Stop 21: Washington D.C. Cherry Trifle

I have been a very bad blogger, I apologize profusely.  The end of school happened and then my back pain and then Europe and well, I have been a very bad blogger indeed.  I am back at it though and hopefully will have lots to regale you with soon!  It has been a bit too hot to do much baking recently (though there was quite a bit of experimenting with baguettes right after I got home from Europe), but I am hoping to jump back in for a BBQ I have next week.  In the meantime, some catch-up!

Right before the end of the school year, my mother hosted her book group meeting.  The book they read was Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, which is really quite a nice book if anyone's looking for anything to read.  She asked me to make something for it and we determined that few things get much more English-y than a trifle, even if it is out of the ultimate American cookbook...

Brown chose a cherry trifle for D.C. in honor of the cherry trees that are so prevalent down there.  I'm not sure how he decided on a trifle for their vehicle though.  It was a pretty basic recipe, but with a few extra tricks thrown in.  Brown called for his "Amazing Vanilla Cake" recipe for the cake layers, but I had some leftover vanilla cake in the freezer and used that (remember when I said I would never deviate from the exact recipes?  HA!).  Brown's trifle recipe calls for sugaring the cherries. This basically means to dump the pitted cherries in with some sugar and apple cider vinegar and let them hang out in the fridge for a few hours.  When all that is done, he has you make a simple syrup and add the juices that have come out of the soaking cherries to that.  Then you soak each layer of cake with the simple syrup before putting in the whipped cream and sugared cherries.  Brown also required the whipped cream to be very loose, so it all kind of blends together.  I think I understood his reasoning, but in the future, would probably whip it up more.  I prefer a firmer texture over his aesthetic preference.

I discovered a cute trick for pitting cherries during this process. By gently pushing of the point of a corkscrew through the top of the cherry (where the stem was), the pit slipped right out the bottom of the cherry and didn't leave a very big hole.  This was good because part of the appeal of the trifle was how the cherries looked with the layers of cake and cream.

It was very tasty, though with those ingredients, I can't imagine how it wouldn't have been!

Europe! (part 2)

After Bruges we headed for three days in Amsterdam.  We got there by train, got kicked out of a first class carriage on said train, made our connection in Antwerp and eventually found our hotel.  We had a bit of confusion with finding hotels because what could be better than being lost in a new city filled with pick pockets and tourists while schlepping 800lbs of luggage?  Nothing!

The first day we were in Amsterdam it was really hot, like 90's hot.  And my back hurt.  That day involved a lot of walking around and looking at things, going into air conditioned stores and finding places to stop and have the magical European iced tea (it's fizzy!).  We saw some sights and then did our normal afternoon siesta.  When we went back out for dinner, it looked approximately like the apocalypse was upon us, so we ended up going to an Argentinian steak place much closer to the hotel than where we had originally planned.  It was good because the skies opened, the winds howled, men clung to their beers under sidewalk table umbrellas for dear life, water sloshed in through the windows and doors, it was outstanding.  And broke the humidity.

The next day we went straight to the Anne Frank house after breakfast.  It was rainy and cold, but there was still a line.  From there we hit the Jewish History Museum, had some falafel for lunch, did the Portugese Sephardic Synagogue, and I dragged my mom to the American Hotel to see the architecture.  Then we discovered hop-on-hop-off canal boats and bought 24-hour tickets for those.  It was a good call, because the sun had come back out and things were heating up.  I had the best crepe of my life at a place called Hansel and Gretel and then we took a mini tour on the canal boat through the city.  That night for dinner we went to a Thai place in the Red Light District which had been talked up by the tour books.  It was busy and the orchids were beautiful, but the food was only so-so.  We then walked through the Red Light District and had some amusing conversations about the fact that we were walking through the Red Light District as mother and daughter and I taught my mom the difference between coffee shops and those coffee shops as we walked by.

