FoodFash

Adventure Begins in the Kitchen

Postal Cookies

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Last weekend I stocked up on boxes and bubble wrap and tested out mailing baked goods for the first time.  Getting a picture message of Em mounging on these macarons in DC totally made my day.  It turns out, cookies are the perfect way say to say “I miss you”.

And since I haven’t visited home in six months or LA in ten months (both records), I have a decently large list of people that I miss like crazy.  This means I have a lot of baking ahead of me in the upcoming weeks.  I don’t mind one bit.

For this round of friends, I whooped up brown butter chocolate chip cookies with pecans from Joy the Baker‘s cookbook, embracing yet another opportunity to bake with brown butter.  Not only was this recipe a total success, I am now a brown butter fan for life.

I can’t remember the last time I baked chocolate chip cookies, but I can tell you with certainty that they were not this pretty.  Perhaps I thought the better these cookies looked, the more loved my friends would feel.  Seems logical, don’t you think?

The Unassuming Macaron

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Between living in Austin and being a part of the food blogging world, a day without seeing a macaron just doesn’t happen.  And even though I think they’re completely adorable, I’m always the first to admit that I don’t love them.  In fact, I don’t love them at all.

But I do love a good challenge and I’ve heard these delicate bites are among the more challenging ventures a baker could take on in their  own kitchen.  I looked up Jenna’s recipe from way back in the Project Food Blog day and decided to see how difficult a macaron could be.

Thankfully, I read the recipe in its entirety before starting so I knew to make the ganache first in order to allow plenty of time for cooling.  Naturally, I looked in my fridge hours later and realized I had totally forgotten to add the cream.  Other than these teeny tiny mishaps and my inability to gracefully use a pastry bag, everything turned out pretty well in the end.

As far as aesthetics go, I could use a ton of practice with a pastry bag.  Like a whole day’s worth.  Stuff was spilling and merging together and oozing into my hands.  It was a total mess.  Such a mess that I couldn’t even begin to worry about uniformity sized pastries.  Or the cracking…  Perhaps I needed to keep a closer eye on them around the 10 minute mark.  Next time?

I wouldn’t have thought there would be a next time, you know, cause I’m not the biggest fan of macarons.  However, I liked the texture of the macarons that came from Jenna’s recipe wayyy better than any restaurant version I’ve had.  And since some solid QT with a pastry bag is beyond necessary, it looks like there will be plenty of next times.

Personal Pie

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I’m not completely evil with my pies, you know.  I recognize how dangerous dropping off a boat load of sweets to a two-person household could be.  So today, I split a traditional pie recipe into two cobbler-esque dishes and caused a semi-food-coma at two separate homes.  That’s what you call spreading the evil love.

The white peach rhubarb pie that I made for my last dinner party was such a hit that I figured it was the perfect personal pie to deliver to Clay for his 30th birthday.  Then I moseyed on down Lamar to drop the second personal pie off to Matt and Max, who were busy painting an Olympic yard sign.

FoodFash White Peach Rhubarb Pie (yields 1, 9″ pie or 2 small cobblers)

2 pastry shells

1 lb of rhubarb, chopped into 1/2″ slices

3 white peaches, skinned and sliced

1-1/2 cups sugar

3 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Mix sugar, tapioca, salt and nutmeg in a small bowl.  Place sliced fruit in a large bowl and top with sugar mixture.  Stir until all of the fruit is coated with sugar.  Let stand for 30 minutes.  Line your pie plate(s) with one of the pastry shells, fill to the top with fruit mixture, and use the second pastry shell to prepare your lattice top.  Bake for 35-45 minutes or until lattice is golden brown.

Not only am I obsessed with this pie, but I think I now have half of Austin obsessed with it as well.  I’m also digging the adorable ceramic dishes that I swooped up from Homegoods today.  Is it just me, or does fabulous presentation make a pie taste that much sweeter?

Nanner Pudding

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Nanner pudding is quite possibly my earliest memory of food obsession.  I can vividly remember my three year-old self sneaking into the fridge, removing plastic wrap, and dipping my little sneaky fingers into the dessert bowl.  I loved the sweetness of homemade vanilla pudding, the mushiness of the Nilla wafers, and how both flavors were tied together with nanner goodness.

So when I asked my friend Dickie what he wanted for his birthday dessert and he responded banana pudding…  It was on!

I whipped out a classic vanilla pudding recipe and got to work.  I forgot how much stirring was involved in the pudding process, but thankfully Instagram was there to keep me company.  It was techie baker multi-tasking at its finest.

And other than the 10 or so minutes that it took to pull the pudding together, the only other work required was slicing ripe bananas and opening a brand new box of Nilla wafers.  Oh and layering, a little bit of layering.

As I poured half of the warm vanilla pudding over the first nanner Nilla layer, I couldn’t help but think why nanner pudding doesn’t happen more often.  It’s light, cool, and simple – perfect for any and every summertime affair.