Peanut Butter Cups

Well, these aren't technically cups, per se, more like little peanut butter, eh, squares, but they taste so much like Reese's Cups that I simply cannot refrain from calling them by the same name.

Our family has hewn to a commercial-free approach to Valentine's Day for the past couple years. I think we said something out loud the first time, something along the lines of, "Let's cease wasting money on greeting cards that don't say anything worthwhile," but our high ground may owe more to pure laziness than to a moral imperative. We've been married for nearly 10 years now, and we know where we stand. Shopping for a way to prove it just seems rather silly, after all.

That said, we have these two hilarious children to think about, and while I do not want to raise them to think every little holiday needs to be commercialized and that we need to run to the inner circle of Hell to purchase the socially-required accompaniments, I also would rather not take all the fun out of everything for them.

Finding that sacred middle ground is an ongoing process. See, I don't really get into cutting out paper hearts and gluing glitter on construction paper and that sort of thing, but cooking is a craft I can really get behind. So last weekend, while we were all sitting around the table together eating lunch, I approached the subject of Valentine's Day and suggested we do 'something special' to celebrate.

"Like get some new toys?" The Boy Wonder asked excitedly. "Um, no," I responded, "Like make a special treat for each other," at which point I explained that Valentine's Day is about showing your family how much you love them, and what better way would there be for us to show love than to get into the kitchen together and play with some chocolate...

I mean, right? What would you rather receive for a V-Day present, a stuffed animal or a homemade dessert? A goofy five-dollar greeting card or a piece of hand-formed candy?

So that is how the kids and I found ourselves in the kitchen on Valentine's afternoon, rifling through cookbooks and stacking up measuring cups. Of course, there was the small stipulation that we would need to bake with whatever ingredients we had on hand. A trip to the store, even for a raw material, would negate the Commercial-Free Valentine's Day Celebration, so it is rather fortuitous that I keep a lifetime supply of dessert ingredients in the pantry (a home is not a home without vanilla extract and sugar).

A peanut butter dessert seemed to be our best bet for Valentine's Day, that being one of The Carnivore's favorite things in the world and he, after all, being my true valentine, so when I fell across an easy-looking recipe in The Silver Palate Cookbook (thank you, Becky, you dear, wonderful kindred spirit for this lovely book) for Chocolate Peanut Butter Bites, I halted the search immediately and started gathering ingredients. I was a trifle nervous, not an unusual state of being for me when armed with a new recipe, and not least because there was neither a photo of the recipe nor any descriptives whatsoever.

But like I said, it looked easy, not even requiring the use of the mixer or the oven, and the list of ingredients was so small and pure (butter, sugar, peanut butter, chocolate chips) that it just had to be good, especially considering the source.

There is little suspense to offer here though, because, obviously, these were a complete and utter hit. And I swear, I'm not exaggerating when I say it tastes just like a Reese's peanut butter cup (only better and without the preservatives and the excess packaging). There are two layers, the bottom one being the tender peanut butter 'filling' and the top being an absolute Godsend of thick, hard chocolate coating. And since I was out of peanuts, and substituted chocolate chips into the peanut butter layer, well, the texture is a revelation, with the firm bits of chocolate in the filling providing a welcome foil to the soft peanut butter. Perhaps just as important as the luscious flavor though, is the fact that this makes a nice, giant pan of treats. There were enough to share with my mother and grandparents, and still plenty left over to last us all week long.

THIS is what Valentine's Day is all about: love for our new favorite dessert (and, ahem, for each other, of course).

*****

CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER BITES (adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook), makes 50

Note: the original recipe calls for 1 cup of peanuts to be stirred into the peanut butter mixture, instead of the 1 cup of chocolate chips that I used. Do with this information what you will.

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 pound confectioners' sugar
• 1 stick PLUS 1 Tbs salted butter, divided
• 2 cups crunchy peanut butter (natural peanut butter works great in this recipe)
• 1 cup PLUS 12 oz semisweet chocolate chips, divided

1. Mix brown sugar, confectioners' sugar, 1 stick melted butter, peanut butter, and one cup of the chocolate chips together.
2. Pat mixture into an ungreased jelly-roll pan (or cookie sheet), about 15x10 inches.
3. Melt remaining 1 Tbs butter and 12 oz chocolate chips, either in a microwave or a double-boiler, and spread melted chocolate mixture onto peanut butter mixture.
4. Cut into bite-size squares (about 1-inch x 1-inch) and refrigerate for about 15 minutes.
5. Serve chilled.

Burn Sauce and Baking Powder

I have no recollection of where I first heard the phrase "Consume Less, Create More," but it is something that has stuck with me - due in no small part to the fact that I have it written on a post-it note and stuck to my desk blotter where it refocuses my attention daily.

In a consumer-oriented culture, one in which money (or, ahem, credit) seemed to fall from the trees for a few years there, it can be counter-intuitive to NOT buy everything we need (and want), but this catchy little phrase grabbed me for other reasons as well when I first stumbled upon it. Namely, that I need to stop spinning my wheels and make things, you know? Not just to be less of a consumer in the financial sense (though that is often the driving force), but because I find such satisfaction, stillness and joy in making things. Hence the knitting, right?

Here lately, I have been digging a hole to the center of the earth when it comes to getting down to the basest of raw materials in consumption. It is all an effort to spend less on finished products, to better channel my meager funds into the local economy, to satisfy my own need to have a creative outlet, and really, to just flat out further my anti-establishment neuroses (of which I am quite fond); but what it means is that I have been lending enormous amounts of time and energy to thinking through each and every purchase I make.

Lest anyone think I've gone off the deep end, it isn't quite as neurotic as it sounds. To be sure, it is a little obsessive, but, well, I find it to be rather a fun challenge. And in the interest of full disclosure, I do still have cable television and plan to buy too many presents for The Boy Wonder's upcoming birthday. I am still an American, after all.

