finding time for cooking | for the time-starved or curious culinary adventurer

A Slightly Odd & Belated Birthday…And Coffee Cardamom Cake With Bulletproof Frosting

October 6, 2019

For years I’ve had a tradition of making my own birthday cake, and trying out something a little special or complicated that I wouldn’t normally tackle. This year, though, was a somewhat strange birthday for me, in both good and bad ways.

It was my 35th birthday, and I’d planned an epic solo trip to Turkey, so I spent my actual birthday watching the sun rise over the Mediterranean on a boat, sipping sweet hot black tea. But then a few days before I left on my trip, my beautiful sweet kitty had some major health issues and very suddenly passed away, leaving me and her brother in shock and not sure what to do with ourselves.

So when I got back into the country a couple days after my birthday, I questioned whether it was worth going to the hassle of making something. While the trip was absolutely amazing, I was tired and sad, and having to deal with trying to get caught up on work things and get used to this new Dobby-less life we were now living. But ultimately I decided that tradition is tradition, and DOGONNIT we were going to make a birthday cake.

But I hadn’t gone grocery shopping or anything, or planned ahead, so the big question was what could I make that was special and unique, but used ingredients I already had in the house. After poring through Pinterest, this coffee cardamom cake with bulletproof frosting kept pulling at me, so I decided to tackle it. I love anything coffee, and the addition of a warm cardamom spice was intriguing.

One thing that caught me by surprise is how delicious the actual cake batter was…it is maybe the best-tasting cake batter I’ve ever tried! I ended up licking the bowl, beaters, rubber spatula, and my fingers clean to get every drop. I came close to just eating the batter with a spoon rather than baking it. I also kept up the tradition of making super ugly but delicious cakes—I try so hard to get better at decorating, but I just don’t know that I have it in me.

One great thing is you don’t need to use a stand mixer for the cake batter. Just stirring or whisking together is totally fine. You will want an electric or stand mixer for the frosting. This got rave reviews at work…and also lots of confused “what’s bulletproof frosting??” comments 🙂 If you’re not familiar with bulletproof coffee, just think of this as coffee frosting.

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Grilled Gorgonzola Potatoes

September 7, 2019

The grilling extravaganza continues! And this time we go a little fancier—gorgonzola grilled potatoes. My love of grilling recipes is well-documented, partly because grilled food is delicious, but also because it’s often healthier, easier, and requires less cleanup.

I’ve been in love with my grilled cheddar rosemary sweet potatoes for like a year now, and this is a similar idea, just taking it up a notch.

Now, obviously strong blue cheese is a polarizing thing. I truly adore it, but realize not everyone does. If you hate it, then I’d say move on, this isn’t for you. But if you’re kind of on the fence, then I’d recommend giving this a try…melting the gorgonzola crumbles and the thin coating it makes over the crispy potatoes and herbs really mellows out the flavor and makes it less in-your-face.

This is a perfect weeknight side dish for one person (hello!), but also could be a great fancy-feeling (and low-effort) side for a dinner party.

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Quick Healthy Thai Chicken Cauliflower Rice Bowl

August 30, 2019

Sometimes a self-directed health guilt trip and a slapdash new recipe can actually work out for once. My track record lately on poorly-thought-out and super rushed recipe trials has been…not great. Due to tons of travel lately (and not a little bit of stress and convenience-based choices), I’m feeling less than spry and as soon as I got back from a week at the wineries of Sonoma I really felt the need to LOCK IT DOWN.

I really needed to actually eat a decent healthy lunch last week, and this thai chicken with cauliflower rice happened to catch my eye. I actually threw it together in just a few minutes *while* making my dinner for that night, and to my surprise it was totally awesome! Easy, delicious, and fast.

And best of all, it made amazeball leftovers. Like, leftovers I actually looked forward to warming up at work. I made a few tweaks to the recipe, both playing with the ingredients in the sauce slightly as well as combining a few steps to make it even easier.

