Multi-grain cereal

This is the multi-grain cereal I just had for breakfast at work – Heidi’s recipe, but I didn’t soak it over nigh this time, and I only used 2 cups of liquid (instead of 2 1/2): one cup water, one cup skim milk. And dates and apples. Joelle & I ate it on Saturday morning, and there was still this ample serving to reheat in the work kitchen microwave.

I also had a bit of an overstock of baked goods this weekend. I made long rise whole wheat bread and cranberry bars on Saturday, and cupcakes to take to a birthday party – of a Madison school teacher, who’s kids are the same ages as mine, so it seemed only right to use the Betty Crocker cocoa cupcake recipe I always sent to school with the kids for their birthdays. I put a little lump of cream cheese mixed with mini chocolate chips into the centers and frost them chocolate. This time I used this perfect chocolate frosting recipe I got from Smitten Kitchen. There was a lot of frosting left, and I have overripe bananas, so I see a chocolate-frosted banana cake in the future (to be leftover yet again??). Then on Sunday I made cinnamon scones. The bread had to go into the freezer, because we have enough other bread; the cupcakes came to work – the last 8 or so. We’re eating the scones – I had two yesterday, as did Mark, I think, and both he & Joelle took them for lunch today, and Al was eating one with his coffee when I left for work. So no need to share or freeze them.

Last three cimmy scones

Cupcakes packed to bring to work

Two cupcakes posing for closeup

When we got seated, we all opted for salads & pasta – Mark & Joelle had Caesar; I had the house with fennel dressing & greens (and nicely thinly sliced red onion, that even though I picked out I could still taste next day). Mark had pasta Bolognese, I had seafood with vodka-tomato – I liked the mussels, but not the shrimp – and Joelle had the wild boar lasagna. We sat near my hairdresser & her husband, and chatted across tables.

Last night, actual Valentines, I was going to make steak frites – We had gotten a really nice steak from Fountain Prairie at the Saturday market – but everyone seemed to be going too many directions. Al was home, so I made a tray of nachos with leftover taco meat for the kids, and I ate bread & cheese. Then I made 6 little chocolate cakes from a Splendid Table recipe that I got from their email news letter. Almost flourless, melted bittersweet & unsweetened chocolate, chocolate chips or chopped chocolate – the only unusual ingredient was a whole teaspoon of cinnamon. We ate them topped with whipped cream, in front of our respective TVs. I watched the last season 1 episode of Game of Thrones. All indoor, bad light pictures – as the Breakaway Cook complained recently, it’s so hard to get food photographed indoors at night to look good – why I’m so jealous of Heidi & Deb, who, as cookbook authors, can stay home and photograph their food in the day time.

So that’s the double – the steak frites is looking to come in third, probably Thursday.

I did finally cook the steak Thursday, and we ate it with creamed spinach and oven steak fries. Yum. There was a good sized hunk of steak left and we talked about how this pound & a half piece of meat that we had just fed 3 people on was small for the US, but would be considered enough for four in the Netherlands.

Seafood pasta with vodka-tomato sauce at Lombardinos

Broken little chocolate cake without whipped cream

All the little chocolate cakes on a tray

Broken little chocolate cake with whipped cream

Broken little chocolate cake with whipped cream

At about 4:00 I got ready to carve the other one. I set it up on newspaper, and stuck a knife in. The stem came off when I pulled on it, and when I lifted the lid, it was all soup inside. Rotten. I assume because of global climate change – the pumpkin must’ve ripened in September – my CSA had their Pumpkin U-Pick & Gleaning Party way back on Sunday Sept. 26. So my pumpkins must’ve been picked weeks ago – plenty of time to spoil. I took it directly to the compost and came back in and made a paper bag luminaria instead, with cat litter and a candle. Good thing I made lots of Halloween-themed food to make up.

The eyeball cupcakes are a nice plain cake with white frosting and gummy lifesavers for iris and pupil. The punch had hand-shaped ices. The spiders are a King Arthur mix – I’d like to try them with mint chocolate filling. I got a blister on my index finger from splitting licorice Twizzlers into spider legs – I couldn’t find any plain licorice strings. I wish I had photographed the tart before I cut it. I made a vampire blood soup – tomato fennel, pureed smooth for drinking, and a pan of those popcorn and pretzel bars, too, but I didn’t photograph those. I let the caramel get a little darker for the bars, and I think they were better than last time.

cranberry juice and fizzy apple juice and a syrup of ginger cloves and cinnamon

Roasted wild mushrooms on top of cream cheese custard & a puree of fennel and more mushrooms

Paperbag luminaria

I splurged and ordered these two  cupcake books overnighted from Amazon: Hello, Cupcake &  What’s New Cupcake? (recommended by Dorrie Greenspan) – totally cute ideas, but almost all the decorations are candy, and I knew the kids would just eat it.

Hello, Cupcake has the cupcake garden idea – dip frosted cupcakes into crushed Oreo dirt and then decorate with lettuces, radishes, carrots and peas. Marzipan vegetables would be more traditional; instead, they use all kinds of candy ingeniously to make the veggies. Jolly Rancher, Starburst & Airhead fruit chews, M&Ms, green licorice laces (pea vines). I especially like the lettuce – cornflakes coated with green icing, arranged around a little ball of green Jolly Rancher on top of the dirt-covered cupcake. And of course, in the book, the cupcakes are arranged in neat rows. They even have plans for end of the row signs, the seed packs that say what vegetable is where – frosted graham crackers on pretzel sticks glued on with chocolate. Martha’s got a carrot cake with a marzipan vegetable garden on top – it was published back when my kids were about 8 & 9, and we were always going to make it – John and I both love marzipan – but we just never did. This candy version we might’ve accomplished.

I provided yogurt raisons, gummy worms, teddy grahams, dried papaya stick carrots, banana chips, coconut, and toasted pea crisps. I forgot to bring the mint I bought at the farmers’ market for leafs, but the birthday girl’s family brought a big bunch from home. The kids’ garden came out a little messier than the book – looking at the cupcakes the dad said, “That’s what I love about you kids – no holding back – whatever we’ve got goes on the cupcake”.

I was going to start by having us make Farm Cakes – they’d have baked while we decorated and the kids could’ve taken them home – but it seemed like too much for one party. We mixed up two flavors of icing: chocolate sour cream & strawberry drizzle – decorated, ate, and opened presents. There was maybe a 15 minutes span when we needed something to do, and the dad started a game of Twister. Oh, and the birthday girl was completely surprised!

Stuck banana bread cupcakes

I used the Grandma’s Banana Cake recipe from Classic Home Desserts, by the late Richard Sax, one of my fave cook books. It’s supposed to be baked in a tube pan, so I should have known to really UNDER-fill the muffin cups – because it’s a cake batter that really needs the support of the pan. Also working against me are the facts that 1) I think my oven is not working quite right – the fan has been making this singsong  sound to get started, and I get the feeling that it gets too hot too fast. Haveta call the repair man – the dishwasher handle is also kinda busted, so maybe I can do two things at once. And 2) I used yogurt instead of sour cream in the batter, and even though Sax says this will work OK, I think yogurt is more acidic and makes the baking powder and soda work overtime – hence the flat, spread out tops.

I started trying to un-mold them,  gave up, took the picture, and peeled them off the pan right into the trash, and took the bag right out to the curb – which would have been a lot more satisfying if the if the city had not just come down our street collecting.