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THE AUTHOR

Though many of us are familiar with the use of fresh fruits in desserts, flavorings in candy, and other ubiquitous ingredients, a great deal are unusual. They're unusual in the sense that they're "not commonly occurring," or that we believe them to be so. With that, here are five ingredients you might find, but not expect, in your next dessert.

The post Five unusual ingredients in sweets appeared first on OUPblog.

I don’t know if it’s the longer days, or the fact that I’m forever on a school schedule, but I definitely have more energy in the summer. And for me, more energy means more writing, more cooking and baking and more exercise. I’ve never been a fan of the gym, but point me in the […]

My kids saw these cinnamon rolls in Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking and begged for days and days to make them. I usually save my cooking energy for meal-making, but the kids were determined, so we gathered ingredients and gave them a whirl.

Here’s the recipe on the Bronskis’ blog, No Gluten, No Problem.

As these things go, they were not all that hard to make. As usual with GF baking, the dough is a bit trickier to handle, but rolling it out between sheets of plastic wrap, as instructed, helped a lot.

When you roll the dough into a long tube, you can kind of pull the plastic out from under the dough, and it rolls together quite nicely.

We cut the sugar by about 1/3 cup and didn’t miss it because of the sugar glaze. They didn’t rise much (at all?), and the texture was a bit more like shortbread than a traditional cinnamon roll. As a friend pointed it, that’s probably because of all the butter! That said, they were a big hit with everyone, gluten-free or not, including my parents.

Two thumbs up for these. I’m sure we’ll make them again when we have the time. For more of my cooking posts, click here. For those of you who aren’t gluten-free, don’t worry, I’ll still be posting all kinds of meals, not just GF baking.

Coming up: some craft and sewing posts. Oh, and we just saw two movies worth watching. One, for grown-ups: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. The other, for kids: Dolphin Tale, inspired by the true story of a dolphin who got a prosthetic tail after losing hers to amputation. Our kids love animal movies and are extremely sensitive to anything scary. After a little coaxing past the beginning injury scene (not very graphic), it went over very well.

My warm-up drawing for the day turned into a cookbook cover. I consider it a rough, mock-up. I could tweak, change and alter this thing forever, if I let myself.

…And now I think I need my own cookie fix… : )

Courtesy of BJ Jones Photography

SAD is in full-swing this month. That’s my MNINB group’s May challenge: Submit a piece A Day. So far I’m batting a thousand.

I’d just finished sending off a piece of Flash Fiction to Ether Books this morning when I became time conscious. What’s that? It means I got a closer look at the time and realized I still had zucchini bread to make before going into anything further.

You knew about the cookbook I’m writing, didn’t you? I’m just now getting around to putting together the recipes I’m responsible for in the book. We need to have all of the modified and personally designed recipes finished in a couple of weeks so that I can get them plugged into the manuscript. Anyone who thinks writing a cookbook is easy should watch Julie and Julia. It has nightmare potential.

I’m fortunate. I only have responsibility for a few of the recipes, aside from doing the editing. My two partners have borne the brunt of the cooking endeavors, and one of those—sister of mine—is doing all the photos. Can’t beat that with a stick, to quote grandpa.

I was using a newly developed recipe for my Zucchini-Oatmeal Nut Bread and it turned out beautifully. The whole-ground wheat flour kept it a deep golden brown as it rose in the oven. The apple sauce replacing the oil in our healthy version sent its aroma wafting across the kitchen seeking nostrils for appreciation. That nuttiness of crushed walnuts lent its own aspect to the bread’s prospective deliciousness.

Back to the point: the bread was doing its thing in the oven along with a tray of tiny Bundt pans of bread batter. While they baked, I rode the recumbent bike, listened to the radio playing in the background, and thought about those items still on my editorial calendar for the day.

Karaoke thoughts entered the picture when the radio came on. We don’t have such a machine. We do it the old-fashioned way, personal memory and raw voice. We choose not to use a microphone. No one in his right mind would want to hear us sing anyway.

Which brings me back to the bike. I try to do three plus miles a day on the bike. When I’m pedaling, I use the time to plan out stories, read writer’s magazines, or plot schedules. Getting organized will bring about such aberrations of thought.

