Susan at the Well Seasoned Cook is the hostess for this month’s Sugar High Friday. We participated in our first one last month and enjoyed it so much that we are doing it again. Now I should tell you about the new rule in our house – no sweets unless there is a good reason. This is definitely hard being part of the Daring Bakers and Tuesdays With Dorie, but I usually am able to come up with a good reason to make each of these challenges.
Diane & Todd of White On Rice Couple got tired of seeing me complain on Twitter, about how I could never find any passion fruit in the city so they surprised us with a box of the little gems. They were so sweet that we pretty much slurped all of them up except for the couple that we saved their pulp and froze – sounds like we saved something else & froze it! During this couple of weeks Diane slipped a birthday by us, she is so modest, so I knew that I had to send a “thank you” and happy belated birthday gift to her (them, she was suppose to share).
Diane and Todd are one of the go to sites for when we need a couple good cocktail ideas and since we know they love their cocktails, it only seemed appropriate to create a gift that was cocktail inspired. We wish we could have shared one of our favorites with them, but since we can not mail a cocktail and a fly down to make it, we recreated it as a cupcake.
Here you have it the Blood Orange Margarita Cupcake. I made a cupcake that was flavored with the zest and juice of one blood orange and topped it off with a ginger tequila buttercream frosting. Where does SHF come in, well, I dusted the tops of the cupcakes with silver sparkle sanding sugar. For this photo I used a gold edible dusting powder. The cupcakes were, well, pretty fantastic and definitely meant for adults only.
| Blood Orange Margarita Cupcake |
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Recipe type: Dessert
Author: Chez Us
- Cupcakes:
- 1 small blood orange – zested & juiced (about 1/8 cup of juice)
- ¾ cup self rising flour
- ¾ cup all purpose flour
- ½ cup butter at room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup whole milk
- Frosting:
- l lb. box Powdered Sugar
- ¼ cup milk
- ½ cup butter softened
- 2 teaspoons minced candied ginger
- 1 tablespoon white tequila
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Line a 1 muffin tin with cupcake papers.
- Sift the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
- In a mixing bowl cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the blood orange zest and juice; blend until combined.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition.
- Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the milk, and mix using a low speed. I use the stir option on my mixer.
- Once combined, mix for 1 minute at medium speed.
- Divide the batter among the cupcake liners.
- Bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until springy to touch.
- Let cool for 10 minutes, and then remove from muffin tin and let cool at room temperature.
- Frosting
- In a large mixing bowl add the powder sugar, milk and butter; mix using medium speed (about a 5 on my mixer), until light and fluffy.
- Add the ginger and tequila, and mix for another 3 minutes.
- Frost the above cupcakes.
- Serve.
- Eat.
2.2.6
On November 4th, I was walking in my neighborhood, when I stumbled upon a gem, Omnivore Books. Celia Sack, the owner of this little gem, was not even open yet but she was kind enough to let us in to check out her new project – a bookstore devoted entirely to cookbooks. I was completely ecstatic! It is one thing to have a new store in our little neighborhood but it is another to have one devoted entirely to one of your biggest passions.
I drug Lenny and two of our friends to their open house that following Saturday afternoon, which proved to be the best thing to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Celia had fantastic food such as cured meats from Boccalone, an assortment of cheeses, olives and fantastic wine – just the thing to warm you up and get you in the mood to wander through her fantastic assortment of old books and new. We left with two books, a cookbook for Portuguese food and an easy read about a foodies adventure in Paris over Christmas.
This little nook in the neighborhood is the perfect place to find a rare book for the foodie on your list or for the hippest new cookbook out there. You will not want to miss the charm and warmth of the store but also from the very knowledgeable owner, Celia. It is a delightful place to spend a few hours.
Omnivore Books on Food
3885a Cesar Chavez Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
415.282.4712
I grew up eating lamb very often, by the time I flew from the nest at the tender age of 18, I did not like lamb. Four years later I found myself in the Bay Area and submerged myself into becoming a foodie. I remember the first time I had lamb again, it was roasted with loads of garlic and rosemary, that taste still lingers in my mind. We are pretty much meat eaters around here and will eat just about anything; I more so then Lenny. WAIT! There’s more »
YEAH, our entry won the Chow Food Fight for Thanksgiving Sides! Thanks for all your votes and thank you to the Chow Editors for liking our recipe!
