New beauty things I like

1.) Booths's Deep Cleansing Volcanic Mud Mask- $9.99 at Drugstore.com

This stuff is lovely, since I have sensitive skin and my old mask got discontinued. It smells really good. It actually works. It is reasonably priced.

2.) Rimmel's Glam Eyes Mascara- $7.50 at Walgreens.com

If I didn't wear mascara, you wouldn't even know I had eyelashes. This stuff is awesome- the applicator brush is silicone, it doesn't clump, and it's really easy to get the tiny lashes at the edge of you eyes.

3.) Elf's Nail Polish Remover Pads- $1.00 at EyesLipsFace.com

I adore these little pads. One of them will remove navy nail polish from all ten digits. They smell like oranges instead of chemicals, and they don't make your hands taste like poison for a week no matter how many times you wash them.

MORE Cupcakes.

So, this weekend we stopped at More, the cupcake store with cupcakes designed by Chicago pastry chef Gale Gand. I recently met Gale at the Green City Market- she was super nice and suggested a couple bakeries I should visit when I'm in Paris. She also told me to e-mail her and then never e-mailed me back. (E-mail me back, Gale!) Anyway. I had a brioche cupcake filled with sour cherry butter cream and iced (made to order) with foie gras buttercream.


There it is. Yum, I love foie buttercream.


Cupcake rundown! (from left to right): The salted caramel, lemon meringue, and the BLT.

The savory cupcakes were pretty good. The cake wasn't as moist as I would've liked, except in the red velvet, which had disappointing frosting. All in all, I'd go back for the foie cupcake, but that's about it.

Oven Pancake!

You can call it a lot of things- Dutch baby, an oven pancake, a German pancake. I don't care- it is the simplest breakfast to make for a crowd. The batter puffs into craters and mountains of crisp, buttery peaks, with a doughy, sweet base. I never remember the exact proportions of my mother's recipe, but my guesses always seem to turn out okay. I did this one with 1/2 whole wheat which only makes you feel marginally better about the stick of butter.

Whole Wheat Dutch Oven German Pancake

1 stick butter
1 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
6 large eggs
2 cups milk
salt
cinnamon
vanilla

Place stick of butter in large baking dish and stick in the oven while preheating. Preheat oven to 400. Mix all remaining ingredients together until smooth. When oven reaches 400 and butter is sizzling, pour batter into the middle of the pan. Cook until puffy and batter has set, about 15 minutes.

Top with powdered sugar, warm cinnamon apples, whipped cream.

Nothing to eat for dinner.

Last weekend I got too caught up in watching Mad Men to do things like shop or cook or generally get off the couch. This always ends up with me eating the most ridiculous things. For instance- I had a frozen dinner lined up with a salad on Sunday evening. I couldn't bear to actually eat it, so instead I took the few things in my fridge and whipped up some truffled Parmesan scrambled eggs.

2 eggs
dribble of white truffle oil
dash of heavy cream
2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan
salt and pepper

Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Beat remaining ingredients in a small bowl till fluffy. Add to hot oil. Stir quickly and continuously until eggs form tiny curds and are soft-set, don't overcook! Grab a glass of whiskey and continue watching Mad Men.

Honey wheat pizza with garlic scape pesto, mascarpone, ventresca tuna.

Whew. I actually cut some of the ingredients from that list and it's still too wordy. I recently got a new pizza stone and decided to try it out. The crust was easy:

Honey Wheat Pizza Crust:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup warm water
1 package active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tablespoon honey

Combine warm water, honey, and yeast in small bowl- let sit until yeast has proofed. Add flour and salt and knead, adding more flour, until dough isn't sticky. Place for an hour or so in a bowl sprayed with cooking spray. You don't have to let this rise, but I think that science says this develops gluten and it gets all flexy.

Garlic Scape Pesto:

1 cup chopped garlic scapes
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts
salt and pepper, to taste

Put all of above in blender. Grind into paste. Eat, because it is delicious. To be honest, I was a little hesitant to make the garlic scape pesto, but now I am a believer. That stuff is AMAZING, and the garlic taste is so subtle once it's been cooked. Yum.

Additional Pizza Toppings:
1 package baby portabellas
2 cups fresh spinach
mascarpone cheese
Parmesan cheese
1 can or jar ventresca tuna, packed in olive oil, drained

Saute mushrooms and portabellas. Squeeze out excess moisture. Roll out pizza dough (you should probably pre-bake this for about 15 minutes at 350). Spread pesto on pizza. Sprinkle on veggies and tuna. Dot with mascarpone, then finish entire pizza with a decent amount of shredded parmesan. Bake. Eat.

The mascarpone melts into these delightful buttery sweet puddles, the tuna is salty and rich, the pesto is creamy, the mushrooms are earthy... The crust is chewy and crisp and hearty and sweet. This is an amazing pizza.

Hazelnut Streusel Buttermilk Coffee Cake

I had house guests the other weekend, and I wanted to make something delicious that could sit out and people could snack on during the day. I had a ton of hazelnuts leftover from my hazelnut macarons, so I decided to make a coffee cake.

Streusel:

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 tbsp butter, softened

Mix all streusel ingredients together in a small bowl until soft and crumby.

Batter:

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 stick butter, softened

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups lowfat buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar together with your mixer. Add eggs slowly, one at a time to butter and sugar mixture until soft and fluffy. In a seperate bowl, combine remaining dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients and buttermilk, alternating slowly, into batter until all dry ingredients are incorporated. Pour half of the batter into a buttered, floured bundt pan. Sprinkle 1/2 of streusel mix over the batter. Swirl two layers together lightly with a butter knife. Pour remaining batter into pan and again top with remaining streusel and again swirl with knife. Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean.

The cake was pretty good. I'm just happy that it came out of my cathedral-inspired bundt pan, which I can NEVER get a cake out of.

Hot Doug's at Work Day!

I'm lucky (unlucky?) enough to work within a scary distance of Hot Doug's, a gourmet hotdoggery in Chicago. Sometimes we will order the sausages and have them for lunch. Today I am having the Spicy Thai Chicken Sausage with Thai Peanut Sauce and Toasted Coconut. Last time I had the Foie Gras and Sauternes Duck Sausage with Truffle Aioli, Foie Gras Mousse and Sel Gris, which was really good but so rich I could only eat half of it.

Happy Hot Doug's at Work Day!