Chewy and Creamy Carrot Cake Sandwiches

I just can't seem to catch up. Maybe it's because instead of spending the time I'm online updating my blog, I spend it on facebook doing nothing of importance. (See Urban Dictionary for a glut of facebook related terms.)

And my poor little blog ends up neglected. Like with these ice cream sandwiches that I've been meaning to post for a week and a half now. That isn't that long of a time, but considering that I moved them to the top of my list of things to post, as unchronologically sound as that is, there is no excuse for this delay.

Other than neglect, that is.

I got the idea a couple months ago when I stumbled across Inside Out Carrot Cake Cookies from Gourmet. But I thought they'd be so much cooler if instead of a cream cheese frosting filling they had a cream cheese ice cream filling. But I didn't feel like making ice cream then and bookmarked the link.
Then the weather started to warm up, and looking through my bookmarks the week before memorial day, I saw the cookies and remembered the ice cream sandwich idea. I looked in the fridge, had everything for them, so instead of making lemon curd cupcakes like I'd been considering, I made these instead!

They were a hit. Next time, apparently, I need to make a double batch. Or make them larger.


Chewy and Creamy Carrot Cake Ice Cream Sandwiches
makes... I don't remember, somewhere between 18 and 24 sandwiches, I think
adapted from Gourmet and Bri's Ginger Cheesecake Ice Cream

For cookies:
1 1/8 cups (about 5 oz) all-purpose flour*
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup, 4 oz) unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup (2 1/2 oz) packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup (2 3/4 oz) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (about 5 1/2 oz) coarsely grated carrots (2 medium)
1 scant cup (3 oz) walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup (2 1/2 oz) raisins, chopped if large

Preheat oven to 375F and place racks in top and bottom third. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone liners.

Whisk together flour, cinnamon, ground ginger, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in carrots, nuts, and raisins at low speed; add flour mixture and stir or beat until just combined.

Drop 1 tablespoon batter per cookie 2 inches apart on baking sheets and bake, switching position of baking sheets (top to bottom, front to back) halfway through baking, until cookies are lightly browned and springy to the touch; about 10 to 15 minutes.
Let cookies cool on pans 1 minute; transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

For Cream Cheese Ice Cream:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Beat the cream cheese and sugar together until smooth. Beat in vanilla.

Heat the milk in a saucepan until bubbles just start forming around the edges. Slowly beat the hot milk into the cheese mixture. Stir in the cream and cover and refrigerate until chilled (about 4 hours) or overnight.

Freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.


To assemble sandwiches:
Prepare lots of flat area in your freezer and some shallow plastic freezer-safe containers or plates.
Take 1 cookie and top with 1 to 2 tablespoons of cream cheese ice cream fresh from ice cream maker, or after being frozen and slightly softened. Top with another cookie and place in freezer immediately.
Repeat with remaining pairs of cookies.

Freeze 2 to 3 hours or until set. They thaw fairly quickly, so you don't want to remove them too soon from the freezer before serving.

I've Got A Major Backlog!

It's been almost a month since I've last updated. And I have been cooking. I have not been making a lot of new things (lots of repeats, but I've never blogged or photographed them), or taking good pictures. I haven't even downloaded my camera since the beginning of May.

It's also been busy, being the last month of school and all. I've also had apathy for just about everything. Especially food styling. I have a list though, and I'm excited. Plus, summer means more light and outdoor shots, which are more fun. Except for when it's muggy.

Some of what I've neglected to blog about: the soda bread muffins from June's Bon Appetit the day it came in the mail because I felt like it; cocoa fudge cookies (for the fourth time); lemon buttermilk cookies (via Molly/Orangette); malted chocolate cookies for a Whoppers fan; actually tasty adventures with nopales; super easy peanut butter ice cream and some not as simple milk chocolate ice cream as birthday presents; oven fries I've been wanting to make since January; tried something new with the buckwheat calamari salad from Delicious Living; a newfound obsession with buttermilk and pancakes galore; finally trying coconut oil and making coconut mini cakes with pineapple; carrot-banana oatmeal muffins to sort of clean out the fridge; a memorial day dessert of inside-out carrot cake ice cream sandwiches (which are next on my list because they're apparently by a consensus of seven people the best frozen dessert I've made, and those plum ice-cream sandwiches are awfully tasty!) just because I had everything for the cookie part and had them bookmarked; gazpacho salad (via Deb over at Smitten Kitchen); amazing black-bean brownies that really are amazing (via Heidi@101 Cookbooks); and a lemon-poppy seed cake last night, my very first bundt cake.

