Showtime!

Locals ... if you are in town this weekend ... please considering attending Valatie Youth Theatre's production of Seussical Jr. at the Valatie Community Theatre, 3031 Main St., Valatie.

Showtimes are tonight through Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.

Annabel is proud as pie to be a Citizen of Whoville.

Little nuts

Adding another recipe to the box of Things My Kids Won't Eat ...

All the better. More for me:

ALMONDOLA

1 1/2 cups almond flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sea salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix almond flour with baking soda, salt and brown sugar.
Blend in oil, agave nectar and vanilla.
Stir in seeds, raisins, chocolate. (You can substitute whatever makes you happy. Go craisins if you like.)
Press mixture into greased 8x8 pan with wet hands.
Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

  

The Champ's Happy (safety violation) Birthday

The princesses and fairies aren't wearing hardhats.

The bathers aren't wearing life jackets.

The construction workers aren't watching what they're doing, not to mention the fact that they're using two different kinds of cement: royal icing and buttercream.

But I have it on good authority cookies (and cupcakes) lose a ton of calories once they've been cracked open with a jackhammer.

How to obliterate hundreds of years of tradition in 45 minutes (including prep time)

These would be Jan Hagel Cookies, a traditional Dutch cookie made by pressing dough into a pan, shellacing it with egg white and covering it with a layer of slivered almonds.

They WOULD be if we'd made them correctly.

See, we attended a Dutch baking class this week at The House of History, where the lovely and talented educators walked us through the process of making three kinds of traditional cookies: Jan Hagels, Dutch wafer cookies and sweet pretzels.

The Jan Hagels were our favorites so we tried to recreate them at home.

The recipe is as follows:

JAN HAGEL COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sugar

1 cup butter
2 cups flour

1 egg (separated)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup slivered almonds

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

In large bowl, cream butter and sugar; add egg yolk.

Add flour and cinnamon and mix well.

Spread batter onto baking dish or pan, press evenly.

Brush top with egg white.

Sprinkle layer of almonds.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Cut into rectangles, squares or triangles.

Of course we got this:

Which, by the laws that govern tradition, will serve as evidence of our crimes. We didn't press our batter thin enough, and our almonds were pulverized not slivered.

(I'd have shown you a picture of the ones we made at the class, but we ate them all.)

Oh well.

They still taste delicious.

They even made us want to try our hand at wrecking other traditional Dutch recipes.

Self serve

I see it this way:

It was his cake.

He mixed it. Baked it. Decorated it.

Even sliced it himself.

Might as well have the piece he wanted and eat it, too.

Chef Boyr'he

He's mastered the egg cracking.

I think it's a law ...

Because all baking should be the product of empirical data and not tossing ingredients into recipes that look similar to the ingredients of which you ran out, real bakers would probably call the police if you tried this in their kitchens:

CHOCOLATE CHIP PANCOOKIES


CREAM (for way too long because you put the blender on and walked out of the room to do something else)
*Two sticks salted butter (who wants to deal with the one stick of shortening the recipe required? Not me.)
* One cup granulated sugar (no brown sugar in the house that wasn't in brick form).
ADD
* Two eggs (one just looks insufficient)
* Some vanilla (It smells good, so add more than two measly teaspoons)
* Some salt (probably should go in the flour mixture, but it all goes in the same place, right?
GRADUALLY (by the teaspoon) ADD
*1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour and 1/2 cup of add-only-water pancake mix (because ... well, they're both powdery)
THEN JUST TOSS IN (not bothering to stir)
* an entire bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips (because whomever thought two cups is enough is just plain mean).



SPOON onto a parchment-lined baking sheet (because who needs another pan to clean) and bake in a 350 degree oven until the edges are golden brown. (Try not to be alarmed when the blobs of batter look like melting ice cream in the oven).

Makes about four dozen cookies (half of which will be either raw in the center or burned) that you will probably need to eat with a fork.

or better yet.

Just eat the batter and pretend it's a dessert mousse.

Houston, we have a problem. No. Scratch that

After the bus had come for Ittybit, The Champ politely asked for cupcakes. "Batman cupcakes."

Which is why, at 8:15 in the morning, I was ransacking the kitchen for a box of cake mix.

Houston, we have a problem.

We have no boxed cake mix, which means I'll have to go out to the grocery store or say "No."

I hate saying no, but it's about a zillion degrees below zero outside and I don't want to do the car-seat dance. Isn't there another way?

"You make them fo me? Pease? Batman cupcakes? Pease?"

What do mean? From scratch?

Me? Seriously?

Blink. Blink. Blink.

So, at 8:18 a.m. I opened "The Joy of Cooking," found the cupcakes section and looked for an easy-looking recipe.