The thing is though, I want to whittle down my general household shopping list. It is the little things, really, that I'm devoting this kind of strenuous effort to, because we have long since shaken loose the sort of hangers-on like pre-made pasta sauce and bagged salads and other convenience items that encumber the typical grocery list, so my focus is narrowing, and now I'm being a bit spartan about the whole mess, even going so far as to try and make my own skin tonic (that was a disaster, by the way) in an effort to not purchase a particular type of skin cream that I do, it turns out, need to buy from the store.

Live and learn.

So I find myself somewhere in the middle, as usual. I'm simply not a purist - I'm just doing the best that I can. For instance, I will simply shrivel up and die a slow, agonizing death if forced to live without hair dye (I am a brunette this week, by the way), but I can, I have learned, live a full and happy life without commercial baking powder.

Have you seen the list of ingredients in a can of baking powder? What IS sodium aluminum sulfate? Calcium sulfate? Monocalcium phosphate? Do you really want those things in your dessert? A few years back, in an article on Scott Peacock in Gourmet, a recipe was printed for, get this, Homemade Baking Powder.

I had NO idea you could make it yourself. And it kind of pissed me off that I hadn't heard about it before. I mean, its no one's fault but my own that I didn't take Home Economics in school (and I will refrain from enumerating the details on the condescending attitude I held at the time), but why on earth aren't we all raised with this knowledge? Is it really so convenient to drive to the store to buy a package of baking powder when it takes all of three minutes to make it yourself?

This really steams my caboose, and I kind of want to stand in the baking aisle of the grocery store and pull a Michael Moore about the whole thing. I want a bullhorn and a camera guy, and I want to raise a big stink.

So it is kind of in that vein that I'm getting all slash-and-burn about our shopping list. And last month, when I reached up in the cabinet and pulled out the last of the bottle of Texas Pete or Louisiana Bull or Tabasco or whatever kind of hot sauce I had last purchased with a coupon, I got a little freaked out when I found myself just mindlessly writing 'hot sauce' on the shopping list. I mean, I can make homemade salsa. Why not hot sauce? Why should it be second nature to just go to the store and buy something without first even putting a few minutes of thought into whether or not I could make it myself? And, by the way, didn't I just see a recipe for pepper sauce in a recent issue of Food & Wine?

I did, of course. Right there, in the December issue that was lying open on the menu desk, was a recipe for Spicy Red Chile Sauce, and there I was, with a giant bag of red chili peppers that I had just picked up from Athens Locally Grown. Symbiotic moments like this are rare, I know. And this sauce, which I made on the spot, and which was not difficult and only took about 45 minutes total, has been a downright hit around here. Ours is rather spicy (we've taken to referring to it as 'Burn Sauce'), but the heat level can be tweaked to one's exact tolerance since, you know, it is homemade. The texture can be as thick or as fluid as you want, and the flavor, as I'm sure you can imagine, is so fresh and so pure that now I kind of can't imagine not having it around the house. Sort of the way I used to feel about bottled hot sauce. Funny, huh?

I may be neurotic, but in lieu of having a Michael Moore moment in the middle of the supermarket, I thought it might better suit my personality to just post these recipes here. Please share them; friends don't let friends buy baking powder.

*****

HOMEMADE BAKING POWDER (from Scott Peacock, makes about 1/2 cup)

• 1/4 cup cream of tartar
• 2 Tbs baking soda

1. Sift the cream of tartar and the baking soda together three times into a small bowl.
2. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 6 weeks (mine has lasted for months, actually, with no detrimental effects on the finished product). It gets clumpy when stored, so just sift it again before using.

*****

BURN SAUCE (adapted from Food & Wine, makes about 3 cups)

• 1 pound fresh chili peppers (green or red), stems removed & discarded.
• 2 cups (or more) water
• 1 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 Tbs rice vinegar
• 1 1/2 Tbs sugar

1. In a skillet, combine the peppers, the water and the salt, and bring to a boil.
2. Reduce heat, cover the pan, and cook over moderately low heat for about 25 minutes, until peppers are tender. Check often to be sure water has not simmered off - in a cast iron skillet, more water will likely need to be added.
3. When peppers are tender, stir in the vinegar and the sugar, and let the mixture cool.
4. Puree the peppers and the liquid together in a blender, and taste the sauce. If too hot or too thick, more water can be added by the tablespoon until desired heat and texture is reached.

Crispy Roasted Broccoli

I get really, really excited about simple side dishes. The kind of thing where the ingredient list is so short you can keep it in your head, the finished dish appears to be the simplest offering in history, yet the flavor and the texture combine in a sort of complex purity that mean leftovers would be a sacrilege.

Leftovers, of course, being the holy grail of mothers of young children, one of whom is being home schooled and likes for his mother to sit and read to him for lo, the many hours of the day.

Leftovers also being a sort of scourge to the work-at-home mother of young children who achieves a kind of zen-like calm during the brief, but oddly fulfilling, time spent fine-tuning flavors and tweaking textures in the kitchen at that beautiful midpoint in the day when the learning hours are past and a dark winter evening in a warm house stretches ahead.

Either way, or (sigh) both ways in this case, we never have leftovers when I make this lovely, crazy-easy, highly addictive roasted broccoli recipe. Last time, as a matter of fact, I doubled the recipe, sure that I would finally push the limits of our broccoli consumption, but still I caught The Carnivore pilfering the last few, by then slightly limp and completely cold, pieces out of the pan while I cleaned up the dishes after dinner.

We've fairly gone bonkers for this recipe, if I'm completely honest about it. I clipped it from an issue of Bon Appetit a while back, suspicious of it's simplicity, yet intrigued by the word 'addictive' in the headnote, and further captivated by the placement of the recipe in the magazine. I have long been a sucker for food columns in which readers request favorite restaurant recipes, and this was one of those. We have rarely been steered wrong by these sorts of recipes, and some of our longest-running family menu ideas have come from the same. And in this case, I mean really, if it is a simple broccoli side dish that has someone writing to a national magazine for help obtaining the recipe, well, I would be a little foolish to just turn the page and go on with my life, yes?