Want to add it to your Thankgiving Menu, here is the recipe.
In all honesty, I was not really sure what a sunchoke was before tonight. I was just interested in trying something new as I did the shopping last weekend. I actually thought it was related to our friend the artichoke, but after some research, I found out it is related to the sunflower and has nothing to do with Jerusalem. “A sunchoke is an underground vegetable like a cross between a rutabaga, potato, sunflower seed, and water chestnut. Also called a Jerusalem artichoke, it is not like an artichoke bloom, nor does it grow in Jerusalem. It’s one of the few native tubers of North America.” Want to learn more click here.
I made a soup out of the little bag of sunchokes. Just a plain simple soup. It was easy. It was very tasty: a bit earthy like a potato and nutty like a just roasted chestnut. I did add some left over Anaheim pepper, which gave it a mild spicy taste. Overall, it was really a nice little soup.
Next time, I may try to add some sunchokes to mashed potatoes instead of our new favorite add-in, Celery root or maybe I will add some to a salad as it has a nice crisp texture when eaten raw.
Recipe
Ilva of Lucullian Delights organizes the Paper Chef challenge, which is similar to the Iron Chef challenges. The rules are very similar, you are given 4 ingredients and you have to come up with a meal using all 4 items – it can be one dish or it can be a few, you just have to use the 4 ingredients. This month Magnus, of Amsterdam, who was the Paper Chef winner for the challenge 33, is hosting the challenge and has selected the following ingredients:
- Turkey
- Anaheim peppers
- Winter squash
- Lentils
When I saw the ingredients I knew I had to take on the challenge as I love all of these items and I knew they would make a simple dinner for one – my man is out of town all week!
First I roasted the acorn squash until fork tender, no seasonings, just plan oven roasted. Then I peeled them and cut into chunks.
I love roasted chicken breasts, so I used the same recipe that I normally use, but with a turkey breast – coated with grapeseed oil and seasoned with sea salt and cracked black pepper. Cooking with the grapeseed oil permits you to cook the chicken at a high heat without drying out the chicken. It comes out very flavorful and moist. While the chicken was roasting, I cooked some French green lentils with some chicken broth, until tender, but still slightly crunchy. While the lentils and chicken were cooking, I sauteed some shallots with diced Anaheim peppers until caramelized and then added the squash and cooked just until heated through.
Once the lentils were done, I drained them and tossed with the squash mixture and reheated. Thinly sliced the turkey breast and plated the meal. End result, quick and easy dinner in less than an hour, which was very flavorful with the nuttiness of the lentils, spicy peppers and very sweet acorn squash and a lightly roasted turkey breast.
 I have just entered our Pumpkin Pie into Apartment Therapy The Kitchn’s Best Pie Bakeoff. Our family pumpkin pie recipe truly is the best and I am not just saying that!
My step-mom, Kathie, has been making this pie for as long as I can remember and the key to her success is using fresh sugar pie pumpkin and cognac. Now, we switched it up a bit, this year, by adding cardamon instead of cinnamon and we used French Brandy instead of the cognac. It came out as creamy and rich as always; but, the cardamon and brandy gave it a really nice warm taste, very smooth on the taste buds. Using the fresh and slow roasted sugar pie pumpkins really is the key to this recipe as it gives the pie texture, really substantial texture, not smoosh like canned. I promise if you make this for the holidays your family will be forever grateful!
As mentioned earlier this week, we are in “clean-up” mode over at our pantry. When I go into these modes, I try to only use what I have in the house and to make the meal as delicious as possible! Tonight I took some carrots, celery and french green lentils and simmered them with some left over onion soup I had tucked away into the freezer for one of those solo dinner nights. Then I grilled (using my new favorite toy) some Lamb Meregez Sausage for the protein part of the meal. The lentils were cooked perfectly, slightly crunchy but moist and full of flavor thanks to the onion soup. The sausage added a really nice spicy surprise to the mellow lentils. It was a great hit you in the face spicy but then softened by the time you were ready to take the next bite!
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