We started off day three by going on the longest canal boat leg that went to the outermost canal in the city and saw some sights that way.  Then we did the Van Gogh Museum, found the cafe we had wanted to go to for lunch which was closed for renovations, ate more falafel, found the flower market, hit some stores, and located the restaurant at which we wanted to eat dinner - we were getting smarter!  After that afternoon's siesta we hit Kapitein Zeppos which was awesome.  Totally quirky interior, excellent food, funny waiter.  It was great!  On the way back we literally spent our last four euros (on water and iced tea).  It was sad knowing the vacation was coming to an end.

lunch and iced tea 

mom in a shoe 

some beers

Bird, the Thai restaurant

Our hotel was made up of four canal houses

at Kapitein Zeppos with some more beer

Kapitein Zeppos interior

rain storm on the first night 

statue of Anne Frank at the Westerkerk next to the Anne Frank house

interior of the American Hotel Cafe

Mom and me waiting for the canal boat tour

And that was that.  The next day we hopped a flight back to Boston and it was like we'd never left.  Unfortunately, I now have the crazy travel bug and can't wait to go back again!

As mentioned before, I came back to a week of extreme back pain and then was in a wedding on the weekend.  The wedding was incredible, but of course, took up a fair amount of time.  From mani-pedi on Thursday to the catered Four Seasons lunch on Friday afternoon to the rehearsal dinner at Silvertone on Friday night to prep and the actual wedding on Saturday, it was a jam-packed weekend.  Also a weekend in which I learned that one should no drink beer, gin and champagne all in one night.  Or at least not without a fair amount of cold pizza in the fridge for the next morning.

This was the wedding of my friend Anne (of guest post fame ) and her fiance Ben.  The wedding had a peacock theme and everything was done beautifully.  And Anne is a vegetarian who doesn't really like vegetable, so there was a pasta bar, which was awesome.  I don't have a lot of pictures from the wedding, but here are a few that show how creative and beautiful everything was.

This is actually two bridesmaids bouquets mixed together. 

Anne's mom made one of these bags for every out of town guest.  They're adorable and have the Make Way for Ducklings ducks on them!  And were jam-packed full of yummy goodies.

And that's that.  Now, the trip is over and the wedding is over and I guess I have to go back to the real world.  Oh wait, I'm a teacher on summer vacation, the real world is the beach!

I'll be posting about the cherry trifle and golden nugget cake soon!

An Actual Side trip - to Europe! (part one)

I realize I haven't posted in quite a while.  The past few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind for me.  School ended, I pulled something in my lower back, went to Europe, came back, was jet lagged, and then, just to top it all off, was in a wedding last night.  It's been a crazy three weeks, but things are finally settling down.  Here are some of the highlights:

On the last day of school for teachers (which is the day after the last day of school for students) every year there is a big school-wide meeting.  I refer to this meeting endearingly as the "Kumbaya meeting" because it seems to be a day for people to get up and tell other people how much they love them.  It's actually very nice and gives people a chance to honor others in a public forum.  This year, I asked the principal if we could combine the meeting with a potluck breakfast.  I used LuckyPotluck.com to create a list of what was needed and have people sign up for those things.  There was a ton of food, it was wonderfully successful, and it was also where I seemed to have thrown out my back.  Because of that last part, I ended up leaving the school for the summer feeling a bit ill-at-ease.  But I had also discovered that many of my colleagues can certainly cook, so we will be doing some major pot-lucking again in the future.

Two days after school ended, my mother and I left for a seven-day trip of Europe.  We took about 250 pictures, which I will not post here, but the whole thing was incredible, bad back and all.  And let me tell you, walking and biking around Europe for seven days is not the way to heal a bad back.

The trip started in Paris where we spent our first day, right off the plane, sans sleep, wandering around, climbing up to Sacre Couer, finding and adorable street filled with cafes (Rue de Cadet), getting misplaced looking for an Miro exhibit (we were literally in the wrong place, not lost), tripping over the Eiffel Tower, and accidentally eating (and paying for) two entrees at dinner rather than one.  Our hotel was adorable, the room being in the garret of an old Parisian building with a view of the Eiffel tower in one direction and Sacre Couer in the other.  Paris was a quick and slightly exhausting (and exhausted) day, but absolutely lovely.