And what I was considering today was how much like cooking writing really is. A recipe is nothing more than a plot, with a beginning, middle, and ending.

The ingredients list represents all of those necessary characters, each with dimensional measurements and traits. The setting and plot twists appear in the directions for combining all of those ingredients. Bowls are involved. Mixers take precedence over the future of the ingredients, all the while a specific order of action must be followed, so that the plot is satisfied, and t

This Sunday's Washington Post Magazine had a fantastic feature article about one of the best things we discovered when we moved to the DC area: Berger cookies.

On the bottom they are like black-and-whites--a mild cakey vanilla round--but on top they are piled with luscious, decadent fudgy frosting. They define the phrase "sink your teeth into it". 

While they are a Baltimore phenom, it's still a hit-or-miss proposition to find them where we live, next to DC and a half hour from Baltimore. So when the article said there was a decent copycat recipe on the King Arthur Flour website, I decided to give it a shot. 

They came out great (photo at right). I daresay the cake bottom was even a little tastier, though the real Berger frosting is still the winner. The recipe wasn't very hard or time-consuming, despite the process of frosting the cookies after they cooled. I used recipe #2, with  50/50 mix of bittersweet and semisweet chocolate chips. 

Guess what this family will be having for snacks, coffee breaks and breakfast this week? :) 

BIRTHDAY CAKE

Measuring Spoons
Our advice?
Be precise.

Kitchen Aid
I stand…
I mix, blend,
whip, stir, knead…
at your command.

Cake Pans
We’re fickle.
Three layers stick
whenever we pick.

Violets on the Windowsill
We choose
purple for our blooms.
You make the air go blue
because of what the pans decided to do.

Table
Come sit.
Unwind.
Write a bit.
Find
the humor in all of it.
Be resigned,
start again. Don’t quit.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2012



Poem #8, National Poetry Month 2012

Cathy, at Merely Day By Day, is joining me in a poem a day this month. Other daily poem writers include Amy at The Poem Farm, Linda at TeacherDance, Donna at Mainely Write, Laura at Writing the World for Kids (daily haiku), Liz at Liz in Ink (daily haiku), Sara at Read Write Believe (daily haiku)...and YOU?

This year, for the first time, Little Dude asked me to MAKE the cake for his birthday party. 

For a moment I sat, stunned. "You don't want me to get it from the bakery?"

"No, I want you to make me chocolate chip-cookie dough cupcakes. Because I love your baking the best." He flashed me a smile and dashed off to play Ninjago or Pokemon or some other game that involves teenish boy-men smacking each other with magical creatures or swords. 

Because he loves my baking the best.

I was sunk.

Happily, I found that chocolate-chip-cookie-dough cupcakes are quite The Thing on the internet. I made my own with this mix of methods, with my very own mixed but tasty results: 

1. I made the this "cookie dough stuffing" recipe for the middle and froze it overnight, which all the recipes seem to agree is critical. I went with an eggless recipe because I really didn't want all of Little Dude's friends to get food poisoning along with their rock-and-roll goody bags at the party.

2. I mixed up a boxed yellow cake mix and filled the cupcake tins. Then I plopped a dough ball in each. No need to cover it or otherwise mess with it. The cake will take care of it.

Now here's the first thing I wish I had done differently. I didn't have any boy-birthday-appropriate cupcake wrappers/papers: I only had Christmas ones. So I merrily sprayed the heck out of the pans and trusted that would work. 

Wrong. I spent a lot of time and anxious energy trying to coax those cupcakes out of the pans. Thankfully, first graders don't really evaluate whether a cupcake is PERFECT before shoving it in their mouths. Husbands are a different story. They point out the raggedy sides. And then they shove the cupcake in their mouths. 

And then I boot them out of the kitchen.

3. After the cupcakes cooled, I frosted them with icing that tastes like cookie dough--for real. This stuff tastes AMAZING. 

But here was my second mistake: the recipe says to dump all of the confectioners sugar in at once, then blend. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE. The sugar went everywhere. Happily for me, my sweet and helpful mother was visiting. As she wiped away probably a half pound of sugar, she simply smiled and said, "you have never done anything halfway, my dear". Look, at left. She really did smile.

