chocolate kahlua cake

I don't know how this happened, but somehow, I ended up with a bottle of Kahlua. I don't know where it came from. Maybe leftover from a party a long time ago? 

I do know, however, how I ended up with rum, amaretto, brandy, and hazelnut liqueur. Sometimes I bake with booze*, but I end up with a lot of leftovers because 1) recipes don't call for that much alcohol and 2) Drew and I don't really drink at home (unless it's wine for me). 

But back to the mystery Kahlua. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm moving and I'm trying to clean out the kitchen. I tasted the Kahlua, and it was still good (full disclosure: I tasted it after drinking a glass of wine), so I decided that I had to use it. I did some quick browsing on the internet to see what kinds of things I could bake with Kahlua. I came across this recipe, and while I normally don't just dive into recipes by unknown blogs (uh, unknown by me, that is) without some sleuthing, I made an exception because it called for 3/4 of a cup of Kahlua, and guess what? That's exactly how much Kahlua I had. 

It was fate.

Or destiny.

Or whatever.

The Collegiate Baker's recipe is for a layer cake with frosting and chocolate curls, which looks lovely, but I made mini cakes instead because they are easier to share. As I was mixing the ingredients, I thought to myself "This better be good; I'm using the fancy cocoa powder!" And it was; the Kahlua was subtle, and the cake was rich and chocolate-y.

*I bake with bourbon too, but I must bake with it more frequently because there never seem to be leftovers. 

olive lentil burgers

I'm moving in a couple of weeks, and I'm trying to use up the food in the kitchen. Even though I'm not moving very far (it's only about a 5 minute walk from my current place), I'll be sharing kitchen space with a roommate now (a friend from my program), and I don't want to take it all up. 

So, these olive lentil burgers were a great opportunity to use up the kalamata olives, lentils, and panko that were hanging around. The recipe was from Post Punk Kitchen, a vegan website, but as these were baking up, all I could think was "oooh, these would be so good with swiss cheese." I don't think that's what they had in mind, but I was right.

My garden has been steadily producing tomatoes lately, so I made tomato jam over the weekend. On it's own, it's a bit too sweet for me (I think Drew would think it's perfect though), but fortunately you're not supposed to eat it on its own, and it was perfect on this burger. Tomato jam tasted like ketchup, except infinitely better. 

cheddar onion rolls

My mom used to say that I bake (or cook) for compliments. I'd be lying if I said she was wrong. Growing up, whenever I made something, I'd subtly fish for compliments, asking everyone if they enjoyed whatever it was that I made. 

I don't really do this anymore.

Not really.

Because sometimes, you just know if it's good. 

As I've mentioned before, I run most Sunday mornings with a running group, and we follow up our run with breakfast. Most of the time, we eat out, but sometimes, we stay in and cook. Last weekend, we did just that, and for the occasion, I made cheddar onion rolls, from the Smitten Kitchen's cookbook. 

And they were really good.

But, I had the feeling they would be. As I was grating the onion, I thought to myself "these are going to be so good. Everyone's going to love these." 

And they did. 

stir fried tomatoes and eggs

Drew and I were introduced to stir fried tomatoes and eggs when we were in Beijing together, 3 years ago. I believe it was our first meal there. Since then, I've tried my best to replicate this dish, but nothing I've made compares to what we ate in Beijing.

Drew has been in Beijing for 2 weeks now, and he's eaten this dish many times, sometimes with rice and sometimes with noodles. So in his honor, and because my tomatoes suddenly began ripening all at once, I made this a couple times last week. It's a very simple dish- just tomatoes, eggs, scallions, salt, pepper, and sugar. It doesn't really require a recipe, but I used this one, from Appetite for China. It was good, but definitely not as good as the versions I ate in Beijing. 

frosted sugar cookies

I have a confession to make.

You know those frosted sugar cookies packaged up in plastic and decorated with their seasonal sprinkles? 

I love them. 

Shhhhh. 

I'm not sure where the fascination comes from. I think they're tied to memories of Girl Scout camp, when I was a counselor. I think I ate my fair share in the staff house. 

And now, I see them taunting me in Target, but I find the willpower to resist. I'm always tempted, but I just can't buy them. I try my best to steer clear of pre-packaged foods with ingredients I can't pronounce and these cookies have so many preservatives that they last long enough to go on sale long after the holiday they were intended for has passed. 

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found a recipe and immediately made them. A lot of them. The recipe calls for one stick of butter, and upon seeing this, I thought 1) whoa, only one stick of butter? and 2) whoa, since when did I become Paula Deen? 

I loved these cookies. They're soft and fluffy, and hit the spot. 

a week of smitten kitchen

After eating this pasta every day for a week, it didn't take me long to realize that I need to cut recipes in half. 

That strategy worked. 

Sort of. 

It just meant that I ate ratatouille 3 days in a row. 

And after that, corn risotto-stuffed poblanos for another 3 days. I'll get the hang of this someday.