I had never roasted broccoli before encountering this recipe, instead generally steaming it and tossing it with a little butter and Parmesan, but our little family had recently fallen hard for a few roasted cauliflower dishes and were thusly prepped for the possibility of love in this instance as well. Of course, I have also turned my nose up at countless roasted winter veggie combinations that resulted in soggy textures and muddled flavors, so I came into this armed with prejudice and a grain of salt.

One just never knows. (Which is why I hope to someday learn to stop attempting new recipes when company is coming over for dinner. It would be nice to not have to stifle my horror the next time a cake refuses to be turned out of it's pan, or a candy seizes up, or a bread fails to rise).

This would have been a fine night for a dinner party though, as I'm sure you can imagine by the careless way I keep throwing around declarations of love and undying devotion.

The broccoli stems become tender as they roast, but just tender enough, if you know what I mean. Not soft. Not mushy. But the real beauty is at the edges of the florets, which crisp up as they begin to brown, lending every bite an irresistible crispy texture. The red pepper flakes are an added stroke of genius and are crucial to the recipe. Don't be afraid of their heat. The broccoli florets won't be overly spicy, and the finished dish would be one-dimensional in flavor without the oomph brought by the seasoning.

This is one of those dishes that goes with practically everything, is so easy to prepare that timing is never an issue, and, honest to everything, hand on a Bible, cannot be screwed up. In the countless times I have served this broccoli, I have made nearly every little mistake possible: I've pulled it out of the oven a minute or two too early, left it in a little too long, scrimped on the garlic and the red pepper flakes, and later overdosed on the same, but each and every time, we've loved and adored it.

And fought over the last few pieces. Of course.

*****

ROASTED BROCCOLI WITH GARLIC & RED PEPPER (serves 2 to 4 as a side dish, from Black Bottle Seattle, and printed in Bon Appetit)

• 1 1/4 pounds fresh broccoli crowns, cut into florets (to a kind of largish bite-size)
• 3 1/2 Tbs olive oil, divided
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• Large pinch of dried crushed red pepper
• Salt & pepper to taste

1. On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss broccoli with 3 Tbs olive oil, and sprinkle with salt & pepper.
2. Roast for 15 minutes at 450 degrees.
3. In the meantime, stir together the remaining 1/2 Tbs olive oil, garlic and red pepper in a small bowl.
4. Remove broccoli from the oven, and drizzle the garlic mixture over the broccoli, tossing to coat. Return to oven and roast for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until broccoli is beginning to brown and has crisped up on the edges of the florets.
5. Season to taste with additional salt & pepper.

Spicy Green Cabbage

Oh, I know, really I know. Cabbage is never going to be sexy, and no one is going to read this and think, "I must go pick up some green cabbage right this minute and run home to make this recipe immediately."

I know.

But, see, I love cabbage. I mean really, truly, love and adore, pledge-my-undying-devotion-at-the-altar, LOVE cabbage. It could be the Southern girl in me, or the vegetarian - I'll never know, I guess, but I'm okay with that, because even if I am alone in this devotion, I will still have cabbage by my side.

I have only had fresh-from-the-farm cabbage a handful of times, and each time has been a sort of Very Important Moment, you know, where angels sing and a light beams down from above. If I could get it weekly from the co-op, I would, but I've only seen it listed on their website one time, and only twice in three years have I received it in my weekly box from the CSA. Honestly I'm tempted to try and grow it myself. Most of the time though, I pick up a heavy, firm head of it from the supermarket.

I've even been known to buy cabbage from a certain giant box store. I feel like such a junkie...

I have come to an uneasy truce with my desire to buy locally by finally settling for doing my best. If something is available locally, at any time of the year, then, with very few exceptions, I will only buy it locally and in season. The Carnivore scarcely notices, and The Boy Wonder has learned about seasons, about climates for growing produce, and about geography from our endless discussions about seasonal produce. I'm so tickled with the little fellow when he sighs wisely while in the supermarket and says, in his best world-weary voice, "I sure would like some blueberries right now, but they just never taste the same when they aren't fresh-picked in the heat of the summer. I guess we'll just wait, right Mama?"

I love him. More than cabbage, even.

Cabbage is one of our supermarket exceptions. Since I am virtually unable to source it locally, then I bend the rule and buy it from the store with the following caveats: that it be purchased only during it's local growing season, and it be grown within the United States. I would prefer to only buy it from our region, but since the produce labeling laws only require the country of origin, then I (again) just do my best.

See, this way I'm only being a little neurotic. 'Tis a vast improvement over some of my stricter OCD proclivities. Ask Beth if you don't believe me. She recently saw me lay a damp and dingy dishtowel over my head while I delineated some of my stressors regarding the simultaneous weighing of the environmental and financial conundrums of purchases.

I can live with 'a little neurotic.'

What I'm trying to say is it is cabbage season right now, and my nearest grocery store had some of the most beautiful heavy heads of green cabbage last week, listed as being from the next state over, and on sale no less. So I bought a few heads. Gleefully.

The Carnivore and I are both head-over-heels in love with the Braised Green Cabbage recipe that I have been using for the past few years, with it's luscious, velvety texture and rich, complex flavor. The only drawback is the 2 1/2 hours of cooking time involved. And since our days of late have been filled with learning activities and crafting and spur-of-the-moment times of drop-everything-and-go-do-something-fun, it is a rare day indeed that I remember to start dinner exactly 2 1/2 hours before we need to eat.

Hence the recent post about The Art of Simple Food. With the flexibility in our homeschooling and homeworking life comes a new flexibility in the way we eat. So last week, when it was suddenly past 4 o'clock, and I knew we would need to be sitting and eating within an hour in order for our busy evening to run as smoothly as possible, I flung open the fridge and surveyed my last minute options.

