Italian Market

Finally went to the Italian Market today. I managed to get no Italy-related things. Instead, I got tacos at El Costeno, so far the best Mexican spot in the city. It's a tiny little place with a smattering of tables, but it was good and cheap and lovely. I then went to Fante's, a bakery supply store. Here's where I got excited! I bought some stuff:

The mini bundt pan will be used this Saturday when I make dessert for the break the fast dinner for Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, involves 24 hours of fasting from Friday evening until Saturday evening. I am looking forward to the dinner, which will be more of a breakfast, with fishes and bagels and stuff. I, however, am not fasting. What I will be doing is making nice sweet tiny cakes with various drizzles and fruit. They will hopefully fit nicely nestled in the little square paper cups.


I also found sprinkles in the shape of bones and a lip-shaped cookie cutter. Something tells me vampire lips cookies will be part of my Halloween baking this year. 

Fall Bounty

Are you ready for fall? Maybe it's already hit you where you are, but it doesn't get here until late November if at all. Sometimes we just skip it and go straight to winter. Southern California winter is boring. It's just chilly and things turn brown. No cool fall colors unless you live in Claremont or one of those places where they've carefully grown some colorful trees. Halloween is usually warm. Actually, it's always too warm on Halloween. I can't remember ever needing a jacket when I was little and we'd go trick-or-treating. That's kind of good, costume-wise, but these days I hate sweating in my costume. It's annoying. It could be worse, of course, and believe me I'm not bummed out on our temperate climate, it's why people move here, but as a creature of the night who refuses to wear shorts....I like cooler temperatures and I love fall.

Starbucks already has its pumpkin latte on the menu. A way too cheerful barista indicated to me that I should try one. Sadly, I had to decline. It was 7:30 am and already 80 degrees! No, fall is not here yet. However, just because it isn't here doesn't mean I shouldn't prepare....

I went to Williams Sonoma to redeem a gift certificate this weekend. I was also hoping to see some of the fall-holiday stuff (Halloween and Thanksgiving). There weren't that many cool Halloween things there, other than black and orange cake decorating stuff. A lot of the stuff they have is for people with little kids, you know, like a goofy vampire spatula, or napkins with an embroidered giggly jack-o-lantern. Not my thing really. But these fall-related things caught my eye:



Yes, that is a spiced pecan pumpkin bread mix, which I'm itching to make. And I couldn't help but also buy the pecan pumpkin butter as well, for when I want to remember the pumpkin bread long after it's gone. It's supposed to be really good on toast. As is the Snickerdoodle spread on the right. No joke, it's like a cinnamon-sugar-brown sugar spread. For a cinnamon toast to die for. I love snickerdoodles. They are cookies that are fluffy like little cakes.


I also bought these pans (like I need more pans, but whatever, they're pretty!) The one on the right is for my pumpkin bread. It has fall leaves and pumpkins molded on it. I'm thinking of serving the bread with cream cheese frosting on the side or maybe piped delicately on the sides of the mold.

The tea cake mold is something I bought because I'm considering making snickerdoodles in that mold. Tea cakes are great, but you can't frost them because you lose the beauty of the mold, so you have to make something that you don't need to frost. Snickerdoodles get tossed in cinnamon and sugar before they go in the oven and don't need any frosting, so I was thinking of doing that. Does anyone know if you can make them in molds like this? They are kind of like short bread cookies, but will they just not cook right in the mold? It's going to be a crazy experiment, smelling all that good cookie smell and maybe not getting good treats at the end. But experiments are my thing. I'll update you if it works. If not I'll probably just say "I haven't had time to try."

I started to search for cookie molds to see if there are particular kinds of cookies that you can put in molds like the tea cake pan. I found some cool vintage replica cookie molds from Blueberry Forest. Check them out!

Lots of cute molds like this one were on the site for individual cookies.

And I loved the rolling pin molds as well.

I tried looking for more contemporary versions of these things, but there isn't really a market for them apparently. I'd love to find some if you know of any.

So with my fall bounty I left the mall a happy lady. Although, with the heat and stuff here in SoCal, I doubt I'll turn on the oven until well after November. Sigh...fall, I wish you were really here.

Order Up!

Since I bailed on Nutrisystem (a combo of factors including money, money, and money), I have tried to keep up with the diet. I eat smaller portions, I eat way more veggies and fruits, and my snacks are much better than they were before. I used to grab chips, now I grab 100 calorie Smart Popcorn. I fit back into my jeans, which now require a belt! And now that the semester is closing up, I look forward to hitting the gym again. I just went today and felt amazing. So good that later on in the day I took a walk from my house to Portfolio, my local coffee spot 5 blocks away, even though I totally could have driven on my way to the store. The old me would have thought, "Hello? I already exercised today." But M. and I took the dog and sat out on the patio in the beautiful sunshine.

