Alizarine

Rose of Sharon

Jeff and I met on Match.com--ain't no shame in it!--and one of the things he liked about my profile was that I had answered the "What was the last great book you read?" question with The Grapes of Wrath. It was one of those books that had somehow slipped through the cracks of my reading life, and I remember finishing it while sitting on a bench in Chicago's Union Station. The devastating ending made me cry, and then I just stared at things for a while, a character Edward Hopper had forgotten to paint: Heartbroken Lonely Woman Crying Over A Book.

Anyway, one of the characters in that book is named Rose of Sharon, and I always thought that was so unusual--she has a preposition in her name! Last year we were shopping for plants to decorate our new patio, and I flipped out when I came across a rose of Sharon. The man who sold it to us said it was blue, which is not as common as the white and pink version, and after planting it, we waited for about a month for it to bloom. It's in the center of the above photo.

I took a photo of the first rose and saved the picture for a future painting. I started it a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't all that revved up to paint it at first, but after a day of work I was excited. I loved the light on the petals, and the variety of blues and purples I used to create the bloom was challenging.

I fine-tuned the white thing and added more details and texture to the petals.

Then I filled in the background with some bloopy, blurry colors, and I started the rocks in the lower-left corner. Most of the white areas would become leaves and branches.

Next up: I spent a lot of time with that dry grass on the left side. It had lots of different blurry colors going on. I texturized the rocks with purples, blues, pinks, and browns. Finally, I did some yellow underpainting on the leaves, masked off the major veins (seen above as yellow lines) and added an additional green glaze over the top.

More leaf work...

I added a lot of details to the leaves and attempted to soften and refine the veins.  Leaves in direct sunlight called for bits of blue, permanent green light, and a whole lot of no-paint. The bigger/closer leaves required some micro veins. This process reminded me of the way I painted the colorful leaf from my Mushrooms painting a year and a half ago. The colors in the photo above are a bit too bright--I took the picture during a thunderstorm and got aggressive with it in Photoshop.

On my last day of painting, I added a branch and some grassy shapes in the center. Those were surprisingly complex and colorful. And then, as if on cue, our new scanner arrived in the mail!

Eleven years ago I bought a kind of so-what HP scanner that did a wonderful job with my watercolors and cartoons, and Bun liked to sit on it, too. When it died in 2009, I assumed it would be easy to find a replacement. But that was not the case--the ones we've tried since then can't handle subtle color changes or things like pastel colors outlined in black pen.

Last month Jeff did some research (and great things happen when Jeff does some research). He found a used Epson Perfection V30 for only $30. A watercolor artist had blogged about this scanner and showed how to configure the settings to work for watercolors. It seemed like such a great deal, especially when you consider that I tend to pay $12-$15 per big scan at FedEx. The only problem was that the vendor was in Hawaii, and the scanner had to endure a month-long boat odyssey and cross-country road trip before it reached us.

We set it up and scanned my painting (which was too big to fit) in two sections. Photoshop miraculously pieced them together--seamless! We were impressed at how the scanner even managed to pick up on the texture (or tooth) of my watercolor paper. Terrific!

And you can find prints of this new painting if you click here!

Imagekind has finally gotten its act together, and now my other new-ish floral paintings are available as prints, too!

Click here for Wilting Parrot Tulip.

Click here for Passion Flower.

I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO BUY ALL THREE! :)

Like me on Facebook, yo!

Mufnuts and Frunch Toast

I can explain.

The night Jeff and I returned home from Orlando, all stocked up on groceries, cuddling with the cats, and awaiting the snowstorm, I hate to say it, but my husband became a little whiney.

He wanted donuts, you see, and we had neglected to pick up any of those when we were shopping, but he didn't feel like getting back in the car and returning to the store. And anyway, the donuts they'd have to offer wouldn't be the apple-cinnamon donuts upon which we gorge once a year at a local orchard.

I make a perfectly good muffin, but Jeff just isn't into muffins. I half-heartedly offered to make some muffins instead and got a dismissive shrug. You guys, my muffins are fantastic and I could eat about five of them now.

I'd been sitting on a Pioneer Woman recipe that seemed like it would be similar to those local orchard donuts, only shaped like muffins, plus no deep-frying. I'd been sitting on it for over a year! The reason I hadn't made it yet: too much butter. Too effing fattening. I'd glance at the photos of her "French breakfast puffs," study the one where she's rolling muffins around in two sticks of melted butter, and scoff. Obscene. It's like they've never even heard of cholesterol out there in Oklahoma or wherever.

But after a few failed crock pot experiments (thank you so much, Pinterest), I wanted to make something that I was confident wouldn't suck in every way, and I wanted to prove to Jeff that muffins are worthy of his love. I made that sat-upon recipe the next morning and fed them to a mind-destroyed Jeff.

They are evil perfection. They are the bastard children of muffins and donuts. We're calling them mufnuts.

The only way we can justify making them is to eat one mufnut per week. We have frozen the rest (they reheat beautifully in the microwave) and--I say this with pride--we still have a small stash in the freezer.

The recipe is here. Proceed with caution.

And then there's this thing:

The next weekend Jeff felt the need to dazzle me with breakfast.

 

His recipe's original title: the unweildy Crunchy French Toast with Cap'n Crunch Coating, which we shortened to Cap'n Crunch French Toast. This further devolved into Frunch Toast.