I guess I was a tad bit busy. But most of those lack photos, or now that I just downloaded them, are pretty bad. Most are blurry. Some have terrible composition. It's pretty much a lose-lose situation. My layout's not pretty enough, and my writing far too bland.

But I'm starting with the coconut cakes before I lose the recipe that I wrote the receipt on the back of as I put it together. I adapted it from the golden vanilla cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I wanted to try out coconut oil. Had I used soymilk, this recipe would have been vegan as well, but my goal wasn't vegan, it was just an easy yummy coconut cupcake to go with the pineapple we had in the fridge. Or in, other words, a simple but elegant dessert that I could put together with what I already had in the house.

The mini cakes, which I baked in a dessert bar pan, can also be made in a muffin pan but will probably yield a few more. I was expecting between 6 and 8, but only ended up with five. The milk can be substituted with soymilk, or the milk and vinegar with buttermilk. Canola oil would also make a fine replacement for the coconut oil (use a bit less) and increase the coconut extract.

Coconut Mini Cakes
Makes about 5 cakes

1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons (45 g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (30g) whole wheat pastry flour (or more all purpose)
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
3/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (50 g) coconut oil
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons (75 g) sugar
1/2 or 1 teaspoon coconut extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray 6 muffin cups with nonstick spray or line with liners.

Combine the flours, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.

Whisk the milk and vinegar together in a measuring cup and set aside for a few minutes to curdle.

In a large bowl beat together the coconut oil and sugar. If coconut oil is too hard, microwave in oven to soften/melt.

Sift in half of flour mixture and then the soymilk mixture and coconut extract, mixing well. Sift in remaining flour mixture and stir until no large lumps remain.

Fill liners 2/3 way full and bake for 20 minutes or until done. Transfer to cooking rack to cool.

Spanish Class Project

For our project in Spanish class we had to find a recipe from a Spanish-speaking country for something we'd never made before. The day we were assigned this, the Good Eating section of the Tribune highlighted Mexican immigrants and Mexican cooking. There was a picture of nopales, or prickly pear cactus, on the cover of the section so my partner and I decided we'd make something with cactus.

Our group decided on ensalada de nopales (though I thought the stuffed fried nopales sounded good - but like they wouldn't hold up), and hoped it would be tasty.
Today we made it and nopales are well, kind of boring. The salad itself isn't assertive at all and other than a slight sour flavor, is pretty bland. I'm guessing either we did something wrong, though we followed the recipe, or we just didn't have good nopales or a good recipe.
Even though it was a simple and straightforward recipe, it still took us an hour to make the salad, so it's probably a good thing that we didn't choose something more complicated.

But in case you want to make this boring recipe, here's the recipe, straight from our project:

Ingredientes
• 6 tazas de nopales picados
• 1 taza de cebollas verdes
• 1 taza de rábanos
• ½ taza de cilantro
• 4 cucharadas de aceite de oliva
• jugo de 2 limes
• ½ cucharadita orégano
• sal y pimienta
• 3 chiles de serrano

Utensilios
• Una tazón
• Unos cuchillos
• Una cuchara


Preparación
Primero, píca y limpia los nopales. Segundo, ponlos en agua hirviendo. Lava los vegetales y pícalos. Escurre los nopales cuando termina cocinarlo. Mezcla todos de los ingredientes en el tazón. Revuelve y tira la ensalada para una hora. Servir alado de carne, pescado, pollo, o tortillas.

The recipe we used, in English, is at Mexico Connect.

I still have two packages of nopales, and I know my mom likes them, so maybe she can figure out something to do with them.

Fig Cookies

One of these days I will learn that baking when you have imminent plans is not such a great idea, unless that aforementioned baking relates to those plans.

Today, it did not. Have anything to do with my plans that is. Cookies are in no way a prerequisite to the movies.
I've had Sherry Yard's Fig Bars via Luisa at the Wednesday Chef bookmarked for a couple months now, and finally had to make them. When I spotted dried Black Mission figs at the store last week I was so ecstatic that I bought a handful to test out, and then went back the next day, after my semi-successful granola bars (and pleased with the figs - I learned the hard way after hating some dried cherries) and bought 1 1/2 pounds of them. That was probably a bit excessive, but I can't always seem to find dried figs.


