CEiMB

I have been a Craving Ellie slacker lately, but I promise it hasn't been intentional slackage. I actually made the recipes for the last two weeks -- I just never posted them. However, I didn't make the lobster rolls that Duff, of Lonely Sidecar, chose for this week. Do go visit her blog, though, and not just to check out the recipe. Lonely Sidecar is easily one of my very favorite blogs. Duff is a fantastic, and interesting, blogger -- and some of her posts leave me in fits of laughter. Last week I thought that I would blog about the breakfast cookies and the vegetable cheese strata on Thursday, but I ended up not blogging on vacation. I don't know why I thought I would, actually, but I really thought I would.


First up, the vegetable cheese strata. Now, I made a strata last March when I was eating down my fridge and I remembered why while I was making this one. I don't like broccoli, it's so cliche, I know, but I dislike it nonetheless. I'm so-so on button mushrooms, and as I had some other veggies around, I decided to swap. I made my strata with some blanched farmers market green beans and some frozen chopped spinach. I used some chicken sausage that I had on hand in place of the ham, and I used Seduction Bread from Whole Foods (am I the only person who loves this bread?). When it was all said and done, I'd cleared my fridge of:

• Dijon mustard
• green beans
• spinach
• parmesan cheese
• shredded cheese blend
• chicken sausage
• eggs
• milk

And this was great! I love having a nice, clean refrigerator when I leave to go out of town. And, best of all, the strata was delicious. I loved the addition of sundried tomatoes -- yum!

On to the breakfast cookies. I was really nervous about making these cookies. I chose Sweet Melissa's breakfast cookies when it was my turn to pick the Sweet Melissa recipe, and I didn't like them at all. I actually threw most of them away, and I almost never throw my naked goods away unless I think they're absolutely without redeeming qualities. Add to that expereince the fact that these are made with carrot baby food and I was pretty much determined to sit this one out. But, then I read that you could substitute apple sauce and I thought maybe I'd make 1/2 of a recipe. Then I saw that a recipe only makes 12 cookies and I decided that I'd make the whole thing. I made the recipe with KA white whole wheat flour, Special K High Protein cereal (it seems similar to bran flakes to me), and dried cranberries. I am so glad I made these! They are absolutely delicious, and they're a wonderful breakfast solution. They taste healthy . . . but not too healthy. I know that I'll make them again!

This ends my CEiMB catch-up posts and I shoud be back to normal by next week!

TWD: Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies

Oh botheration! I am so behind on my blogging, and I do apologize for it. I've actually managed to keep up with making and baking. I just haven't managed to keep up with posting. I got swamped with work and then I left for a bit to go on vacation with my family. I just returned from a lovely trip to Blackberry Farm, and things should hopefully return to normal around here.

Lazy feet in a hammock . . . what a nice way to spend the morning.

I think that I'm a lucky girl, and one reason is because I've had the opportunity to know my grandparents very well. I'm the oldest child of an oldest child, so growing up my grandparents were "young" grandparents. I also had a great-grandmother, BaBa, who is the source of my love of baking. She would come to Houston every year, either for Thanskgiving or Christmas, and I would always help her make the cinnamon rolls, cheese bread, and homemade noodles on my days off of school. When she moved to Houston when I was in middle school, I would go over to her house and we'd pour through issues of Bon Appetit, and make lists of all of the menus we wanted to make. I learned so much from her, and while I am certain that I would like to be in the kitchen without her influence, I credit her with my continued desire to try new things when I'm cooking. When she passed away, my grandmother asked me what I would like, and I asked for her recipe files. She had two metal recipe boxes, one green and one gray, with all of her clipped recipes. When I was going through them right after she passed, I came across a clipping for Katherine Hepburn's brownies. I never made them, but I remembered them because the preface to the recipe included an anecdote similar to Dorie's about Katherine Hepburn and her brownies. I adore Katherine Hepburn. I started watching old movies when I was in about 8th grade or so, and I love all of her movies, but I think that my favorite has to be The Philadelphia Story. So, the combination of memories of my BaBa's recipe files, Katherine Hepburn, and brownies had me very excited to try this recipe.

I made these brownies right before I left for vacation. I had a ton of work to do before I left and some of this work involved a very late night typing my stundents' creative writing anthology. What better fuel for a night of editing and typing then brownies? The brownies are a seriously easy, one bowl/pan recipe. I made them as directed, minus the nuts, baked them, and ate them. No problems here. They're very, very fudgy -- perhaps a little too fudgy for my taste -- but very delicious. Dudley was over when I made them, and he found the Sweet Melissa Brown Sugar Vanilla ice cream in my freezer and used the two to make a delicious brownie sundae. I enjoyed mine plain while typing, and Dudley enjoyed the rest while he took care of Lucy for me. Thanks to Lisa of Surviving Oz for picking this delightful recipe!

TWD: Perfect Party Cake

The Perfect Party Cake is a pretty bold statement. I mean, it has a whole lot to live up to, don't you think? I had a birthday party to go to last weekend, but I didn't have the cake ready in time to bring it with me. So, this Perfect Party Cake is for the party of one that continually rocks this little corner of DC. Although, who am I kidding, I definitely shared some of this delightful little cake.

I made 1/2 of the recipe, and baked it in a single 8x8" pan. I didn't have lemons, but I did have limes, and more importantly, I like limes, so I went with the lime flavor for this cake. Limes and raspberries are ok, but I think that limes and cherries are better. I had quite a few farmers market cherries in my fridge, and I made a batch of cherry lime preserves to sandwich between the layers. In fact, I've been affectionately thinking of this as my Perfect Cherry Limeade Party Cake. I split the cake in half across the middle and down the middle to make a nice little loaf shape, and I can honestly say that I didn't meet up with many problems while making this cake. Except one. So, can someone please tell me how to get the jam layer to be only red and the frosting layer to be only white? In the book, there are the loveliest, most pristing layer cake layers with red raspberry jam and white buttercream frosting. My buttercream is pink in between my layers. That was the only part that I found frustrating, but in the end, pink buttercream isn't the end of the world.

As far as flavor goes, this was a very delicate cake. The lime and cherry flavors were subtle, perhaps more so because they had to compete with the buttercream and the coconut. Speaking of coconut, in high school I had an English teacher my sophomore year, Dr. Johnson, and he had a beard. He used to tell us that a beard could hide a multitude of sins: acne, scars, wrinkles, you get the point. Well, I think that the coconut plays a similar role to Dr. Johnson's beard on this cake. The buttercream just doesn't make enough to do a thick layer around the cake. You essentially have enough to make a thick crumbcoat, and then you start pressing in the coconut. If you don't like coconut, then I'm guessing that extra frosting is absolutely necessary. My buttercream got hard in the refrigerator, and as a result, it was definitely my least favorite part of the cake. I also felt like it overwhelmed the flavor of the cake itself, so in the future I think I'd probably try to find a way around the buttercream. Thanks to Carol, of Mix, Mix, Stir, Stir for chosing this very fun and pretty cake this week.