 

Not Franch! Frunch.

The recipe, which you can find here, reminded us of a slightly classier version of this:

 

Jeff substituted a loaf of white bakery bread for the recipe's challah (it's expensive around here). The recipe produced enough custard to soak a dozen slices, i.e. the entire loaf minus the heels. We elected to bake eight--oh yeah, you bake this!--and freeze four.

It took about 30-45 minutes for Jeff (with light assistance from me) to produce the Frunch toast. It's now our go-to French toast. No question about it. And look: you get 8 pieces all at once! Plus you are left with a mostly-full box of Cap'n Crunch, which you love but never buy!

IT WAS SO FANTASTICALLY CRUNCHY.

You'd think that the Cap'n Crunch flavor would dominate, too, but no. It reminded me of the time I made Nigella's Nutella cake, which required an entire jar of the stuff along with other rich ingredients (shocker, I know). When I tasted the end product, the Nutella flavor had all but disappeared. Unnerving. That is sort of going on here with the Cap'n Crunch. You get a bit of the flavor but a ton of the texture.

We each ate a couple of pieces and froze the rest of the baked Frunch toast along with the aforementioned four pieces of raw Frunch. When microwaved later, the baked Frunch was not crunchy anymore, but it still tasted good. We haven't baked the raw Frunch yet, but I'll let you know how it goes.

I think this recipe would be great if you're serving a crowd at breakfast. Serve it with a side of mufnuts!

Nah. Do one or the other. You don't want your guests to think you're a murderer.

Apple Pie Cake

This centerpiece has occupied our dining room table since probably Thanksgiving. Last week Jeff put our omnipresent plastic deer (deers?) on its two highest peaks for no real reason, but they reminded me of that scene in The Lord of the Rings when representatives of every--I don't know, I barely paid attention--every type of creature?--climbed to the top of mountains and lit things to signal each other that--what? A war or maybe something awesome was going to happen?  This scene:

 

Again, LotR is not my bag and I don't care enough to investigate this further. Please don't bother to tell me what's happening, but I'd like to think that maybe those are signals of celebration. And that's what our plastic deer (deers?) are doing up there: they are lighting their party beacons because holy Moses look at that cake!

Yesterday I wanted to plunge myself into a major baking project. Jeff's been feeling just sick enough to not want to do anything, Bun's on the mend (thank you for asking) but a little wiped out by antibiotics, I've been alllll about painting lately and harboring some low-level feelings of dread regarding an upcoming medical checkup. My parents' crotchety but beloved and ancient cat Robert died on Friday. This winter has been a complete washout as far as snow is concerned, and I'm jealous of the east coast's blizzard. I just really needed to do some next-level baking. This recipe from Christina Tosi's Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook had been haunting me for months. The fact that Valentine's Day is coming up was reason enough to make a cake that tastes like apple pie.

Here are the cake's six components: a "barely brown" butter sheet cake, pie crust crumbs, apple pie filling, an apple cider soak, pie crust frosting, and something called liquid cheesecake. Special equipment is involved. Don't bother making this if you don't have a stand mixer. Christina Tosi is a culinary genius and an entertaining writer, and I felt like she was coaching me through the entire process. She's the kind of coach who is not going to put up with your bullshit shortcuts, though, and I was on my best baking behavior all afternoon. I didn't want to let her down!

The end result (which Jeff and I tried after the prescribed 12+ hours of freezing and 3 hours of thawing) was as good as any non-chocolate, fruit-based dessert gets. We shared one of the cake's six triple-decker megaslices and were stunned by its complexity. The recipe is below, along with my notes in italics, just to give you some idea of what you'd be dealing with should you decide to take on this lunacy. Please buy the book if this kind of thing appeals to you. The entire book is that way, and the photos will make you cry.

Dude. I think I just heard a robin.

Barely Brown Butter Cake
Makes 1 quarter sheet (9x13) pan

2 tablespoons or 40g brown butter, see recipe for instructions
4 tablespoons or 55g butter
1.25 cups or 250g sugar
1/4 cup tightly packed or 60g light brown sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup or 110g buttermilk
1/3 cup or 65g grapeseed oil  <-- unavailable here; I used vegetable oil instead
1/2 teaspoon or 2g vanilla extract
1.5 cups or 185g cake flour
1 teaspoon or 4g baking powder
1 teaspoon or 4g salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. To make the brown butter, microwave the 2 Tbs of butter in a microwave safe bowl covered with a microwave safe plate, for 3. The butter will pop while browning, so don’t worry if it sounds like your microwave is going to explode. If not browned enough after three minutes, continue to microwave at 1 minute increments. Be very careful when removing the bowl and plate from the microwave – it will be very very hot. While brown butter is cooling, stir occasionally to melt the caramelized bits of butter. Cool completely in the refrigerator. There is something decidedly weird-ass about brown butter. I've yet to put my finger on it.
2. Combine the butters and sugars and beat on medium-high for 2-3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs and continue to beat for 2-3 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Return the speed to medium-high and beat for at least 5-6 minutes, until the mixture is very light and has doubled in size.
3. If the mixture hasn’t reached this stage by 6 minutes, continue to beat it.
4. Reduce the speed to very low and add the cake flour, baking powder and salt. Continue to mix on very low for a minute or two until all the batter is smooth and free of lumps.
5. Pam-spray and line your quarter sheet pan with parchment. Bake for 30 minutes, until the cake holds its shape when poked and the center is no longer jiggly.
6. Cool the cakes on a wire rack and store for up to 5 days, well wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge.
7. Note: this cake baked perfectly flat (no doming) tastes almost exactly like Twinkies. The batter alone is delicious and lets you know that you're making something special.

