My stress levels sometimes dictate what I end up baking:

cupcakes, cookies = Life’s sweet! I’m happy! Hearts and sun and little puppies!

two-layer cake with buttercream frosting = I need to be cloaked from the cruel world behind a cloud of flour.

bread =  Don’t talk to me. Seriously.

Made this herbed, cheesy Focaccia With Fresh Sage during election week, because I wanted to soothe my frayed nerves by working on some dough with my hands. I have a dough hook for my stand mixer and a bread machine as well, but sometimes, nothing beats kneading dough yourself.

I was scanning the images that I took as the focaccia took shape, and just looking at them makes me happy. So happy, in fact, that I’ve tacked some of these up on my corkboard in the office. The first one is my favorite. Call me crazy, but I’ve always thought that the pattern flour makes after I’ve thrown it across my work surface is one of the prettiest images in the kitchen. I often step back before I lay the dough on it to just stare at it. (Writing that out makes me seem INSANE. Ahaha!)

If you’re interested in the recipe, THIS is the one I used. I knew I wanted to include fresh sage in it because I had so much in the fridge from a previous meal. As it turns out, I was Googling stuff on the herb for this post and learned that its Latin name is salvia, which means “to heal.” And that, it did.

Happy weekend, all!

Aren’t they a hoot? And so much fun to make!

I took my favorite chocolate cake recipe and made it into cupcakes…

…and while they were baking, I melted some chocolate chips and piped out “RIP” on some Mint Milano cookies. If I mucked up some letters, I just “erased” them and used the other end. They’d be stuck halfway into the cupcake anyway, so no one would spy my BOO-boos (oh, see, I made a pun again.)

The cookies are the ones from Pepperidge Farm and come in a pack like this.

I frosted the cupcakes with chocolate icing, and dusted the tops with powdered cocoa. The cocoa settled into the frosting after a bit and made it look like dirt!

Then, I simply stuck my decorated “tombstones” into each cupcake, making some crooked, because that made the ghoulish treats more interesting to look at.

These, by the way, were TO DIE FOR with a tall glass of ice-cold milk.

Something for the baker in you to consider the next time Halloween raps on your door!

This is recipe #3 in The Girl With A Curl’s Fallin For Soup project.

Cioppino is a happy hodgepodge of all things seafood. It originated from seafaring Italians in San Francisco in the 1800s, when fishermen would contribute their day’s best catch to a communal soup pot. It owes its name to the Ligurian word ciuppin, meaning “to chop” or “chopped,” which is what you do to all manner of gifts from the sea to throw together for this spicy, tomato-based soup that’s perfect for cold weather. You know what else makes it yummy? Red wine. I don’t cook with alcohol that much, but this dish wouldn’t have been the same without it.

This version used what I found at the fish market on the morning of the day that I cooked this dish. There’s crab, shrimp, scallop, clams and cod.

And some other ingredients that I’d never think to use in daily cooking: crushed red pepper flakes, bay leaves and dried oregano, and other usual suspects like garlic, onion and green bell peppers.

CURLIFIED CIOPPINO

4 large garlic cloves, minced
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 small bay leaved
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 green bell pepper, diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
1 (28- to 32-oz) can diced tomatoes
1 cup bottled clam juice
1 cup chicken broth

Seafood of your choice, like:
- crabs, cooked and cut in pieces
- clams/shellfish
- shrimp, heads trimmed
- scallops
- white-meat fish in chunks
- squid

1)    Cook garlic, onions, bay leaf, oregano, and red pepper flakes with salt and pepper in oil until onions are softened. Stir in bell pepper and tomato paste.

2)    Add wine and boil until reduced by about half. Add tomatoes with their juice, clam juice and broth. Simmer and season with salt and pepper.

3)    Add crab pieces and clams to stew and simmer, covered, until clams just open. Discard unopened clams as these mean they aren’t good for eating. Lightly remaining seafood with salt and add to stew, then simmer, covered, until just cooked through.

4)    Garnish with parsely or chopped basil and a sprinkling of cheese and serve hot.

You know what’s funny? I don’t even like crab or shrimp! And I wouldn’t touch lobster either, which is one other thing you can throw into the pot. I actually didn’t eat this for dinner (I had a cheeseburger and fries instead, ahaha). I know, I’m weird. I made it for the experience of working with seafood, and my seafood-loving friends and family said this hit the spot.

Cooking this made me remember Pappy. My dad’s an avid fisherman and used to take us fishing when we were kids. He would love this stew. I’ve made a mental note to cook this for him the next time he visits.