There was a fridge drawer chock full of cabbage, a few big knobs of sunchokes, some leftover blue cheese & wild rice frittata from the night before, and a few pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes in the pantry. I could serve the leftover frittata with Sunchoke & Potato Mash, but would need something a little crunchy to go with those softer textures, so really, the Braised Cabbage would have been a lousy choice even if I had, ahem, started it in time.

I had just the perfect recipe to try though, from Vegan Soul Kitchen, another cookbook I had lusted over for months before finding a used copy online. In it was an intriguing sounding, and easy looking, quick recipe for Spicy Smothered Green Cabbage. It sounded ideal for the purposes of this dinner, with hardly three minutes of prep time, a few strong-flavored spices to add some depth of flavor, and a short enough cooking time that the cabbage would almost certainly retain just the right amount of it's crunchy texture.

I'm telling you, if I thought I loved cabbage before this recipe, I love it even more now. This dish was so incredibly lovely, nicely flavored but versatile enough that it won't compete with whatever main dish it is paired with, idiot-proof in it's ease of prep and cooking, and ready in a flash. Simple does not mean bland, you see.

I upped the red pepper flakes a little, to add some additional heat (it wasn't quite spicy enough to merit using the word 'spicy' in it's title, I felt) and I added a little vinegar to brighten the flavor somewhat; you could tinker around with this as you see fit. The artistry of this recipe is in it's simplicity.

The final dish is a bit like a warm slaw, and is delicious on it's own, served alongside potatoes and frittata in this case, but would also do wonders as a bed for a pan-fried fish. Actually, I had thought about using the leftovers as a kind of fresher, livelier sort of sauerkraut atop tofu dogs, but I ended up eating it straight out it's container the next day for a very late breakfast.

'Twas THAT good.

*****

SPICY GREEN CABBAGE (serves 4 or more, adapted from Vegan Soul Cooking)

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp mustard seeds
• 1/2 to 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp raw cane sugar (or other less-processed sugar)
• Coarse sea salt (or kosher salt)
• 1 green cabbage (about 2 lbs) quartered, cored, and sliced relatively thinly
• 5 Tbs water
• Coarsely ground black pepper, or ground white pepper
• Rice wine vinegar (or other mild white vinegar), to taste

1. In a wide, fairly deep, heavy pan, like a Dutch oven, add the olive oil, mustard seeds, red pepper flakes, sugar, and 1/2 tsp sea salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mustard seeds start to pop, about 2 minutes.
2. Quickly add the cabbage, and stir to coat with oil. Cover, and cook for about 5 minutes, until cabbage is a bit wilted.
3. Add the water, stir again, cover, and cook for another 4 or 5 minutes, until most of the water has evaporated. The cabbage is ready at this time, but can be cooked on low heat for an additional 5-15 minutes to achieve a softer texture if you wish.
4. Season with salt, pepper and vinegar to taste.

The Art of Simple Food

We periodically go through shifts in our way of living, and a seismic occurrence seems to be going on right now. It was the addition of homeschooling to our schedule that cemented this new shift, I believe. Well, that and learning how to knit, if you can imagine.

Regardless, we are currently mid-shift and it is affecting the way we eat.

Gone for now are the afternoons in which I can tinker around in the kitchen for a few hours, putting together complicated meals. Gone also are the countless other hours spent poring over cookbooks and food magazines, planning meals and shopping lists, and cleaning up a wrecked kitchen at the end of the day.

Instead, some of that former free time is being redirected into other pursuits that are becoming very important to our funny little family.

Archaeology training, for instance, takes precedence as a new daily priority.

There are tepees to make and science projects to root.

And we have frozen birdbaths to inspect (while wearing bathrobes and snow boots).

The Art of Simple Food has been my bedtime reading for the past week or so - such fortuitous timing, and while there isn't a lot of new ground in the way of recipes in this gorgeous book, it is her notes and explanations and, well, her guiding principles that I treasured as I read. If you are at all familiar with Alice Waters, then you already know why her cooking guidelines would be so endearing, and for those who might not have already been exposed to her quiet sermons on food and place, I could not possibly recommend this book enough as an introduction to her way of thinking about eating.

I cannot get enough of her, obviously, and have coveted this book since it was released. I finally splurged with some birthday money and read it slowly, cover to cover, even the sections on cooking meat, which I suppose means I may have slightly lost my mind (though I do not intend to actually eat any of those dishes, of course). The lovely book now sits proudly on the menu desk next to a few of the other Chez Panisse cookbooks that I have collected over the years. I turn to these often for inspiration these days, especially there close to dinnertime when I realize yet another day just sped by in a whirlwind of reading and snuggling and creating and learning and exploring with my young teachers.

As our schedule evolves, so do our meals, and I am a bit invigorated by the change and the challenge of seeing things anew. There have been a few duds (well, okay, more than a few) in the recent new, more streamlined, recipes that I have tried, but there have also been some make-you-smile-with-each-bite winners as well, and I cannot wait to share them here.

Of course, I'll need to squeeze in the time to do that...

Mocha-Frosted Cake

All has never been quite so well with my soul as it is right now, with a big mug of coffee in hand and a sliver of Mocha-Frosted Cake in front of me. If you know me at all, then you are probably aware that a coffee dessert will get me more excited than finding a substitute teacher for my homeschool.

And I'm a little bit in love with this one. The coffee dessert, that is. Not the homeschool.

A few weeks back, four generations of my family ate together at The Grit, Athens' beloved vegetarian restaurant, to celebrate my birthday, and I remember nothing from that day quite as clearly as I recall my first bite of their Mocha Cake. The wedge of cake was huge, far too much to eat in one sitting, and I brought the leftovers home to share with The Carnivore that night, but, of course, devoured it by myself when he wasn't looking. The cake was luscious in that way only a good homemade cake can be, rich and dense, tasting of butter and vanilla and sugar, but it was the mocha frosting that took my breath away. It was crazy-sweet, almost painfully so at first, but the flavor was something to swoon over. The coffee and the cocoa came through so perfectly, so exquisitely, that within a few hours I was digging through my copy of The Grit Cookbook to see if the recipe was in there.