I thought about making them Friday night, but I had plans at 6:30 and didn't have the 3 hours minimum that I knew I needed. So Saturday morning I took out a stick of butter, went out for breakfast, and started on them once I got home around nine...
And then had issues with the fig jam. I couldn't decide whether to cover and simmer or leave uncovered. I covered it half the time, and uncovered it half the time, because it seemed too runny. But I also had it on the stovetop for close to two hours! So at 11:30, the time I needed to be leaving for the movies to meet my friends, I was, stupidly, putting a second tray of cookies into the oven instead of putting them in the fridge to bake when I returned home from the movies.

I made it to the movies on time, thanks to something called a generous mommy with a car, and only missed half of a preview. Though my friends and I have now decided to see Made of Honor when it comes out.

Oh, and the fig bar cookies. They're really good. But the jury's still out on whether they're worth the effort for someone who hates rolling things out. They aren't complicated or hard to make - I just have issues with rolling dough. But the filling - just spread it on a cracker with some greek yogurt or cream cheese and...
Well, it's delicious. The spread isn't much effort, and the hint of orange makes it worthwhile. Or I suppose you could just stir orange zest into storebought preserves and enjoy that instead.

I didn't change anything at all from the recipe Luisa posted:
The Wednesday Chef: Sherry Yard's Fig Bars

30 Hour Trip: Super Long Summary of a Super Short Trip

Please, ignore the frivolity of that. After I returned home from Denver, I realized that the entire trip from the time I left home on Saturday until I returned home on Sunday spanned the same amount of time as the return trip for Tehran. However, quickly exploring Boulder and Denver was much more fun, and a lot less tiring than traveling home was.

Also, this isn't all about food, so maybe it doesn't need saying, but I had fun over the weekend, which did involve two meals, so I suppose that justifies it.

From the Denver International Airport we drove to Boulder. Apparently it was the same distance as our hotel in Denver, just the other way. We drove near CU-Boulder because Mom couldn't remember where in Boulder she remembered the cute shops were. We drove through by the Greek homes, and since the weather was nice, it was a bit amusing people-watching from the car. I saw a large (maybe forty people?) group doing what appeared to be some sort of dance on one of the lawns. Once we parked we walked around the practically deserted campus, the streets with the bars and stopped for some banana fudge gelato at Glacier Ice Cream.

After looking around a record store, being offered some free chocolate cake where the air smelled sweetly of smoke, and Mom being sure that there was a downtown mall that she remembered from thirty years ago, we headed back to the car to look for the sign we'd seen earlier before we turned towards the campus. But on the way I had to stop into Stellar because it looked too cute. The tags on the clothes had the cutest descriptions, the dress I bought said "girl next door vintage lanz." How could you not be seduced by cute tags like that?


We found Pearl Street Mall, but at that point it was after six o'clock and most places had closed. Some were open, such as Lighthouse Bookstore which smelled too strongly of incense for me to even get past the doorway, Goldmine Vintage with its selection of new and old clothing including an adorable blue dress that I couldn't resist trying on and getting, a store with a Princess dress in the window that I don't know the name of, and Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative Gallery. It was light out when we went in and dark when we emerged from the gallery. We were getting hungry, and started looking for a place to eat. We first stopped at a place with an hour and a half wait, and then when Mom found a place with a fifteen minute wait she put her name down. I wanted to keep walking, and next door I found The Kitchen, which looked like the kind of place that I would have seeked out with weeks of planning. I walked in and they could seat the two of us at the community table. I had a hunch that I'd read about the place before, and after we'd sat down and I saw the chalkboards, I was fairly sure. It turned out that I've read two or three articles about the restaurant that I saw in the hallway leading to the bathroom.

We started with the spicy greens salad with a mild chevre and deliciously candied pecans; also, the calamari and sausage ragu with polenta which was tastier and more delicate than we'd imagined. I'm not even a big sausage fan and I liked it because it was more calamari. We were tempted by their pastas, but wanted to save room for dessert. After a long debate we chose to split the pan roasted steel head trout. It was served next to braised lentils with pancetta and a lemony sauce. The lentils weren't too heady for the fish either. (The other entree we'd been considering was the lamb shank with onions and polenta verde (there are greens pureed into it). For dessert we had the Pot au Chocolat which was amazingly decadent with cream. The only bad part was it was late when we got back to the hotel. But early starts on Sundays aren't usually an option anyways.