Hope you get the chance to warm up to your memories of the sea with this hearty dish!

My obsession with Madeleines didn’t start with Marcel Proust. He apparently put these scallop-edged tea cakes on the world’s culinary map by mentioning them in his novel Remembrance of Things Past:

She sent for one of those squat plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell … I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure invaded my senses …

And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray … when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Leonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane …. and the whole of Combray and its surroundings, taking shape and solidity, sprang into being, town and garden alike, from my cup of tea.

Since then, they’ve taken on a mythical quality and have become an object of adoration and among bakers (and readers) the world over. My introduction to them didn’t involve any Proustian interests whatsoever. I could claim otherwise and spin a tale of how I used to while away my summers appreciating the subtle character shifts and narrative devices in Proust’s novels. But my family reads this blog and they know the extent of my reading only goes as deep as, well, it doesn’t.

The real story behind my Madeleine mania lies in the discovery of pans like these at a baking supply store five years ago. I have a fondness for making tiny, delicate things. Petit fours (many tragic attempts and I STILL haven’t gotten the hang of them!), mini cupcakes, spun-sugar threads around made-from-scratch cream puffs—these are what I LOVE to do. The more work something is, the more compelling it is for me to make. So, when I saw these buried under a bunch of other baking pans, I thought about how the tiny cakes would come out as pretty seashell shapes, with golden brown, crisp edges, and I couldn’t wait to get them home and try them out.

And try them out, I did, with many disastrous attempts. The first pans I had were smaller than these and didn’t have a non-stick coating, so I burned them. I also couldn’t find a recipe I was happy with. Madeleines are supposed to be substantial and dense, a bit dry (but not too much), and should have a characteristic hump on the back.

The humps mean you’ve worked the batter at just the right level for it to develop, without the aid of leavening (like baking soda or baking powder). The recipes I tried led to results that spanned the spectrum: On one end were the sponge-cake like, airier ones, and on the other, the tasty excuses for hockey pucks.

Finally, this past weekend, I found Madeleine nirvana. I was actually nervous about this batch because the batter was thicker than anything I’d ever worked with—almost like cookie dough! It was so thick, I had to use my cookie-dough scoop to measure them out into the shell shapes. (You’ll see below that I did three globs for each shell.) I made sure to use cooking spray and flour for the molds.

Something in my gut told me this recipe was IT. You know why? It was uncomplicated. It didn’t ask me to let the dough rest for an hour, or refrigerate the pans, chant a secret incantation or whatever else I had to do in many other past recipes. All it took were the most basic ingredients found in a pantry: sugar, eggs, and flour. Add some butter and fresh lemon zest, and you have the simplicity that’s characteristic in the greatest desserts.

The clean, honest flavors came together in a diminutive morsel that’s perfect for dunking in tea, or in melted dark chocolate (which is what I decided to do).

I’m sharing this recipe by giving you a link, HERE, to the Epicurious website, where I found it after many years of searching. My only advice to you, if you plan to make these, is to trust the recipe’s simplicity. Sometimes, we all make it harder for ourselves, even in the kitchen.

I hope you enjoy making these as much as I did, and that you make Proust proud.

This is recipe #2 in The Girl With A Curl’s Fallin’ For Soup project.

This Turkey Chili is a family favorite. It’s embarrassingly easy to make! I’ve made this many times, but have found that its full, spicy flavor is best with the sweetness of cornbread, made moist by buttermilk and topped with fresh corn, so I try to make both when I get the chance. A chilly wind was blowing through the kitchen windows today, and this made for a perfect, cozy dinner.

CURLY TURKEY CHILI

* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

* 1 pound ground turkey

* 1 29-oz. can tomato sauce

* 1 15-oz. can diced tomatoes with jalapenos

* 1 1/2 to 2 cups water

* 1 15-oz. can white beans, rinsed and drained

* 1 15-oz. can red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

* 1 15-0z. can corn kernels, drained

* 1 large onion, chopped

* 2 tablespoons chili powder

* 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

* 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder

* 1/2 tablespoon ground cumin

* 1 pinch ground black pepper

* 1 pinch ground allspice

* salt to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat oil in a deep pot, brown ground turkey in it. Drop in the onion and saute until soft.

2. Pour in the tomato sauce, tomatoes with jalapenos, and about a cup and a half of water. Stir. Add all your spices: red pepper, chili, garlic powder, cumin, black pepper and allspice. Mix in.

Bring chili to boil, then lower heat to simmer for as long as you want, stirring every so often. I’ve seriously simmered this up to three hours, the house filling up with that delicious chili smell. This time, I did so about an hour and 20 minutes while I tackled the laundry.

