(Inside A Black Apple)

Caramelized

As far as I am concerned, two of the best kitchen-cooking-smells are browning butter and cooked sugar.

Enter: Caramels.

Caramels are my new holiday jam. Perfect in a little bag tied up with string for a friend, perfect in a jar for you.Perfect to mail. Perfect to cover in chocolate. Plus, there is very little that is as painfully darling as the little waxed paper bundles they make.

I thought someone out there might need an easy-ish and last minute present idea, so here is the recipe I'm using (it's Mark Bittman's, from How to Cook Everything).

Caramels Bittman
(directly transcribed from emailing excitedly to Amy)

1/2 stick butter
1 1/2 c heavy cream
2 c sugar
1/2 c light corn syrup
pinch salt (I say more!)

Mix all of this stuff in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over low. Stir like a crazy. When every single last sugar particle is dissolved (this is when I use my little brush and a cup of water to wash down the sides of the pot because I am terrified of crystallization), crank up the heat to medium (just medium) and let it go, only stirring every five minutes or so. Mine were bubbling for 30+ minutes at least. Measuring with a candy thermometer, let it go to: 240 for soft caramels, 245 for hard-ish ones, or 250+ for "toffee"-like ones. Take off heat, add vanilla, pour into parchment-lined 8"x8" dish. Cool on rack!
They solidify pretty easily, so after an hour or two you should be able to cut (I used scissors).

PS: Thank you so much for all of the book-excitement (bookcitement?). It was so exciting for me to finally say something about it!

Best Brunch for Lumberjacks

This weekend, I took off of work. It didn't occur to me that it would be so odd to really + truly not work at all for two whole days, but it felt weird. It has become so common for me to work every day, anywhere from 6-12 hours a day - and while I love what I do, I love it so much that I have to command to myself that I take Black Apple mini-breaks sometimes. Anyway, so this weekend: no work.

So what did we do? So many fun things! Good dinners, hunting for old stuff (thrifting + antiquing!), brunch, laundry...good things.

Yesterday we headed up North (Portland-wise) for brunch at Gravy. Now, if you are a lumberjack, and you happen to find yourself on N. Mississippi, you should hasten yourself to Gravy. Find a place to rest your axe, and get ready for an omelet bigger than your head. Actually, I'd personally recommend the french toast - they're as hearty as the 2 x 4 pine planks you had been cutting all day. Basically what I'm trying to tell you is: the portions are insane.

And though I am no lumberjack, I do love their french toast. Ashley is the person who convinced me to give it a chance, because as a life-long hater of regular french toast, I was a skeptic. It's usually too soggy and weird for me...but this? This is crispy, dense, chewy perfection, dusted with the tiniest bit of confectioner's sugar. I think they make it with challah, hence the hearty, chewy consistency that's egg-y without being soggy.

Anyway, so remember what I said about the portions?

Um, get ready for your mind to be blown...

 

This is the half-order!

And at the point at which this photo was taken, I had already donated half a slab to Josiah (and in return I received that omelet-let you see there).

See?

Lumberjack food if I've ever seen it.

My Favorite Brownies

I'm perpetually on the hunt for the best basic recipes: the best vanilla cupcakes, best macaroni + cheese, etc. and for a while I was on the hunt for the best (to me) brownies. I've been using and refining this recipe for about 3 years now, and I think it's the one for me - and maybe it'll suit your fancy, too!

As far as sweet stuff goes, I fear I have very simple taste. Chocolate chip cookies? Best cookies. Milk Chocolate? Best chocolate. This is the confectionery world I inhabit - the same one as when I was seven. And because of this, I make a lot of brownies...at least a batch every other week.

These are so reliable, so fast, and so good, and they fit my brownie-criteria to a T. I know that people look for different things in their brownie, but these are my top concerns:
-Chewiness
-Soft-ish insides
-Crisp (but not hard) little crust on top and sides

The little crust is, to me, extremely important and kind of elusive - but these have got it (food science-wise, I'm pretty sure it comes from a high ratio of sugar-to-flour).

So, here's how to make 'em!

