Ham Sandwich Indicted!

Sometimes, the only thing to do on a rainy Sunday night is to bust out a new cookbook and make something that you've never made before. In this case, it was the Golden Book of Baking that my sister-in-law gave me for my birthday (thanks, Eva!) and the recipe was Apple Kuchen Crumble. This was the recipe of choice for a couple of reasons: 1) I had 3 pounds of frozen, sliced apples in my freezer that needed to get used, and 2) I was actually home for the several hours required for raising and proofing the dough. For those of you that didn't grow up with off-the-boat German grandmothers for whom baking was a part of life and not something to blog home about, apple kuchen (cake) is a German pastry with a bread-dough like base that's topped with sliced apples and a crumb topping or maybe a light glaze. It's not overly sweet, as the focus is on the fruit, and it was the de rigeur dessert at many of our family holiday dinners. The thing that was great about my Grandma Ber...

This weekend I had the privilege of making cupcakes for a friend's birthday party. Having been informed that she was a fan of vanilla cupcakes, I busted out a Bon Appetit recipe that I used last Spring. That recipe, however, is fairly coconut-centric, and I wasn't sure how the party guests would feel about it...coconut seems to be rather polarizing, you either love it, or loathe it. The recipe calls for reduced coconut milk to keep the cupcakes moist and add flavor to the batter and icing, but I felt that the concentrated coconut milk might be too much. Having read about the wonders of mayonnaise as a useful ingredient in keeping baked goods moist and delicious, I thought that maybe I could combine some un-reduced coconut milk and some mayo and get the same effect as using straight, condensed coconut milk. Yes, mayo is well, mayo, and the thought of it in a baked good sounds somewhat bizarre. Turns out, however, mayo is pretty fantastic and keeping your cupcakes from drying ou...

Ramps are another one of those things that make Ohio pretty awesome (along with Jeni's Ice Cream and Barley's Brewing Co , and pretty much everything else I mention in this blog...) Ramps, if you don't live in a state bordering the Appalachian Mountains, grow wild in said mountains and foothills of those mountains, and are a short-lived Spring treat. Part of the allium family, they are sometimes called wild leeks or spring onions. They're a cross in taste (in my opinion) of a scallion and garlic. They are also delicious. Having first read about ramps last year in Bittman's blog, Bitten, I found some end-of-season stragglers and made them into some pretty delicious biscuits . This year, I was ready for them, and made a beeline to The Hills market this past Saturday morning to pick some up. Based on my research, I found that you can do a lot of things with ramps to prolong your enjoyment of them. There are several recipes for pickling the bottom white parts,...