It was not.

I was horrified. This was the kind of thing that I wasn't going to be able to live without, but at $4 a pop for a piece of cake, I didn't see living off take-out portions in my future. So I did what any industrious techno-savvy girl would do. I went to Facebook and updated my status, pleading for the recipe. And before you think I'm crazy, that this doesn't seem the best way to obtain a restaurant recipe, well, you might not be familiar with Athens. See, The Grit isn't such an institution around here just because we love their food (though that is true enough). It is just One of Those Places, you know? The kind of place that has been around pretty close to forever, has an offbeat personality that almost perfectly mirrors that of the town, and has employed something like 86.9% of all local musicians and artists through the years.

And we take our local musicians and artists very seriously around here. Athens is a little bit like high school, you see, except that in this case, The Geeks and The Freaks are the popular ones. It is a very endearing quality in a city.

I wasn't terribly worried about getting a hold of the recipe. At least a few handfuls of the people I know have worked there at some point (this is rather a small town), and The Carnivore does work on their building occasionally, bringing home treats and goodies for me and the kids.

There are ample variations of mocha frosting online, of course, but it was the one from The Grit that I wanted, and so I reached out. And within a few minutes, a handful of the best friends a girl could have were weighing in and giving me some options. In the most bizarre twist though, my old friend Becky found the recipe in Her Copy of The Grit Cookbook.

It isn't in my copy. I checked four times. She claims her copy is an anniversary edition, but I'm not sure I believe her and I didn't really have the urge to delve too deeply into that particular part of this saga anyhow. I just wanted to bake the cake.

Of course more roadblocks raised their heads. Nothing can ever be so simple that I eat a piece of cake, find the recipe in the restaurant's cookbook, and then come home and duplicate it myself. This time, it was the cake batter that tripped me up. The frosting recipe in Becky's Extra-Super-Special-Limited-Edition version of the cookbook was not associated with a particular cake, and the book lists a handful of their different batter recipes.

I skipped over Facebook this time and dialed the restaurant directly. "I want to bake your mocha cake," I told the person on the other end of the line, "but the cookbook does not mention which cake batter is used."

"It goes on the Chocolate Death Cake," she replied.

And I started to silently recite mild curse words in my head. "But," I began, "When I had the cake a few weeks ago in the restaurant, it was on a white cake."

Silence on the other end.

Then, "Nooooo," she said. "It would have been on the Chocolate Death Cake." [Pause]. "Unless," she went on, slowly, "Unless we were just playing around and trying something new."

I bit my tongue painfully for a moment, and then, in a pained voice, said, "Do you know which cake it might have been on then?"

More silence on the other end.

One of two things happens to me in situations like this. Either I dig my heels in and refuse to give up, plowing forward until I get to some conclusion, any conclusion, whether correct or not; or I walk away on the spot, fully absolving myself of the matter and refusing to ever bring up the subject again.

There is no middle ground. And the decision is always immediate.

I felt fully vested in this cake though, and I was starting to take the whole thing just a little personally. So I packed the kids in the car and went out to buy a pound of butter. When The Boy Wonder asked what we were doing, I gritted my teeth and told him we were going to bake a cake. Right away. He brightened up and said, in the most heartwarmingly cheerful voice I've ever heard, "You're finally going to get your birthday cake, Mama?"

I'm telling you, I love that little guy so much it makes my heart hurt.

Choosing a cake batter turned out to be relatively simple once it was all said and done. I knew I wanted a cake that was moist, but was not spiced, and was not chocolate, which narrowed down my choices in their cookbook until I ended up with the batter for their Vanilla Malted Cake.

Eureka.

By dinnertime, I had a three-layer cake sitting on the counter, slathered more than generously with the mocha frosting. After three weeks of bellyaching about this cake, I finally had it. It was right there on my counter.

And I was afraid to cut into it. Something about knowing how much butter and sugar went into it was really messing with my head.

It's not easy being me.

The cake did turn out perfectly, thank God. Even though I ripped the layers a little bit getting them out of the pans, and despite the way they each cooked up lopsided so that one side was higher in each layer, and overlooking the fact that I unevenly iced the layers, this cake is a wondrous thing.

I know there is untold disagreement on when a cake is at it's best. Some say cakes are always better on the day they are made, and then there are those in my camp that feel strongly cakes improve with an overnight rest. Please believe me on this one though: this cake is much better the second day. The cake layers seem somehow denser to me, and the frosting has hardened up just a little, enough to get those kind of delicately crispy peaks that make it so much fun to eat cake.

The coffee flavor of this frosting is heavenly to a coffee nut like myself, with the same delicate intensity of Haagen-Dazs coffee ice cream, but, um, even sweeter from the ungodly amounts of confectioners' sugar that are used. Every bite tastes of butter and sugar and vanilla and coffee. I can't think of a better combination.

*****

MOCHA-FROSTED CAKE (adapted from The Grit Cookbook, serves at least 12)

Cake

• 1 cup butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 3 cups sifted cake flour
• 1 Tbs baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Grease three 9-inch round cake pans. Grease them liberally. And then grease them a little bit more. Then dust with a considerable amount of flour, shaking out the excess.
2. Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. Stir together the milk, oil and vanilla extract.
5. Add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with milk mixture, beating after each addition, just until smooth.
6. Divide batter evenly (or close to evenly) into those 3 heavily-greased pans.
7. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the layers comes out clean. Take care not to overbake.
8. Remove from oven, cool for about 10 minutes, then remove layers from pans (run a knife along the edges, and gently use a spatula to loosen if necessary) and allow to cool completely.
9. Freezing the layers for about 5 minutes before frosting them will help them to hold together better and not get crumbs everywhere. Trust me.