Sunday morning we drove over by Civic Center Park. It was pretty deserted and a bit scary at 8:30 in the morning. And nothing really opens before ten. But we took a stroll in the brisk weather around the area, walked over to 16th Street Mall where everything was closed, figured out where Bump & Grind was, and then entertained ourselves walking until 9:45. When we got back to Bump&Grind, a small cafe at 17th and Peninsula in Denver, there was a line of about twenty people. I freaked out a bit and got in line. I guess men in drag serving breakfast really was worth it and appealing. Breakfast was large and satisfying, with amusing names that I wish I could remember. Though I saw a bit more than I would have liked to of some of the waiters -er, waitresses.

We walked over to the Denver Art Museum and waited for it to open, and gazed up at the library. I could move to Denver - it has a gorgeous library that looks like a painting.

After the museum though, it was a quick stroll to 16th Street Mall which was bustling and not all that interesting, and then the airport. I guess 24 hours in the area really wasn't that long.

Places:
Glacier Homemade Ice Cream
1350 College Ave. and other locations
Boulder, CO
303-442-4400

Stellar Clothing Co.
1203 Thirteenth
Boulder, Co 80302
303-443-5190

Powell's Sweet Shoppe
Have a candy you haven't seen in years? They probably have it. We picked up a Hello Kitty marshmallow pop for my cousin here.
1200 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO
303-213-3060

Goldmine Vintage
Clothing
1123 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO
303-447-0065

The Kitchen
If your in Boulder, I'd stop here. It's open for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner and is simple and unpretentious.
1039 Pearl Street
Boulder, CO 80302
303-544-5973

Bump & Grind Cafe
I was only there for their brunch, served by waiter in drag, which is quite a popular event and on Saturdays and Sundays starting at 10. I'm not sure about the rest of the week. Sorry that I don't have a more precise address, but the place is hard to miss.
17th and Pennsylvania
Denver, CO

Denver Art Museum
Didn't have quite enough time to spend in it. But how can you not like a place with lots of art AND interactive stations where you can make your own postcard. Elsewhere I grabbed a card that said INSPIRED on one side and on the other was a quote from Ansel Adams in the 1930s.
"A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside me."
www.denverartmuseum.com

Oh no, I'm becoming a cookie monster!

The night before the child-killing test on the Russian Revolution, what was I doing?

I know I should say studying, but I could only study for so long, and even though I was leaving for Iran in 48 hours and was planning on making shortbread to take with me, I couldn't help but find a cookie to use up the super-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl and some of the eggs. Of course, muffins probably would have been more effective, but I remembered the time I made muffins that SHOULD have been cookies and unable to find my recipe, I decided to look online for a banana cookie recipe. I found one at Bakingsheet (now Baking Bites). Though the recipe was terrific unaltered, I woke up early the next morning and changed them up a bit and they seemed even more banana-y when I took out the chocolate and added some chopped nuts. Oh, and to answer the rhetorical question simply: baking cookies.

Out of fear of overbaking these, I keep undercooking them and they turn into mush. But the one cookie sheet that I managed to leave in the oven long enough turned out deliciously crispy cookies that were browned and nice and soft on the inside. I'm still struggling with that balance of baking time - though I will admit the other batches were definitely undercooked.

Now, three weeks later, I had to make another batch. And they disappeared (and its dark out and I'm too lazy to take a picture - what's wrong with me?) before I got a new, better picture.

Banana Oatmeal Bread Cookies
adapted from Bakingsheet
makes a few dozen

1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (or all purpose)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 small/medium banana (about 1/4 cup), mashed
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350F and line two baking sheets with a Silpat or parchment paper.

In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar. Beat in egg and banana, and then vanilla extract. Either on slow speed or by hand, gradually stir in the flour mixture. Stir in the oats, chocolate chips, and pecans.

Drop by tablespoonfulls 2 inches apart on baking sheet. Bake 12-15 minutes.

