Valentine's Day Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats!

We leave for Cancun tomorrow, so I wanted to get this last Valentine's Day post out for you! While I have a few more surprises up my sleeve for Nolan, this one came a little earlier in the week and we snacked on them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Sweet, nutty, and memorable, these rice krispie treats should be just another reminder of why you're with your loved one this Valentine's Day!

Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats

As with many of my recipes, this one, too, is versatile. Use the add-ins you want, change up the white chocolate to dark, and write whatever message you want to convey to your baby boy. 

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoon butter
• 12 oz marshmallow fluff
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 12 cup rice krispies
• 1 tablespoon red sprinkles
• Pinch of flaked sea salt
• 12 oz white chocolate (chips are fine)
• 1/4 teaspoon red dye (plus more for writing, amount may vary by quality of dye)

Directions:

1. In a dutch oven, melt your butter on medium-high, allow it to cook until brown and slightly nutty
2. Immediately add your marshmallow fluff and begin stirring
3. Add sugar and continue to melt your marshmallow down
4. When completely melted, take off heat and stir in your cereal, sprinkles, and salt
5. On a parchment-lined baking sheet, press down with slightly oiled hands
6. Allow to cool and harden slightly and cut into hearts with a cookie cutter
7. While these finish cooling, melt your chocolate in a large bowl
8. Divide your treats in half. For the first half dip into the white chocolate and return to parchment to cool 
9. When you've done your first half, now mix red dye into the remaining white chocolate and mix to create a pale pink
10. Dip remaining treats into the chocolate
11. Finally, using a toothpick, paint with more dye saying on the hearts and enjoy!

Roasted Banana Shortbread Cookies

I have the luxury of time now, reflection, opportunity. I’m 24 but I wasted an embarrassing amount of years shoring up the flotsam of who I used to be. I don’t worry so much now. I know I’ve kissed boys I’ve regretted. I know I’ve eaten ice cream the carton and left it on the counter until morning. Laundry piles up, bills change color; but I keep waking up in the morning and find it comforting.

Time shifts. Slows down. There’s a birds nest that’s been shuddering with wakeful chicks since last Sunday. It’s an eyrie built in the rain gutter and there’s a poem in there somewhere. They keep me up at night, I hear their hungry cries. They’ve just woken up and I hear them through my window.

There’s a rise and fall to my emotions. I used to think they were impressionism, small strokes of color and enough space in between to contrast. I have a Rembrandt temper, deep and opaque.

I’m working on this.

I made these cookies for no one but myself. I made them because it’s rained for four days straight and it doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. I made over two dozen and only ate a handful. The rest I took out, still on the pan, and threw them to the birds that peck at the apple tree wood. I threw them, one by one, and brought back an empty tray. I have a lot of time these days; I don’t mind sharing.

Roasted Banana Shortbread Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 banana, cut lengthwise
• 8 tablespoons butter, divided and softened
• ½ cup brown sugar, divided
• 1 ¾ cup AP flour
• Pinch of salt
• ½ cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon cinnamo
• Nutella, optional

Directions:

1. First, you must roast the banana for this recipe
2. Preheat oven to 400*F and prepare a pan with aluminum foil
3. Lay banana, peel side down, on pan and cut three small cuts into the banana
4. Top each banana half with 1 tablespoon butter and 1/8 cup brown sugar apiece
5. Roast for 10-15 minutes until sugar is caramelized and bananas are soft and browned
6. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before continuing on
7. While waiting for banana to cool, do the following: Reduce oven to 350*F; prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper; sift flour and salt together in a mixing bowl
8. When bananas are cooled, use a food processor and blend together bananas, remaining 6 TB butter, and remaining sugars. Process until well blended
9. Add vanilla and cinnamon to the mixture
10. With food processor on, slowly add flour through the feeding tube and continue to blend until a dough just starts to form
11. Turn food processor off and turn onto a floured work surface. Dough will be a bit crumbly at first, so work it a bit with your hands and pat into a disc
12. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes
13. When 30 minutes are up, roll back onto floured work surface and cut into desired shapes (make sure the cookies aren’t over a 1/3 inch in thickness)
14. Place shapes on your prepared cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes or until edges are golden
15. Allow to cool and you can eat as is, or top with Nutella and a little cinnamon
16. Last for up to 3 days in an airtight container

