If it wasn’t a quarter past seven in the morning, I’d be making this chocolate cake RIGHT NOW:
I love her solution for if the cake spills over the top of the mug: “Next time, get a bigger mug.”
(via BB)
About half-past noon, Amy and I decided to have breakfast. With a half-loaf of leftover French bread from spaghetti last night, she suggested French Toast. I Googled a recipe.
Then, I Googled another. And another. And then I found a video. Boy, am I glad I did. Following this video, we ended up with some fantastic French Toast.
I urge you to try it:
Just like when we baked bacon instead of frying it, the result is just so much better from the oven.
(Here’s his full recipe, but the video was enough for us to follow, and it looks like he’s in the process of migrating to a new site, so don’t be surprised if this link doesn’t work forever.)
Mar 182010
(Photo: Chris Noto looms over an Irish Whiskey Cocktail on St. Patrick’s Day.)
I’ve blogged about it twice over the space of more than a year, but last night I finally tried the nameless Irish Whiskey Cocktail that was spawned by a challenge the master distiller of Bushmills himself. (Proper credit: Though I mistakenly told everyone last night that the master distiller, Colum Egan, had come up with the recipe, more properly he challenged some top bartenders to create Irish whiskey-based cocktails, and this was the one featured in the article I read.)
The recipe is simple (all three links, above, will get you to it), but also time consuming. Since there were a goodly number of people I had convinced to try this new cocktail, I quadrupled the recipe and did it in a blender, rather than a cocktail shaker.
That means I used four ounces of Bushmills Irish Whiskey, two ounces of cherry liqueur, two ounces of orange juice, and four raw eggs.
Firstly, I’m glad that I used real cherry liqueur and not something like cherry brandy, because they are very different drinks, and this cocktail needed the heavy depth of the liqueur. Secondly, if you try this at home, add the eggs first, because the yolks can ‘plop’ a fairly hefty splash out of a blender if you’re not careful.
A couple of pulses later, and we had a nice, light brown, frothy drink. Poured into martini glasses, it easily served five or almost six, so quadrupling the recipe was no biggie.
Everyone was hesitant (even me), but we all gamely tried it.
Verdict: Delicious!
Although the drink was a tad on the strong side, it was delicious. There was no raw egg taste, and you could hardly taste any of the individual ingredients. Instead, they blended together to create a fully new flavour.
It was like a light, but very spicy egg nog. The whiskey provided the spice, I’m sure, but it tasted for all the world like a Christmas drink transposed to spring. It didn’t have the artificial sweetness or vanilla flavour of a commercial Christmas egg nog; instead it was light and frothy and the egg added a delightful creaminess.
Probably, some nutmeg or cinnamon wouldn’t have been amiss, to sprinkle on top, but I would be wary of too much experimentation.
The original recipe calls for straining into a chilled glass, and I do think that cold ingredients and cold glassware make for a better drink — as it warms, it’s slightly less appealing.
So for Round Two, I plopped a couple of ice cubes into the blender, hoping to lower the temperature. Then we realized that there was mint chocolate-chip ice cream in the freezer, so we added a couple of scoops of that.
Round Two was not a dismal failure, but it was definitely more disappointing than the original. Rather than a minty freshness, or a chocolatey-chip sweetness, the ice cream mostly added a weird colour to the drink. And without the strength of the whiskey coming through, the eggy nature of the drink was more apparent.
In fact, though the second attempt was more dilute, I found it smelled a lot more like raw egg, and it was less appetizing to drink. Stick to the original.
But stick to the original I will. This was a great drink, all in all. And it’s a bit of a fancy one to make, too, with the raw egg, if you like being a showoff.
Today is not National Doughnut Day (that’s in June). But it is a Friday, and according to the woman at the bakery I went to this morning, that is by far the busiest day for bringing sweet treats to the office.
Frankly, since I work weekends, Fridays are about the only time I can share sweet treats with my workmates (bakeries are often closed on Mondays).
So, when I was called out on assignment this morning — and the assignment was cancelled at the last second — I dropped by Kuipers in Brandon for a dozen of their finest teeth-rotters. Sugar, cinnamon and assorted fillings would help ease the February blahs, I figured. And I was right (at least until the sugar crash).
And, I’ll admit that I asked for a few extra of the cinnamon twists and cinnamon rolls, just because I was inspired by one hard-workin’, cinnamon-lovin’ Lewis Meme.
Now, let’s all take a moment to think about the bakery workers of the world. There isn’t a neuron in my body that’s ready to fire at 4 a.m., but these hard workers are already up and at’em, kneading bread. It’s too easy, these days, to walk into a big box store for all your needs, including a loaf of cheap bread. For an extra dollar — or less! — why not stop by a small nearby bakery, support a local business, and pick up a loaf of their finest.
No, it’s not survives-nuclear-holocaust Wonder Bread. But it will be wonderful.
And if you happen to pick up some cinnamon buns while you’re at it, share them with the office.
I was enthralled to read about the process of making chocolate — “from bean to bar” — in the Riverfront Times, a St. Louis-based website. There’s a substantial slideshow and a lengthy article that goes through both the process itself as well as looking at the fact that artisinal chocolate production seems to be on the rise.