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Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Skillet Banana Bread

August 24, 2019

This is a continuation of my long love affair with cake breads. Cakes masquerading as bread. I’m all about things being more awesome than they say they are, so I bring you this delicious skillet dark chocolate olive oil banana bread. It’s a mouthful in more ways than one…

But don’t be fooled into thinking this is truly dessert. It’s moist, dark, fudgy, but is a bittersweet flavor and not too sweet. I like to use white whole wheat flour to add a bit more health (and a nuttiness), and the quality of dark chocolate chips you use (and the cocoa powder) does make a difference.

I like to use my old school cast iron skillet, and it slides easily out of the pan. But I’ve used a simple non-stick cake pan and it cooked just as evenly. I’ve tried this recipe a few different times to get the amounts right, and I always take it to work…where it gets devoured almost immediately.

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How To Brine Chicken Breasts: A Secret To Amazing Chicken

August 11, 2019

Not to brag or anything, but I make darn good grilled chicken breasts. Like, my-sister-requests-them-for-her-birthday-dinner good.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts often get a bad rap for being the iceberg lettuce of the protein world…a bland necessary evil but absolutely nothing to get excited about. However, I really struggle with the texture and flavor of chicken thighs or bone-in chicken, so I’ve made it my mission to crack the code on delicious chicken breasts.

My best friend (my Cheese) put me on to brining a few years ago, and it’s become an invaluable tool in my arsenal. I often forget to put chicken in to marinate in the morning before I leave for work, and so what I will often do when I get home at night is make up a brine, throw the chicken in, go for a run, and fire up the grill as soon as I’m back.

Now, I’ve read a number of things on brining, and none of them agree fully. For instance, I haven’t tried putting sugar in my brine (though I plan to). But overall the technique is very flexible and forgiving—and it scales based on how much time you have. You wouldn’t want to use the same amount of salt for an overnight soak as you would for a 30-minute one! And this works equally well for grilling or baking.

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How To Make Amazing Grilled Pizza…And My Go-To Pizza Dough Recipe

August 3, 2019

Ever since I bought my house last year and was able to get a proper grill (not the electric nonsense I had before), I’ve been working on becoming a total grillmaster. That means all the usual things like learning how to make moist and flavorful chicken, steak, fish, and vegetables.

But one of my favorite things to experiment with has been grilled pizza, so I wanted to share what I’ve learned and provide my best tips for how to grill pizza. I won’t claim to be an absolute expert, but I’m super happy with how it turns out for me!

The beauty of grilled pizza is how versatile it is…you can seriously top it with just about anything, as long as it’s already cooked or mostly cooked. From veggies to protein to fruit to cheese to chocolate, you can’t go wrong.

I’ve outlined my grilled pizza dough recipe below, and then at the bottom of the post I have a list of tips for how to grill pizza—both making and grilling the dough!READ THE POST

Heavenly Dark Chocolate Orange Babka

July 21, 2019

Even though I made this at least a month ago, I’ve been dreaming about it ever since. And forcibly restraining myself from making it again. Because this chocolate orange babka is what dreams are made of.

As a flavor combo, chocolate and orange will always be a winner—particularly this kind of dark chocolate. One thing I really love about this recipe is that it uses a challah dough as the base, which makes the final result lighter and softer. I often find babkas a bit denser and drier than I like, so I was drawn to this particular recipe.

This is my happy place…

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Roasted Vegetable Barley Salad With Lemon Tahini Dressing

July 10, 2019

It’s rare that I find a recipe that not only makes amazing leftovers, but makes *enough* of them that it’s worth all the work. And that I can actually talk myself into still choosing over the cafeteria’s amazing chicken tenders on days 2, 3, 4…

This is one of those recipes.

This grain and roasted vegetable salad is a total recipe unicorn—easy, versatile, and just as good hot, lukewarm, or cold. It can be meat-y, vegetarian, or vegan. Basically, YOU DO YOU.

Also, this lemon tahini dressing is sooooo good! It really pulls everything together, with depth and tanginess but doesn’t just overwhelm you. Honestly you should put this dressing on everything!

The only downside of this recipe is that actually getting that many vegetables roasted or grilled (and prepping them, honestly) can take a bit of time.

However, what I usually do is pace it over the course of an afternoon, since the veggies don’t need to be piping hot fresh. And I’ll do a combination of grilling and roasting so I don’t have my oven on forever. I love to absolutely pack this salad with veggies rather than have it be really grain-heavy, because HEALTH.