Orange Ginger Shortbread Cookies

The days are slowly creeping longer and I’m tired by seven. I’m working harder, longer hours. I drove something like 450 miles this weekend, and I’m glad I spent the money on toll roads, parking garages, bottles of wine, and cups of coffee. I’m making my own memories now. I’m paying off bills. I ate bologna sandwiches with my parents the night I came home and we sat and talked for an hour. My dad, with the TV turned loud, and my mom, with her wool socks and iPad on her lap. She checks for deals online and he checks the death toll in a five-car pile-up outside of Pittsburgh.

I don’t fear I’ll be here forever, but I’m taking my time here while I can. I made them cookies before I left, the smallest gesture to say thank you that I could muster. They’re orange and ginger shortbreads. The whole batch was gone by Monday. They were made with love and only the crumbs remain on the cellophane, now crumbled up in the trashbin by the sink.

Orange Ginger Shortbread Cookies

Yields 12-14 cookies, depending on shapes used

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cup flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• ½ cup white sugar, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 ½ tablespoon orange zest, plus more for sprinkling
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon orange juice

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or oil to prepare
2. In a medium bowl, sift flour and salt together
3. Mix butter and sugar in stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, until it is well incorporated but still pretty firm
4. Add vanilla, orange zest, ginger, and juice
5. With mixer on a low speed (or, if you prefer to use a wooden spoon, that is perfectly fine), add flour mixture until dough begins to come together
6. It will be fairly dry but should hold its shape
7. Dump onto a floured work surface and pat into a disc
8. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes in refrigerator
9. Roll out onto a dusted work surface and cut into shapes that are about 1/3 inch in thickness
10. Sprinkle with sugar and orange zest
11. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until brown and crisp around the edges

Home + Cake

I live just west of two creeks now, just shy of the intersection between Dunnings Creek and Bob’s Creek. In a house too big for us. In a town I used to think was too small for me. There’s a store here run by a Mennonite family. They’ll sing to you if you buy bread in the morning. Hymns about salvation, the ascension, peace on earth. I just wanted a loaf of rye.

I’m tempted to start smoking again, to fiddle with a cigarette between my lips. Breaking promises I never thought I could keep. I’m busy now, watching the houses turn from wood to vinyl to brick on my drive to the gas station. I see a horse swat aimlessly at flies with its long, shaggy tail. I look a little closer and see it’s matted in horse shit. I get angry and then get over it. I keep driving, still craving a cigarette.

I don’t buy a pack, though. Not yet at least. I think of an uncle my mother had. She called him Old Relic. He was ancient and his nails were bitten to the quick; he left small drops of blood on napkins when he’d twist them too tight in his hands. His voice wheezed and grated, his windpipe as fragile as china. At night I’d hear him snoring from the hallway, his breathing a constant moan, a motel air conditioner that’s only half-assing it.

I didn’t buy a pack and I turned around. The filthy horse didn’t even move an inch. I go back to a home that I craved for years while I lived in California. A home where the chipped paint of the back deck breaks off in large strips. The paint was called terra cotta when my mom bought it. It’s hardly blushing anymore.

It’s a home where six cats live and two dogs. Three Midwesterners still sometimes feel out of place in rural Pennsylvania, too. Cats that step in my mother’s Gold Bond powder dusting the bathroom floor. Small footprints and nothing but whispered running on the floorboards while I’m upstairs working. Cats with sleepy, glaucoma eyes that stare and blink and still trust me in their fog. A bucket of screws fell when the wind swung the door open too fast. The bath sometimes takes a half hour to drain completely.