Located one that seemed manageable and immediately found myself improvising:

Yogurt Cupcakes (reduced fat)

In medium-sized bowl mix:

2 1/4 cups flour (whoops ... I used 2 1/2 cups).
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

In large bowl cream:

5 tablespoons unsalted butter (We have no butter. Threw some canola oil in the bottom of the bowl ... looks like three or four or five tablespoons maybe.)
1 cup sugar. (All we had is that brown raw sugar, so I used it.)
1 large egg, two large egg whites ... (Didn't bother with separating, The Champ was intent on helping. Let him crack two large eggs and then retrieved the shells from the mixing bowl.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract. (Didn't have any, used a dash of lemon extract and a dash of almond extract.)

Add flour mixture to fat mixture in three parts.

(Thank GOD for KitchenAid. I'm already exausted.)

Add one cup yogurt (All we had was strawberry. Good enough.)

Spoon into cupcake silicones (with huge amount of spillage).

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 (or 23) minutes.

Voila. A baking experiment.

Not bad.

They were actually quite moist and tasty even if they were a little more muffin-like than cupcake-like.

I suppose I could have problem-solved the Batman thing with some chocolate frosting but The Champ had forgotten about that part of the request. Problem solved.

Alone by Myself on an Island Cookies

best cookies I've ever made, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I didn't really use a recipe ... so chances are I won't be able to recreate them but maybe you can ...

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients (all thrown unceremoniously into the Kitchen Aid without the use of measuring devices):

* A small food processor bowl full of oatmeal (ground)
* A few shakes of enriched white flour (maybe a 3/4 of a cup)
* About two tablespoons of butter, softened
* Nearly two tablespoons (guessing) of canola oil
* Two eggs
* Half a box of dark brown sugar
* About half a cup of granulated sugar
* Two pours of vanilla extract
* A pinch of salt
* A spoon-tip of baking soda (couldn't find the baking powder but I would have put in an equal amount of that).

Mix until blended and then add in:

* About a cup of chocolate chunks
* 3/4 of a bag of shredded, sweetened coconut (well, I put in half of the bag, but Silas - in his infinite wisdom of such things - decided it really needed more and added the rest while I was hunting for ...
* Three dried pineapple rings, chopped

The experiment is almost over: Place heaping teaspoons of batter on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes.

Coneheads

Mmmm. ... Ice cream cone.

Nope. Guess again.

Mmmm. ... Cupcake.

I tried out this cupcake-in-a-cone thing last weekend as a test of my baking prowess. I wanted to see if I could I make 100 of these little delicacies for Annabel's birthday party next month. (They're so small, even the little people will need at least three).

I only made a couple dozen (all of them gone now) but I think I can do it.

*Fill cone halfway with cake batter
*Stand in muffin tin
*Bake as usual
*Pipe on frosting
*Sprinkle with festive, dinosaur candy toppings

Easy as pie cupcakes.

The real problem will be figuring out a way to transport these little thumb-sized cups of goodness to the Skate Factory where the party is going to be held.

I'll go insane if I have to make a tray by cutting 100 holes in box tops. I'll let Jed do that part. He's crafty.

Sunshiny day

Sunshiny day, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Strange things happen when you have two children and no life.

You can get a sitter - go to dinner and a movie - but it's not as fun if you know that the big kid won't go to bed and the little kid might not stop crying until you return.

You could go to a restaurant that doesn't mind if your kids hang from the chandeliers and shoot peas from their noses. But that's not really relaxing.

Even if you stretch out on the couch after you manage to cajole the children to sleep, there's really no need to have another conversation with your spouse; you can already finish their sentences.

So what are parent's supposed to do?

I'll tell you what. They're supposed to try and date OTHER PARENTS who have kids 'roundabout the same age.

That's what we've been doing; courting folks who seem friendly and interesting, and who don't mind hanging out with us for a few hours on a weekend.

It's been tough. Scheduling has been more tight than JFK's flight patterns. Until this weekend, we'd been striking out. But then we got a bite. A nice family that owns a local ice cream shop invited us to dinner Sunday.

God, I hope I make a good impression. I hope I don't break anything or shoot beer out of my nose from laughing. ... That would be horrid.

I mean I'm already breaking the first set of instructions: Don't bring anything aside from yourselves ... **


PEAR AND GINGER UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tablespoon plus 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 1/8 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup milk (do not use low-fat or nonfat)
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
3 firm but ripe Bosc pears, peeled, cored, thinly sliced

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray 9-inch-diameter cake pan with 2-inch-high sides with nonstick vegetable oil spray. Sift flour and next 8 ingredients into medium bowl. Combine milk and vanilla in glass measuring cup. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until lightly and fluffy. Add egg and beat until will blended. Add molasses and beat will. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with milk mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Arrange pears in bottom of prepared pan. Pour batter over.

Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Transfer pan to rack and cool 10 minutes. Using small knife, cut around sides of pan to loosen cake. Turn cake out into rack and cool slightly. (Cake can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and store at room temperature.)

Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream.

**I hope it doesn't suck.

How first they practice to deceive

The making of a Mudslide, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

"Mother! I dropped one.

"Don't worry. It's still good. I can eat it.

"Oh no! I dropped another one!"

Things change

So good it's GUUUD, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

When I was a child and my mom baked she'd always pop the beaters out of of the hand mixer and give one to my sister and one to me.

Brownies, chocolate cake, cookie dough, pudding ... It didn't matter what confection came out of the oven, it was the batter that we all clammored to get.

That was then.

By the time we were teens, salmonella had reared it's ugly head and made spoon licking something only daddies were allowed to do, and only because they pretended they were washing them in the bathroom sink. With the door closed.

Since then food poisioning incidents seemed to have skyrocketed.

Every season there's a new culprit.

From improper handling to incomplete cooking to things that just shouldn't be in the foods we eat, such as man-made chemicals and heavy metals, food scares keep getting more horrific.

You can just see a time in the not-too distant future when the giant farm machine collapses on itself and we are all going to find ourselves tending kitchen gardens in our spare time.

The same way I don't imbibe, because some doctors would tell you a sip of something will cause fetal alchohol syndrome, Jed and I haven't let her lick the beater when raw eggs are used in the mixture. It's just one of the many precautions that have made their way into our paranoid psyches.

And how could you not be concerned: folks in the know are now saying spinach is still not safe from e-coli contamination ... and it's been hard to even figure out what remedy or measures would make it safer.

But the incredible, edible egg seems to have made a comeback.

I recently read about how the industry has really done a lot to make eggs safer, and it seemed reasonable. You really don't hear a lot about salmonella contamination and eggs anymore.

Of course, we'll probably still err on the side of caution, but once in a while you just have to hand over the spoon.

Some experiences are just too good to miss.

The groundhog is such a kidder

Yesterday I did the unthinkable for a person in the news business. I called in on account of snow. In the more than fifteen years I've been in this business, I missed exactly two days of work because of the white stuff. Once, in 1996, I had to turn around and go home when I got halfway to work and my car couldn't plow through the foot-high drifts that were sailing around the backcountry roads. It was a weekly and we weren't on deadline, so I didn't feel so bad.

This time however, I was all set to go. I was planning what to wear, and thinking about my still broken cell phone charger when Jed gave me the stern look that only FATHERS can muster: "YOU ARE NOT THINKING ABOUT GOING OUT IN THIS ARE YOU?"

"I have to," I say, feeling a little like a rebuked child.

"I have to go to work," I continue, with endless reasons at my disposal:

People are counting on me

At least TWO people are on vacation

I know some people just won't show up

and I know there might very well be only TWO people that DO show up. ...

And yet his reasons for staying by the warmth of the fire, petting our sweet ailing dog and forgoing the battle of a potential two-hour commute were equally compelling:

"YOU ARE PREGNANT,"

"YOU ARE SICK WITH A COLD,"

"AND THE STORM IS JUST GETTING WORSE."

So I acquiesed and got on the horn to work.

It was a good day, though: Annabel got to break in her new snow shovel, a valentine's gift from her dad who trudged out around noontime to go to the store on an errand for baking supplies and who ended up coming home with a new movie he bought on impulse while standing in the checkout line.

Professional guilt, as well as a need for toddler diversion, made me send him to the store for 18 ounces of bittersweet chocolate and enough eggs to get us through the week should I clean us out with my plan:
I was going to bring a "guilt" cake to work.

About 20 inches of snow (and seven hours later) Annabel was helping me put the finishing touches on the chocolate cake we made (only half of which I brought to work this morning because of theiving housemates).

"Look mommy, I'm snowing on the cake."

So here it is:
VALENTINE'S DAY SNOWED-IN FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE
Zero Flour, All the Guilt

1 cup water

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

18 ounces bittersweet chocolate (bar form) (We added half a bag of Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips because we were a tad short).

1 stick butter, cut into cubes

6 large eggs

Preheat over to 300 degrees F.

Melt chocolate in double boiler (are you nuts. USE THE MICROWAVE).

Combine water, sugar and salt in medium sauce pan and cook over medium-low heat until sugar is disolved, stirring continuously. (Annabel did this part).

Fold butter into melted chocolate one cube at a time. Add syrup mixture and blend in eggs one at a time. (I'm sure Annabel would have been more precise than I was in this endeavor; I dropped in two eggs at once, then dropped one egg on the floor).

Pour into 9" springform pan and place in oven in a water bath.

Bake 45 minutes.

When it had cooled, I filled a tea ball with confectioner's sugar and let Annabel make a blizzard on the cake ... and in the kitchen and all over her clothes.