Frosting

• 1 cup butter, at room temperature
• 2 lb powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 Tbs instant coffee granules
• 2 Tbs cocoa
• 2 to 6 Tbs soymilk or whole milk

1. Beat butter at medium speed in an electric mixer until creamy.
2. Stir in sugar, beating until combined.
3. Dissolve instant coffee in vanilla and a tiny bit of water.
4. Add coffee mixture and cocoa to the butter mixture, stirring until combined.
5. At medium speed, add soymilk or whole milk, starting with 2 Tbs, and adding more as needed (1 Tbs at a time) until spreadable consistency is achieved.
6. Frost between layers, and top and sides of cake.

Feta Devils

I feel a little silly coming in here with deviled eggs, of all things, but I think I may have stumbled upon the holy grail of deviled egg recipes (heh heh. I just said "holy" and "deviled" in the same sentence). Deviled eggs don't usually get me all hot and bothered. I mean, I love them as much as the next person (because of course there is no middle ground with deviled eggs - one either grins at the sight of them or wrinkles their nose in disgust, yes?), but I've never been much for clipping deviled egg recipes so as to have copious versions of these in my repertoire. They're just eggs, after all. Hard-boiled eggs with some mayo and mustard and paprika, and maybe a little pinch of this or that thrown in, but they'll never be the most sensual item on the buffet.

There I was though, with some gorgeous fresh eggs straight from the farm and a big handsome hunk of local feta, and I thought I might die of boredom if I made one more frittata. Or quiche. Vegetarian proteins are a bit limited, you see, and and I needed a little break from anything puffy and custardy (especially after slogging through the utterly delicious, but tedious by the fourth day, leftover corn souffle from Thanksgiving).

Come to think of it, I would be remiss to not share that souffle recipe here soon, especially with Christmas dinners coming up, but I just can't bear to dwell upon it yet. I. Need. A. Break.

Anyhow, late one recent afternoon, when it was too cold to play outside for something like the ninth day in a row, and before I had wised up enough to institute Mama's Mandatory Afternoon Coffee & Knitting Break, I was pulling my hair out trying to come up with an activity to occupy the kids that did not involve either phonics or Christmas crafts. And, then, The Boy Wonder suggested we go to the kitchen and cook something together.

I love that kid. Sometimes I think he knows me better than I know myself.

"Good idea, Doodles," I sighed in relief, "Let's cook something."

We already had a batch of brownies on the counter, and I had a vegetable plate planned for dinner, so, while Thing One and Thing Two noisily dragged chairs across the kitchen so they could stand at the island and "help," I dove into The Stack of Misfit Recipes to find some sort of snack or appetizer-like thing from the pile of clipped recipes that I had been meaning to get around to for some time now.

The fridge and pantry were a little bare, leaving us with limited options on what we could throw together, but I knew I'd hit upon gold when I pulled out a recipe for Blue Devils, clipped eons ago from the AJC. We didn't have any blue cheese on hand, but I was kind of itching to dig into that afore-mentioned block of feta, and I had a sneaking suspicion that using smoked paprika (one of my biggest obsessions lately) in place of the bacon bits would make for an exciting little combination. Plus, since boiling eggs would be something of a novelty for The Boy Wonder, I figured this little activity would make for a nice science lesson as well.

Homeschooling is fun like that.

These were, of course, incredibly simple to make, and the kids had a bang-up time helping to peel the eggs and mash up the yolks. And we had nothing to lose, after all, because even if they were only so-so, I knew they would have fun eating them as an afternoon snack. Amazingly though, these turned out So Darn Yummy that the kids fought over them and we ended up having to make a second batch so we could have them with our dinner also. We're big feta fans around here.

Oh, they were so lusciously rich and tangy and smoky all at the same time, and the crumbles of feta added a nubby texture to the yolk mixture that provided a beautiful toothsomeness to an otherwise one-trick pony. Almost as importantly, with lots of smoked paprika sprinkled over the usually bare whites of the egg, the flavors were pumped up and the visual impact more stunning. I think I'm a little bit in love.

*****

FETA DEVILS

(adapted from the AJC), makes 12

• 6 large eggs
• 2 Tbs plus 2 tsp mayonnaise
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 Tbs crumbled feta cheese
• Salt & black pepper to taste
• Smoked paprika for sprinkling

1. In a large saucepan, cover the eggs with cold tap water and bring to a boil over high heat. Boil, uncovered, for three minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, cover, and let stand for 15 minutes. Drain the eggs and rinse under cold running water until cool enough to handle.
2. Peel the eggs, cut them in half lengthwise, and put the yolks in a medium bowl. Set the whites aside on a serving platter.
3. Mash the yolks with a fork, and stir in the mayo, mustard, feta, a couple pinches of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper. Add more salt & pepper to taste.
4. Spoon the mixture back into the egg whites, and sprinkle both the whites and the yolks with generous amounts of smoked paprika.
5. Refrigerate until ready to serve (can be refrigerated, covered, for up to 8 hours).

Cappuccino Brownies

1. My plans to go fishing on Thanksgiving Day have been thwarted.
2. I have a busted shredder, and oodles of paperwork that I must rip up by hand.
3. Kindergarten is kicking my butt, and Little Miss Hazelnut has discovered that watercolors make fabulous designs on fabric.
4. The living room needs to be swept for the second time today, I can barely see the porch for the pile of leaves that keep blowing onto it, and we now have a pet snake. A snake. With a name and a heat lamp and it’s very own little terrarium perched jauntily on the antique bookshelf in the living room.

This is only a short list of the justifications that I came up with when I needed a reason to indulge my sweet tooth. There is more, of course, but I would hate to bore anyone with the absurdities that complicate what should be an otherwise serene and lovely life out in the country.

Just know that I had earned these brownies fair and square. It is important no one misunderstand me on this point.