Delayed Vegan Valentine

A month or two ago one of my friends decided she was going to be vegan after reading a book about something. She never said what the book was. This was not too long before valentine's day, and since I usually take the treats I make to lunch with me, I felt bad if I took treats I couldn't share with everyone at the table (since they all eat nuts, I don't worry about those like I did in the past when I ate lunch with a nutty anti-nut friend).
I checked out Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World from the library last year because with a title that cute how could I resist? However, being anti-margarine and shortening, as well as an omnivore, I never did anything but flip through it. But I'd tabbed pages that lacked offenders and wanted to try them. But then I returned the book. So when my friend mentioned being vegan, I figured it would be a nice surprise. So I checked out the book again, picked out my recipe for an icing (Super Natural Agave Icing), and bought everything for either vanilla or chocolate cupcakes. Then I reread the recipe: soy milk powder. And I began a three-week quest for the stuff short of ordering ten pounds of it from the internet. I only needed 1 1/2 cups. So then I gave up, but the plain soymilk was still sitting in the basement fridge. In the past I've enjoyed soymilk in my cereal, but that's because vanilla soymilk is sweet and I didn't want to open the soymilk until I knew I could finish it. Unfortunately, it's almost March 11th, the date on the package.

So it was time to make the cupcakes, and the chocolate ganache to match.

(Coincidentally, I also started reading Vegan Virgin Valentine - or more accurately, listening to, on my iPod today. The character's name is Valentine though.)

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes
adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero
makes 12-15 cupcakes
My dad said these seemed like corn muffins to him. They weren't patient enough to wait for them to cool or for me to ice them this morning. When I had one, I pinpointed the flavor. It was a mild flavor from the soy milk.


1 cup soymilk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract (or more vanilla)

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line muffin pan with liners.

Whisk the soymilk and vinegar together in a measuring cup and set aside a few minutes to curdle.

Whisk together the soymilk mixture, oil, sugar, and vanilla extract and other extracts in a large bowl. Sift in the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mix until no large lumps remain.

Fill cupcake liners 2/3 way full and bake for 20 to 22 minutes or until done. Transfer to cooling rack and let cool completely before frosting.

Rich Chocolate Ganache Recipe
adapted from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
Note: It makes more than enough for 12 cupcakes, so I made truffles, like suggested in the book, with the leftovers. It suggested using a chocolate with up to a 60% cacao content, but the lowest vegan chocolate I had was 70%, and I wasn't about to compromise the vegan value of the cupcakes after getting this far. And one of my friends said she likes the ganache topping better than a buttercream anyway, so I guess it was worth it.

1/4 cup soymilk
4 ounces semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup

In a small saucepan bring soymilk to a simmer. Remove from heat and add chocolate and syrup. Stir until smooth and set aside until ready to use.

A Cake for A Potluck with Paella

As I mentioned last night, Dad was making paella for the potluck at our house. Mom contributed with tuna empanadas, and I was in charge of dessert. While the main course was a mish-mash of paella, kuku-ye lubiya (a Persian-style frittata with green beans), breaded shrimp with veggies, salad, and two different mast-e khiar (cucumber yogurt). I focused my dessert though to follow through with a theme started by the paella.
I have a recipe for a bizcocho de naranja in a magazine I picked up in Barcelona last year, but I used a different one that I made before and had notes on it so I knew that it would turn out tasty. I didn't want to risk a bad cake without time to try to save it.

Last time I used orange juice from a bottle since we already had it in the house, and this time I freshly squeezed it. Also, instead of following the recipe, I used Brown Cow cream top yogurt to make the cake, and since it was a new container and I didn't stir it up, most of the yogurt used was the cream top, which probably contributed to some of the richness, but the original recipe called for low-fat yogurt. I also probably need to find a better garnish because raspberries are not super tasty (and outrageously priced) this time of year. It just looks so boring without it, but tastes fine.


Bizcocho de Naranja (orange yogurt cake)
adapted from Cooking Light, July 2005
Serves 12 (or so)

1 cup freshly-squeezed orange juice
a large pinch crushed saffron threads
2 cups (9 1/2 ounces; 275 g) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg white
1/4 cup plain yogurt
6 tablespoons good-quality olive oil

3 Tablespoons orange marmalade
1 Tablespoon Grand Marnier or other orange-flavored liqueur

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan with at least 1 1/2 inch sides.

Bring juice to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat; stir in saffron. Let stand 10 minutes, or while you are doing other steps.

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt with a whisk in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl (or bowl of a mixer), beat sugar, egg, and egg white at medium speed until thickened, about 5 minutes. Add yogurt, beating well. Gradually add oil and the juice mixture, beating until well blended. Add half of flour mixture; beat just until blended. Add remaining flour and beat until just blended.