3. Drop in the two kinds of beans and corn.

Simmer for about 20 minutes more. Serve with some shredded cheddar cheese on top. You can also add dollop of sour cream.

GOLDEN BUTTERMILK CORNBREAD

Seriously the best I’ve tried (I’ve had many, but always come back to this). I’ve deduced that the buttermilk is key. I’m not entirely sure what buttermilk is, though I do know it’s a dairy by-product that’s a sour milk of sorts. Don’t have any on hand? You can make an easy substitute by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar or 1 3/4 teaspoons of cream of tartar to each cup of milk. Stir, let sit for about 10 minutes, and use.

* 1 cup unsalted butter

* 2/3 cup white sugar

* 2 eggs

* 1 cup buttermilk

* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

* 1 cup cornmeal

* 1 cup ap flour

* 1/2 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square pan. Shuck fresh corn and slice top section of kernels into a bowl. Scrape the rest into a separate bowl.

2. Melt butter in a microwave, taking care to check at intervals.

3. Pour melted butter in a mixing bowl. Add sugar and stir.

4. Add eggs and beat quickly. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk and pour that mixture into the melted butter mixture. Stir in the scraped fresh corn.

5. Stir in cornmeal, flour and salt and blend, just until all ingredients are incorporated. Pour into pan and top with corn kernels.

6. Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on top. I usually underbake this by about 3 minutes.

There’s nothing like chili to kill the chill!

Have a great start to your weeks, everyone!

Fall is my favorite time of the year. In the U.S., it officially began last September 23, and will last until December 21, when winter begins. I love fall because the weather starts to change and the leaves answer vanity’s call by bidding goodbye to greens and browns and wearing all those reds and oranges that the season is known for. The word “fall” actually comes from the term “fall of the leaf,” which happens to trees closer to the season’s end. Being in California is great for all the sun-worshipping freaks out here, but I personally look forward to bringing my scarves and boots out of hiding.

The nip in the air lends itself to the ultimate comfort food: piping-hot soup that fills the stomach and warms the heart. Making the hearty Turkey Meatball Soup with Curly Endive that you see above two weeks ago made me think about how this is a perfect time to seek out, make and share yummy soup recipes that are simple yet fun to make, and are savory celebrations of the season. And how timely: it’s a chance to take stock (pun intended) of my soup-making abilities, so that when winter blows into town, I can wield my pot of soup and say, “Ha, Winter! My consommé will kick your cold culo!” (Thanks to Via for always using the Spanish word for butt/bum while we were in college!)

Before I get any more carried away, let me say that this post introduces my humble FALLIN’ FOR SOUP project on The Girl With A Curl, which aims to bring you a hopefully delicious soup recipe every other Sunday, for the rest of the season. I understand that some of you might be in countries where fall is unheard of, but I hope these recipes still make their way into your recipe box. Nothing quite soothes like a bowl of good soup! 

By season’s end, you will have learned six soup or stew recipes along with me, if you care to follow along. That seems ambitious, considering how I work full-time and craftdancesurfthenetandhavealife during the rest of my waking hours, which means I could very well skip a Sunday or two. But there’s so much for us to try our oven mitts at: bisques, cream-of-somethings, slow-cooked stews, all that rib-stickin’ good stuff. Who knows, I might get so much into it that I’ll do more than six! I actually wanted to do something every Sunday, but that’s getting ahead of myself.

Here’s the recipe for my Turkey Meatball Soup with Curly Endive to start!

TURKEY MEATBALL SOUP WITH CURLY ENDIVE
* 1 pound ground turkey
* 1 egg
* 1/4 cup onion, diced
* 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2-3 cubes of chicken bouillon
* 2 1/2 cups water
* 2 carrots, sliced diagonally
* 2 stalks celery, chopped
* 1 onion, chopped
* 2 cloves garlic, minced
* 2 medium potatoes, diced
* 1 bunch curly endive, ends trimmed and the rest cut into 1 ½-inch pieces (You can also use spinach!)

* This is what curly endive looks like, by the way. It has a slightly bitter taste that rounds out the flavors in mild-flavored soups like this one.

DIRECTIONS
1. Mix together the ground turkey, egg, onion, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Form meatballs using a small ice-cream scoop (I use mine for cookie dough, too.)

Here’s a tip to check if your meatballs are well-seasoned (because I can never get them right): Fry a little bit in some oil for a taste test. This should give you a fairly good idea about whether or not it needs a little bit of this or that.

