These dyed Easter are real eggshells that have been coated on the inside with chocolate and stuffed with candy and a small surprise.
Everything I used to decorate the eggs is edible. I used jumbo sized eggs, though this wasn't necessary. I stuffed them with the smallest things I could find.
I was hoping to try to make my own version of the chocolate filled real eggshells that Martha Stewart created a few years back, but I wanted mine to be more like a Kinder Surprise egg with a toy or small item inside. I also took inspiration from hollow chocolate eggs that contain smaller chocolates and candies, as these make a pleasing rattling noise when you shake them, and I can never wait to find out what is inside.
I learned a lot through mistakes along the way (which I'll go into obnoxious detail about in a later post), but here is what did work for me.
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· comments [106] · 03-30-2010 · categories:craft · food · holidays ·
Herbed-Baked Eggs › shutterbean.
The Foppish Baker: Crumpets. This is how I bake too, last minute and with all sorts of things missing.
Homemade liqueur lollipops meant to be swirled into a glass of champagne, at Martha Stewart. So cool. Via Susan at Juniper Moon Fiber Farm, whose links (and life!) are always amazing.
Waffled falafel (and the secret to perfect hummus) - Waffleizer.
The 5 Commandments of Sautéing Food | Serious Eats.
Little Lemon Souffles on marthastewart.com. I might try to make these before committing to a souffle pan.
Bread Cones | Bread Recipes.
Know Your Legumes : Give the humble little bean some respect - CHOW. A guide to beans, something I'm trying to learn more about.
Corned Beef and Cabbage, Caraway Soda Bread. This year I'm doing St. Patrick's Day just the way Simply Recipes recommends.
Tasty Planner - Article - The Problem with Ice-Planets. Excellent. Via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.
Erica’s Birthday Party, at make something. Love, love the ruffled cake.
Give us your lucious, your aromatic, your fantastic Olive Oils | Ask MetaFilter.
Make Your Own Girl Scout Cookies : Our versions of Samoas, Tagalongs, and Thin Mints - CHOW.
Latest Food on a Stick: Pizza Pops! | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn.
SUCCEED Blog: Mondrian Cake.
How to saber a bottle of champagne (or any bubbly) « Cooking Issues.
coffee culture by shenkar college of engineering and design, ramat gan. Very interesting cups, and I like the slowly dissolving sugar pods.
Mobile Chowdown 3: Seattle vs. Portland Street Food | Serious Eats.
The Basics: How to Make Seared Chicken Breast : Flavorful, moist, boneless, skinless - CHOW.
Roast Your Own Coffee Beans With A Drill! | Apartment Therapy Unplggd.
angry chicken: eggs & rice with matcha salt. I like the technique for over-soft eggs that she talks about here.
Craftzine.com blog : How-To: Make Your Own Custom Copper Cookie Cutter.
Steve Jobs Cheese Head. Excellent, it reminds me of Meathead.
· comments [12] · 03-22-2010 · categories:food · links ·
Yesterday was the first meeting of our Cookbook Club, a gathering of friends where we each bring a different dish from a chosen cookbook so we can sample and compare. Our first choice was easy, Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, aka 101 Cookbooks.
I'll just go ahead and tell you I liked everything. Heidi's book is very focused on vegetarian foods that aren't necessarily healthy (there is no shying away from butter and cheeses in this book) but aren't trying to be vegetarian versions of meat foods. She explains very clearly the how and why of each recipe (I finally get soaking and cooking beans). Our collective criticism? Some of the ingredients can be difficult to find, even in health conscious, food focused Seattle. Though because of this conversation, half of us learned about Big John's PFI, an imports store in SoDo.
My favorite of the afternoon I somehow didn't end up with a picture of, it was the Black Tea Spring Rolls. They are filled with mushrooms and smokey tea leaves and the flavor is interesting and comforting and I wanted to eat more until I burst. update: You can see a picture of these taken by Maggi (thanks Maggi!) here. In fact, she is an amazing photographer so just go look at her pictures instead.
