This video brought to you by Sad Shibow, who is not in tune enough with her audience to know whether or not it will get the reference in the title of this post. Also… guys, it’s an excellent song.
This week has been a little bleh so far. The most exciting thing that’s happened is that someone made fun of my hair today and I cried over it. So basically the most exciting thing that’s happened all week is that I’ve regressed emotionally into early, early, childhood. Let me just totally not bother you with that and skip right to the dessert chat, yeah?
So a bunch of people asked me if I’d be making soda bread for this week’s post. No, because a. already owned that shiz, b. all of the drunken revelers at this year’s parade– held annually on the avenue directly in front of my place of employment– killed my vibe and c. THAT’S TOO OBVIOUS, HOMIES!
Also, d. I was making this dessert for my mom, for whom I stereotypically decided to make a mango dessert because she is Indian, and also because she genuinely loves mangoes. Anyway, I hadn’t seen her in far too long to be considered acceptable, and thought that a sweet treat was just the right form of bribery channel through which to express my my-bad’s. Enter Mango Coconut Macaroons, an easy, delish, fancy looking (and fancy tasting) treat.
2 tablespoons of sugar, if desired, and if you feel like your fruit isn’t sweet enough on its own
2 cups of shredded coconut
3 egg whites
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Cook mango chunks (sprinkled with sugar, if you desire) in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until frequently, until the mixture has cooked down into soft clumps. Set aside to cool.
In a large bowl, combine coconut and egg whites, then stir in mango chunks until batter forms. The mixture will be sticky and probably a little annoying to deal with, so it’s a good idea to use an electric mixer in this case.
Preheat oven to 350ºF and line a large cookie sheet with parchment paper. With buttered hands, gather tablespoon-sized mounds of the batter and form into balls or pyramids. I tried to go for something more abstract, because I just could not get either of those other damn shapes down for the life of me.
Bake for 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until the tops of the cookies are browned. Let cool for at least ten minutes, then enjoy.
So, what’s the verdict on these? Given that I, like my mother, am Indian and have no interest in subverting the stereotypes of my culture, I freaking loved them. They’re MANGO COCONUT macaroons. More importantly though, my mom was enamored with them. Even my dad ate two of them. Two! I mean, one I can understand, as he’ll do anything to make my mom happy. But two? He likes ’em! He really likes ’em!
a. You start questioning your taste in fashion when your boyfriend calls the fuchsia number you wear to work your “Insane Clown Posse” dress, and spends the rest of the day referring to you as “Juggalo”
b. A man whom you do not know, who is three feet taller than you (or so) decides to attempt to chest-bump you on a busy platform, and all you can do is pretend you’re in a wack Bourne Identity knock-off and jump onto a random train that is taking you AWAY from your destination
c. Daylight Savings Time springs you forward and just. doesn’t. stop.
d. You met Ad Rock over the weekend and now everything that has happened since just can’t compare
e. All of the above
I’ll just give you the answer now because I’m feeling a little lazy and I know you’re dying of suspense. The answer is sort of e., but mostly d.
From left to right: Hip Hop Royalty, Crazy Eyes, Boyfriend Who Looks Totally Chill Despite This Being One of Greatest Moments In Life
YOU GUYS WE MET A BEASTIE BOY. We…met one. After my run-in with Glen Hansard, I basically swore off ever approaching another famous person that I was a huge fan of, for fear of mortifying myself. Fortunately, I was with my brave, socially suave boyfriend who is not in possession of the same shame/awkwardness I am.
I want to tell you all about it, but I have no idea what to even say because I am still in shock. He was the sweetest guy ever, and I’ll always be grateful that I had the opportunity to meet a living legend– and one that I am a MASSIVE fan of, at that. What’s funny is, right before I bought the tickets to the show he was in, I was IM-ing with a friend and whining about how much I’d love to just run far, far away from New York City. Now, I take it all back, swears it (for now).
So yeah, I think maybe I’m dealing with a bit of post-Ad Rock depression, feel me? Like… I want everything to be that great. But instead of actually getting up off of my booty and turning my whole life around, I think I’d rather feel sorry for myself with a giant cookie bowl of peanut butter fudge ice cream. A giant *what* bowl, Sad Shibow?!