You need: 1 medium sized pot, parchment, and an 8" sq. baking dish
Ingredients: 1 stick butter (8 tbsp)
1/2 c Brown Sugar
1 c White Sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 c flour
1/2 c cocoa
Pinch salt
Tbsp Vanilla

1. Preheat Oven to 390
2. Melt butter in pot over stove
3. Remove butter from heat, let cool about a minute, then add sugars (just use the pot as your bowl...it saves you more dishes). Mix well.
4. Add eggs, flour, cocoa, salt, and generous tablespoon-splash of vanilla, and mix well.
5. Line baking dish (I use a glass one) with parchment, pour in batter, and pop in oven.
6. Bake 20-25 minutes, I test with a knife in the center and remove when only a few little crumbs cling to the knife.
7. Cool one hour or overnight.

They have this almost caramel-y quality that is just so good. Okay, I'll stop talking about them. I think I need to eat a peach or a carrot or something...I'm getting a sugar-crash from writing all of this.

See you soon & Happy Tuesday!

Oh, Miette!

While we were in San Francisco, we managed to steal away Monday afternoon to do a few little fun things before we drove back home. After all, we didn't want our whole impression of such a neat city to be derived from the inside of the Fort Mason Center and the interior of the SF Marriott!

The only place I suggested insisted we visit was the famous Miette patisserie. It has the same name as my little fur-person, and it seemed just as sweet. I was so happy that they were open on Monday (and we were met at the door by the lovely, gingham-clad manager who happened to know me from the blog!).

It's safe to say that our visit there made me incredibly, dorkily, sweet-things-ecstatic.

 

 The wrappings and foil and boxes and bags were almost too good. There were so many candies there I had never even seen! And then a few that I had, but only once or twice before, like those jewel-colored pansy chocolates on the scale below:

 

Here's our bag of goods! And a close-up of these beautiful, beautiful bee chocolate bars we brought home.

 

These are the two candies that we're really hoarding:

 

Seriously, we're both interested in proposing candy-marriage to them. I found the Napoleon sour candies online, so the hoarding can relax a little as far as those are concerned. But if anyone has a source for those incredible, so-rich-you-can-seriously-eat-one-for-dessert foil wrapped strawberries, feel free to send it on!

They're so beautiful, it's really a little heartbreaking to eat them right now.

Strawberry Fields

On Monday, we went out to the wonderful, calm, restorative Sauvie Island Farms with the lady Berkley for the last of the season's strawberries.

 

Ashley blogged a couple days back about her trip out there...and I think they brought something like 20 pounds of strawberries home because the fields were so bountiful just a few weeks ago!

We had to peek under leaves and crouch and search for our berries, but the last of the harvest were so sweet and just perfect (if a little shrimpy). They were like little jewels.

 

 

But we persevered, and eventually Josiah, Lu and I had each collected a respectable harvest.

Not too shabby!
We took home enough to have some for freezing (future smoothies), jam-making, and just gobbling up.

We also took home a few enormous heads of spinach.
I'm including my feet (also enormous) for scale:

Such a good, chilly, Portland afternoon...and then we had delicious spinach and strawberries, and a day later, jam!

 

I like tart, not-too-sweet jam, and it ended up just right on that front. That's one of my favorite things about making things for yourself - you can tailor whatever it is to your exact persnickety tastes.

Happy Friday!

Sweets For The Sweet

A few sweets-related items for you from the last couple weeks!

I made some key-lime macaro(o)ns last week, and they turned out pretty darn good. The lime macs from Pix are Josiah's favorite, so I wanted to try to approximate something like them.

I've realized in all of my experimenting that the key with the fillings is to have them contain as little cloying sweetness as possible, since the cookies provide so much of that on their own (being one-half powdered sugar and all). This filling had a huge amount of zest and juice in a buttercream that was very light on sugar. Tart and lovely!

The other day, we picked up a six-pack of tiny cupcakes from one of our favorite cupcakeries, Cupcake Jones (which is just a few blocks from Powell's, and is therefore a required stop when we're in that neck of the woods). I thought to snap a photo, but the sun was almost gone, so this photo doesn't really do their adorable tastiness justice:

Their treats are wonderful, but very rich, so we've realized a couple of these little minis are the way to go! Plus, I always want as much variety as possible.

And...

Ms. A sweetly brought me these beautiful pansy chocolates a little bit ago, and I've had them in a little jar in my kitchen where I can admire them.

So pretty!

They're perfect. I've nibbled on a few, but I still have some for looking at.

Saturday View, Sunday View

What a wonderful weekend!