Anyway, I'm cooking again, which I love. So let me regail you with my latest stuff, some of which is good for you, some of which is not. All of which was tasty!

Cuban Ham Croquettes (aka croquetas de jamon)

I made just a few of these for Mother's Day. My mom loves croquetas, but never makes them. They are pretty easy to make, but apparently she's traumatized by my grandmother's method of making them, which was exactly like the method I am going to give you now, but only for like 20 people, which means a huge vat of bechamel sauce. If I had remembered that, I would have been intimidated. She once helped make 200 croquetas for my aunt's wedding. So she was very happy to have a plate of them without having to shell out time or money! Creamy and rich on the inside, with a tasty fried coating on the outside, you could die from too many of these. And it would be worth it.

Here's how my grandmother made them:

This recipe makes about 24 small croquetas (the size you see in the picture, about 2 inches long).

4 tbsp butter
1 tbsp chopped onion
1 cup milk
3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tbsp dry white wine
2 cups ham, chopped in a food processor (I used a black forest ham from the sandwhich deli meat section)

for the coating:
2 eggs for the egg wash
1 cup of cracker crumbs (you can use bread crumbs, but I like the coating to be fine, so I ground up some low sodium saltines)

vegetable oil for frying

1) Melt butter and sautee onion on medium heat in a skillet on medium heat
2) Add milk, flour, salt and pepper and cook on low heat
3) Stir constantly until you see the bottom of the pan. It will start to stick to itself and form a big mushy ball. Turn down the flame even more
4) Add the white wine and ham and mix it all together well (I also add chopped parsley, but it was not my grandma's style)
5) Remove from heat and let cool
6) Once cooled, refrigerate for 2 hours. It really helps you form them into a shape if they are cold, so if you skip the fridge, you will have blobs, not croquetas.
7) Once you are ready to start frying them up, make two dishes, one for the egg wash and one for the crumb coating.
8) Form the dough into balls and then flatten them out so they are in a croquette shape (cylindrical, if you will), then dip in the egg and then in the crumbs (just once each should do).
9) Fry those babies up in vegetable oil at 375 degrees. Once they are browned, set them on a paper towel to cool.

If you wanted to freeze them to make at a later date, just coat them and roll them in plastic wrap. You could also coat them and put them in the fridge to fry up the next day.

Great for an appetizer, a finger food (even good at room temperature after frying), or a side dish.
They should be soft but not runny.

That's a freebie, folks!

Peanut Butter Cupcakes with TWO Frostings.

I rarely get experimental with baking. I like to perfect recipes, not add to them, because they are so precise. If you add too much of something, your whole recipe fails and you have an inedible thing that smells good but goes right in the trash. This one paid off. Don't ask me how!

These are peanut butter cupcakes. I used 3/4 of the amount of peanut butter that the recipe called for (I got it from Connolly's 500 Cupcakes cookbook), and it made it not as heavy.



I also added a glaze to the tops of the cupcakes. I used a really basic vanilla glaze recipe you'd use for bundt cakes. After that cooled and formed a nice hard layer, I capped the whole thing off with a rich milk chocolate frosting. Chocolate, glaze, peanut butter, cupcake. So good! I brought them to a dinner party and got raves on them. I left them with the hosts and they called me the next day to tell me they were eating the rest of them. That's a good review, I think.

Tonight I didn't have any lettuce, so I made a simple salad.



Cherry tomatoes, sliced in quarters, cucumber, chopped walnuts, feta, and chopped parsley. I added a bit of lemon rind, some of my favorite dressing (Brianna's Blush Wine Vinaigrette), and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

On my diet, I had zucchini all the time. I still love it. I must, because I've been keeping the zucchini industry alive single handedly in the past 3 months with how much I keep on hand. Finally, though, I gave myself a treat and made some fried zucchini. I like to use bread crumbs, garlic powder, salt, pepper, a pinch of finely chopped parsley, and a bit of lemon rind in my batter. I'm not a big fan of heavy batters. I know some people do the whole beer batter thing for fried zucchini or fried mozzarella sticks. That sounds very heavy. I just dipped my small slices of zucchini in a light egg wash, tossed it in the dry batter, and fried it up quick (1 minute each side tops in hot oil). The result was a really tender but still crisp veggie with a barely there crunchy outside.


Tomorrow I am going to try to improvise my own flautas. I'll update you on how that goes!