COOKIE. BOWLS. Let’s do this.
To start, we’ll use regular ol’ chocolate chip cookie dough. Here is mine.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (makes enough for 12 bowls)
1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of browned butter (melt butter in a saucepan until brown specks appear and butter takes on nutty aroma; let cool)
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup of white sugar
3/4 cup of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
3/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks
Preheat oven to 375ºF and turn a muffin tin upside down. Oh you heard correctly– turn that thang the other way, and cover each muffin cup bottom with a square of foil.
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together flours, salt and baking soda, and set aside. In a large bowl, beat together butter, egg and sugar until creamy. Stir in flour mixture until batter is formed. Fold in chocolate chips.
Take a tennis ball-sized chunk of cookie dough and mold it around the bottom of your muffin tin, like so:
You may find that you need less batter than this; use your judgment (unless your judgment is telling you to not make these, then just listen completely to me). Repeat until all of your batter has been used. You should come out with about 12 bowls.
Send into the oven and bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until the cookies looked baked but not to a crisp. Mine were done at 9 minutes. Definitely keep a good eye on these, and all cookies, as they tend to bake rather quickly.
Let cool for ten minutes, or however long it takes for these to cool enough for you to handle them. Peel foil from bowls, and then fill to your heart’s desire.
Fill with what, you ask. Fill with EVERYTHING. I filled these with M&Ms, with ice cream, with peanut butter cream cheese, and with straight up milk. Yes, milk. It’s a bowl. Just be glad I didn’t fill it with potpourri and place it in a tasteful spot on the bathroom sink. I was thisclose. If you try to knock me you’ll get mocked. I’ll stir fry you in my wok .
So, how were they? I mean, they’re cookie bowls! How could they be bad? And they were anything but bad. They’re basically a chocolate chip cookie that has been shaped to allow for maximum sugar-related bad behavior. There is nothing wrong, and absolutely everything right, about these bowls.
I totally woke up yesterday feeling all sorts of blog-related guilt. Guys… what’s my dealio? I abandon this thing that I love, that I’ve come to enjoy doing because… because I’ve been lazy? What gives? Well, I supposed I’ve been writing-lazy and life-preoccupied. Does that make sense? I hope it does.
What I’m trying to say is I’m sorry I’ve let this blog lay dormant for so long. I feel like I’m making it sound as if I’m apologizing to myself in a public forum, which seems like a twisted, self-serving public flogging. Aren’t you glad you’re joining me for this?
Props to my boyfriend for this.
Anyway, I am mad at myself for not writing nearly as much as I have in the past, which is why I’ve decided to throw myself a mini-challenge: For the next two months, I’m going to publish a new post every week, by, at the very latest, that Wednesday. I hope you’ll all either a. keep me accountable by scolding me heavily if I fail to make good on this promise or b. at least not, like, tell me I suck and should never write anything again if I do come through (oh and I do plan to come through, good sirs and madams).
Hell, this might even be the time to have all of you hear my to-do list for the first half of this year. Maybe ya’ll can keep me from lazing out on those too:
1. Go to at least one Prince concert in my life, and preferably in my life this summer
2. Go to Montreal at least once in my life, and preferably in my life this summer
3. OMG OMG OMG you guys Prince is playing a jazz festival. In Montreal. This summer. This maybe shouldn’t be numbered, but is, because…
4. Take more risks in my writing (e.g., numbering things that shouldn’t necessarily be numbered. SCANDALOUS!)
5. Spend less time around bright, flashy screens and more time with other things that haven’t almost completely ruined my eyes, like books and chocolate
6. Cut out sugar
7. Check to see if anyone was paying attention to #6 and hope you are all laughing with me over how ludicrous a resolution that is
8. RETIRE MY SNOW BOOTS FOR A LONG, LONG TIME
Yeah. That last one has hit me, and a lot of us I imagine, pretty hard. I’ve finally accepted that I have a mean case of seasonal affective disorder that nothing short of sunshine, 80-degree weather and giant bowls of ice cream (shut it, that one’s totally necessary) can cure. I think maybe that’s part of what’s been keeping me from updating this blog, or doing anything productive, really. I…hate things right now. Yup, that sounds articulate and sensible. Let’s move on to our DOUBLE DOSE OF DESSERT, shall we?