 

Liquid Cheesecake
Makes one 6” square baking dish

8 ounces or 227 g cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup or 150 g sugar
1 tablespoon or 15 g cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon or 2 g kosher salt
2 tablespoon or 25 g milk
1 egg

1. Preheat the oven to 300F/150C.
2. Beat the cream cheese on medium for a couple of minutes, scraping the bowl once or twice. Add the sugar and continue to beat for 2 minutes, until completely incorporated.
3. Mix together the cornstarch and salt, then gradually whisk in milk, then egg, until the well combined.
4. Whisk the cream cheese on medium-low and slowly add the egg/milk mixture, until the batter is smooth. 
5. The recipe says to use plastic wrap to line your baking pan, so that's what I did, and it was kind of strange and melty around the edges when I took it out of the oven. I've read other takes on this recipe where parchment paper is used instead, and I will do that next time. Also, who has a 6x6 pan? I used a standard loaf pan and it was perfect.
6. Pour the cheesecake into your lined dish and bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are set but the center is still jiggly. Remember, this is supposed to be a spreadable liquid cheesecake, so you don’t want to over cook it, but if the edges aren’t set, continue to bake for up to 25 minutes, checking every 5 minutes. Do not allow it to brown at all. Mine took 15 minutes.
7. Cool completely in the pan, then store for up to a week in the fridge.

Pie crumb 
Makes about 350g (2 ¾ cups)

1.5 cups or 240g flour
2 tablespoons or 18g sugar
2/4 teaspoon or 3g salt
8 tablespoons or 115g butter, melted 
1.5 tablespoons or 20g water

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl and mix well, then add the butter and water and continue to mix until small clusters form. This can be done in a mixer with a paddle attachment on low speed, but it isn’t necessary. 
3. Spread the clusters on lined baking sheet, and bake for 25 minutes, breaking them up occasionally. When ready, the crumbs will be golden and a little moist--they will dry as they cool. Mine seemed too dark after 25 minutes. They still tasted good, but I'd check them at 20 minutes next time.
4. Cool the crumbs completely, then store in an airtight container for up to a week at room temperature or up to a month in the fridge/freezer.

Pie Crumb Frosting
Makes about 220 g (3/4 cup)--this is enough for one very generously frosted 6-inch cake (with plenty of leftovers--Christina Tosi recommends you snack on it with apples). Also, Christina's cakes typically have no frosting on the sides, just the tops, because she likes people to be able to see what's going on inside.

1/2 recipe Pie Crumb
1/2 cup or 110 g milk
1/2 teaspoon or 2 g kosher salt
3 tablespoons or 40 g butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup or 40 g confectioners’ sugar

1. Blend the pie crumbs, milk, and salt in a blender or food processor on medium-high until smooth, scraping down the bowl a few times. The mixture was shockingly thick and smooth!
2. Cream together the butter and confectioners’ sugar using a stand mixer on medium-high until pale and fluffy. Reduce the speed to low and add the crumb puree. After a minute, increase the speed to medium-high and blend for another couple of minutes, until very the frosting is a very pale light brown. 
3. The frosting can be stored for up to a week in the fridge.
4. Note: this frosting is like no other frosting I've ever tasted. Not too sweet, it's basically a spreadable pie crust. Bizarre and amazing.

Apple Pie Filling
Makes about 400 g (1 3/4 cups)

1 lemon
2 medium or 300 g Granny Smith apples
1 tablespoon or 14 g butter
2/3 cup tightly packed or 150 g light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon or 1 g cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon or 1 g kosher salt

1. Half fill a medium bowl with cold water, then add the lemon juice.
2. Wash and peel your apples, then quarter and core them. Cut each quarter into three sections, lenthwise. Then cut each of these skinny pieces into four small chunks. Store apple pieces in the lemon water.
3. Drain the lemon water from the apples, then put them in a medium saucepan and add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, gently, over medium heat and stir the apples occasionally. Once they have begun to release their juices, simmer for 3-5 minutes, until soft but not mushy. Cool completely before cake assembly.
4. Store this filling for up to a week in an airtight container in the fridge, but do not freeze it.
5. Note: I had some very juicy apples, I guess, and the sauce never quite thickened for me. I used all of the apples in the cake but not the liquid. I strained that off and drizzled a bit over the apples when assembling the cake. Maybe if this happens next time I will add some corn starch while cooking.

Apple cider soak
Makes about 60g (1/4 cup)

1/4 cup or 55g apple cider
1 teaspoon tightly packed or 5g light brown sugar
pinch or 0.25g cinnamon

1. Whisk together all of the ingredients in a small bowl until the sugar has dissolved.

Assembly!

Invert the cooled cake onto a piece of parchment and cut out two x 6’’ circles of cake, using a 6’’ ring as a guide. Use the remaining scraps to form another layer of cake.

