Strawberry Lemonade Cookies

I hardly ever go to Walmart - it's nowhere near me and I have mixed feelings about doing "real" grocery shopping there, but my dear friend A. offered to take me for some necessities that somehow there's never time to buy during the week (like soap and conditioner). But being hungry and it being Walmart, I wound up buying a whole bunch of snack foods that offered no nutritional value, unless orange cheesy powder counts, but lots of nostalgia.

The healthiest item I bought was a bag of frozen strawberries, which threw me back on the hunt for a strawberry baked good that actually uses fresh strawberries. Ninety-five percent of the recipes on the internet either use strawberry cake mix, strawberry gelatin or strawberry jam to achieve their flavor and signature pink color. Go on, google it. I refused to make any of them and decided to find a good basic cookie recipe and convert it into a strawberry recipe.

The result? Martha Stewart's glazed lemon cookies sans glaze, plus a cup of thawed chopped strawberries. Oh and a little pink food past, just because. Pretty yummy if I do say so myself.

Acorn Squash Tea Bread

I'm a rebel. I bought my first acorn squash - at the end of winter/squash season. I was planning to just heat it and eat it, but while researching cooking methods, I came upon a recipe for Squash Tea Bread. So I, uh, made a cake out of it instead. Hey, it's from EatingWell.com, so it's healthy, right?

Moist, dense and spicy. Yum.

Curry Deviled Eggs

My first deviled eggs. I have some issues with mayonnaise that I need to resolve, because there are a lot of recipes that use it. I just threw a few things together for this filling, including honey mustard, curry powder and sriracha, but no mayo.

Oreos

My day off was a nice relaxing cooking day. I won't say much since this recipe is everywhere online, but they all go back to Smitten Kitchen's blog, and there isn't much variation between recipes. I will say that 1) This is one of the fastest cookie recipes I've done and 2) I need new cocoa powder. My sister reminded me the can I almost finished was from my trip to California 7 years ago -- eeek! In my defense, I didn't cook much back then. It was a sweet tasty cookie, though it lacked that something extra that makes the chocolate wafers in an Oreo so good. Possibly the cocoa Nabisco uses isn't 7 years old. Possibly.

Anniversary Meal

Today is my parent's 28th anniversary. Instead of wrestling with my mom to go out to a restaurant, I offered to cook dinner. It was relaxing to spend a day cooking a whole meal, complete with dessert and some bubbly. I started with a few recipes as a base, but added a few other ingredients to make it even more special.

Main Course/Side:

Alton Brown's steak au poivre - Alton's recipe is a twist on the classic au poivre sauce, but in my book, you can't go wrong with cognac and cream. My family aren't such big pepper fans as I am, so I toned down the usual pepper crust on the meat. My additions were to add some ingredients from a tarragon sauce, which also uses cream and cognac, but lots of sauteed onions, garlic, mushrooms and a dash of chicken stock. The result is a very rich and flavorful sauce that beats your bottled steak sauce any day.

Laura Calder's Savoy Cabbage in butter - To go along with the rich and creamy theme, I made a French Food at Home recipe. This was my first time using savoy cabbage, and it was a lot prettier than your normal cabbage. I shredded a whole cabbage, as if you were making cole slaw, and sauteed for about 8 minutes in 4 tablespoons of butter, salt and pepper and voila!

Dessert:

David Lebovitz's panna cotta - My first attempt at panna cotta. I first had it a few years ago and it has been my go-to dessert whenever I can find it on a menu. I feel it might be taking over as the next molten lava chocolate cake, which although I love, can get a little boring after the umpteenth restaurant is serving it. David Lebovitz's recipe couldn't be any simpler, and within 4 hours chilling in the fridge, I had a soft, milky white pudding. I used half and half instead of the usual heavy cream and it came out tasting different than what I usually have in outside, making me think they use all heavy cream. But now that I have the basic recipe down, I can experiment with some amaretto and other flavors. So all in all, a successful cooking day, if I do say so myself!

First place

My photo of my red velvet cupcake as well as my pink macaroon came in 1st and 4th place respectively in my local neighborhood's Why Leave Astoria? blog today!

Lemon Poppy Cake

It's been a while since I've been able to cook and post, sad how much time working takes up! So I apologize if you are overwhelmed with some food candy for the next few days as I try to catch up with what I've been cooking. I bought a one pound container of poppy seeds at my local supermarket, partially because they looked so pretty gray-blue, and partially because I love baked goods with them. They're pretty versatile, as they can be used in savory recipes (onion poppy rolls, anyone?) or sweet recipes like this lemon poppy cake. On a search for a unique plum/apple/walnut/poppy seed cake from the Austrian bakery, Demel, I came upon Smitten Kitchen's lemon poppy cake that she actually got from the Neue Galerie's Cafe Sabarsky. It isn't no ordinary lemon poppy pound cake, though there are two sticks of butter in it, but also 8, yes, 8 egg yolks plus one whole egg.

The result is a dense, rich, eggy cake, similar in taste to the sponge cupcakes in Chinese bakeries. And I just love how the poppy seeds create a speckled effect through the cake.

You can be sure to expect more recipes with poppy seeds from now on!