Spoon batter into prepared 9-inch cake pan. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a wodden pic inserted in center comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove and cool completely on wire rack.

Place cake on serving platter. Combine marmalade and liqueur in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer stirring constantly. Remove from heat and spread mixture evenly over top of the cake, allowing to drip over sides. (If you like lots of glaze or don't like the look of the chunks, you can either double or strain it because this doesn't make a whole lot of glaze, its a very thin layer.)

Spanish inspired cookies that ring Iran

Tonight we're having a potluck, a themeless one because of technical difficulties that prevented us from contacting our family soon enough to insist upon a theme. But Dad's making paella, so I decided to make the bizcocho de naranja that I made a year or so ago when Dad made paella.
To go along with it as well, I figured I should make something else, just in case. So I flipped through The New Spanish Table by Anya von Bremzen and the very last recipe is for Chocolate-Dipped Almond-Stuffed Figs. That definitely caught my eye and I added it to the grocery list. But the dried figs were too expensive and too small at the first store and had too many preservatives in them at the second store. After I made my cake, I remembered having seen a recipe for a pistachio shortbread that I had all the ingredients for, so I measured out my pistachios just to make sure, and then decided to make it. The smell was familiar - like Iranian treats, so the cookies work perfectly for tonight whether I pretend I'm going with the Spanish theme or appealing to my family's preferences.

The scent of saffron and the presence of pistachios placed into something Scottish. It's a multi-ethnic cookie!

But you can find the recipe on page 451 of The New Spanish Table, here or here. The latter also has the recipe for chocolate-dipped almond-stuffed figs that I was going to make until I couldn't find figs and had everything to make the shortbread.

Granola Bar Weekend

I'm not sure what possessed me to make granola bars, but I had some sort of urge to make them on Friday night that was unfulfilled. I made corn tortillas, and when I was done with that, I decided to make granola bars. Mom told me she'd be home soon, so I didn't have enough time. And discovered I didn't have quite enough almonds, and despite having other nuts around, I was determined to use almonds.
So on Saturday, after the SAT (how fitting SATurday), I came home and made granola bars. I did have a paper due on Tuesday, but this is me and when the pressure comes pounding, I do something else.

The granola bars I made on Saturday were straight from The Kitchen Sink, though mine didn't come out nearly as photogenic. And I have an inability to cut things. Oh, and I used cherries instead of cranberries.Other than my parents complaining they were too hard (something I like about CRISPY granola bars), they were good. But I noticed the crumbs after eating them were almost always the whole flax seeds.

So on Monday, while my friend was editing my paper for me, I set out to make another batch of granola bars, but this time without coconut (which somehow sneaked its way in) and with ground flaxseeds (which somehow ended up as a mess in the garbage can.) The wheat germ in the container I couldn't get open was rancid, so for some reason I chose to use oat bran instead (these'll definately clean you out) and I added more honey after measuring (so weight is given for it and the tahini with estimates for volume). I personally liked these better, even though the fruit was EXTREMELY chewy and I left them in the oven a little too long because I chose to ignore to timer and continue what I was working on.



Sesame Pistachio Crisp Granola Bars
makes 16 bars, or however many pieces you choose to cut it into

2 1/2 cups (≈265 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup (≈40 grams) oat bran
1/4 cup (≈20 g) shredded coconut
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 cup (≈150g) almonds
1/2 cup (≈60 g) pistachios
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt or 1 tsp. of finer grain salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
130 g honey (that's probably around 1/3 to 1/2 cup, I think)
80 g tahini, a ground sesame paste (that's probably around 1/4 to 1/3 cup)
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 325ºF. Line a 8x8 or 9x9 baking sheet with two perpendicular pieces of parchment paper in a cross with overhangs for easier lifting; grease paper.

Mix together oats, oat bran, coconut, sesame seeds, almonds, and pistachios and spread out on a silpat or parchment lined baking sheet. Toast in oven for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine salt, cinnamon, honey, and tahini in a large saucepan. When the oat mixture has about 5 minutes left, heat over medium heat, stirring, until honey and tahini make are warm and thoroughly mixed. Turn heat to low. Stir in oat mixture and dried fruits.

Press into prepared pan and bake in oven for about 30 minutes or until just turning golden. Let cool completely in pan on rack. Cut into desired size pieces.