Popping in to ask your opinion on something: My golden birthday is fast approaching. I usually bake for the wonderful day but I’m not sure what to bake this year. I have a reputation to keep up in the office. Last year I brought mimosas and my boss called it ‘inspired’. Then there was the time I made lemon cupcakes with raspberry filling and you would have thought I brought Jesus. So the choices for this year: red velvet ice cream cupcakes (red velvet cake is my specialty) OR key lime pie? Thoughts?
Category Archives: “The Pot Licker”
Not short but sweet
“Christmas is the gentlest, loveliest festival of the revolving year – and yet, for all that, when it speaks, its voice has strong authority.” ~W.J. Cameron
I think I might have more Johnnie Walker Red than I had originally thought as evidenced by my returning home and crying and emailing and drinking the Chenin Blanc that had exploded all over my freezer. Please note that crying, emailing and drinking are not three activities that should ever be done at the same time. It’s like mixing napalm and well, oxygen. Police are so upset about people drinking and driving well psychotherapists and close friends should send out warrants for the arrest for overdramatic 20 somethings with a proclivity to confess The Feelings at 11:39 PM while weeping over a large glass of wine.
Woe!
The Spirit has been in and out. Next week when I’m sitting at home for 12 glorious, God sent, Jesus kissed days with nothing to do but write, write and maybe write some more, I will tell you about Friday night and how Susan had to keep me from jumping off my balcony while had a house full of people.
Merry Christmas! Try the eggnog! Excuse me while I leap all of three stories to my death but what would actually be a broken hip!
There is no proper segue here except that I need a very long break. Not a week off of work where I go somewhere else and pretend to be thrilled about TSA giving me an anal probe but a week off where I sit and read and play with my new Hayden Harnett. Speaking of which – and an utter digression of where this post is headed – I bought two Hayden Harnett bags for myself for Christmas. I even had them gift wrapped with a gift note. The gift note: “Dear Heather: You rock. Don’t ever change. Love, Heather”. So you know there’s that: Even if I’m feeling unloved by the world at large at least I love me and that’s what really matters.
Anyway, while I’m home I’ll probably bake and practice making gluten free goodies (post on why I find myself blatantly lying about why I don’t eat gluten coming soon to a crapass blog near you!). In the meantime I will leave you with these:
Gluten free pumpkin cupcakes. I’ve been holding onto these bad boys for a month now waiting for the right time to release them on you because people are terrified by the no gluten thing. As if anything sans gluten will taste like chalk paste ground up with salt. These are quite delicious. And I’m not saying that because I put my blood, sweat and tears into them but because I was apprehensive and had resigned myself to defeat that I would just have to suffer in silence. I test out everything I bake on my coworkers before I give them to actual people. The feedback from these was a resounding, “Quit your job and bake”. So if things in politics don’t work out and President Obama doesn’t want me in his administration because of my facebook/twitter/blog/MySpace sex shots (I AM KIDDING) then I can always bake for a living.
Gluten-free Pumpkin Cupcakes (from Simply Recipes)
Ingredients
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature (I only had 3/4 of a stick so I used that and added 2 Tbsp of olive oil. It worked fine.)
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 Tbsp molasses
1 Tbsp honey
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pumpkin purée
2 cups Red Mill’s gluten-free flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice (1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon lemon zest)
1/2 cup buttermilk*
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 cup raisins
Frosting ingredients:
8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup confectioner’s powdered sugar, sifted
*Note to make your own buttermilk, combine 1/2 cup of milk with 1/2 Tbsp of vinegar or lemon juice. Stir and let stand 10 minutes before using.
Method
Cupcakes
1 Preheat oven to 350°F, and place rack in the center of the oven.
2 Using an electric mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, molasses and honey, until as light and fluffy as it will be, about 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the pumpkin purée and vanilla and beat until incorporated.
3 In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. Add the flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to the pumpkin batter, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
4 Add the pecans and raisins. Mix in by hand.
5 Set paper cupcake holders in a muffin tin. Spoon the batter into the cupcake paper cups, close to the top of the cups. Bake approximately 18 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.
Frosting
6 Using an electric mixer, mix together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add maple syrup and confectioners’ sugar and mix to combine. Once cupcakes have cooled, apply frosting.
Makes 16 cupcakes.