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Falling In Love With Middle Eastern Cuisine: The Food of Israel & Jordan

June 29, 2019

In some countries and some cultures, food and culture are inextricably linked. And in the case of today’s destination, go back millennia. I’m so excited to share some background on Israel & Jordan cuisine, and some of the amazing food we tried (and places we visited)!

I can’t even begin to show you all the amazing stuff we did during our seven days there. I’ve done a whole post here on our trip itinerary (that links to several other individual in-depth posts). Suffice to say, it was a complete bucket list trip—including actually ticking my #1 bucket list item off when we visited the Lost City of Petra.

But one thing I didn’t get to go into tons of detail about in my travel blog posts was Middle Eastern cuisine and all the delicious things we ate and drank in Israel and Jordan. And when I returned home, I immediately started incorporating aspects into my recipe experimentation.

The hallmarks of Israel & Jordan cuisine

There are tons of similarities in Israel’s cuisine and Jordan’s, and both have been shaped by thousands of years of history and cultural changes. But there are some differences as well.

Like most Middle Eastern cultures, both rely on staples such as hummus, some kind of flat bread, tahini (sesame seed paste, used in many different things like halva, hummus, and sauces), meat roasted on a spit and shaved off (shawarma), lots of fresh salads and mezze (dips), falafel and other chickpea-based foods, flatbreads, and hot tea that welcomes you everywhere. And you’ll find olive oil in and around everything. While there are small differences in how each culture prepares each of these dishes, they’re very recognizable siblings regardless.

Then each has specialties and unique offerings. In Jordan, their cuisine is especially adapted to cooking over campfires in the desert, due to the Bedouin roots. For instance, zarb is cooked in an oven submerged over a fire in the sand out in the deserts of Petra and Wadi Rum, and yields super tender meat and vegetables. You’ll see a lot more za’atar (made from sumac that grows wild in Jordan) and yogurt served alongside main dishes (similar to what I found in Turkey). And you’ll be offered hot tea with mint (sometimes sweetened) everywhere you go—Bedouin hospitality is legendary!

In Israel, shawarma, falafel, hummus, and pita are omnipresent, with tahini sauce coating everything. You’ll find more sweets like knafeh and baklava as well. Shaksuka (a spicy egg dish originating in North Africa) is also emblematic of Israeli cuisine. What’s interesting is how all of the Jewish people returning to Israel after World War II from places like Eastern Europe have impacted the overall cuisine—seen in the presence of dishes such as rugelach, babka, and sufganiot (jelly donuts for Hanukkah).

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Almond Pavlova With Balsamic Berries & Whipped Cream

June 22, 2019

I feel a little like a superhero on this one. Like I’ve tackled something a proper baker would do with ease.

Or maybe I’ve just been watching too many Great British Bake-Off episodes…which is probably true anyway, but my point is that they are ALWAYS using meringue of some sort and getting all fancy, but it’s always felt like something a bit too complicated and fiddly for regular ol’ folks. However, I’m here to tell you that it’s amazing and delicious, and we all need to go out and make pavlovas RIGHT THIS SECOND!

See, I’ve never been a huge fan of meringues…like those hard little cookies that are like styrofoam? So this was a baking technique that I wasn’t quite rarin’ to try. But what I discovered was that there is a key difference between a meringue and a pavlova.

What makes a pavlova magical is that, after you’ve whipped the egg whites and added all the sugar, you add a tiny bit of vinegar and cornstarch. This is chemistry sorcery, and results in an amazing marshmallow-y center with the meringue’s crispy outside. As a bonus, this is naturally gluten-free, so can be a fancy but still easy dessert to make when you need something GF.

These are so versatile and can be topped with all sorts of things. You definitely want something sharp or tart to offset the intense sweetness, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with some more “out there” flavor combinations. But for this one, I went with one of my favorite combos of all time—almond and berry. Because I thought, “What can make this even better?? Easy: almond pavlova!” This is kind of like a posh strawberry shortcake, and you’ll be wow-ed by the lush, pillowy textures, the chewiness of the meringue, and the way all the flavors explode in your mouth.

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