Beluga Lentil Crostini, with goat cheese and chives, we couldn't stop eating these.
Golden-Crusted Brussels Sprouts, this picture was taken just before they were sprinkled with cheese that melted fetchingly.
Gnocchi alla Romana with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, these were delicious, and not shown was the accompanying spicy tomato sauce.
Straw and Hay Fettuccini Tangle, made with asparagus and spinach pesto, amazing.
Otsu, this was very satisfying to eat.
Sweet Potato Spoon Bread, so very yummy.
Giant Crusty and Creamy White Beans, this is the one I made and I'll be making it again.
Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake, served with whipped cream. This had a delicious crusty top and we were impressed how well the whole wheat flour turned out a fluffy cake.
Thin Mint Cookies, really great, I nabbed one of these before we officially started eating.
Next up, Falling Cloudberries!
· comments [26] · 03-15-2010 · categories:food ·
Secret Decoder Cookies · Edible Crafts. These are so incredibly cool!
best cocoa brownies | smitten kitchen.
Crispy Kale Recipe - baked — Recipes Steamy Kitchen. Take note of the tip on when to add salt.
Taste Test: Delivery Pepperoni Pizza | Slice Pizza Blog.
Strange utensil | Ask MetaFilter. There is such a thing as asparagus tongs?
Best vermouth for a classic martini? | Ask MetaFilter.
Print James Bond Walks Into a Bar... and orders a Vesper, a cocktail that hasn't aged too well. Here, a remake. At Esquire.
Vesper (cocktail) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Very detailed history with substitutions to get an approximation of what the cocktail would have tasted like in 1953. Apparently a lot of ingredients have been reformulated over the years to be less bitter and more sweet. Is this why classic cocktails often don't appeal to us? It's not a shift in palette as a shift in the actual taste of the specific ingredients?
Raw to Sweet: How to Change the Intensity of Onions | The Kitchn.
Corn Starch Candy Molds, at Instructables. Via Craftzine.
Serious Eats asks Where's the Love for Chestnuts? and gets some great answers in the comments. One commenter points us towards this story in the WSJ: Marron Made In Heaven, and another wrote this article on the blight that took out the chestnut trees that used to cover huge parts of the US: Long forgotten, chestnuts are coming back with a vengeance. My own father has always keenly loved chestnuts and has planted a few chestnut trees in his yard, he also gives talks about the current state of Chestnut trees in the US.
Confections of a (Closet) Master Baker: P.S., I Cake You. A message written out right in the cake itself, awesome, and a very clever technique. Sent by Maggi, thanks!!
quinoa FAIL. Help? | Ask MetaFilter. Plain quinoa topped with an over easy or poached egg is still my favorite breakfast, and my regular breakfast during the whole process of losing weight last year. I buy it bulk, and cook by simmering, covered, in 2x water for about 10 minutes or until translucent.
The Paupered Chef's Guide to $3 Homemade Pizza Stones | Slice Pizza Blog.
· comments [5] · 02-22-2010 · categories:food · links ·
The other week I came across this recipe for Sausage Balls in a thread about Bisquick over at Ask Metafilter. The recipe goes like this: Mix together one pound of spicy sausage, on pound of finely shredded cheddar cheese and three cups of Bisquick. Form into quarter sized balls and cook on a baking sheet at 350 for 20 minutes. People insisted they were delicious and I was very curious about how they would turn out, so we made some.
It took a while for the dough to come together, and it takes a bit of strength.
They puffed a bit while baking.
Inside you couldn't really see the sausage.
They tasted ok, interesting for a breakfast item. But they weren't the breakfast crack we'd been expecting. They had some heat from the spicy sausage, but the cheese flavor was pretty mild. We figure that if we'd used a really good extra sharp cheddar instead of simply sharp cheddar it might be more alluring. And they are fairly close to scones, so I might make a cheddar scone with breakfast sausage substituted for some of the butter instead. That said it was fun to pop little balls of cheesy bread into you mouth first thing in the morning.