Truly, I just wanted to bake a simple pan of brownies today, something with dark chocolate chips and maybe a handful of nuts, but I also wanted to make some sort of dent in The Recipe Stacks, so I plunged headfirst into my piles of clippings and came up with something called Cappuccino Brownies involving chocolate and instant espresso powder from a back issue of Bon Appetit. How could that be wrong?

Well, except for the added time that comes into play while waiting for not one, but two, layers to cool, of course.

Knitting, thank God, has become my tool of Zen, though, (if it is possible/advisable/understandable to use the words ‘God’ and ‘Zen’ in the same sentence) and now, as difficult as it may be to believe, I am now able to achieve a state of total calm during periods of enforced waiting. I’ve waited my whole life for something like this to come along and make it possible for enforced waits to be something I find to be not only tolerable, but rewarding.

I swear I have not been body snatched. I have achieved a level of patience heretofore undiscovered. Yoga has nothing on knitting, and now, when both kids simultaneously melt down and freak out on me, I yell not. I knit.

All that to say, I did spend the afternoon baking and waiting on these brownies. I was also cooking rice for tonight’s Mozzarella-Stuffed Arancini, and simmering a batch of Fiery Marinara Sauce, so a little extra time in the kitchen wasn’t going to kill me (though the mountain of dirty dishes nearly did me in), and while I waited for the brownies to cool so that I could make the ganache for the top, I knitted.

Then, while the ganache cooled, I made dinner. It was all very efficient. So carefully planned and executed, so Martha Stewart. Once the arancini was in the oven, I cut the brownies and composed a photograph while the natural light was still coming in through the bay window; and then, after an embarrassingly early dinner, I sat down to savor the crowning glory of a day well spent.

And I was completely disappointed. The brownies were, meh, nothing to write home about. I mean, they’re good. They’re more than edible. They could even be described as rather yummy, but they’re just not All That. Not worth the calories. Not worth the time.

Under normal circumstances, I would be devastated by this. Crushed, even.

But I have my newfound Zen-ness to call upon. So I sit. And I knit.

And when I am not sitting in a boat in the middle of Lake Keowee on Thanksgiving Day, fishing and spending some downtime with The Carnivore and the kids, I will be knitting. Maybe it will lessen the blow somewhat.

Coffee Toffee Fudge

A very taxing and mood-souring week ended, finally and at long last, with a whimper on Friday night as I wearily filed the last piece of paper from my inbox, wrestled the kids to sleep, folded a final load of clothes, and threw myself, with great fanfare, into My Chair to page through the final issue of Gourmet which, now that I think about it, only adds to my sense of ennui. I'm really going to miss that magazine.

Things started to look up this morning though, after The Boy Wonder gently woke me from a solid, uninterrupted night of glorious sleep. I knew The Carnivore would be home all day, thus acting as the Pied Piper to his devoted children, Miss Hazelnut had slept for 14 blessed hours after a week of coughing and fretting every night, and my agenda was blissfully clear.

I had all the makings for a perfect day to piddle around in the kitchen, and just the framework from which to begin: a recipe I had unearthed, quite by accident earlier in the week, for coffee fudge.

Coffee fudge.

I love coffee. I sneak coffee liqueurs into cake batters, consider dark-chocolate coffee beans to have vitamin-like qualities, suffer midnight lustful cravings for coffee ice cream, and, of course, drink coffee like it's going out of style. Coffee fudge, then, seemed like an obvious necessity to a complete life well-lived, yes?

Thus, after a couple cups of coffee, I made pancakes for the rugrats and spent some time outside pondering the ideal location for The Boy Wonder's Spring science project (read: vegetable garden), and then snuck back into the house when it looked like The Carnivore and his spawn were happily ensconced in tree trimming, tree climbing, and whatever it is that Miss Hazelnut does when she hangs out with them.

A quiet house is a beautiful thing.

The idea of coffee fudge has intrigued me for some time, but because I had never actually run across any, even at candy shops, I would tend to brood obsessively on the subject for a while, and then forget all about it again. Come to think of it, I employ that strategy with many of my interests. One more thing to add to my list of character flaws.

Previous internet searches always ended abruptly with recipes that included, I kid you not, marshmallow cream. I probably don't even need to get into the list of reasons why this is such an appalling idea. A few days ago, though, while having a near meltdown about owning too much stuff and trying to purge more of the same, I flipped through a silly little gift book about coffee that I've been dragging around for umpteen years and, right before I tossed it into the 'donate' pile, I saw a recipe for a pistachio and coffee fudge.

And the obsession was reborn.

This recipe had the right jumping off point for me. I could easily sub instant espresso granules for the coffee, marshmallow cream wasn't involved, and I could do anything I wanted where the nuts were concerned. Pistachios, while lovely and addictive, weren't what I was looking for here. Hazelnuts seemed ideal - I can't count how many hours I wasted at the old Athens Coffee House with a tableful of friends and a pot of hazelnut coffee back in my early college days - but hazelnuts were nowhere to be found at the grocery store and I wasn't terribly inclined to do one of my drive-around-town ingredient searches. I briefly contemplated using cacao nibs, but was afraid they might be too bitter to match with the espresso, and dark chocolate chips seemed not to be the right texture. Then I remembered my old favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor, the now-retired (argh) Coffee English Toffee Crunch, and I dug a little deeper into the back of the fridge and came out with a bag of Heath Toffee Bits leftover from a Mocha-Kahlua Cake experiment from last spring.

Eureka.

The end result has a flavor reminiscent of pralines, with a nubby texture from the toffee bits, and just a hint of the coffee - not enough to repel those odd souls who aren't addicted to coffee (even my children liked it), but enough to attract those of us who smile even at the scent (I can't get my husband to stop eating them). Actually, if a Frappuccino were made into a candy, I'm pretty sure this is what it would taste like. Starbucks, consider this recipe copyrighted - you know how to contact me.