The recipes this week are all from Smitten Kitchen, one of my favorite cooking blogs. Deb Perelman writes the best stories to go with each recipe, takes great pictures, and I think she's funny and down to earth. Both of these recipes are from her new cookbook, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. 

To accompany my poblanos, I made black beans. I winged it here and simmered black beans in veggie broth, sauteed onions, garlic, and cumin. Drew would be so proud of me for forgoing a recipe (though doing so was admittedly difficult). I also added a couple chopped tomatoes, fresh picked from the garden.

In addition to the ratatouille and poblanos, I also made vinegar slaw, breakfast apricot crisp, and a spring salad with potatoes. As you can see, I'm a big fan of the Smitten Kitchen. The recipes are fairly low maintenance, but Perelman doesn't resort to shortcut cooking or baking. Some of the recipes are pretty standard, but she also has ones with interesting twists. I will always have a soft spot for Smitten Kitchen. After all, it was after consulting Perelman's tutorial that I finally mastered pie crust. 

orange pecan brown sugar cookies

Big Fat Cookies was one of the first cookbooks I ever purchased. 

During my last year in college, my roommates and I used to go to the Barnes and Noble in uh, Roseville, I think, to study. One of the big draws was that this Barnes and Noble also sold used books, which were a lot of fun to peruse when I took study breaks. 

The cookbooks at this Barnes and Noble were located near the restrooms, so I passed by them a lot during my visits. I was just getting into cooking and baking, so I usually stopped to browse, but since money was tight, I usually restricted my purchases to the used book section. For some reason, Big Fat Cookies caught my eye, and after passing by it more than once, I finally gave in and bought it.  

This is a great cookbook. In the beginning, I used to make the cookies big and fat, but I eventually stopped because they were, well, too big and fat (now I just make them a normal size). I even remember the first thing I made: Chocolate Chip Stuffed Cookies. That was a long time ago, but I still turn to this cookbook when I'm in the mood to bake cookies. And when I'm not in the mood to bake cookies, I turn to Elinor Klivans' other cookbooks: the Cupcakes! cookbook, the Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook, or Chocolate Cakes.

I first made orange pecan brown sugar cookies back in December, and my friend loved them. In fact, he was the one who reminded me of when I first made them because I couldn't remember. It was his birthday earlier this week (we're birthday buddies!) and he requested these. I happily complied, and they were a big hit at his birthday party. 

on swimming

When I was in high school, I was a diver. I'm not exactly sure what piqued my interest in diving, but I suspect it was gymnastics. I took gymnastics classes for a few years, and I was on my junior high school's gymnastics team, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue in high school (I did, but only in 9th grade). Plus, I had weak ankles and I wasn't very good. So, I decided to try diving. 

I wasn't a spectacular diver, but I could do it. I was an exhibition diver in the 9th grade, but after that, I dove mostly at the varsity level but sometimes at the junior varsity level. At the varsity level, I always placed last in swim meets, but as a JV diver, I think I did win a few times. 

I had a lot of fun, made good friends, and went to diving camp. I was a consistent diver, but I was accident prone. I hit the diving board a lot, and one time when I did a somersault off the side of the pool, I even managed to hit my head on the underside of the pool deck. Aside from some scrapes, I never injured myself. But I suspect that I did eventually grow tired of hitting the board, and it probably contributed to the end of my diving career. When I was a freshman in college at St. Mary's University, I dove for about a month. In practice one day, I was doing an inward somersault, and I kicked out too early and smacked the backs of my calves on the diving board. There was blood. I think I quit shortly thereafter. To be fair, at that point in time, I already knew I was going to be leaving St. Mary's after only a semester there, so I wasn't too committed to the diving team or the school itself. 

Upon telling people that I was a diver, I am guaranteed to get 2 questions, in the following order: 1) Did you dive off that really tall platform? and 2) Are you a swimmer?

The second question baffles me. After all, unless an athlete is on the track or cross country team, nobody asks her if she is a runner, even if her sport requires a degree of running around. Diving doesn't even require the ability to swim. All a diver has to do is push herself up from the bottom of the pool and dog paddle to the side.  

This isn't to say that I can't swim; it's just that I wasn't a swimmer. I took swimming lessons for a few years as a kid, so if I happened to fall into one of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes, I wouldn't drown. I dreaded swimming. In fact, before I joined the diving team, it was apparently not uncommon for the divers to form a diver relay and compete in meets. I was relieved that this never occurred while I was on the team (that I could decline to participate never occurred to me).

I think you know where this is going.

To avoid turning a minor running injury into a major one, I took a month off after the OC Half. After doing nothing for a few weeks, I decided to take up swimming. I got a real swimming suit and goggles (and I have to say, swimming gear is a lot cheaper than running. For less than the cost of running shoes, I got a suit and goggles). I started taking swimming lessons at the gym a couple weeks ago, and I'm finding that I actually enjoy swimming. I've even voluntarily gone to the pool to swim laps.

If someone had told me that someday, I would be running and swimming- for fun- I never would have believed them.