Ham Sandwich Indicted!

It's the holiday season, kids...the time of year to dig out old traditions, dust off old recipes, and wax poetic about the past.  Unexpectedly smacked by a wave of nostalgia, this past weekend I channeled the ghost of my paternal grandmother, Bertha, and busted out a classic German cookie recipe.  We called them "German S Cookies" and after searching the Internet for recipes, apparently so does everyone else...I guess it goes to the practicality of the German mindset. They're not much more than a basic shortbread, with the addition of egg yolks and lemon zest, but it's their simplicity that makes them so enjoyable. They're just slightly sweetened, the sort of cookie you can graze on absentmindedly while enjoying some eggnog at a holiday party. As far as I can tell, the "s" shape might relate to similar cookies called  Spritzgebäck   that are made with a cookie press and shaped into random letters/shapes. One recipe ( this one), refers to them ...

Sometimes, the universe conspires so perfectly to create a weekend of such magnitude and blessings, that it is nothing short of breathtaking.  Sometimes, the love, passion, and joy of six people is so great that a seventh one decides she has to join the party.  That was the case this weekend, when I went up to Petoskey, on the far Northern tip of Michigan, to visit my very pregnant friend B, her husband, and his father and brothers that also happened to be in town. Being that we're a group of people for whom food shortages are not an option (and because I couldn't sleep at 6am that morning), I brought up a peach-cardamom coffee cake, based essentially on this Cook's Illustrated recipe from The New Best Recipe  cookbook . I should have known I had no need for such worries as a lack of baked goods, however, as B married into an amazing family of very accomplished bakers and cooks, and for dinner that first night they 'threw' together a meal of homemade focacc...

When I first started college, I was pretty convinced I was going to go into medicine, psychiatry, to be precise, and started my freshman year on the pre-med track.  This meant biology, chemistry, and their accompanying labs.  Somewhere in the middle of the second semester, I realized that I was terrible at chemistry, and even the help of a tutor (who patiently and repeatedly walked me through chemical reactions and equations) was not enough to get me much past a low C.   Thankfully, I did have the brains to realize my talents lay in the humanities, and made the switch to history and foreign languages.  Life (and my grade point) got back on track. Since then, however, I've always had a deep appreciation/admiration for the sciences, and those individuals that make them their profession....doctors, physicists, chemists, biologists...they all do things that my literature-minded brain can barely grasp.   So when Dan Siegal-Gaskins founded the Columbus S...

It's probably a little ridiculous to post a King Cake recipe the day after Mardi Gras, but I didn't get my pics off my camera until now. The King Cake is (I think) a lot like Christmas fruitcakes--they start popping up in grocery stores at one particular point in the season, and are never as appetizing as advertised. It's one of those traditional foods that people seem obligated to buy, but no one is really ever super excited about it. (I'm sure there are New Orleans residents who would beg to differ with me on that point.) Anyway, I think they're kinda tacky--slathered in high sugar glaze and festooned with an explosion of sprinkles...they're like the over-forty cougars in miniskirts at the bar...trying just a little to hard to get noticed. All that being said, this year I decided that they are probably better if made from scratch, not sealed in a plastic and cardboard box, and so I pulled a recipe from epicurious and made a couple King Cakes for friends an...

It's Ash Wednesday--a day of fasting and restraint, which means it's the perfect day to post a recipe for the cupcakes I made for a friend's birthday a couple weeks ago. Chocolate and peanut butter. There's really not much else to say. Reese's Cup Cupcakes (recipe modified from this NYTimes recipe) Makes 16-24 For the cakes: 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably Dutch process) 5 1/3 ounces (10 2/3 tablespoons) sweet butter 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 3 eggs 1 cup milk 1/2 cup sour cream (plain yogurt would work, too--so would mayo) For the peanut butter frosting: 12 tablespoons butter, softend 1/3 cup heavy cream/half & half/milk 1 1/2-2 c. peanut butter 2 c up powdered sugar 1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line muffin tins with cupcake liners. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder and set aside. Using a hand or stand mixer, cre...

OK, so they don't look like your typical street vendor/concession stand pretzels, but I can confirm they taste about eight million times better... This is the year of the pretzel for me. My goal is to achieve pretzel perfection for the day that I decide to open a German beer garden. This weekend was the first step on that path, in that it was the first time I tried making pretzels from scratch (I've already mastered the beer drinking part). While not the most attractive things, they did turn out pretty tasty. I followed a recipe from the Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes , by the head baker at King Arthur Flour....My guess is, they're probably a pretty reliable source when it comes to baked goods. This book is no slouch when it comes to baking--it offers an extensive section on the foundations of baking--ingredients, shaping, etc, then provides recipes in metric and standard measures, as well as commercial production and home baker production (need to ...

I've been dying to get this post up all week, but this is the first chance I've had to sit down and write anything--it's amazing how much time a day job takes up! Last weekend, a friend, her daughter, and the H.S. drove up to Petoskey, Michigan to visit another friend and her husband. Petoskey, for those of you unfamiliar with the upper reaches of Michigan, is almost to the point of the middle finger of the "mitten" of Michigan. It's an absolutely charming resort town, overlooking Little Traverse Bay, and chock full of little, independent cafes, ice cream shops, bakeries, bookstores--and did I mention how charming it is? Anyway, it's cherry season in Michigan right now, and the plan was to hit up some of the orchards for bulk fruit to bring home. Lucky for us, my friend in Michigan had also discovered a wild raspberry patch in the forest not far from her house. Thus, the first order of business was a trip to the woods for some sweet-tart deliciousness: ...

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...