Lay a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan or cake pan (I used an 8-inch round cake pan). Clean the 6" ring and place on top.

Line the 6” ring with a 20"x3" piece of acetate or another type of strong but flexible plastic sheeting. Place the cake scraps inside the ring and flatten them into an even layer. Brush half of the apple cider soak over this layer, then layer over half of the liquid cheesecake. Sprinkle over 1/3 of the apple pie crumbs, then half of the apple pie filling.

At this stage, you can use reinforce the walls with another layer of acetate, overlapping the bottom one slightly and tucking it between the first piece of acetate and the cake ring. This is delicate, awkward work.

Place another layer of brown butter cake over the apple pie filling (waaay easier said than done) and brush on the remaining apple cider soak. Cover with remaining cheesecake, then half of the remaining pie crumbs, and all of the leftover apple pie filling.

Top (awkwardly; that acetate is not easy to deal with) with the last sheet of cake, then add the pie crumb frosting. Decorate it as you will or smooth it flat. Use the remaining pie crumbs to make a border around the outside of the frosting.

Transfer the cake to the freezer and leave it there for at least 12 hours, or up to 2 weeks. 3-4 hours before you want to serve the cake, remove it from the freezer and slide off the metal cake ring. Peel off the acetate and stick the cake in the fridge, where it can stay for up to 5 days. Wrap it in plastic or cover it with a cake box if you are going to leave it for an extended period of time.

Misc. Winter Things

The photo above is a shot of our side-yard one afternoon last week, back when we had a dusting and a half of snow. The light seems to be changing just a bit now that December is over, and spring is obviously just around the corner.

Not really.

I'm going to spend the next ten weeks enveloped in various fleeces and plan to amuse myself with new recipes, including two you'll see below. But first, I wanted to show you a couple of photos of Poof from Christmas at our parents' house.

She was sitting there looking so blissfully content that I had to ask her to freeze while I took a photo.

I like how her senior photo seems to be peeking at her happy future self. What a beauty. I love her so much.

And now, the recipes!

This is a Pinterest recipe I found and made almost immediately. It's from something called "jujugoodnews" and is a black bean salad with corn, red peppers, and avocado-lime vinaigrette, minus the avocado for now. It's shockingly tasty and healthy to boot! I've tweaked it a bit (see italics).

INGREDIENTS

• 2 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed and drained
• 3 ears fresh cooked corn, kernels cut off the cob <-- I used a bag of thawed frozen white and yellow corn, something like 12-16 ounces, so yeah, I went *heavy on the corn.* I've adjusted the lime juice, onion, salt and olive oil amounts below to accommodate the extra corn.
• 2 red bell peppers, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• generous 2 teaspoons salt
• generous 2 tablespoons minced red onion
• generous 2 tablespoons sugar
• 10 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon lime zest (be sure to zest limes before juicing them) <-- I zested 2 small limes
• 7 or 8 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for garnish <-- I used Italian parsley because I have a problem with cilantro
• 2 Hass avocados, chopped

DIRECTIONS

Combine the corn, beans, and peppers in a large bowl and mix well.

Mince the garlic and mash it into the salt until it becomes a paste. Put it in a small bowl along with the lime juice, lime zest, olive oil, and onion. Whisk and pour over the corn mixture. Mix well.

Cover and chill for a few hours or overnight. Right before serving, add avocados and mix gently, being careful not to mash avocados.

Serve at room temperature.

Jeff and I decided to turn this salad into some tacos. He has a quick guacamole recipe that he likes to throw together (avocado, traces of lime juice--he had a bad experience with too much last month--a grated clove of garlic, a tablespoon of jarred salsa, and salt to taste). So: it's a smear of guac and a little pepper jack cheese on a blistered corn tortilla topped with the above salad.

This made a fun 1:30-ish kinda-lunch! Also there's no meat here, although this made us want to add some carnitas into the mix, but not enough to actually get in the car and drive 10 miles into town to our favorite carnitas provider.

Next up: spicy brittled peanuts from that Smitten Kitchen cookbook I've been talking about lately. Oh man, these are incredible. That amount of cayenne down there is perfect, and it quietly buzzes around in the sweet-salty background. If you're not allergic to peanuts, you will find yourself saying lots of double-negative things like, "Life would not be worth living if I couldn't eat peanuts."

You're going to have to work for these way-better-than-CrackerJack peanuts, but not too much. It's mostly just a lot of stirring over a medium-hot pot, and some of that stirring is very interesting because science.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 cups shelled raw or roasted unsalted peanuts, papery skins removed <-- I used blanched peanuts

DIRECTIONS

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon mat. If you don't have either, coat your baking shee with a thinslick of vegetable oil.

In a small bowl, whisk together the baking soda, sea sat, and cayenne, and set aside.

In a large saucepan, the heaviest one you've got, heat the sugar, butter, and water over medium-high heat until it just begins to turn golden, about 7 to 10 minutes. Add the peanuts and start stirring, coating them with the sugar mixture.

After a minute or two, the sugar will sieze up a bit, making the peanuts look grainy and crusty, and it will be harder to stir them--you'll be convinced that it's gone irreversibly south, cursing me under your breath [This cookbook is so conversationally awesome and you need to go buy it--K], but fear not, keep stirring, and in about 3 minutes it will melt back into a golden caramel.