Below we have your basic sugar cookies but with a lemon glaze frosting because I had no patience to whip up vanilla frosting and think vanilla frosting is a product of the Devil. I did have powdered sugar and some lemons lying around so I made lemon glaze which made an ordinary sugar cookie taste like magic. If you’re ever looking to impress your coworkers or mother or parole officer; tell them that you made sugar cookies from scratch without the help of Pillsbury and they’ll all bow at your feet and tell you how fucking fantastic you really are.
1 Cup of sugar
1 cup of butter
3 tablespoons of milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg
3 cups of flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of Baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1. In large bowl, combine sugar, butter, milk, vanilla, and egg. Blend well. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. Add flour, baking powder and salt; mix well. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate for atleast 1 hour.
2. Heat oven to 400 f. On lightly floured surface, roll out 1/3 od dough at a time to 1/8-inch thickness. Keep remaining dough refrigerated. Cut with floured 2-inch cookie cutter. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet,
3. Bake at 400 f for 5-9 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Immediately remove from cookie sheet decorate as desired.
Serving size is one cookie with frosting…
Enjoy!
Number of Servings: 72
Frosting:
Whisk 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, two tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 ½ teaspoons lemon peel in small bowl. Frost.
And with that, have a very wonderful Holiday, listen to Carol of the Bells, drink eggnog spiked with four kinds of hard alcohol and I will see you all next week.
Also posted in "Oh night divine", "The Pot Licker", Va-cay-cay-cay, Whoa feelings 12 Comments
This Calls for Cupcakes
“Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first. ” ~Ernestine Ulmer
It was about a month ago when I went to Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend and remarked that that trip had turned the LOSE YOUR SHIT switch in my head to the off position. And there it remained in the upright and locked position until the last several weeks slowly unraveled every lose thread in my brain. It’s as if there was that one tiny piece of string that begged to be tugged but once it was tugged there went a perfect hemline.
Since that weekend I’ve been to Denver, Chicago, San Francisco and I just left New Orleans. It’s that last trip that makes me bite my tongue when lamenting how hard my life is right now and how much stress I am under and how I’d really like to just bathe in a large bath of Swedish Fish while a butler fans me and brings me bottles of Peroni and beignets. Because if I want to see or feel hard, the people of the Gulf Coast of Louisiana can show me hard.
I go back to the Vineyard later this week during my mandatory vacation. I think it is forced upon us so that we don’t get all disgruntle and ornery or feel the need to take a swan dive into the Hudson with weights strapped to our ankles. The last time I went it was for my mother’s birthday and after she begged and pleaded with me to come out there, I brought with me a large bottle of Prosecco – her favorite – and a dozen lemon-raspberry cupcakes. Because love means willingly grating lemon peels for five hours and losing a knuckle in the process. It’s like please ignore the stubs of my once lovely fingers and enjoy the refreshing lemon flavor and the surprise bit of raspberry in the center. These are my new favorite cupcakes not just because they proved to my mother that I have other talents, besides being annoying as fuck. I think the only reason she won’t disown me now is because when she says JUMP, I say HOW HIGH and then provide her with goodies. I’ve been meaning to write about these for weeks because they are divine and easy to make and are a little bit of comfort and heaven topped with a fresh raspberry.
I think that right now I deserve cupcakes but after the last three weeks of enjoying French fries and beer as a meal, I’d much prefer a vat of lettuce, avocado and tomatoes. But I am totally not kidding about the Swedish Fish bath.
Lemon-Rasperry Cupcakes (from Epicurious) (Yields 12)
¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups powdered sugar, divided
4 ½ teaspoons finely grated lemon peel, divided
2 large eggs
1 ¼ cups self-rising flour
¼ cup buttermilk
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, divided
12 tablespoons plus 1 tablespoon seedless raspberry jam
Fresh raspberries (for garnish)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees (F). Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners. Using electric mixer, beat butter, 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, and 3 teaspoons lemon peel in large bowl until blended, then beat until fluffy and pale yellow. Add eggs one at a time, beating to blend after each addition. Beat in half of flour. Add buttermilk and 2 tablespoons lemon juice; beat to blend. Beat in remaining flour.
Drop 1 rounded tablespoonful batter into each muffin liner. Spoon one teaspoon raspberry jam over. Cover with remaining batter, dividing equally.
