Owl on the Prowl

I’m finally in the position to contribute to my blog again. Let’s see what has been happening?

well, i finished my cake project of 2012. In November I made a Almond cake for my friends post wedding party….

and in December I made a Buche de Noel….

In 2013, I’ve decided to take on bread. I got all types on my list and have already made pretzels (which didn’t turn out to hot. I think I fucked up the yeast…must try again!)

and foccacia (which I used to make a muffuletta for the old man)

One thing is for sure, bread is WAY harder to make than cake or pie. It will take me a while to perfect bread…especially all the varieties.

In other food related news, Toddski got me a tagine for xmas and I have been experimenting with Moroccan food and preserved lemons. I just love Mediterranean food and need to eat more of it and less burgers. I AM getting older.

At the end of last year I got to see two of my favorite bands, Neil Young with Crazy Horse and THE STONES! Both shows kicked ass but the Stones really delivered. Complete with Mick Taylor! I am hoping to see Seger later this year and maybe even Fleetwood Mac. I can’t resist the white witch.

Toddski’s book was just mentioned in Publisher’s Weekly and he has a long interview in the current issue of PW Select. Yay! You can buy his book here. It has a new cover designed by our friend Christophe that is far better than the one pictured.

Lastly, I am going to explore the Hudson Valley this year in hopes of moving to a smaller, less expensive area where I can open my dream restaurant/bakery, Kookies. More on that later when I have a better idea of if it can actually happen. If you have any thoughts on upstate towns, please email me!

I realize I haven’t posted anything in a while. I have been stupid busy with work and holiday crap. I have been keeping up with my cake resolution, i even made 2 cakes in November, but I will just post about the Almond Cake with Raspberry jam. This month I will be attempting a Buche de Noel, so wish me luck. I think for the new year, I will be making bread every month. Donuts, croissants, bagels, challah…I’ll figure it out. Anyway, I just thought of something awesome to make my husband for xmas…

You guessed it. I made another birthday cake. This month, it was for my friend Tim (buy his book!). I LOVE anything coconut. Coconut milk, coconut rum, coconut cream pie, Almond Joys, those neopolitan coconut candies made by Brachs, you get the idea. It’s the wonder fruit. So versatile and delicious. Is it a fruit? It is definitely the weirdest one. You need a hammer and an awl to get in one of those bad boys. But then you get to reap the benefits of its dank interior. When I lived in Raleigh, I would every once in a while make a special trip to Hayes Barton for an enormous slice of their coconut cake. (*side note- if ever in Raleigh and you want an absurdly huge piece of cake or pie, go to Hayes Barton. In fact all their portions are huge, so go hungry). I’m not sure if this one is as good, but it’s pretty damn good.

Luckily, Tim also likes coconut cake. He told me tales of his mom’s coconut cake that was “wet” it was so moist. Not sure if I’m picturing that correctly…As usual, I was hard pressed to find a good recipe. My criteria this time though was that it had to be coocnutty (as well as moist and delicious). Just because a cake is white, with white frosting and has coconut all over it, it doesn’t mean that cake is a coconut cake. In fact that is unacceptable. The coconut must be infused. The cake must reek of Coppertone…but not taste of it. The whole thing should transport you back to a 1953 vacation in the tropics when coconuts were exotic.

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Every time I get on an express train, I am surprised at how GD slow it moves (I shouldn’t be at this point, but I am). I don’t think anyone at the MTA has any idea what the term “express” means. Well, here ya go MTA:

ex·press/ikˈspres/

Adjective:

1. Operating at high speed.

The key words here are high speed. That does NOT involve stopping every minute mid-route. It also does not involve moving at about 5 mph. Get it together please.

A few weeks ago, I got me a zip car account. I was sick and tired of being stuck in this GD city all the time. I had been wanting to travel upstate and to the beach for years. Let me tell you first off, Zip Car is awesome. They have cords for your ipods, they pay for gas and they have e-z passes so you can pay the tolls later. Also, you can rent hybrids. Sold! Anyway, my first trip was to Storm King.