That part actually took more like 5 minutes. I'm sure this was because my idea of medium-high heat is a little low, as I am afraid of heat.

Keep stirring, breaking up any clumps with your spoon, until the nuts are evenly coated, then remove the pot from the heat. Stir in the baking-soda-spice mixture as fast and evenly as you can, then spill the caramelized nuts out onto your prepared sheet, spreading them in a single layer and breaking up any clumps that you can before they set. Cool completely.

Once they're cool, break the nut clusters into smaller pieces and put them in a serving dish. The nuts will keep in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks, but rarely do because they are habit-forming.

She's not kidding. These were gone in two and a half days.

In other food news, yesterday I tried one of David Leibovitz's recipes for a flourless chocolate cake that was great but, disappointingly, not awesome. I already make a couple of F.C.C.s that beat it handily taste-wise and are a lot prettier to boot. So we're off to a disappointing start on that cookbook, but I'm nowhere near giving up. You should see some of the photos in that thing.

Finally, Jeff and I spent last week watching Mad Men's directors' commentaries for season five, and I was amused to discover this not-at-all-Photoshopped! insert in the packaging. I love how ticked off Betty looks.

PS Jeff thinks that Jon Hamm has an enormous head, especially in the image above, and he asked me to tack on this video.

 

Chocolate Chip Brioche Pretzels

Oh boy did I get a lot of books for Christmas, especially graphic novels (Harvey Pekar's Cleveland, Drawn Together by Aline and R. Crumb, New York Drawings by Adrian Tomine, and, geek squee!, Building Stories by Chris Ware, which I haven't even opened yet because I fear its power and size--it's about as big as a Monopoly box). I also received a couple of cookbooks: Ready For Dessert by David Lebovitz and Deb Perelman's The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook.

Let's hear it for Amazon wish lists, everybody!

I tore into The Smitten Kitchen and was immediately inspired. This 300+ page wonder includes a surprising number of vegetarian recipes. Bacon gets mentioned once or twice during the breakfast chapter, but meat doesn't make a real appearance until after page 200. Which is great! I've been craving more vegetables, and Deb's broccoli slaw and black bean ragout are already big hits with me.

But yesterday I felt like trying something more indulgent, and the book's chocolate chip brioche pretzels seemed too good to be true. They are pretzels in shape only. Our favorite local bakery makes a similar item (a long, narrow brioche sandwich with melty chocolate chips inside), and it has been a favorite of Jeff's and mine for nearly as long as we've been together. He even ate two of them on the morning of our wedding. Could we create something like those ourselves?

Answer: yes. Just barely, but yes. The recipe put our KitchenAid stand mixer through its paces, that's for sure, to the point that we thought it might do some damage to the machine. And even though these pretzels are as good as our bakery's if not better, Jeff and I will not be making them as often as we would like to because we love our mixer and would hate to see anything bad happen to it.

The recipe, which is kind of long, is here. Please read it if you want to give these prezels a try. Otherwise, here are some photos of the pretzel-shaping process and comments.

Here's half of the dough after its 2-hour rise. Jeff cut it into eight equal portions. Dibs on that one on the left!

He rolled the dough into 18-inch ropes on a plastic cutting board, stretching the dough by spreading out his fingers as he worked. The dough was really easy to deal with and required no flour to keep it from sticking to the plastic.

Each rope was turned into this sort-of noose shape.

Total pretzelization.

Four per pan.

While Jeff formed the pretzels, I got the egg wash going. I used the coarsest sugar in my cookie decorating arsenal to beautify the tops. I wish I had the clumpier kind that mimics the salt traditionally found on pretzels, but this was a good-enough substitution.

 

The recipe said to bake them for 12 minutes "or until lightly bronzed." After 12 minutes, ours were still pale and squishy. Ditto after 14. At 16 minutes, we declared them done, although they weren't as brown as the cookbook's photo:

That, to me, is "bronzed." And I want that sugar.

Be that as it may, our pretzels were perfectly baked and bronzed on the bottom. Please note the gross-looking crust in the prezel's holes formed by the egg wash. Don't be as aggressive as I was with the egg wash, or just don't worry about it. You won't notice it when you're eating these. Also please note my stylish bracelet. I'm one of those women who wears a seemingly-permanent hair tie bracelet.

These brioche pretzels are outstandingly delicious. As I ate the first one, still warm from the oven, I informed Jeff three times that "these are SO GOOD," as if he didn't know. They were also fantastic this morning after 20 seconds in the microwave.

PS A whole stick of butter was involved in the making of these babies, along with a hefty amount of chopped dark and milk chocolate, and when you look at them they positively scream I AM MADE OF CARBS PLEASE JUST STICK ME DIRECTLY ONTO YOUR THIGHS RIGHT NOW OKAY?! Sorry everybody.

Specul-YUMs!

Here is a 10-minute recipe that will rock your holiday party to its very foundations. It's a take on the popular teacher-gift that my former students called "puppy chow," a term that always made me wince as I ate the chocolatey stuff hand over fist.