This is the world I live in now, not the one of wanting and remembering. I see it for its beauty now, the uneasiness and the imperfections that lie just beyond the quick when I bite the nail too low, when I drive too fast on the windy roads. When I think of Old Relic and the cats that can’t see and the horse that seems to have given up on life. It’s all beautiful in its own way, because I’m letting life happen around me these days.

Orange Marmalade Cake with Tahini Frosting

Makes two 6-inch cakes

Ingredients for the cake:

• 2 cups AP flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• ½ tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 cup whole milk
• ½ cup orange marmalade
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• Zest of half an orange
• 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
• 3 tablespoons shortening, room temperature
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs

Directions for cake:

1. Prep two six-inch pans with butter and parchment paper
2. Preheat oven to 350*F
3. In a medium-sized bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside
4. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together vinegar, milk, marmalade, vanilla, and orange zest. Set aside.
5. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, beat fats and sugar on medium-high until light and ribbons form
6. Add eggs, one at a time
7. With mixer on low, alternate between adding the flour mixture and the milk mixture in thirds. When both are mixed in, turn mixer off and scrape bowl with rubber spatula to ensure batter is fully incorporated
8. Divide batter between prepared pans
9. Bake for 34-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Check at 30 minutes for excessive browning on top, due to the sugar content in this recipe (with the marmalade). If so, tent foil on tops of cakes
10. Allow to cool before icing cake

Ingredients for Tahini frosting:

• ½ cup tahini
• 2 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 2-4 tablespoons whole milk

Directions for tahini frosting:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a whisk attachment, beat tahini and sugar together. If dry and crumbly, add a thin stream of milk until you yield your desired consistency

Small Updates and a Recipe

I moved back to California this week and it has been an exhausting time.  I chased the sunlight and forgot what timezone I was in.  I denied myself sleep and sat in silence, listening to Nolan sing to the radio under his breath.  We talked a lot about nothing.  We took Milo with us.  I'll speak more about this all in time, because, between packing, concerts, and Los Angeles this week, time is something I'm lacking right now.  

I realized it's been a week or two since I posted a recipe and I wanted to get the last of the recipes of my life in San Antonio out.  To start new, to start fresh.  I have two recipes lined up for next week that I am excited to try, both inspired by dates I've taken with Nolan since my return to California.  A celebration, a commemoration, and apology.

But for now, enjoy the last thing I baked in my little studio kitchen--Dorie Greenspan's Custardy Apple Squares, sliced with a pocket knife my uncle got in the army.  Even when apples remind me of home, they don't remind me of the home I came from.  They remind me of Pennsylvania, teenage dreams of France, and not the white-walled silence of that small apartment in San Antonio that I loved so much.

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Dorie Greenspan's Custardy Apple Squares (via Food52)

Ingredients

• 3 medium apples (juicy, sweet)
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• Pinch of fine sea salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 6 tablespoons whole milk
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled (but still liquid)

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 400° F. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. 
2. Peel the apples. If you have a mandoline, slice the apples thinly, turning when you reach the core. (The slices should be thin but not transparent.) If you don't have a mandoline, simply core and slice as thinly as you manage. (Don't worry about the slices being impossibly precise or thin.)
3. In a bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.
4. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and salt for a couple of minutes, or until the sugar dissolves and the eggs become pale. Whisk in the vanilla, then the milk and the melted butter. Add the flour and whisk until smooth. With a spatula, gently fold in the apples until each slice is coated. Scrape the batter into the pan and roughly even out the top.
5. Bake the cake for 40 to 50 minutes or until golden and uniformly puffed. A skewer in the middle will come out clean. Transfer to a rack to cool, then slice and dust with the optional confectioners' sugar.
6. I highly recommend eating this with a topping made of freshly-whipped cream, a small amount of almond butter, and a pinch of cinnamon 

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