Bake cupcakes until tester inserted halfway into centers comes out clean, about 23 minutes. Cool cupcakes in pan on rack. Meanwhile, whisk remaining 1 ½ cups powdered sugar, two tablespoons lemon juice, and 1 ½ teaspoons lemon peel in small bowl. Spoon half of icing over 6 cupcakes. Whisk one tablespoon raspberry jam into remaining icing. Spoon over remaining cupcakes. Let stand until icing sets, about 30 minutes. Garnish with raspberries.
Also posted in "The Pot Licker" 22 Comments
These Soul Soothing Cookies
“You could do a lot of good in the world with cookies” – Moose In the Kitchen
Way back in March-ish my dear friend Moose had a horrendous break up with her boyfriend of five years. It was one of those things that might have been looming but to the rest of us, those who loved her and read her regularly well I can say that we were shocked. I distinctly remember my heart breaking for her because at the time, I couldn’t imagine what that could feel like. Of course now that I know what it feels like, we’ve been commiserating via email for several weeks because misery loves company. And I like to hear myself talk. The end.
Moose has the great fortune of living in San Francisco with the other ladies who freelance. A group of women that I envy and am in awe of because of their talent and the way they can put a few words together to make an actual sentence whereas I just look at a blank Word document and get diarrhea of the brain. Everything comes out in nonsensical bullshit and what could be said in one sentence gets said in a rambly paragraph full of digressions. Case in point: READ ABOVE. Anyway she is one of those people that I genuinely like and enjoy. If you ask she will tell you all about that time she cried in the Chicago Children’s Museum and while Chris Jordan sat and did some motherly comforting for her, I just stood there all opened mouthed and said “Um OK. I’m gonna go now.” I totally score on being the understanding friend.
Anyway because I love and because she is such a nice and lovely person I did what anyone would do from 3,000 miles away; I offered to bake cookies. Then I gave myself a hearty pat on the back for being the good friend who bakes and overnights cookies from the other coast. Then little brown sugar fairies danced in my head as the possibilities were endless.
That was in March. March was like two months ago. And in that two month period I myself suffered the break up from Hell and because I generally get distracted by shiny things I kind of put my cookie baking to the wayside. For the record I am also that friend that will say “OH YEAH! I will totally do that random thing for you” and then when push comes to shove I’m that friend who you’d like to kick in the shins because I’m full of good intentions and zero action.
Several weeks ago I had the great pleasure of sitting across from Deb of Smitten Kitchen fame and I remembered that I had to bake cookies and since she was sitting right across from her I made nice conversation and then interrogated her on some cookie recipes. She in turn sent me the loveliest email full of cookies for me to bake and I had to purchase a new laptop because of all the damn drooling. (Note to self: Invest in a bib. Also an apron).
The recipe that caught my eye though was for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. Here is how I feel about the commingling of peanut butter and chocolate: It is like an orgasm for your taste buds. In fact after consuming the two put together in perfect harmony, your tongue hangs out of your mouth for a bit – inadvertently of course – searching around your lips and if your tongue is as long as mine, down to your chin trying to grab those last few drops. For surely there must be more and your tongue is programmed to search and destroy. And do not think for one instant that I’ve never taken a spoonful of Skippy, sprinkled chocolate chips on top and called it dessert for my ever refined palate.
I clearly remember Deb saying that these cookies were addictive and perhaps I should put them in the far recesses of my kitchen. I just nodded and said sure then baked one batch for my family with my seven year old cousin. Now my family does not see me as the baking type. They see me as the woman who would like things delivered to her doorstep and ‘from scratch’ is some foreign lexicon. ‘Hostess’ is a word I am familiar with. Well imagine the surprise and broad smile that came across my incredulous and curmudgeonly, Republican uncle’s face when he put my cookies to his lips. In fact he asked for seconds just to make sure they were there and were for real. My Aunt Rachel ate four and my no carbohydrate eating mother kept eyeing them in hopes that maybe they were carbohydrate-less and calorie free and possibly made of air.
With the first batch a success I then made a second batch for Moose’s Mouth ONLY. She received them yesterday and had to shove two cookies in her mouth so she could type an email to me as to their deliciousness. Then told me that I was awesome. Well, duh.
