Cardamon Oatmeal Pancakes with Apricots and Almonds

When Mark Bittman announced the end of the Minimalist, his weekly food column for the New York Times, I was a bit devastated. I so looked forward to his quirky videos and creative recipes each week. In my opinion, he was the face and character of the New York Times food section. He introduced me to fabulous recipes like tomato jam, West African peanut soup, corn and tomato salad, and strawberries with almond creme anglaise. His recipes always promised something fun and different with a few clever witticisms thrown in for good measure. The Minimalist will certainly be missed.

Anyways, I thought I would post a Minimalist recipe today in honor of our departing friend. When I saw these pancakes I was smitten. I love cardamon in any capacity and featured in a warm breakfast treat with oatmeal, apricots, and almonds sounded particularly delicious. I altered Bittman's recipe a bit based on the ingredients I had and the pancakes turned out beautifully. Served alongside a fresh fruit salad, I can't imagine a better way to enjoy breakfast, with a nod to one of my favorite cooks.

Cardamom Oatmeal Pancakes with Apricots and Almonds
Adapted from Mark Bittman

1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1 heaping teaspoon of ground cardamom
Dash of salt
1 egg
1/2-3/4 cup of milk, depending on how thick your batter is
1 cup quick cooking oats cooked with 2 cups of water, or a scant 2 cups of cooked oats
1/3 cup chopped dried apricots or other dried fruit
Butter for frying
Honey or warm maple syrup for serving

1. Mix together both flours, oats, almonds, cardamom, and salt in a medium bowl. In a smaller bowl, beat together egg and 1/2 cup of milk. Slowly add the oatmeal, a spoonful at a time so as not to cook the eggs, and mix well. Stir in apricots.

2. Gently add oatmeal mixture to the dry ingredients. Slowly add milk, a tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is the same consistency as thick pancake batter.

3. Heat a few tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Drop in pancakes and cook for 2-3 minutes, until bubbles on the top of the pancakes pop. Flip and cook 2 more minutes on the other side. Serve with honey or warm maple syrup.

Serves about 4

Cookies Three Ways

Food related gifts are my favorite. Whether it's cook book, a new kitchen tool, or even a dinner date, I get so excited for gifts with culinary horizons. But even for the non-food obsessed, edible gifts are a simple and thoughtful way to show someone you care. And so begins a tale of cookies. Three cookies to be precise.

I had occasion to send a thank you to those who had taken care of and reached out to me when I was sick a few weeks back and I thought there would be no better way to do it than with a gift bag full of freshly baked cookies. I thought I would make a couple different kinds of cookies, assemble them in a bag, and send them off with a thank you card. It ended up working out really well.

The first are very lovely Lemon Scented Olive Oil Cookies with Almond Glaze. When I saw these on Joy the Baker, I completely fell in love and knew I had to have them. I mean, lemon? Olive oil? Almond? Together? I couldn't imagine a better flavor combination if I tried.

They turned out just as wonderful as I thought. They were light and not too sweet with great depth of flavor. They're perfect with a cup of tea on a lazy afternoon. Find the recipe I followed here, at Joy the Baker.

The next cookie came about when I tried to think of a good contrast to the light lemony cookies I'd made before. Something rich, something chocolaty, something classic. I thought chocolate chip cookies would be too simple, but the more I looked for other recipes, the more I kept being drawn back to that treasured family favorite but with the volume turned up (Barefoot Contessa anyone?). Chewy Molasses Chocolate Chip Cookies by Alton Brown, via the illustrious Joy the Baker yet again, seemed perfect for the occasion. They're a gussied up classic, complete with a healthy dose of molasses (you make your own brown sugar by mixing refined sugar with molasses), dark chocolate chips, and a light sprinkling of sea salt, just before baking. Seeing how many of the recipients of my gift bags were going to be children, I thought these would be sure to please.

And they were! They turned out chewy and delicious. It was tough for me to know when they're done because they're supposed to have a gooey-molassesey center, but once I got it down they were a huge hit (hint: they're supposed to be thin and flat!). Here's the recipe (followed it exactly except for all-purpose flour in place of bread flour).

And as a final addition to my gift bags, I thought I'd go with something a little different. Not quite a cookie but just as bite sized. I thought of these wonderful Cherry-Pecan Meringues I had made from Everyday Food a few years ago and they turned out to be the prefect finishing touch to the gift bags. I followed this recipe but replaced the chopped dried cherries with chopped dried cranberries. I think my mom ate like 10 of them after they came out of the oven.