We had so much dough left over we decided to make something like Scotch Eggs. I steamed some eggs for 11 minutes, which I find is just right to set the egg without overcooking it, then cooled and peeled them. We wrapped them in the mixture and baked for about 30 minutes. It turned out ok but ultimately didn't work, as the cheese mixture puffs in the oven the egg settled to the bottom so it was more blanketed than wrapped at the end. Pretty good, but at this point we were full of sausage balls and couldn't finish them. Overall? Probably won't make again but it's given me some ideas for cheese breakfast biscuit treats of some sort in the future.
(p.s. The pictures above were all taken with my S90 on a darkly overcast morning. Most of the pictures used only the light from the window. I had the camera set to automatic and I think they turned out really well, I didn't lighten them in Photoshop.)
· comments [28] · 02-15-2010 · categories:food ·
· comments [10] · 02-11-2010 · categories:food · links ·
These Academy Award cookies from Bakerella are genius. She uses slotted bases to hold up the statue. Recipes and complete instructions here.
(Photos by Bakerella.)
· comments [5] · 02-10-2010 · categories:food ·
These almonds from Trader Joe's are my secret snack weapon. They come bundled into individual packages so you can throw a few in your bag on your way out. Then, when you realize you spent, oh, say, three more hours than you intended looking though the dresses at Nordstrom Rack you will have the fuel to keep you upright in the outrageously long line for the dressing room. They also help me from buying the nearest bag of chips when I'm dreading getting stuck in traffic on the way home. They also help me from being tempted to eat peanut butter out of the jar as a snack when I'm at home. They are awesome. Why did it take me so long to find them?
I though I would find them bland as they are unsalted, but I don't. Each packet is just over 200 calories.
While I'm talking about Trader Joe's I just want to mention that their frozen Chicken Serenada entree has become a regular backup meal in our fridge. Seriously, we buy them by the dozen. (Don't get confused and buy the Ensenada, it's not as good, trust me.) Each serves two and takes precisely long to heat in the oven as it takes to cook rice. I don't own a microwave, our kitchen is tiny, but they are also microwaveable.
· comments [25] · 02-3-2010 · categories:food ·
· comments [6] · 01-29-2010 · categories:food · links ·
Every once in a while I make something to eat that I fear will make my serious food friends shun me forever.
This is one of those things.
I had been musing on how odd a name Chicken In A Biskit is for crackers. My thought process went something like this: Chicken In A Biskit - mmm chicken - chicken and dumplings - ooh chicken IN dumplings. Lo and behold, there is actually a recipe for this. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of the grocery store looking up recipes on my iPhone when I discovered it. (I mention this as a possible explanation of my next action, which was to buy the ingredients and make this for dinner.)
At the very least I actually got to use our soup plates for something soup related:
Looking at the recipe you immediately know this was some sort of Pillsbury recipe contest entry, and some Googling that I cannot seem to replicate suggested it might be from 1971. I could be mistaken.
It is chicken and mushrooms mixed with chive cream cheese and butter, wrapped in premade croissant dough, dipped in more butter, rolled in chopped walnuts and crushed, uncooked herb stuffing mix and served smothered in cream of chicken soup. I know, right? I didn't really realize what I was making until I got all the ingredients home, and while it was cooking we practiced having heart attacks. Here are some cooked cream cheese and chicken pods:
But, you ask, how was it? The first bite was really yummy, salty, crunchy and mushy. Perfect comfort food trajectory. The second bite was mostly just salty, with the tang of "it's not necessarily good but it's nostalgic" flavor of cream of chicken soup. The remaining bites alternated between the soup or the croissant dough dominating. But I can see the recipes intent and I applaud it. I'm left feeling a little woozy from the sodium and with the flavor of chives lingering in my mouth winning over the wine I'm attempting to eradicate it with. So, no, I don't really recommend this recipe.
That said, it was really very fun to make.
update: In the comments Jeanmarie pointed me towards this recipe for Cheesy Chicken Muffins made by wrapping dough around chicken and cream cheese filling and baking them in muffin tins. I must make these soon!
· comments [30] · 01-27-2010 · categories:food ·