I had my first paying baking gig in a while last night. 50+ mini cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla. They were for my former law school prof's class on patent and copyright, the focus for this particular class being the issues surrounding the copyrighting of recipes. Food and the law!!!! What a delightful combination! Someone should start a blog..... Anyway, after a long day of keeping criminals behind bars, baking some cupcakes would be a welcome reprieve. The vanilla cupcakes were basically the strawberry cupcake recipe from this past summer, sans strawberries. The chocolate ones were a new recipe from the fine folks at Cook's Illustrated. The cake batter itself turned out OK , but I'm a little concerned about it's moisture level--in that there's not enough. It's deeply chocolaty though, which is excellent. The bigger concern I had was the icing--basically processing hot cream with bittersweet chocolate chips in a food processor, then adding some powdered sugar,...

Of the various obsessions I have pending at any given time, a constant (at least for the past year or so) has been Penzey's . I've mentioned it in the past, and if you haven't had the chance to check one out, or go online, you really must--it's a fantastic store, offering up almost every spice, out there, along with some nice boxed spice sets. (They make great gifts!) My most frequently used spice is their Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon. Sweetholyjesus it's awesome--rich, heady, maybe even decadent in it's aroma and taste. I find myself putting it in all sorts of dishes, just to see how it will perform. Usually, it performs fantastically. The other wonderful thing about Penzey's is their mail-order catalogue. It's great because if you sign up for it, you almost always get a coupon for a free spice or seasoning with each issue (this time around, it's Cajun spice mix). It's also great because they have really homey, all-American interviews with ...

This is what mon jardin looks like right now. Well, actually, this is what it looked like two weeks ago, when we actually had some snow on the ground. I can't decide if it looks kind of sad and desolate, or cozy and tucked in--waiting until planting season in just a few, short months. I'll go with the latter, as the former thought makes me want to pack up and move to the Islands. For my loyal readers out there, you'll notice that Ham Sandwich has been pretty quiet lately. The insanity of the holidays, coupled with a general lack of inspiration, has kept me from posting anything of interest. Not to say that it hasn't been a great season of wacky food misadventures, because it has... For my coworkers, I made a bouche de Noel as a Christmas present: If you're thinking "wow, that's so impressive...I could never do that," thanks, but trust me, you can. If you can read and follow the recipe on the inside of the Libby's pumpkin puree label for making ...

My fruit CSA from Wayward Seed Farm has been just prolific over the past few weeks--pears, apples, plums, and melons have been piling up on my dining room table. To cope, I dug out two of my favorite recipes and refitted them for use with my current bounty. First, a plum tart that I modified from a New York Times pear tart recipe: Upside Down Plum Tart 1/4 cup honey 5-6 plums, peeled, quartered lengthwise and cored 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon allspice 2 large eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 cup all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a 9-inch ovenproof skillet (not nonstick), simmer honey until it begins to reduce, caramelize and darken in color, 6 to 10 minutes. Don't let it burn! 2. Arrange plums, close together and cut-side down, in a circular pattern in skillet. 3. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together sugar and spices. Whisk in eggs and vanilla. Fold in flour and salt...

I really like it when a recipe describes something as "rustic." It's an immediate signal that whatever I'm about to produce can be casual in appearance, with flavor being a more important concern. Don't get me wrong, a skillfully latticed cherry pie (for example) is great, but sometimes, it's 8:30 at night on a Thursday and you just have to do something with those berries otherwise they're going to meet a tragic demise wasting away in your refrigerator. The NYTimes had a recipe in June for a Foraged Fruit Tart , that I had printed out for the specific reason that it was "rustic" in the best way a pie/tart recipe can be: make the dough, roll it into a circle, dump the fruit in the middle, and fold up the edges. Bake. Eat. Technically, this style of tart is called a galette, but that just seems to be fancying up something that is really quite casual. I took the tart pictured above to my coworkers, and it was very well received--it apparently made ...

Just some self-indulgent/self-serving pictures of projects I've been working on in the past few days. Above: raspberry-vanilla cupcakes with raspberry preserve filling and blueberry-vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd filling. Below: my first strawberry-rhubarb pie. Pretty damn delicious, thanks to the awesome crust recipe from Cook's Illustrated. (Unfortunately, the photos are terrible since I had to take them with my phone. Boo.)

Hey Friends! I'm competing in a cupcake baking contest on Saturday May 9th! It's the first Cupcake Camp Columbus, being held at Surly Girl Saloon in the Short North. There's two sessions you can go to: 2-3pm or 3:30-4:30pm. $5 gets you in the door for all you can eat cupcakes in 4 categories: Best Use of Alcohol, Best Use of Bacon, Best Vegan, and Most Creatively Decorated. I'm entering the Best Use of Alcohol Category. (Shocking.) If you're free that afternoon, come down and try one (or several cupcakes) and know that your admission fee is going to a great cause...The Mid-Ohio Food Bank. Thanks and hope to see you there!!!!

April 1st saw my 31st birthday (Happy Birthday to me!) and my first non-friend/co-worker cupcake order for a central Ohio CSA workshop at Wild Goose Creative . Jaime Moore from Wayward Seed Farms, as well as representatives from Toad Hill Organic Farm , Bridgman Farm , Elizabeth Telling Farm , and 2Silos sat down with local residents to talk about CSA's, what they do, how to get involved, and how important it is to support your local farmer. (In case you're not familiar, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture--basically, you pay a certain amount of money at the beginning of the growing season, and for that money you get fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs, etc. on a weekly basis, depending on which type of CSA you sign up with.) With so many great local farms so close to Columbus, it's a great way to support small agriculture AND get super delicious fruits and veggies.* Anyway, thanks to Jaime at Wayward Seed, I had the opportunity to provide cupcakes for the event--S...