Pita with Red Peppers, Onions and Feta

I used to make this a lot for dinner my first year here, and then I sort of forgot about it. It's an awesome, late night - don't know what to make for dinner. It also helps that the ingredients are things that are often on hand.

I included a recipe below, although it's very self explanatory - chop up veggies, and eyeball the proportions on top of the pita. Normally I use 1/2 to 1 red pepper, half a smallish onion, a handful of feta and recently I've added a bit of minced garlic. I could also see dressing this up a bit and sautéing/caramelizing the onions before putting them on the pita, since the onions in this version have a bit of a crunch to them. But mostly when I make this I'm sort of desperate for food as quickly as possible.

Pita with Red Pepper, French Feta and Red Onion
(Adapted from Not Eating Out in New York)

1 pocketless pitas
1/2 to 1 medium red bell pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced
handful of French feta, crumbled
olive oil (about 1 Tbl)
freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place pita on a baking sheet and arrange peppers, onions and feta on both. Drizzle with 1 Tb of olive oil. Sprinkle with pepper and a touch of salt. Bake for about 8 minutes. Remove from sheet and let cool a moment before serving.

Brown Butter Blondie with Chocolate Chips

The trouble with baking a lot is that baking leads you to do more baking. It's a circular problem. Some nights I feel a sort of restlessness which can only be combatted by getting out the mixer and some butter. I really enjoy creaming butter and sugar and then adding the dry ingredients. It calms me. It's like a zen thing.

The worst is when there is no specific project to channel my desire toward. The other night I simply wanted something, I felt vaguely Brownie-ish, and more specifically a Blondie - which I prefer to Brownies. That's when I came across Martha Stewart's recipe for Brown-Butter Toffee Blondies. I made them sometime last summer, but I now realize, I did not brown the butter long enough last time. Because if I had browned the butter long enough, I would not have stopped eating them between then and now. I didn't have toffee bits, so I went with chocolate chips. Given the chance, without toffee I would just leave out the chips. They were almost too overpowering for how dense and amazing the rest of the batter was.

Compost Cookies & A Return to My Neglected Blog

Oh, blog. I've been neglecting you. I keep thinking about you. Posts I should write. I want to keep better track of the things I make and how they turn out. So here we go again. And what better way to jump back into food blogging than with a Momofuko Milk Bar recipe?

During the spring I took two trips to New York, and both featured dragging people to the two different Milk Bar locations to buy and sample a good chunk of the menu. I had already made the Blueberries & Cream cookies, Caramelized Cornflake, Marshmallow & Chocolate Chip cookies, and the Crack Pie. So there was only one logical conclusion for what to bake next, Compost Cookies.

Everyone and their mother raved about this recipe. But I remained skeptical. In part because I don't have a stand mixer, and I read a comment on one blog about how attempting the 10 minute creaming process with a hand mixer could result in burning out the motor. In the end my curiosity won out. I made the cookies.

And they were awesome. Just as amazing as everyone said they would be. I'm a big fan of order while baking, preferring anal retentive Martha Stewart-esque recipes to a "throw whatever strikes your fancy in." But I have to admit I think anything would work in these cookies within certain parameters. I used pretzels in some brownies a while back and they were a disaster, but these retained their crunch. I ended up playing it pretty safe with my mix-ins, opting for coffee grounds, chocolate chips, peanut butter cups, regular potato chips and pretzels.

i'm melting!

"I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness? " - The Wizard of Oz

I actually don't care much for peeps. But my friend Chloe is a big fan, and so when I saw the idea for Peep Krispie Treats on Serious Eats, I decided I should give it a try while the peeps were cheap.

I'm not sure why the recipe encouraged you not to mix the peeps while melting, but you know. I tried to keep them separate. Ultimately, they turned out sort of greenish in color, and you can taste all the crystallized sugar from the peeps. Bottom line, if you're a peeps fan melt yourself some peeps and make some krispies.

it's time to make the doughnuts

The first time I attempted making doughnuts from scratch, they were fine, but not life-changing. Deep down, I knew that home made doughnuts just out of the fryer should be knocking my socks off. They should be, as the name of the recipe from Joy the Baker implies, Oh! My! God! Doughnuts. There were many things I did wrong that first time - I don't think the yeast foamed long enough, I lacked a real rolling pin and so I had to improvise, and those are just the things I remember off the top of my head.

So when spring break rolled around, I decided to approach my dedicated baking partner and give this recipe another shot. Oh boy, am I glad we did. In truth while the process takes a bit of time to allow for the rising, the dough is really straightforward. We both couldn't believe it was pretty much, put all the ingredients in the mixer and well, mix.

Here are the doughnut holes - puffed up from the second rising. Then it was the painless process of frying the doughnuts, dipping them in glaze and decorating them with sprinkles. As Kelly said, "this is a dangerous thing to know how to do." If one were more of a morning person, you might be able to pull off getting out of bed at 9am, mixing the dough, returning to bed for a few hours, then getting up again to fry and having warm doughnuts waiting at brunch for your loved ones. If one was such an inclined morning person. In truth, you need to make these for a cadre of your favorite people, because eating them all is damn near impossible, and they don't keep well.

Or more accurately, they keep fine. But once the doughnuts have melted in your mouth straight out of the fryer - there is no going back.

cannolis in comfort of home

I love cannolis, I mean seriously, what's not to love? Seeing this recipe for homemade cannolis on RecipeGirl made my mouth water. But making dough, frying dough, and rolling dough (who has cannoli tubes just lying about the place?) my eyes were glazing over from time and effort. At that point it seems easier and cheaper to drive over to the Italian bakery.

Insert a magnificent suggestion from my old Italian grandfather - ice cream sugar cones.  Get a package of these for $2, the rest of the ingredients for cannoli filling, some chocolate chips and bob's your uncle.

Cannoli Filling
(From RecipeGirl)

¾ cup whole milk ricotta cheese (drained overnight w/ cheesecloth & squeezed dry)
¾ cup mascarpone cheese
¼ cup powdered sugar
½ tsp vanilla or Grand Marnier
½ tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt


Mix filling ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use (at least a couple of hours). Scoop into sugar cones. Add chocolate chips on top.

(I definitely did not drain the ricotta overnight. Also my total refrigeration time on the filling was maybe an hour. Everything was still tasty.)

Cakes of Pan. And Sour Cream

Yesterday was sort of a long day. I got home late from campus, with not a lot of food in the fridge and a lot of snow on my car. So I decided it was the perfect time to try out this Sour Cream Pancake recipe (from Pioneer Woman by way of Smitten Kitchen).

Normally, I make buttermilk pancakes, and I can't say these sour cream pancakes tasted much differently. But maybe I was just too hungry. These were however, the perfect pancake size recipe for one person. Normally I halve the other recipe, and still have way too much batter. With the wacky 7 tablespoons of flour, this was perfect.