Storm King is this sculpture museum about an hour and a half away form the city. I had been wanting to go, mainly because there is an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture there. If you are not familiar with the man, I suggest watching the documentaryRivers and Tides. He is the most patient man on the planet.

Once we arrived at Storm King and started walking around, I found there was much more to see. The first thing that really caught my eye was the giant R (first photo)…that’s at least what it looked like to me. In search of the restrooms, we came across this LOTR type sculpture (above) and this overlook of the land (below).

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I can’t believe I have followed thru on my resolution this far. It’s already September! Only 3 more cakeys and I will have succeeded.

This month it was my dear friend, Jimmy’s 40th birthday so I just had to make him a cake (next month it is his husband’s birthday so he will probably get one too…). My scheduled cake for this month was a Chocolate Peanut Butter cake and lucky for me Jimmy approved. I had found this recipe on, you guessed it, Smitten Kitchen a while ago and have been dying to try it.

Let me preface this post by saying that my oven has been broken for 2.5 weeks. A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to bring a pie to a restaurant to see if they wanted to buy some to sell. I went to preheat my oven and twenty minutes later it still was not hot… 4 visits by repairmen later (3 by someone who doesn’t fix ovens and 1 by someone who does), and I still don’t have an oven. I am told I will be getting a new one today. We’ll see.. Tim and Jimmy were nice enough to let me come upstairs to make the pie in their oven and it turned out nicely. However, the restaurant in which I took it to turned out to be very un-dude. The owner stood me up (he knew the exact time I was coming) and even though I left the pie with the chef, I never heard back from anyone. WTF? Who does that? You can at least contact me and say one of three things, it sucked, I loved it or just thanks for the pie, we’ll think about it. 

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HEY!

So it’s August and pretty hot out. I figured it was high time I made an ice cream cake. I recently acquired the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid. I spent so much money at this one store, they gave me $75 off anything I wanted. I only had to pay $12 for it…well 12 dollars plus the 200 I had to spend to get the discount, but I got a lot of great stuff! Anyway, all summer I have been making small batches of ice cream. First Pistachio, then Lemon Custard (didn’t like that one too much-it needed to be more of a lemon creme cookie filling tasting), then cookies n cream- my childhood favorite and finally teaberry which tastes like pepto bismal but better.

I knew that in August I was going to make an ice cream cake modeled after a Baskin Robbins ice cream cake which features both cake and ice cream, but with the addition of Carvel crunchies. The big decisions came with what kind of ice cream to feature and what kind of cake. TBC after the jump…

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Hey! So this month marked my 32nd birthday and I wanted a strawberry cake. I had a small problem though. I also wanted to go to Maine for a couple days. My solution was, bake the cake, freeze it and when I got back from my mini-vacay, ice it and share with friends.

First things first, bake the cake. I don’t know if all of you know this, but summers in NYC suck ass. It’s hot as f?@#, the humidity is stiffling, and people don’t really have central air in their apartments so it pretty much is an awful idea to bake anything or to turn your oven on at all. But GD it, I made a pact to make a cake every month and I’m gonna do it.

continues after jump…

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Directly from Yelp

After such an amazing meal…we debated over order the one desert offering, cherry pie, until the table next door started describing the blueberry pie they had last week.  Forks in hand we dug into one of the best - authentic cherry pies we have every had.  the crust was flaky, the filling highlighted the natural taste of the cherries … all setting in a pool of cream.

I know he spelled some stuff wrong, but that sounds good to me! If you would like a pie, email me. I can make all varieties… Here’s a shot of the pie that the Yelper speaks of:

Also, if you like pictures of pies, you can buy some of mine off Instacanvas.

How is any American ok with calling this mockery of food “American” cheese. It’s disgusting, the worst cheese that ever existed. It’s got boring, made-up flavor because it’s a fake cheese. It’s exactly American. (and yes, I was born and bred here) Why do people still buy that crap? Is it for sale in other countries as “American cheese”? If so, what an embarrassment. Foreigners probably point and laugh at our feeble attempt to make cheese. God forbid we make an effort to produce something delicious. It’s fucking cheese! It’s not that hard to make. Come on America, try harder.