Mom and me at the Sacre Couer steps

Our balcony

Paris hotel (the window allll the way at the top was our room)

 The next day was our trip to Giverny, where Monet lived and painted, and the real reason for our trip.  We had arranged a bike tour through Fat Tire Bike Tours which my mom had read about in the newspaper and did not disappoint.  The day started with meeting at the Gare Saint-Lazare to catch a train to Vernon, the town next to Giverny.  We did not miss our train, but only just.  In Vernon, we got out bikes and then we to a open market to buy lunch which we then biked to a spot on the Seine to eat.  Then we biked to Giverny (nice smooth bike trail and a little hill at the end) and had a few hours to see the house and gardens.  They were amazing.  Then we biked back, caught a train back to Paris, we home, fell asleep, woke up, ate dinner and packed because the next day we were leaving for Belgium!  I do want to give a little plug to the bike tour company here because I thought it was pretty incredible.  It's an American company that runs all sorts of tours in London, Barcelona, Paris, and Berlin.  Our tour guide (Meghan) was knowledgeable and sweet and very helpful.  It was well planned and the bikes were comfy.  There is about a 25% chance that I am going to quit my job and go give bike tours of Europe for the rest of my life.  I'll keep you posted.

Meghan giving bike instructions

Our picnic by the Seine

Mom and me at Giverny

Yummy crepes for dinner that night!

We made our train to Brussels very, very early and ate about three breakfasts in the meantime.  By the way, I should take a moment to point out that everything in Europe is very expensive right now.  Like, you sit down and order a coffee and then realize you've just paid seven dollars for it.  But you're on vacation, so you just kind of go with it.  It's a really great way to get really poor, really quickly.  Anyway, we made our train to Brussels with no issues.  We also eventually made it onto our train to Bruges, though having ticket machines in the Brussels train station that do no accept cash or credit cards was a bit sneaky.  And mean.

In Bruges, once we found our hotel (which was a converted barge and adorable), we met up with my friend Tom who was in Belgium on business.  I loved Bruges.  It was an adorable, totally navigate-able city with tons of history and shops and bikes and tourists.  It didn't really need more than a day or two, but for some reason, I want to live there and stay there forever.  Mom, Tom and I used the Rick Steve's Snapshot Bruges (big shout out for Rick Steves!) to take a tour of the city, see all the sights, check out the brewery, find a closed restaurant (that should have been open), and then finally find one of the best restaurants we ate at on the trip, amusingly called Tom's Diner.

The next day, it was just mom and me in Bruges and we rented bikes from the hotel and went on a journey to Damme, a small town about five miles away.  There wasn't much to Damme, but it was a very nice ride and very nice to be on a bike since we had done so much walking the day before.  At this point, my back was still in pretty bad shape, but biking seemed better than walking, at least until I got off the bike...  After Damme we went to some chocolate shops and boutiques, a park called Minnewater, found a lace shop, and had a light dinner.  I should also mention that for some reason in these parts of Europe, the sun does not go down until the break of dawn.  Or at least about 10:00-10:30.  Because of that, it makes a lot more sense to eat dinner between eight and nine.  And because of that, it makes a lot of sense to nap between five and eight.  These Europeans are really onto something.

My favorite picture!

Bruges canals   

At the Chocolate Line - chocolate place with crazy flavors

De Halve Maan brewery

View down the canal from Damme to Bruges

Amsterdam and wedding in part two!  

Hometown stop: Go Bruins!

I decided to make a quick stop in the city that is nearest and dearest to my heart (and physical location), good old Boston, and make some cookies to support the Bruins' run for the cup tonight.  I figured a few Bruins cookies would be sure to set them in the right direction, and lessen the mood of high stress-crazy children at work in these last few days of the school year.

I also thought I'd take the easy way out by using slice-and-bake sugar cookies for some of them.  For the rest, I wanted to make the chocolate cookies from the dirt cake because they were way too good to just use for crumbling.

I made icing with my very specific recipe for decorator's frosting: 2lbs confectioners sugar, 2 sticks of butter, and enough milk and vanilla to get it to the consistency you want it at.  I also picked up some "electric yellow" and "super black" gel icing color, and a sparkly gel icing pen.  I frosted some of the cookies with the pen and then, for fear that they wouldn't ever dry (does corn syrup mixed with sugar and fructose actually dry?), so I switched to regular icing.  The pen ones did come out prettier though.