Jeff found the recipe last week, and, similarly dissatisfied with its name ("sandy buddies"), he came up with the abomination you see above, Specul-YUMs!, so named because its key ingredient is Speculoos. Also known as Biscoff spread or simply cookie butter, Speculoos changed our lives when we were killing time in Los Angeles a few months ago. You may remember this photo:

We went through a phase where this was all we wanted to eat, but since then we've scaled back on our Speculoos consumption, conceding that when all is said and done, Nutella is our nutritionally-bankrupt spread of choice.

But then along came Specul-YUMs!. We have been enduring a brutal, three-day diet that ends later this afternoon, a diet so strict that our heads have become heavier than the rest of our bodies and this is happening:

 

Not really. We lost a few pounds but were hating life.

So when we made this recipe today and sampled a few weeee bites in the name of quality control, we lost our dang minds. This stuff not just some gimmicky snack. It is a savior that has delivered us from eating a cup of cottage cheese studded with five saltines and a hard-boiled egg and calling that some kind of lunch.

The recipe is from here. This is our doubled and slightly altered version (it's for a party).

INGREDIENTS

• 4 1/2 cups rice Chex cereal
• 4 tablespoons white chocolate chips
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup Biscoff Spread/Speculoos
• 4 tablespoons butter
• powdered sugar for coating, something like 1 cup

DIRECTIONS

Place cereal into a large bowl. In a separate small bowl, microwave chips, Biscoff spread, cinnamon and butter for 1 minute. Stir. Heat for 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until mixture is smooth. Spoon mixture into cereal and gently mix to combine all ingredients.

Place powdered sugar into a gallon resealable bag. Spoon in half of the cereal mixture and shake to coat. Then spread this on wax paper to cool. Repeat with the rest of the cereal mixture. Place in a festive bowl to serve!

Salad Dressing and Corn Chow-Chow

Here are a couple of easy ideas for those of you who think that Christmas just doesn't feel right without some homemade gifts. Both are recipes by Nigella "Queen of Christmas" Lawson, and their sunny color and zingy flavors will brighten up the dark, horrible days of January. Each takes around a half hour (or less!) to throw together. Let's do it!

But Kelly, why chow-chow? you might ask. Quite simply, it's because of this picture:

It's on page 243 of Nigella Christmas, and I've wondered about it for three years as I've made other recipes in this marvelous cookbook. Look at it, all pretty and bright and so cutely packaged. It looks like fun things are happening inside those jars, right?

I've seen chow-chow occasionally in grocery stores but have never tried it. Nigella says that it is a sugary, vinegary Pennsylvania Dutch/Southern U.S. condiment, but she has put her own British spin on it by cutting the sweetness with hot mustard. I'm not much of a mustard or pickle fan, but I love this. It's like eating sunshine. You can use it as you would any other relish--I'm thinking it would be fantastic on a hot dog--or just eat it as is.

Some of these measurements were in metric in the book, and I'm keeping them there with some notes.

CORN CHOW-CHOW

INGREDIENTS

• 900g frozen sweetcorn, thawed <--a big bag; just check the weight on the package
• 8 teaspoons hot English mustard, from a jar <--I used half English mustard and half Dijon
• 300g honey
• 500ml apple cider vinegar
• 3 teaspoons celery salt
• 50g sugar
• 8 scallions, sliced into 5mm rounds
• 3 red bell peppers, deseeded and cut into 1cm dice

DIRECTIONS

Sterilize your jars. Here's how. Nigella recommends simply washing the jars, lids, and rings in the dishwasher and filling the jars while they are still warm, taking care not to touch the rims or interiors. Treat the rings and lids with similar care. I've done this before and am happy to report that no one has died from eating my canned goods.

Take the sweetcorn out of the freezer and let it begin to thaw in a sieve over a bowl. If you need to speed the process, pour hot water over it.

Put the mustard, honey, vinegar, salt and sugar into a saucepan and place it on a low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to help everything dissolve.

Stop stirring, and turn up the heat so that the mixture comes to a boil, the let it boil for 5 minutes. For me this was just a gentle, merrily bubbly boil.

Check that the corn is thawed and drained, tip it into a large bowl, and add the scallions and diced peppers.

Once your liquid has boiled for 5 minutes, take it off the heat and pour through a sieve (so you get a smooth syrup) onto the corn, scallion, and pepper mixture. Stir.

Ladle equal amounts of corn mixture and liquid into your warm, prepared jars. The syrup should cover the chow-chow; or rather, no corn should sit above the syrup but it doesn't matter if the syrup comes up over the corn a bit.

Seal the jars or screw on the lids, and store in the fridge. Once opened, use within one month.

Note: this produced 8 cups of chow-chow with enough liquid to cover it as specified above. I also had 2 cups of corn mixture left over with nowhere near enough liquid to cover it. So I am keeping that around for us to snack on. It's just as tasty as the rest of the batch, but I'm not sure if it will keep as long in the refrigerator with less liquid.

GOLDEN HONEY MUSTARD DRESSING

Jeff and I have been eating a lot of salads lately, and this is my favorite dressing to make. It's so delicious and easy that I refuse to buy salad dressing from the store again. This recipe makes around 1.75 cups, and I recommend that you try the recipe first and see if you like it before making vast quantities for your friends. For my gifts, I multipied all of these measurements by six and produced enough dressing to fill the four pint-and-a-half jars you see in the top photo (with a little left over).