I made the cookies out of love and because it was the only thing I could do for her. And since I’ve been going through what I’ve been going through people have been offering (and I’ve been declining) baked goods because nothing makes another feel better like a fresh pie or a pan of brownies. Really it’s the thought that goes beyond words and says that there are friends out there, amazing people who want nothing more than for you to feel better and normal again. So they put out what effort they can to make something and do something that really can mean more than words. Which leads me to yesterday’s post and all the posts of sadness and agony before; the words do mean more than you can ever know and if you really want to send me something, package up some French fries and a giant bottle of wine and call it a day. Or you can be straight up Canadian and send me a box of Smarties and declare your undying love for me. Either way, I’m easy.
Peanut Butter Soul Soothing Chocolate Chip Cookies (yields 36)
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup peanut butter at room temperature (smooth is what we used, but I am pretty sure they use chunky at the bakery)
3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon (for sprinkling) sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup peanut butter chips
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, the baking soda, the baking powder, and the salt. Set aside.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and the peanut butter together until fluffy. Add the sugars and beat until smooth. Add the egg and mix well. Add the milk and the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture and beat thoroughly. Stir in the peanut butter chips. Place sprinkling sugar on a plate. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls into the sugar, then onto ungreased cookie sheets, leaving several inches between for expansion. Using a fork, lightly indent with a crissscross pattern, but do not overly flatten cookies. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Do not overbake. Cookies may appear to be underdone, but they are not.
Cool the cookies on the sheets for 1 minute, then remove to a rack to cool completely.
Also posted in "The Pot Licker", Fotografias, On Happiness 21 Comments
French 75
“Everybody should believe in something; I believe I’ll have another drink. ” ~Author Unknown
Many many moons ago a group of us had drinks at the Warwick hotel in Manhattan. And like any other evening of drinks with girlfriends, we sat among each other laughing and catching up until the server arrived. The server, I still remember as he served two of us again months later, asked for our drink orders – and so far all of this very typical night out – and that is when dear Alexa chimed in that I should try the French 75. What could that be? I wondered out loud and read the description of gin, champagne and a little bit of sugar. Why yes! I exclaimed. For it was a balmy summer evening, I shall have one of those. Moments later the server returned with a champagne flute full of my drink. I put the glass to my lips as my mouth curled into a smile. Oh, that is good. And from there a love was born.
Later in the summer while in New Orleans and then Seattle I was surprised at the popularity of the French 75. Why yes, all bartenders responded, of course I can make that. And if you’re looking for true excitement, said a waitress in Seattle, We also have the Seattle 75 and Seattle 76. It seems they like to mix things up when mixing things up in Seattle. With each sip out of a flute and with my pinkie up, I spent two weeks of the summer drinking this divine champagne cocktail accompanied by raw oysters. For two weeks things were delectable.
But oh, there is always a sad bit to every story. In this story it is the return home to a town without oysters. A town that thrived on wings and burgers. Which is fine but I craved. Oh did I crave my French 75. And so to every bar I went asking tip hungry bartenders if they could make me one. What is that, they’d reply. And I’d shrug and request a deep red wine. Forever leaving my mouth unhappy as what it wanted was nowhere near by.
One evening I went to the Volstead. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? A bar in midtown Manhattan. There was a full rager going on there. The weekend had been solid so of course I’d be able to get my drink of choice to end the weekend in style. So I sauntered up to the bar – already full of liquid courage – and asked for a French 75. Hmmm, the bartender said. I’ve never heard of it. I’ll show you! I said eager to see if I could remember and remember I did. Some gin! And then some lemon! Now simple syrup! And shake it! Now pour it into a champagne glass. Pour the champagne on top. Add a twist.
Here, he put the glass towards me and I sipped. So?
Perfect.
I carted my drink around to friend after friend proud of my new skill to remember how to make a drink – or anything for that matter – without having the directions directly in front of my face. I offered sips and each friend found what I had in my hands to be remarkable. Gin? AND Champagne? Who would have thought of this? Surely not I but I was glad to bring it to the masses. Oh and that bartender, he was thrilled. I tipped him 50% and told him to remember me.
Weeks later I was walking from the Upper East Side back in the direction of Midtown and was parched. My iPhone led me to Uncorked where I sat down and politely requested a French 75, please. The bartender said sure. So I sat and we chatted about tattoos and he made me two(!) more.
What follows here are photos of a bartender making a French 75 after you’ve already had a French 75 and this what they call the ‘Lush Effect’ on Hipstamatic:
1 1/2 shots of gin
1/2 shot lemon juice
1/2 shot simple syrup
Shake, shake, shake!
Pour
Add Champagne.
Et voila! Enjoy.
Here’s the recipe on Esquire.