This is something that has happened with both coffee and beer in the past while, as multinational behemoths strip all the authentic flavour out of something to make it mass-marketable, efficient and profitable. I wonder what product is next for the artisinal approach?
Also, I could totally go for some chocolate right now.
In case a bacon cinnamon roll isn’t, um, how you roll, I present the video below, which demonstrates just exactly how you should and shouldn’t cook your bacon:
I will admit, I’m an impatient bacon-cooker, but I’ve recently started to take more time with it, cooking it longer at a lower heat, and I think the results are worth it. I also like Amy’s suggestion that I pop completed bacon in the oven to crisp it up and keep it hot, so we can fry eggs in the leftover bacon grease.
(I was going to tag this post NSFW, but I don’t think we have any heart surgeons or rabbis in the audience.)
Dec 062009
My newest friend on Facebook, Lewis Meme, whom I’ve posted about before, has a thing for sweet confections. He works in a bakery, don’t you know (his last job turned out to be kind of a temp gig). While browsing his page, as I do for every newly-acquired Facebook friend (how else to know which privacy setting they have decided you deserve?) I came across the picture above, of a bacon cinnamon roll, which he said tasted better than heaven: “just a little smoke and a whole lotta sweet.”
Immediately, I hit the Google. And found a recipe! Well, “recipe” might be a little strong:
While grocery shopping the other day I picked up a tube of ready-to-cook cinnamon rolls and thought hey, I wonder how these would taste with bacon. As I read the back of the package I was reminded that the rolls are actually un-rolled when you remove them.
I unrolled the first pastry and the length of the dough reminded me of something. Could it be? Yes indeed. Serendipity. The unrolled pastry was nearly identical in size to a strip of bacon. This was going to be interesting.
After assembling all the bacon cinnamon rolls I popped them in the pre-heated oven at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes. I then pulled the rolls out of the oven and drizzled the icing upon them as directed.
The recipe writer calls them a winner: “The entire house was filled with sugary, cinnamony, bacony aroma. The taste was both sweet and salty, a perfect combination for a morning pick-me-up meal. Highly recommended for any bacon lover!”
This I have got to try. Thanks Lewis! And thanks pseudonymous Internet recipe-writer “Mr.B“!
In other news, there is a website called Bacon Today, which promises “Daily updates on the world of sweet, sweet bacon.”
Jun 142009
Now this is a Top-Five list that I can wholeheartedly endorse:
Easy Mixing: 5 Cocktails for the Lazy
I don’t get the chance to be lazy too often. My workweek is frequently seven days long. Come Sunday afternoon I’m writing, preparing for an event, or responding to emails. Thankfully, I love what I do and, being that my job is what it is, I get to go out to bars and restaurants often. So it’s not all that bad.
Yet the feeling of swinging in a hammock, beneath the fiery mid-day sun with an ice-cold drink sweating in the palm of my hand and the intermittent sips the only thing keeping me from melting in to a pile of flesh and bones, beckons as the summer advances. Being lazy feels good.
He adds that the top five are, “my favorite drinks for the shiftless, idle and indolent. They go for simplicity and ease.” The drinks, for the record, are the Cherebita, the Dark and Stormy, the White Port and Tonic, the Ice Pick, and the Rickey. But I’m going to ask that you click through to the original for the directions, because I don’t want to rip the guy off. Come on, how lazy are you? Click.
There’s at least one comment there with an additional recipe, and if you’ve got any favourites of your own, add ‘em here. And then, if I can scrape together the motivation, we can have a Lazy Drinks Party.
Today is National Doughnut Day — at least according to the random woman I bought doughnuts from this morning. And she said that it was just a random customer who came in and told her that. Of course, when it comes to Doughtnut Day, I’m not really inclined to ask questions — nope, just suck back the sugar-glazed and assume that National Doughnut Day is a real holiday.
And, actually, it is! Well, according to Wikipedia, and to this random website that I Googled. (That random website actually has a fun quiz on it.)
Apparently, National Doughnut Day was established in Chicago fully 71 years ago, by the Salvation Army, as a way to recognize those who had served doughnuts to doughboys during World War I. This is cited in a haf-dozen news stories, but I can’t verify it. However, again, let’s just not ask questions! This is a day when Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts are giving out free doughnuts.
Mmmm, doughnuts. Even though I had to pay full price for the dozen that I took into the office, it was worth it. Because I went to a real bakery instead of a stupid coffeeshop, I spent $10. But, again I say, it was worth it. The doughnuts were so much better.
Happy National Doughnut Day, everybody! And you know what? Let’s not get hung up on what nation it is, or whether it was actually proclaimed by the government or whatever. It’s non-demoninational. It’s fun. It’s free! (at participating stores).
I think I’ll have another …
(The picture, by the way, is the cell phone snap I took of the doughnuts that I brought into the office. Yes, one of them was sugar-glazed and then topped with whipped glazing chocolate. Yes, it was delicious. And yes, I bought a full dozen, but immediately a large portion of them were snapped up. And yes, if you click on the picture, you can see it full-sized, which will reveal my boss, working in the background.)