Indeed I did decide to share two sweet treats in one post, mostly because of the aforementioned guilt over my lack of posting. Let’s get to it, friends!
So dessert #1 was supposed to be one of those ooh-la-la Valentine’s day desserts that would accompany a fancy-schmancy homemade dinner, but V-day’s kinda dumb and also was on a Friday night after a long, lame week, and both of us were dead tired. So instead of presenting it as a romantic dessert, I’m presenting it as portion-controlled chocolate cakes (that you can have two of if you aren’t down with sharing).
Strawberry ice cream, or NOTHING (or another flavor of ice cream, or berries, or whipped cream. But probably strawberry ice cream)
Preheat your oven to 400ºF and butter two 6-ounce ramekins. In a medium heat-safe bowl over a pot of simmering water, melt chocolate with butter, stirring until chocolate is completely melted (you can also do this in a microwave in 30-second increments, stirring after each session).
Stir in confectioner’s sugar, then beat in eggs and flour, whisking until the batter is smooth.
Stir in vanilla, then divide batter between your ramekins. Place ramekins on a baking sheet, and send into the oven for 9 to 11 minutes. Make sure to watch these, as they’re done before you think they’re done– the center will still look gooey and jiggly, two very important, official baking terms. Let cool in ramekins for five minutes, then invert onto plates for serving.
Top with strawberry ice cream. I make room for no other option because there should be no other option. Strawberry. Ice. Cream.
So, if I’m being honest, I didn’t love the way these cakes looked, which is completely on me, for using ramekins that were way too wide, making these look like overdone veggie burgers. However, once we cut into these and liquid chocolate came oozing out, I was SOLD. I didn’t even have time to get a picture of the inside because of how completely freaking sold I was.
Now, for our second dessert of the post (how lucky are YOU), we’re working on something easy, fun and oven-free. Hooray!
So, apparently for people who are not Indian people, popcorn balls are a classic sweet treat. This is what my boyfriend, who is not Indian people, tells me, at least. Can anyone chime in on this? Is it like me saying that halwah and papadam should be staples in every American household?
Anyway, I decided to surprise him by trying my hand at this “classic treat” because I am generous and also can never turn down the opportunity to combine three most excellent ingredients: butter, sugar, and popcorn. Let’s get “classic!”
9 cups of plain popped popcorn, seeds removed, unless you hate having teeth
1 cup of turbinado sugar (you can use regular white sugar, but I love the deep flavor this imparts)
1/3 cup of light corn syrup
1/3 cup of water
1 teaspoon of white vinegar
1/2 stick (4 tablespoons) of salted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
Grease a large glass bowl, and place popcorn in it. Set aside.
Large glass bowl. Popcorn. Creative captioning. World’s Finest Chocolate wrapper because I am nostalgic. Jar of peanut butter for me to snack on whilst “working.”
In a medium-sized saucepan, combine sugar, corn syrup, water and vinegar; stir to combine. Place pan over high heat, and cook– stirring constantly– until sugar is dissolved. Bring mixture to a boil and cook until it registers at 260ºF on a candy thermometer (if you don’t have one, don’t fret, just cook the mixture for 5 to 7 minutes). Remove from heat, then stir in butter and vanilla.
Quickly pour hot sugar mixture over popcorn, using a rubber spatula to spread the mixture evenly over the popcorn. Stir until the mixture is just cool enough to handle with bare hands, about three minutes. Seriously, these are good, but not burn-your-palms good. I don’t know what would be burn-your-palms good. I have some ideas, though. None are suitable for this blog.
With oiled hands, grab a chunk of popcorn and mash together, compressing popcorn into a ball. Let balls cool completely on parchment paper. *Giggle*
Ok…these were good. If they really are a classic treat, I can totally understand why. They’re buttery, salty/sweet, and somehow miraculously melt almost as soon as a bite hits your tongue. This dessert’s been a repeat offender in our home, half because my boyfriend is sentimental and half because we’re sugar fiends. I actually think it’s probably 78% because we’re sugar fiends, but it’s six popcorn balls in one hand and a half-dozen in the other. Or something. See you next week!
I know I said I’d be going dark for a spell, but OMG IT FINALLY SNOWED A BAJILLION TIMES and so I have cabin fever and cabin fever makes me eat like I have seven stomachs and also I missed you guys. So hey there, friends!
