Bake Sale, Cookbooks and Moonpie Cake!

I have been doing a ton of baking lately, partially due to scone making (Thyme and Honey / Pumpkin and Marshmallow) for the No Kid Hungry fundraiser Bake Sale I did, and partially due to so many birthdays. I highly recommend getting involved in some way with No Kid Hungry. They are on a mission to make sure the children of America have three square meals a day, something most of us take for granted. Having a bake sale was a fun way for us to raise a lot of money for a good cause, and hang out on a beautiful day. You can easily do the same in your own community, and if not, just spread the word.

AND, As a person who ordinarily has bad luck, I think that doing a lot of good brought me some good luck, as I won the raffle I donated to win! 10 cookbooks from Quirk! I am beside myself excited to start using them, and not for nothing, they are SO pretty and colorful on their own they are already brightening my house. They have fun layouts, and the marshmallow book cover is fluffy and squishy like a marshmallow! YAY. Let’s be honest though, while sugar is nice, I am the most excited about Tiny Food Party (Since I dream of one day opening a little restaurant named Eatlet) and Breakfast for Dinner!! With CSA coming up I am interested to try some of the dishes in Cooking with Flowers as well. You should totally grab some of these beauties!

And now for some Moonpie Cake!

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Ombre Chocolate Cake – goDie by Chocolate!

So. My dear friend Diego had a birthday recently, and he is a chocoholic with a major sweet tooth, neither of which I am. But i wanted to take the challenge and make him a cake that grows exponentially in its chocolatey-ness and sugar level. An ombre cake it is! Now, I am no pastry chef. I hate the precise and all of my creations that involve frosting come out looking like Pollock paintings or Seuss gone wild. So dont judge me. However, in my research I found that there is not an easy to find resource for the math involved in making the color right for each layer, and I don’t want anyone else to have to go on a crazy search like I did. The search ends here.

Our friend Jared had the idea to call it goDie (DieGo) by Chocolate. He also was the culprit behind the Margarita Mouthfuckers title of my Cookie Takedown cookies (Have yet to blog these) Now, you might notice the very bottom layer of the cake is a brownie, and that there are a lot of other sugary things happening. I will tell you everything that I did, and you decide how you want to build a chocolate monster of your own.

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NYC Hot Sauce Expo!!!!

Now, you all know of my personal love for hot sauce, and due to last year’s win at Googa Mooga with my Cockonut Sauce, (and all-around awesomeness, I’m sure) I was asked to be on the Judge’s Panel for the first annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo April 20th and 21st. I had a blast on judging day…the Awards ceremony will be at the actual event, see the Official Site which has a great video of us judges testing everything out. And this poster is fucking great.

However, I do NOT recommend having 75 teaspoons of hot sauce layered with milk for one’s dinner. BUT if you wanna get drunk on spicy Bloody Mary’s and Micheladas with me and layer said delicious sauces with some incredible food, you should get tickets now. They start at $10, people! And its being held right next to Smorgasburg. NOM NOM.

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bread for cheaters.

This is the super easy and magical NYTimes no-knead bread recipe. Easy to make and easily customizable. Which you know I did because I cant leave anything alone.

I rarely make bread for several reasons. One, It has to be babied, which requires a certain amount of time at home, and two, it isn’t really nutritious at all. However, I am working from home currently, as is Eliz’s bf, who has evidently been making this every week, and I had some, and then I went home and wanted more. And when he told me how fuss free it was I decided to give it a go. So this is cheating. No kneading. No babysitting.

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What I ate in Zhangjiagang, China.

So, this post is oh, 4 months tardy? But Eliz is traveling to China soon and wanted advice on what to eat in Zhangjiagang, and I thought, well this is the perfect time, cause when else is anyone I know going to be out in rural China? The rest of you can just marvel at what I suggest she tries.

Everything.

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Dinner with Chef Nick Grosz

So, you already know that if you want ugly comfort food or a quirky theme party catered, you can hire me to do it for you. But if you want an out of this world, 5 star meal in the comfort of your own home, I recommend giving Nick Grosz a whirl. While I have had my own wonderful experiences with KitchenSurfing cooking for other people…Tumblr’s Thanksgiving was AWESOME, I have never gotten to be on the receiving end of any of this meals. I bid on a meal from Chef Nick at a fundraiser with a couple friends, and he came over to my friend Cynthia’s house and somehow managed to whip out an incredible meal from her stove top without breaking a sweat. It was really special to have this meal in such an intimate environment, talk to the chef, watch him cook, catch up with friends, without the clatter of strangers or asking where the bathroom is. We felt SO fancy! I will definitely be doing things like this more, and I highly recommend that you try it.

What is all this greatness, you ask!?

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spicy black bean zucchini burgers!

All I have wanted all week is a great black bean burger. I finally had time (While catching up on Shameless, of course) to start what I thought was going to be a test batch, but ended up being awesome. YAY! I love when that happens.

Now, these are of course, ugly. Ideally I would have wanted to make a more patty shaped burger, but I decided that in order to that, my mix would have to be too dry, and I don’t like dry foods. So I opted for a more “drop biscuit” approach to these patties, and then I served them with chipotle sour cream, homemade quick guac and some pickled jalapenos.

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overnight refrigerator oatmeal.

I have been dying to post this baby! I was searching for a new breakfast, as eating KIND bars or a piece o fruit was getting boring, and I can’t have a lot of eggs. Everyone and their mother seem to be all over this, and though I rarely get on board with food trends, see: kale chips, maple/bacon anything…this one is so great I jumped right on. You know how much I love a great base recipe that can be altered over and over so I never get bored, and this one couples that with the beautiful fact that it is possibly the quickest, easiest, healthiest, most wonderful thing ever. Hot or cold, overnight refrigerator oatmeal is where its at. And its ugly as hell. Bonuses all ’round.

Oats, chia seeds, milk and yogurt are the base for a great breakfast! And I may or may not have had some for dinner the other night.

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Champagne Cupcakes for a New Year!

I recently saw some adorable blue velvet cupcakes and thought they would be perfect for New Year’s, but I was heartset on making champagne cupcakes, so I figured I’d just dye them blue. : ) Since I loathe buttercream (and most frostings) I made a bubbly, sweet champagne mascarpone frosting for the tops. These things are magic. They aren’t too sweet, the cake has a dense eggy, angel food-like quality. They are soft in the middles and have a nice chewy “crust” on the edges. And they’re pretty and fun. So here.

Now, I am not a baker or a pastry chef type. I lack precision and patience. I am more of a – throw a bunch of stuff together and make delicious magic type. So my cupcake more so resembles a Dr Suess creation rather than a pretty cascade of champagne bubbles. And that’s fine by me.

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