborah Madison, you can do no wrong. Except that this was too salty (and I luuurve salty desserts), so below I have reduced the salt from 1/4 tsp to 1/8 tsp.

Slice enough apples (peeled or unpeeled, it's up to you) to fill your 9" square or 8" x 10" dish. We used 3 or 4 apples. Slice them thinly. We threw in sliced strawberries, too. Toss with 2 tbs sugar (and if you have it--we did not--a tablespoon of lemon juice).

Mix 3/4 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup flour, 1/2 cup rolled oats, 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg, 1 tsp cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp salt. Rub in 6 tbs butter (does not need to be softened) that you have already cut into little chunks. Cover the fruit and bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes  to an hour--top should be brown, fruit should be bubbly.

These were Mutsu apples. Andrew didn't want to peel them, but I think it would have been even better if they had been peeled. He thinks the skin imparts good apple flavor; I think when I am eating a bowl of this with vanilla ice cream melting on top, good apple flavor is not my first concern. I am more interested in mouthfuls of soft fruit, caramelized sugar, butter, and cream uncomplicated by stringy old skin.

3. APPLE OAT CRISP from Staff Meals

Finally, I had to try my old standby apple crisp recipe. Unlike the others, this recipe calls for the butter to be creamed; this means the topping is more like a uniform cookie-roof than a crumble. To be fair, I think I found this crisp less pleasing because I failed to include enough fruit. But  Deborah Madison's brown-sugar-intense crisp would have taken the day, I think, no matter what was underneath.

Peel and dice 6 apples (I used Mutsu apples; I only had three, and I wish I had had more). Toss with 1 tbs sugar (and, if you have it, lemon juice; I did not have it).

Cream 6 tbs room-temperature butter with 1/2 cup dark brown sugar and 1/2 cup granulated sugar; this should take 3-5 minutes. Add 1/3 cup flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, a pinch of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper (I could not taste this in the baked dish). Stir in 1/2 cup rolled oats. Spread topping over fruit and bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

   

In this picture you can see the Staff Meals apple crisp on the left and the (slightly mutilated) Deborah Madison crisp on the right. Not very instructive, is it? But I think the lessons I learned are 1)rhubarb is good, 2)use all brown sugar in the topping--no white, and 3)use oatmeal.

If anyone else has a favorite standby recipe for crisp topping, I would love to hear it.

monkey bread and dutch pancake

I'm a bit reluctant to share this picture, but it sums up last weekend so well that I feel I have no choice. Between Friday night and Monday morning I ate nothing but baked goods and cheese. OK, I also ate a couple of pieces of fruit, but I didn't even see a vegetable, let alone eat one. As you can see, by Sunday morning I had turned into the crazy carb lady. I'd like to blame my indulgence on the still non-functioning cooktop (thanks, Department of Buildings!), but only having an oven didn't mean I had to make monkey bread...and making monkey bread didn't mean I had to eat all of it myself.

Have you ever had monkey bread? I know it as the addictive, warm, butter-oozing first offering at the tearoom in Neiman Marcus in Houston, where it is served with strawberry butter and a tiny cup of consomme. Imagine brioche, but even more buttery and tender; imagine one of those foods with which it is pretty much impossible to be generous ("you insist I have the last piece? OKAYTHANKYOU!") It is just as much of a treat to go to lunch at Neiman's with my mother and sister now as it was when I was a little girl, and I find that the greedy consumption of monkey bread before constrasts nicely with the polite nibbling of chicken salad and sipping of tortilla soup after. You can see a totally seductive picture of monkey bread as I know it on the cover of the Neiman Marcus cookbook. Friday night a glass of pink wine inspired me to bake something happy, and I turned to the NM cookbook for the first time.

My monkey bread was not as sublime as the stuff in the store--it was a little tougher and, shockingly, could have used even more butter--but it was pretty good (not to mention heartbreakingly gorgeous, at least by my standards). Let's just say that I ate a lot of monkey bread this weekend--hot, cold, with jam, without...if I had had more restraint, I would have realized my dream of eating it with chocolate; maybe next time. I remembered that Heidi at 101 Cookbooks tried it once, too, and hers is covered with crunchy sugar; a fantastic idea. An internet search turns up some frightening concoctions of canned biscuits, margarine, and cinnamon. Friends: do not be fooled. This is not monkey bread.

In any event, I want to experiment before posting a recipe.

After eating monkey bread for breakfast and lunch on Saturday and bread and cheese for dinner, what was there to do but try the tempting Dutch pancake for Sunday breakfast? I followed the Food Section's recipe and was delighted. Not only was it delicious, it was also terribly exciting to put so little effort into something that puffed up with such topographical drama. This is my un-powdered, un-lemonspritzed pancake--and a document recording my reunion with my beloved cast iron skillet, sprung from storage at last so that I can feel like Ma Ingalls in the city once again.

blueberry buckle (and another blueberry treat)

sugar, butter, and lemon zest await creaming; the forlorn (and slightly soggy) last bit of buckle

The fourth of July was a gloriously pretty day here. I celebrated by walking all the way down Fifth Avenue to the Shake Shack, eating a hamburger with a caramel milkshake (!!!), and stopping at the Greenmarket for some blueberries for the blueberry buckle in this month's Cook's Illustrated. Friday was a surprise day off from work, which I had spent shopping for staples to fill my bare pantry. I drifted through Fairway in a daze, filling my cart with bulgar wheat and baking powder, red wine vinegar and cinnamon sticks, panko and peanut oil. In short: I was finally equipped for baking in my new oven.

Alas, this was not my favorite Cook's Illustrated recipe. To be fair, 1)I'm not crazy about blueberries anyway, and a buckle, as we learn in the magazine, is a very fruit-heavy thing, 2)I had to use an 8 inch cake pan because I didn't have a 9 inch, so I had to guess how much to add to the baking time, and 3)it wasn't half bad--I happen to have inflated expectations for Cook's Illustrated. I still managed to choke down most of the cake myself, much to the shock and displeasure of the one who had supervised the buckle-making [N.B. reader, this person had recently snatched the last homemade gruyere crouton from my plate and popped it into his mouth, claiming he thought it would be "funny"--do we save cake for crouton stealers?--I didn't think so].

In any event, a blueberry recipe I liked much better than this can be found on Epicurious: blueberry muffin tops. I don't have a muffin top pan, so I made these in regular muffin tins, with frozen blueberries, and they were still so good. They are very sweet--more of a dessert than a breakfast muffin--and I recommend them highly, so long as you don't mind a cakey fruit bread.