I don’t think I need to elaborate on how deeply I hate this weather, since I imagine a lot of you feel the same way. I suppose it’s enough to say that peeling a frozen teardrop from your face whilst attempting to trudge a third of a mile to the subway station is not an ideal way to spend a Monday morning. Or any morning. I do hope you’ll agree.
The first three seconds of this commercial pretty much sum up my feelings on this year’s Super Bowl. BO-RIIIIIIIING! And don’t get me started on that filthy Stamos yogurt commercial. I personally was thisclose to calling the FCC just because I was offended by his face on my screen. The only saving grace of that whole night– besides the above Muppet extravaganza– was PRINCE on New Girl’s post-game episode. I’ll say it again. Prince. Prince. Prince. Loves him.
Oh, actually, there was one other extremely wonderful treat that night– the cream puffs! I’ve always wanted to try my hand at these but have been feeling lazy and untalented and generally bad about myself (maybe I’ll get into that on a different post when I’m thawed out and in better spirits. Whenever that is *chuckle*) and basically thought these were super difficult to make. Then, I happened to see an article on pâte à choux in a recent magazine–whose name I will not mention because the company has personally offended me– that went on and on about how easy the “puff” part of cream puffs are to make. And, given my combative nature (LOL!) and need for easy-but-fancy-thangs in my life, I thought these would make for an appropriate game-night dessert.
Note: I made the easiest filling possible, whipped cream, mostly because we’ve been eating like wild animals for the past few weeks and I needed to cool it on the heavy sweet treats. Seriously, it’s been bad. If you’re looking for a pastry cream filling instead, Joy of Baking will hook.you.up.
Cream Puffs (makes 2 to 4 dozen, depending on how ya pipe ’em)
For the pâte à choux
8 tablespoons of unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
1 cup of all-purpose flour
4 eggs
For whipped cream
1 cup of heavy cream
2 tablespoons of granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
Preheat your oven to 400ºF and grease a baking sheet with butter; set aside. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat, add salt, and stir in all of your flour. Stir vigorously until the mixture starts to come away from the sides of the pan and forms a ball of dough. Remove mixture from heat and stir in your eggs one at a time. You can use a hand mixer at this point if you’re not sure you can handle taking a wooden spoon to this. There’s no shame in it– I totally thought I could just stir the whole batter together like a badass and ended up having to take several hydrate-and-stretch breaks. 😦
Only slightly annoying.
Now, you can either fill a pasty bag with this batter or simply use two spoons to plop tablespoon-sized mounds onto your baking sheet. If you see the mixture getting a little bit lumpy, and lumpy bothers you, you can wet your finger and smooth out the imperfections. Lumpy does not bother me/I’m lazy.
Bake puffs for about 30 minutes, until golden brown. Lightly prick each puff to release steam, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
When cooled, you can either poke holes in the tops of your puffs or cut them in half and fill, then sandwich halves back together.
To fill: Beat heavy cream and sugar on high until peaks begin to form. Stir in vanilla and beat again, just until combined. Spoon as much of whipped cream as you desire into puffs.
As you can see, I also added chocolate sprinkles to my puffs, because I am four and LOVE SPRINKLES AHHHHHH! Also I thought they looked prettier this way.
You also probably noticed that the actual puff dough contains no sugar, which I personally like. You can basically fill these babies with anything you like, or use them as a base for sweet or savory snacks, like eclairs or cheese puffs. Or cheeseclairs. What’s a cheeseclair, you ask? I don’t know, but I kind of want to use my next post to find out. Stay tuned.
So, how were they, you inevitably ask. Oh they were just terrible. So terrible that my boyfriend and I ate almost every single puff before the second quarter even started. So terrible that I am making these again tonight because they’re easy and I feel compelled to now attempt these cheeseclairs I heard about somewhere five seconds ago. Yum.