2. In a soup pot, sauté garlic, onions, celery and carrots.

Pour in water and bring to a boil. Drop in meatballs one at a time and simmer for 10 minutes. Drop in diced potatoes and simmer until soft to the fork, about 20 more minutes.

3.  Spoon some broth into a cup. Dissolve one chicken bouillon cube in the hot liquid and pour back into the pot. Taste and adjust accordingly, adding more chicken flavor if needed.

4.  Add curly endive, cover and let simmer. Turn heat off after five minutes. Enjoy!

Nutrition note: I first made a modified version of this for my mom while she was on a low-iodine diet by using only egg whites, non-iodized salt and by omitting the bouillon cubes.

The next Fallin’ For Soup post is this Sunday, so remember to check back! Until then, I hope to finally post something about my swap project and my quilt.

I can’t wait for our tureens to teem with yummy soup! (Which reminds me, I don’t even HAVE a tureen, haha.)

Between soupy posts and updates on my quilt’s progress, it’s shaping up to be a craftin’, cookin’ fall. I can’t wait.

Jerseys don’t mean squat. Case in point: Here’s mine, from the office’s softball team. They’re called the Stets (I work in a publishing company—points to you if you’re able to connect the dots! If not, and you want to be a nerd, you can go here.) My possession of this piece of clothing doesn’t in any way, shape or form mean that I’m athletic. On the contrary, the most athletic thing I do (aside from dance, but that’s a different matter) is knead dough and wrestle with my quilt as I’m feeding it through the sewing machine. Hence the nickname the team decided to give me on the back of the jersey. I don’t do sports…I just cook for the team.

I baked these homemade Twinkies for the Stets’ championship game. These were a hit!

I always just use the Vanilla Cupcakes batter from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook, and a tried-and-tested buttercream recipe with my own decorating tip and bag to goo-ify the little cakes with delicousness. You’ll see the yellow dots on top where I’ve filled the Twinkies with yummy frosting.

I got my Twinkies bake pan from a bakery supply store. It came with recipes and a special “frosting injector,” both of which I’ve lost. Oddly enough, the set’s available from Urban Outfitters.

Making these always makes me feel like I’m pretend-baking, the way I did as a kid. Coincidentally, my brother told me about this cupcake baking and decorating set (he watches the Cartoon Network even if he’s ____ years old, and well, hee, I do too!) I want it! It’s called My Girl Gourmet, and you can bake the cupcakes in the microwave, put them in a special decorating thingamajig that twirls while the frosting dispenses from a special tip. You even get a cupcake carrier. See what I mean:

As for baking for the team, the new season’s started. I haven’t been to any of the games, but maybe I’ll get the “Call To Den Mother” email again soon, and maybe more homemade Twinkies (maybe chocolate ones, with cream cheese frosting!) will get me another award like this:

Plaaay ball!

Any excuse to cook is good for me, even if it’s for my own birthday. Especially because it was for a picnic at the Hollywood Bowl, one of my favoritest places in Los Angeles. I’ve caught beautiful Easter sunrise services there, several Sound Of Music Sing-Alongs (yes, seriously) and an unforgettable performance by Dave Matthews Band a couple of years back, when LeRoi Moore still around. So, when I caught wind earlier this year that John Williams and the LA Philharmonic would be playing at the Bowl the weekend following my birthday, I decided that it would be a perfect way to celebrate another year in my life. I had already been to three other performances of his in years past, but still, I couldn’t wait to go this year. (Spoken like a true Star Wars fangirl!)

Going to the Bowl is always an exercise in decision-making: What should we bring to eat? A valid question with a million answers! Tradition calls for a packed dinner with beverages (they even allow wine) and an early arrival, so you have time to find your seats and settle in to eat and enjoy people-watching while the summer sun’s still out. We usually buy food from some place like Whole Foods or the Bowl’s own restaurant. But this year, I wanted to cook.

I took me weeks to decide what to make. This was serious business! It was the first time I’d be responsible for the whole Bowl-eating experience, and it was for my birthday. I was nervous, but finally came up with the idea of making restaurant favorites, done Girl With A Curl-style.

The final verdict? Homemade Mac N’ Cheese, Chicken Nuggets and Steamed Vegetables. Dessert was actually store-bought! Those pink Hello Kitty packs are Choco Pies from a Japanese market. I love them. I decided to throw in some Dove dark chocolates, Baci and Perugina candy from Rome and milk candy, also from the Japanese market (if anyone from LA is reading this, the Japanese market is Nijiya on Sawtelle.)