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt (or 1/2 teaspoon table salt)

DIRECTIONS

Put all the ingredients into a jam jar, make sure the lid's on firmly, and shake like mad.

Or, if you're making a lot of this, put everything into a large bowl and whisk like mad.

Taste to check for salt and/or honey. I always use way more honey than is necessary, but I've got one hell of a sweet tooth. You might want to add a note to your dressing recipient telling them to shake it before using.

Nigella says, "I don't keep [the dressing] in the fridge, but no doubt the health and safety police would tell me I have to." But when you refrigerate this, the olive oil rises and solidifies into a disturbing cap atop the rest of the dressing, and if you want to use it you'll have to thaw it first, and this is annoying. Once again, I've had zero casualties by doing things Nigella's way.

Happy gift-giving, everybody!

Christmas Decorations

Jeff and I finally broke down and put up our Christmas tree. I've been busy with some U2 lunacy and a difficult portrait commission over the past couple of weeks. Those tasks completed, I engaged in a bit of therapeutic ornament-making, this time with salt dough. In the past I've made gingerbread ornaments, but this year I thought the tree needed something more colorful, and salt dough is so much easier and less expensive. I used to make salt dough ornaments with Mom to give to my teachers as Christmas presents, so the smell and texture of this dough transported me back to my pre-teen years.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup salt 
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup  water

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl mix salt and flour. Gradually stir in water. Mix well until it forms a doughy consistency.

With your hands form a ball with your dough and kneed it for at least 5 minutes.

Store your salt dough in a air tight container and you will be able to use it for days.

You can paint our creations with acrylic paints and seal with varnish or polyurethane spray.

You can let your salt dough creations air dry; however, salt dough can also be dried in the oven. Bake at 200 degrees F until your creation is dry. The amount of time needed to bake your creations depends on size and thickness; thin flat ornaments may only take 45-60 minutes, thicker creations can take 2-3 hours or more. You can increase your oven temperature to 350 F, your dough will dry faster but it may also brown, which won't matter if you are painting your entire creation.

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My ornaments, which were between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick, took around an hour and a half to bake at 200 degrees. I used the entire cup of water in making the dough, so it may have been a little on the damp side. I let them continue to air-dry overnight before I painted them the next day. I used cookie cutters shaped like Christmas ornaments--an early present from Jeff--and, when I dipped them in a little flour, they cut through the dough beautifully, and those complicated, delicate shapes were no problem.

This recipe produced over 40 ornaments, each about 3 inches tall. I took them up to my work table and busted out some sequins and extra-cheap acrylic paint. I had no real plan, but I found myself painting each ornament with tints of a single color accented with coordinating sequins. Then I varnished them with a clear acrylic glitter paint. A couple of hours later, I had these:

I found a half-box of ornament hooks (or whatever you call them) leftover from last year, and I was ready to hang them!

Earlier this year, Jeff and I rearranged our living room furniture. We love the new setup, but it messed up our usual tree-area, so we moved the tree to our library, which you might remember from this painting:

The tree is small, so to give it some height, we set it on the table between the two wicker chairs. We also had to move the middle bookshelf away from the wall to access the outlet behind it. But soon enough we were decorating the tree, and Jeff used some gargoyle bookends to hang stockings behind it.

And here are some of the ornaments, which we paired with our usual birds.

They're prettier at night.

Two weeks ago, I transformed my studio into a GLOW CHAMBER.

As I sat on the floor, trying to arrange the lights in a way that made a tiny bit sense, I'm pretty sure a spider bit my foot through my sock. I felt an instant, mild itch and watched a small light yellow spider crawl beneath my bookshelves on the left. The bite swelled up immediately and turned pink. Fearing a week of pain, I popped an antihistamine, applied some antibiotic cream and anti-itch gel, elevated my foot, and put the sucker on ice. Over the following week I watched the formerly-swollen-but-now-just-bruisey area, which was about the size of a Chips Ahoy! cookie, turn a rainbow of colors: dusty plum, cadet blue, zombie green. But it never really hurt or itched, and then it went away. I suppose I'm writing about this so that if one day my skin splits and billions of small light yellow spiders come streaming out, well, here's how that happened.

And what holiday season would be complete without Christmas Marvin Gaye? I've always thought his What's Going On album seemed Christmasy, and for years I have made a point of displaying it next to something festive. First known example:

So that was great, but this year I really topped myself by placing him in the GLOW CHAMBER. I urge you to make Christmas Marvin Gaye a tradition in your house.

One last time: I have to plug my online merchandise store. Thanks to all who have ordered items with my paintings on them--I just put together some new compacts featuring details from Ruby Liberty Dragonfly. I appreciate each and every sale I make. Please go there and get a little something for yourself!

And it's not too late to pick up a print of mine from Imagekind. Prints are 25% off this weekend, and how about that free shipping? Framed and canvas prints tend to take about a week to ten days for them to produce, but unframed prints usually get shipped out a couple of days after you order. Thanks again, everyone!

Twinkie Cake

I haven't been following the Twinkie Apocalypse story very closely, but a few weeks ago, on the day the news broke that maybe Twinkies were not long for this world, I saw a woman at our local supermarket flat-out hoarding box after box of Twinkies and other Hostess products.