Whoa. It’s been so long since my last post that I had to go back and remind myself about what my life was like the last time I wrote in this thing. After some careful, intense reading light, lazy skimming, I recalled that I was talking about how I hoped for a much calmer, quiet year. WELP, as my old friend Jesus Christ liked to say: LOL! Wait…
Anyway, yeah, I have been hiding out big time. It’s weird. I guess the older you get, the more your relationships to people, places, (animal, vegetable, mineral…) and just yourself change. Or maybe that’s just me and I shouldn’t be weirdly speaking in the second person? I don’t know. As much as I love this blog, and as much as I love all things social media– my boyfriend would tell you it’s an annoyingly unhealthy amount– it makes me sad that it’s all taken the place of hours-long phone conversations, face-to-face meetings and just social interaction in general. It’s easier to find out if someone has a cold through Twitter than it is to find out through a phone chat, because PHONE CHATS? ARE YOU MY MOTHER? And in this weird, counter-intuitive way, it’s all made me super anti-social. Like, I’d-rather-be-knitting-awesome-headbands-and-just-watching-the-paint-in-my-bathroom-dry-than-oversharing anti-social. By the way, I am SO going to Pinterest the ridiculously awesome paint job my boyfriend did in our bathroom. Sh*t. I’ll just never learn, will I?
Tempting, right?
I definitely didn’t explain that well. I think the short version is that I’m a very private person who cherishes my relationships with people and is scared to see those relationships disappear or change. I guess that’s the abridged version. You can skip all of the crap above this if you want. Or just skip straight to the mini pies below.
*RECORD SCRATCH*
Mini pies?! Dude… why didn’t I just LEAD with that, right? I know, unbelievable. Let’s just…get on with it then.
So, these are basically something I just came up with after I realized I had a lot of leftover dough from a failed coconut pie attempt. I plastic-wrapped the remaining dough up, froze it, and finally thawed it out when I was feeling just sad enough for a taste of pie but not sad enough to make regular-sized pie. Feel me?
Mini Pies (how many this makes depends on how much dough you have)
For the crust (note: this will make enough for a single-crust 9-inch pie. You can totally use this for a regular pie and then take the scraps and use the heck out of them for mini pies. Or just make a bunch of minis. Do you.)
1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1 stick of very cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
A bowl of ice water
Melted butter
Cinnamon sugar (1 teaspoon of cinnamon + 1/4 cup of sugar)
For the filling (note: you can kind of go crazy here as long as you’re not trying to make fruit pies, since those will cook differently)
Chocolate Chips
Peanut butter
Jelly
Shredded Coconut
…You get the idea. It’s an EXPERIMENT!
So, I just sort of winged this. Wang it? Mmm…no. I improvised. I preheated the oven to 375ºF. I busted out a mini-muffin pan and brushed the cups with butter. Then, I stamped out little pieces of dough just big enough to fit into the bottom and sides of each cup. I rolled each dough piece in cinnamon sugar (never said these were healthy, homies) and then pressed them into cups.
Then, I basically went a little bit crazy. I dropped a couple of chocolate chips here, a dollop of peanut butter there, a little jelly, a few more chocolate chips, a little malted milk powder because I’m wild. You get the idea. Here’s a visual if you’re terrified of the process:
Then, I covered the tops of most of them (ran out of dough, sadly) with more dough, and cut tiny slits in each so I wouldn’t be dealing with baby pie explosions for days afterward. Then, I sent these into the oven for 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through.
I knew they were ready when the tops were golden brown and the filling was bubbling out a little bit. (Btw, sorry for the conversational tone instead of the instructional one guys. I haven’t fully taken ownership of this post yet, which I know is unhealthy, but I’ll totally work on all of that later, promise.) After about ten minutes of cooling in the pan, I popped the pies out and let them cool completely on a cutting board.
Guys HOW CUTE right?
Some of you might remember that I made a mini-s’mores pie with leftover pie dough last summer. That one served as the inspiration for these minis, which, um, RULED. I want to say my favorite was the PB&J one I made, but I can’t. They were all so good. It seems almost impossible to go wrong when your base is a buttery, flaky, sugary crust.
I think I almost like these more than normal-sized pie because they made me feel like I had my very own pies that were just for me and no one else, (ok, fine, and my boyfriend who ate a bunch of them too) and sometimes it feels good to be selfish. Though these do seem like the exact sort of thing I should be making for dinner party guests, whenever I decide to rejoin the land of the living, breathing humans. I’ll get on that. Eventually. (Most likely)
Sad Shibow 