It was wildly beautiful here this Saturday and Sunday...and this is coming from a girl who much prefers 50-degree-Fall-ishness. I had just commented to Josiah the other day that in between Winter and Summer, it's difficult for me to get inspired about dinners and things. I think it's because the choices aren't obvious. If it's Winter, you make a soup or stew or some cozy thing...if its Summer, the weather calls for pasta, salads, avacado (as if I don't consume plenty of those 52 weeks a year!). But we had two nice, warm, easy days and two Spring-y/Summer-y dinners.

Saturday:
-Antique stores
-Bagels + Iced tea/coffee
-Park...dozing, reading aloud, enormous lemonades
-Big salads for dinner (which are, quite literally, just big salads with lots of good stuff on them)
-Drawing at night

Sunday:
- Pick up friends from airport
- Grab picnic food and take it to...
- Park, again! Hours of drawing, bird-watching, and cherries. And more lemonade!
- Work at home in the evening
- Make off-the-cuff "white lasagne" for dinner with basil, tomatoes, chicken...85% smashing success, will futher perfect and share
- Drawing and movie-watching at night

Any weekend in which we end up on a quilt at the park two days in a row is a total success in my book. Worthy of celebrating with crazy-expensive cherries...I always try to resist, but they totally got me yesterday.

Happy Monday to you!

Two things I have done recently that I recommend:

1.) Watching Let The Right One In

 

I was really, really looking forward to this little film, and we finally got it from good ol' Netflix last weekend. It's not for everybody, for certain, but I really loved it and I've heard nothing but praise for it from other people. It's such a beautiful portrait of the wild precipice between child and adult, right and wrong.

2.) Making this pound cake which  Sarah tipped me off about. So good! I cut down the eggs by a few, but I think it's probably grand either way. And definitely go for the cake flour with it!

Things I do NOT recommend:
Twisting your ankle horridly (as I did on Tuesday night) and becoming couch-bound. This is the reason for the lack of posting and the kind of anemic post today. I'm just trying to really do the whole R.I.C.E. thing (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation, I think?!) and cross my fingers that I can at least leave the house with my crutches in a day or two.

Happy weekend!

Golden Years

Thank you for all of your merry birthday wishes!

Today is for quiet, happy, real-birthday time, so I am going to get on with the business of that...but before I do, I thought I'd share a few nice vignettes from last night's get-together.

I never really buy big cakes or things like that for parties, since I always want to bake everything, but I thought that since it was my birthday I would avoid the potential heartbreak of baking macaro(o)ns myself. Pix did the work for me instead, and we had a dozen of my favorites (Rose) and a dozen of Josiah's favorites (the caramel). Everyone really got a kick out of them, and I think they also had a happy time celebrating with me and ol' Abe!

It was a marvelous little gathering...I got some of the most thoughtful gifts, Amy's girls came (who are treasures themselves), and I felt so warm and as golden as all the candlelight.

I am so lucky.

Artwork Dreams & Donut Wishes

I thought I would be hermit-like this weekend, but it always seems that when I plan on that, we're 10 times more social than usual. This is a good thing! It means we got to spend Friday night with Ryan + Lucy hanging out at the opening at Grass Hut for a show in which Ryan had lots of work. This is my favorite Ryan-piece from the show:

Ryan is so prodigiously good that it's actually a little frightening.

The piece that made me cry a little inside because I cannot really afford it at this time is this Carson Ellis drawing:

Jeez louise.

She also has a drawing on the Grass Hut website (that I didn't see at the gallery) that is the "Little Fur Child" from this book, which is absolutely my favorite picture-book. And if you happen purchase it, please get the faux-fur binding. There is no point in the non-tiny, non-fur-bound edition.

We had dinner and then donuts, and the abundant artificial light at the donut place was too amazing.

 
You can barely make out the "mega donut" on the upper tier on the right. Its radius was at least 6 inches.

Aforementioned prodigous Ryan with utterly out-of-place chandelier.

The boys were really into this bubble-hockey game. Like, two hours of games into it. Josiah is there on the right. That man is such a cutie. A cutie among cuties.

We also got to hang out with this out of town Etsy-pal on Saturday, and then Drew made us brunch today. Ashley contributed by pouring us some orange juice.

And now I'm going to cut out fabric for dollies and spend time with my numero uno friend of them all. Luckily, he's just in the other room.