I like Twinkies as much as the next woman, but I find myself craving them above all other available snacks maybe once a year. I'll buy a little two-pack, eat both of them in 25 seconds, and that takes care of Twinkies for 2012.

But I get it. Oh do I understand the need for sweet snacks. I don't know what I'd do if the Reese empire somehow dried up...wait, I DO.

I'd make my own, of course! It's called being a survivor.

And now you, the Twinkie needer, can make your own Twinkies, sort of.

I mean, this cake is very good. The filling is AN EXACT TWINKIE FILLING DUPLICATE. If that's all you're really needing, look no further. The cake itself doesn't quite get there. It's a little heavy and dry, but that could have been my fault. I might--might!--have overbaked it by a few minutes, although I followed the instructions exactly, and the bundt format makes me wonder what would happen if I made mini-bundts or cupcakes instead. Or what if I used a plain old yellow cake mix? I'd like to experiment with the recipe, but this try-out cake kind of made me not need to eat Twinkie cakes for the rest of the year, you know? Maybe you could try the recipe out and report back.

Inserting the filling was not exactly easy, and it involved digging holes into the cake by hand and connecting them with tunnels. Some pieces resulted in a near-perfect circle of filling mostly surrounded by yellow cake. Others were more like the one above, where the filling didn't quite make it all the way in but smooshed around the bottom (to this I shrug and say so what?)

The filling seemed to improve the moisture level of the cake on day 2. If you like the part of the Twinkie that sticks to the little white card they put in the packages, you're going to love the bottom of this cake on day 2 and 3. But this is a whole lotta cake for two people, and Jeff and I couldn't get through it, because we have something called self-discipline. And also because it had become dry again.

A truly great breakdown of this recipe, complete with the kinds of photos I should have taken but somehow couldn't be bothered to do so, can be found here. Please go, please read, please try it out.

For now, I will leave you with the recipe for the filling. Please note that this makes only just enough filling for the cake, so don't go crazy eating it beforehand. If you don't want to deal with making the recipe's from-scratch cake, you could buy a mix, a pound cake, or one of those deli "creme cakes" that come pre-sliced.

Gah, that cake does not look good to me at all. But you know what I'm talking about. Get a yellow cake and dip it in or frost it with this filling for easy faux-Twinkie satisfaction. You could be like Poof and me and call this hybrid a Twankie, which is fun to say aloud with a Southern drawl. TWANKIE.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 stick of room temperature, unsalted butter
• 1 tub (7.5 ounces) marshmallow creme (aka Fluff) <--I couldn't find anything smaller than 15 ounces, so in my case it's half a tub
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Beat butter and marshmallow creme until smooth. Add vanilla and beat until incorporated.

That is seriously all you do, people. I feel like I have given you the keys to the kingdom. Use this information wisely!

Representation!

Good things are happening in my art world! Last week UGallery took me under their massive, cuddly wing, and that is where you can buy my original paintings now (not prints, not merchandise--I'm talking about the actual piece of paper with the actual paint on it).

UGallery is an online art gallery that's received positive reviews from CNN, The Economist, InStyle, USAToday and others. If you search for "buy art" on Google, it's right up there near the top if not the very top. I had to apply to be accepted, and I waited and wondered for over a week before I received a happy email and phone call. They accepted all of the paintings I offered, and the gallery manager answered all of my questions in a friendly, welcome-to-the-family kind of way. I'm currently being featured on the site's front page along with other artists with new work ("A Forest of New Art") and on the UGallery blog in a short article introducing artists new to the site. You can also view my art and profile here.

Unlike my art website, UGallery receives lots of traffic from people who are serious about buying art, and I want those eyes on my work. UGallery is currently--like, it ends today--having a 20% off sale, their biggest event of the year, so please check them out.

Anyway, I'm happy to have my work up at UGallery--wish me luck there!

I also have a couple of paintings at Cureeo, including Planets and Foil, above. Cureeo is smaller and more boutique-y than UGallery. They said no to everything I offered up for sale except for Planets and that second portrait I painted of Mabel with the little-kid background. So I don't really understand Cureeo's selection process other than the fact that the work they seem to go for is a bit more avant garde than mine, but it's nice to be included there in some way.

We'll see how things go at both of these online art galleries! I can continue to sell my paintings independently, so feel free to contact me personally if you want an original. Last week my friend and former colleague Dave bought Apple Blossoms for his wife Sandra (don't worry; she was in on this) from me on the day before it was about to appear on UGallery--thanks Dave! Nothing makes my day like a sale.

In other good art news, The Graduates (above) won an Award of Excellence at the Illinois Watercolor Society's annual members' show. After Best of Show, three Excellence awards are up for grabs, followed by some honorable mentions and merchandise awards.

People who won awards included (l-r) Carmelo Schifano, me!, Sylvia Aruffo, Sally Konley, Bret Steinhaus, Tom Herzberg, Robert Krajecki, and Rochelle Weiner.

So this was huge for me, and Jeff and I were very happy that we made the long drive up to Oak Brook for the Thursday night opening earlier this month. I provided a boatload of cookies for the opening. If you'd like to see my painting along with forty or so other watercolors, please stop by the beautiful Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook before the show closes on December 5.

Finally, please *like* my art page on Facebook--I'm currently 8 likes away from 500. I regularly post in-progress photos of my paintings and let you know about print/merchandise sales. Thank you!