The Mac N’ Cheese was fun to make, because I knew it would be portable and un-messy and would fit right into my whole packable, picnic-able dinner plans. I could tell you that I used low-fat sour cream and fat-free cheddar cheese, but my cooking is something I don’t lie about. And it was my birthday, so I decided to live a little.

The Chicken Nuggets were interesting because they’re actually baked, not fried. I’ve found that the best tools for a task like this are two sets of chopsticks, one for dipping in your wet ingredients, another for dredging in dry. You dip pieces of chicken breast into melted butter (I know! But it was ever so little, and really, you can also use yogurt, buttermilk or plain old milk!)…

Dredge them in the mixture of breadcrumbs, parmesan cheese and spices (Italian seasoning, fresh thyme, salt and pepper)…

Lay them carefully on a rack that’s been sprayed with cooking spray and placed over a cookie sheet…

Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, and under the broiler for another five. These were perfect with the cheesy pasta and the steamed-crisp veggies. These Rubbermaid Take-Alongs with dividers that I packed them in were picnic-perfect (more so because I got them at 50% off!). This way, each person had a portion of the main dishes. (Veggies went into a Ziploc bag, for easy passing-around.)

I have to admit, though, my favorite part of the meal was stuff I didn’t make, these ice-cold Orange Cream Gourmet Sodas. (Parang Mirinda na hindi!)

Drinks went into an insulated carrier, and the foodstuff snuggled with cutlery and paper napkins into my FEED bag*.

The evening’s performance was awesome , with John Williams conducting the Olympic theme while huge screens showed scenes from the games. The Bowl was decked out in colored swaths of light, as we were taken from Indiana Jones to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, to a special highlight that included scenes from (sigh) Singin’ In The Rain. (Gene Kelly, I heart you.)

And yes, of course, the evening ended with an encore that included the Star Wars theme. And, like every year, the ampitheatre lit up with light sabers as the theme played. There were so many of them, and I tried to take pictures, but was way too excited to take any good ones. Geek much? (I LOVED IT!)

Perfect. Evening.

*The FEED bag, a World Food Programme project, is available in two sizes, a smaller one (above) at Whole Foods and a larger one from Amazon. The cost of your purchase of the smaller bag equals 100 meals for hungry children in Rwanda who don’t have access to nutritious food. The larger one equals meals for a full school year for one child. I have both and use them for everything, from plane trips to picnics!

Perfect Potatoes. Or Peppered Potatoes. Tattered Taters. Superb Spuds.

I don’t know why, but all these alliterated recipe titles were rolling by like the news ticker in my head while I was making brunch yesterday. Which one would you pick?

I’d been craving for breakfast potatoes since last Sunday when I had some really good ones at Maxwell’s in Culver City with Jen. They were soft and savory and were the perfect start to a lazy Sunday with eggs. I decided to recreate them with what I had on hand.

The usual suspects were called in and lined up: boiled and diced red baby potatoes, garlic, onion and red and green bell peppers.

The garlic and onions were ordered into a pan for a good saute.

Then the red and green bell peppers practically threw themselves into the skillet, and cooked until they were soft.

The potatoes were prodded into the happy mix and all got a good shaking or two of garlic powder and seasoned salt. (If you don’t have seasoned salt, drop in any and all spices you find! Rosemary, basil, onion powder and paprika would do just as well.)

Ahhh, an alliterated, beautiful brunch!

A curly start of the week to all.

Made these for Allen’s birthday several weekends ago. We spent the afternoon staking our claim at a fire pit at Dockweiler beach. Jen lent me a beach chair so I could park myself with a book in my hands and my feet in the sand for a good three hours (I was pretty toasty) before we built a huge bonfire, to welcome the sunset with S’mores. Since cheesecake is the celebrant’s favorite, I decided to make bite-sized versions for portability and easy munching—no need for plates and forks. (We had to be extra careful because the sand got EVERYWHERE—the pizza was slightly crunchy!)

What’s interesting about these mini cheesecakes was the shortcut in the recipe for the crust. These were baked in mini muffin cups, and instead of filling each individual one with crushed graham crackers, you just pop in a Nilla wafer, dome face down. Neat, huh? And I mean that literally, because you don’t have to futz around with crumbs, so there’s less cleanup.

After filling them 3/4 full of cheesecake mixture, you chuck them into the oven and they come out nice and plump.

They cool down into little treats with a slightly concave center, ready for the filling. I chose strawberry jam and fresh strawberry slices for half the batch, and honey with fresh blueberries, walnuts and orange segments for the other half.

Bite-sized, blissful, beachy birthday treats! Care to make some of your own? HERE you go!