*****

COFFEE TOFFEE FUDGE (makes about 3 lbs of candy)

Notes: I used natural cane sugar with great results, though white sugar is traditionally used in fudge. Cafe Bustelo makes an instant espresso that comes in a jar in most grocery stores. Heath Toffee Bits can be found by the chocolate chips, but feel free to substitute nuts.

• 1 1/4 cups whole milk
• 4 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 2 Tbs instant espresso granules
• 2 Tbs light corn syrup
• 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
• 1/2 cup toffee bits

1. Grease a small jelly roll pan or an 8x10-ish glass casserole dish. A larger dish can be used, and will result in a thinner piece of fudge (nothing wrong with that).
2. In a large saucepan, continuously stir the milk, sugar and butter over low heat until sugar has dissolved.
3. Add the instant espresso, corn syrup, & condensed milk, and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring often.
4. Continue to boil the mixture, stirring very often, for about 20 to 30 minutes, until mixture has reached about 230 degrees (or soft-ball stage: drop small spoonful into bowl of cold water; a soft ball should form).
5. Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes.
6. Stir in toffee bits, and beat mixture with a wooden spoon for 2 or 3 minutes, until mixture is no longer glossy and has thickened slightly. This is the only tricky step: if you stir too long, the fudge will begin to harden too much in the pan and will be a little grainier when it is cooled. When in doubt, stop stirring.
7. Quickly pour into greased pan. Let stand for a few minutes, until cool to the touch. Cut into squares, then allow to cool completely.

Homemade Granola Bars

One of my primary goals as of late has been to demystify the modern world to my children. I have taken them to farms and shown them the plants that grow our food and the animals that provide us with dairy products and eggs, they have seen the machines that roast our coffee, and side-by-side we have huddled together over the stove to make our own play dough. Next month, I will begin a knitting class, and have thus promised to make The Big Boy as many hats and scarves as his little heart desires (partly to placate him because he is so devastated that he cannot go to the lessons with me).

Something has been lost over the past few decades where, in the interest of modernizing ourselves, we have turned into consumers instead of producers. I think it a bit silly that I do not know how to sew, and far more absurd that I was thirty years old before I even attempted to bake bread. It isn't that I want to adorn myself with a bonnet, eschew makeup (God forbid), give up my car, and relinquish my Blackberry at the door, but more a desire to regain some independence that is driving me towards some of these more simple pleasures.

It would just be nice to know there is an alternative to automatically and blindly heading to a store when I need something, you know? As household items have broken recently, we have tried to see if we can make do or do without instead of mindlessly replacing everything, an exercise in which we have had wildly mixed results. The coffeepot and the laptop were both replaced within hours (and upgraded to boot), but it turns out that a lingerie bag and a little bit of manic cardio can take the place of a salad spinner, and a cast iron grill pan makes a more than adequate pizza stone. This is a work in progress, obviously, and is sure to be tested further.

It was in this spirit that I decided we needed to add some more snack foods to our cooking repertoire, mostly in the interest of demystifying those over-packaged and nutritionally impotent geegaws that so tempt young children. So far, so good on this front: French fries were fun to learn, as were onion rings, spicy dill pickles and, of course, all desserts we've made to date (truth be told, I would love to master potato chips as well, but I'm petrified of using a mandoline - my lack of grace could be to my detriment in this instance). And as soon as I can get my hands on a used food dehydrator, we will test our fruit drying skills to see if there is some way to convince my skeptical son that gummy candies are unnecessary to a happy childhood.

This week, to supplement our learning activities and to pad The Big Boy's lunchbox for his weekly four hours at 'school,' I snagged a recipe from Serious Eats for homemade granola bars. The post's author had already done much of the dirty work, substituting here and there in the original recipe to make for a more healthful bar and since that particular website is a little less, ah, crunchy than some of the others I read, and the ingredients were all items that I keep in our pantry at any given time, I was fairly confident from the get-go that this would appeal to the whole family.

I was also, it should be noted, willing to throw in a small handful of white chocolate chips to make these more palatable to children who might not yet be able to appreciate their mama's moral neuroses.

The recipe was surprisingly easy - I'm not sure why I assumed granola bars were either time-consuming or labor-intensive - and the end result was nothing short of addictive. I keep swearing I'm going to wrap them up and put them away, but I just can't stop eating them.

The bars are dense and chewy, ever-so-slightly rich, and just sweet enough that their healthfulness can be overlooked (I love it when that happens). The texture is heavier than commercial chewy granola bars, but less crispy-crumbly than the old-fashioned original kind. Even better, they are filling enough to make a lovely breakfast on the go. I will be eating a lot of these, I can tell. Actually, um, I've eaten three in the last hour alone - they're that good.

*****

GRANOLA BARS (adapted from Serious Eats, makes 15 2x2 bars)

• 2 cups rolled oats (the extra-thick ones from Bob's Red Mill are particularly good)
• 1/2 cup unpacked light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup dried, sweetened cranberries
• 1/4 cup slivered almonds
• 1/4 cup white chocolate chips (optional, to the purists)
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 large egg whites
• 1/4 cup canola oil (or roasted nut oil)
• 1/4 cup very mashed banana
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

1. In a 325 degree oven, toast the slivered almonds on a baking sheet until pale golden, about 8 to 10 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, sugar, wheat germ, cinnamon, flour, cranberries, toasted almonds, white chocolate chips, and salt.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the honey, egg whites, oil, banana, and vanilla.
4. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour the honey mixture into the well, and stir together with a wooden spoon until everything is moistened.
5. Pour mixture into a well-greased 9x13 glass baking dish, and pat into a rectangle. The rectangle may not reach all sides of the pan. Don't let that stress you out. Mine was short about 2 inches at one end.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 35 minutes, until edges begin to brown.
7. Remove from oven, cool for no more than 5 minutes, and cut into squares (if you wait too long to cut them, they will not cut well). Let cool completely before removing from pan.