Blend the sugar in gradually. Little bits at a time. Or you'll wish you had listened to me.

So how were the cupcakes? Raggedy. Rich. Delicious. I would definitely make these again, so long as I had suitable cupcake wrappers. In fact I have some extra dough balls stashed in the freezer, just waiting for another opportunity to whip these up. 

Little Dude's review: "They were really good, Mom. But I didn't like the frosting."

Me: "Oh. OK. Well, I won't freeze the leftovers to put in your school lunches, then."

Little Dude, panicked: "Wait, no, you can freeze them. I'd eat them for LUNCH." (As opposed to breakfast, I guess... not that we EVER have cake for breakfast in this house...)

So, you might want to consider vanilla frosting if you're making these for kids. But for grown-ups? Go whole-hog and do the dough frosting!

Got shopping, chopping, sauteing, cooking and baking on the brain.

Chocolate chip…white chocolate macadamia nut…peanut butter…oatmeal raisin…sugar…  Yep, we’re getting hungry too, given that laundry list of fabulous cookies!  What’s your favorite kind of cookie?

I love making a storytime theme out of things that I personally enjoy – it keeps things fresh after your 100th storytime, not to mention I think that your enthusiasm really shines through for a topic in which you’re personally invested.  So, if you’re like me, you can try a cookie-themed storytime:

SONG/RHYME:
“Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?”

STORIES:

COOKIES: BITE-SIZE LIFE LESSONS by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Jane Dyer

COOKIEBOT! by Katie Van Camp, illustrated by Lincoln Agnew (watch the adorable book trailer)

CRAFT:

Food version – Use already-baked cookies and let kids decorate with sprinkles, frosting, chocolate chips, dried cranberries, raisins, and anything else delicious you can think of.

Non-food Version – Cut out circles of paper and let kids decorate their “cookies” with confetti, strips of paper, glitter (if your library allows it), stickers.

Photo source

Heather Sisson

Blog: http://heatherinasuitcase.blogspot.com/

Website: http://heathersisson.carbonmade.com/

What interested you in doing artwork for TheyDrawAndCook? Do you cook as well as you draw?

Well when I first discovered theydrawandcook I thought the idea of an illustrated cookbook was very cute and unique. It was a great way to get my work looked at and see other illustrators that really inspired me. (The recipes were also very cute and I did try some!)

Im not the greatest cook but I am a very good baker. My last two years of Pratt I used baking as a stress relief from art. I didn’t realize how much I really enjoyed it until recently. I suppose art and baking have always been a large part of my life. When I was growing up my mom taught me how to bake and every night she would read a Golden book to my sister and I. What I would really like is to figure out a way to combine them. I am currently looking into Johnson & Wales cooking school to take a baking class for next January. (Earlier if I can!) I would love to build sets out of baked goods for my children’s books. I’m still working out the kinks but eventually I will find a way to make things work.

What do you use to work with? What tools/materials can you not live without?

Now this is a question I have been trying to figure out for a while now. In the past year I have tried watercolor, collage, acrylic, gouache, ink, etc. Watercolor is my favorite but recently I have been very successful with collage. Two years ago my professor (Rudy Gutierrez) assigned a project that frustrated me to no end. Somehow I ended up with a beautiful mixed media collage of a wolf. I have never been a fan of collage so I stopped only to recently make a few new ones. Katelan Foisey and David Hollenbach have been great inspirations for me in the last few weeks. They do amazing collages that are unlike anything I have ever seen. I don’t feel like I have found what makes me, me yet but I am on my way.

No matter what paper or medium I work with I always feel the need to incorporate watercolor somehow. (It’s not a Heather painting unless there’s transparency!)

What’s your ideal studio environment?

At first I thought it would be at my desk with a pair of headphones and an ipod but now I would say I prefer to be near other people. There is nothing better then working at a table with a group of your friends. Listening to everyone’s stories and corny jokes somehow makes me much more productive.

What kind of volunteer work do you do? How does it inspire you creatively?

During my sophomore year at 1 Comments on New Artist Showcase: Heather Sisson, last added: 11/9/2010