All of the cookies came out well because, well, one set came out of a tube, and the other's are just yummy.  I left out one egg yolk because I ran out of eggs, and cooked them at a higher temp than called for, because my oven doesn't stay lit at 300, so they came out somewhat cakier than they had before, but they were delightful.  Someone at work described them as a mix between a cookie and a brownie and coined the term, "brookie."  This was after figuring out that "cownie" didn't sound quite right.

I have not being doing a lot of detailed decorating recently and I think I had forgotten what it was like.  I had forgotten about being extremely covered in icing that feels like pure grease and looks like egg yolks when you don't boil them quite long enough.  I had also forgotten how long it takes to decorate 32 cookies, how much clean up there is and what happens to your back when you stand for 3 hours to painstakingly put a Boston Bruins logo on to every cookie using multiple colors and tips.

Yes, I am complaining.  It was worth it this morning because everyone at work was really happy.  We will see if my good mojo worked in a few hours.

I am not overwhelmingly pleased with the actual detail work, but then, when am I ever pleased with what I create?  I always have images of grandeur in my head and think I'll be able to create them with little training, little practice and icing that isn't quite soft enough.  Oh well.

Close up of one with the gel pen.

These are the ones with the regular icing.  They look better in the picture.

Decorated with the gel pen.

Go Bs!

Too Hot in Boston

What do you do when it's 85 degrees in Boston at 5:30pm and you've spent the whole day in a non-air conditioned library with adolescents who have yet to buy into the concept of deodorant?

You make a drink.  Preferably a frothy, cold drink.  With ice.  And gin.

So, on my way home, I stopped at the store about bought (what seems to be) the most enormous cucumber in the world, and some fake lime juice.  Please don't mock my plastic lime shaped lime juice.  It's not my fault that there are no limes to be found in a 10 mile radius of Brookline.  

I had seen Ina on the Barefoot Contessa make a cucumber yogurt dip for which she shredded the cucumber and the squeezed out all of the water so the dip wouldn't get watery (which explained so much about my past dips).  I saw this and thought, what a great thing to make a gin cocktail with!  The cucumber water, not the shredded cucumber, that is.  So I shredded about a quarter of the cucumber into some cheesecloth and squeezed out all of the liquid.  There is A LOT of liquid in cucumber.  I then mixed the cucumber juice with some of the plastic lime juice and some Hendrick's gin.  I have no idea of the proportions.  

I had tried to chop some ice using the Magic Bullet, but when it all game together, the ice had melted, but the drink was cold and frothy.  I added the tonic water at the end, using Fear Tree tonic, which, if you haven't tried, you should.  Then I put it over ice in a glass chosen to support tonight's hockey game.    It ended cool, refreshing and delicious.

Oh, and don't worry about the cucumber that I grated, I tossed that in with the salad in the bag that was all I had the energy to make for dinner.  Well, that's a lie, I also ate about a third of a rotisserie chicken.  But then I saw Paula Deen make mashed potatoes and I didn't feel so bad about myself...

Stop 20: Wisconsin Brown Sugar, Cranberry, and Pecan Cake

I did a Sarah-style triathalon today.  This means I rode my biked 4 miles and walked 1 1/2 miles and came home and passed out on the couch.  The passing out on the couch is the third activity in the tri.  As I as passed out on the couch, I realized that I was going to a birthday party tonight and hadn't made a cake.  Then I thought something along the lines of, "woe is me," (back of hand to forehead), "it is far too late now for me to make a cake that would be ready tonight.  Alas..."  Then I looked at the clock and realized it was only noon, got over myself and went to Whole Foods.  I had to go to Whole Foods because for this recipe I needed muscovado sugar and maple sugar.  Interestingly, in my house right now, I have muscovado sugar, turbinado sugar, maple sugar, and dark brown sugar.  No white sugar.

Anyway, my friend whose birthday it is is from Wisconsin, so I decided to make the Wisconsin cake  (seems logical, yes?).  The Wisconsin cake is this brown sugar, cranberry, pecan thing.  Brown decided on this cake because cranberries are the state fruit of Wisconsin and they celebrate them in a festival every September in a place called Warrens, Wisconsin.  I have no idea if this is near where Molly is from, but it's okay.  It turns out that Wisconsin produces the most cranberries of any state in the country.  As a girl from Massachusetts, this hurt a little to discover.

Brown says he likes to pair dried cranberries with muscovado sugar, which he, of course, just has around the house.  Muscovado sugar is a kind of unrefined brown sugar.  It is also known as  "Barbados sugar" or "moist sugar," though, that is from Wikipedia, so take it as you will.  This recipe also called for maple sugar.  Maple sugar is what is left at the end of the maple syrup-making process.  It is also what we commonly leave out of the maple sugar sweet potatoes every Thanksgiving because it is really, really expensive.  Well, now we have it.  And at $10/lb, we'd darn well better use it every Thanksgiving from here on out.  


The recipe is cooked in a bundt and calls for a rum-confectioners' sugar glaze. There is also rum in the cake.  I used Captain Morgan's since I seem to have acquired a handle of it at some point and I don't drink it, so I will use it in recipes until it is gone.  You cook the dried cranberries in the rum for a little bit, I assume to plump them up and get them good and tanked, then mix them in with the rest of the wet ingredients.  Besides that, it's a pretty typical cake recipe.  Cream the creaming ingredients (where the white sugar and muscovado sugar go) and add the wet and dry ingredients (where the maple sugar went) alternately.  Then you bake it.  I am being a bit anal about the oven this time since it did the whole turn itself off three times thing in the middle of baking the Coca-cola cake (stupid oven).  


I also, and this part is embarrassing, but I'm putting it in anyway, left out the sour cream.  I'm not exactly sure what happened, but when I had finished the dishes and the cake was well into the baking process, I looked on the counter and saw the sour cream sitting there, all un-opened and innocent looking.  The cake came out fine, super rich and sweet and delicious.  It was a bit crumbly and I have a feeling the sour cream would have helped with that.  Now I have to figure out what I'm going to do with 10oz of full-fat sour cream.


All in all, it was definitely a success.  I think it would be more of an autumn cake and it definitely had a coffee cake feel to it.  I think it would be perfect for breakfast the day after Thanksgiving.  If I had to choose between this one and the Delaware coffee cake, the Delaware cake would definitely win out, but this is a good one to have in the arsenal.


Here it is all naked and ready to be iced.  I think the discoloration comes from the oil spray, but I'm not 100% sure.

There is a layer of thinner icing underneath the thicker top layer because I had the proportions off a bit when I started.  I think it looked pretty nice by the time it was done.

And here's the birthday girl enjoying her half-eaten cake!

I have no next stop predictions right now.  I guess it will have to be a surprise...

Short Trip to the New England of my Youth

Hey New Englanders, remember these?

I've heard that they have ice cream cups in other parts of the country, called things like Dixie Cups, but none of them can be quite the same as a dual-flavor delicacy of the light, whipped Hood ice cream cup.    I bought a package of Hoodsies the other day.  They might not have come with the flat wooden spoon, and they sure seemed smaller than I remembered (could be that I've grown...), but the sentiment was the same and the flavor brought me back to hot summer days and sticky elbows.  I gave one to the three year old niece and discovered that they have the same affect on kids now that they did when I was that age.  Utter glee!

Then, of course, I made the mistake of checking the nutrition facts (NEVER, EVER check the nutrition facts on ice cream, just don't do it), and now, I can't eat them ever again.  It is so much better to go to an ice cream parlor and be in the dark.  But, last night, I did discover the best purpose for them ever:  Ice Cream Sandwiches.

It started when I made the famously delicious Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies of Cooks Illustrated fame to bring tonight's potluck.  When they came out of the oven, I was marveling at how perfectly round and equal in size they all were.  It was also about 150 degrees in the kitchen and my thought went immediately to using them for ice cream sandwiches.  

I pondered what kind of ice cream to get and how exactly to do this on my entire ride home from the Cape and realized about half way back that I had the answer already in my freezer, in the form of 3oz chocolate/vanilla swirl ice cream cups.  

It was the perfect (though maybe not most cost-effective) solution, especially since I wasn't going to eat them as they were.  

I simply ran a knife around the outside of the cup plopped the ice cream onto the bottom of one cookie.  It was already in the right shape...  

...and after a quick spread with the knife, was ready to be topped with the other cookie.  Then back into the freezer they went to get nice and solid and ready to be eaten.

Honestly, what could be better than that?