The last step was to assemble the gift bags. Any good craft store will have nice cellophane bags that are ideal for cookies. With little labels and ribbon, you'd think these gift bags were professionally made! Okay, maybe they're not quite that good, but they're pretty gosh-darn cute and I'm happy to say that everyone loved them.

Creamy Dreamy Creamed Spinach

It's not often that something extraordinarily healthy can be turned into something so genuinely terrible for you in just a few short moments. Creamed spinach is one such case.

You start with a big, beautiful bunch of spinach leaves and cook it down in a creamy sauce flavored with onions, garlic, and parmesan cheese. And, well, that's pretty much it. Creamed spinach is a luxurious treat that's ready in a flash and an elegant accompaniment to to even the drabbest of Monday night meals of the weekend leftovers. So, just for a night, don't listen to what your mind is saying (which is probably something like, "There's butter, cream, and cheese in there?! Are you nuts?!") and don't follow your heart (which is definitely saying, "HEART ATTACK ON A PLATE!!").  Put aside your better judgment and enjoy the sinful simplicity of something delicious.

Creamed Spinach
Serves 2-3 as a side dish
Loosely adapted from Ree Drummond

1 bunch of spinach leaves, stems removed and rinsed well
3 tablespoons of butter
1/2 a yellow onion, chopped
1 large garlic clove, minced
Scant tablespoon of flour
1/2 half and half
1/2 cup milk (may need more if the sauce is too thick)
About 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, finely grated (optional, and to taste)
Pinch of nutmeg
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat butter in a heavy bottomed pot over medium heat. Add onions and saute until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and saute until fragrant, about a minute.

Sprinkle flour over the butter and onions, whisking to combine to create a roux. Slowly add half and half and milk, whisking into the roux. Add parmesan cheese and stir to melt. Stir in nutmeg. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until the sauce is thickened, 2-3 minutes.

Add spinach leaves, tearing the larger leaves in half. Coat the leaves with the cream sauce and cook down, stirring frequently, until the spinach is soft and cooked but not soggy, about five minutes. Serve with a sprinkling of kosher salt.

Apple-Blackberry Brown Butter Cake

Life is what happens when you make plans.

Maybe it's just my experience, but that expression seems to sum things up pretty well. Life is unexpected, spontaneous, abrupt, and ever changing despite our feeble attempts to have control of what's going on. I'm not saying we should all drop what we're doing and let fate take over, but I think we all need to respect the idea that no matter how hard we try and plan, schedule, and micromanage our lives, things probably won't go the way we imagined. I certainly didn't plan on taking off the last semester of my senior year and living at home with my parents, but you know? That's how life works sometimes. And if that first phrase is in fact true (which I fully believe it is), then so is this one:

When one door closes, another opens.

Life may change unexpectedly. Some unforeseen turn of events may thwart the plans you had meticulously constructed and destroy your vision of a perfect life. But that's okay. Because nine times out of ten when something doesn't work out the way you had hoped, a new opportunity presents itself. Finding that silver lining is not always easy, you may have to spend time in some dark clouds first. But it's usually there, in the end, so long as you wish to see it.

Which brings me to this cake. Well, not really. This cake has nothing to do with anything I just said, but it is a pretty darn good cake. You should make it. I know blackberries are not in season, but frozen ones are readily available and adapt beautifully in this cake.

I found this recipe from Martha Stewart when I was searching for a dessert to bake some soon-to-be-bad apples into. Martha's kind of my go-to girl when I have bakers block. Her recipes are simple and classic and usually don't call for any weird or pretentious sounding ingredients. However, I did make one very important change to this recipe. Martha says to melt the butter in a saucepan before adding it to the cake. My feelings towards melted butter in baked goods are as follows: if you're already taking the time to melt the butter in the first place, why on earth would you not keep it over the flame for a few minutes longer to make brown butter, which will turn whatever you're making into the greatest dessert of all time? Brown butter is nutty and caramely and everything regular melted butter hopes to be and adds something really special to baking. It turned out perfectly in this cake, complimenting the warm cinnamon and apples.

Other than that very important detail, I followed her recipe (except I multiplied it by three which is why my cake isn't the lovely circular one that Martha has but a giant mass fit to feed an army -- I scaled it back down in this recipe). Give it a try and please enjoy. As silly and simple as it sounds, I know that for me at least, a cake like this can help me start to see that silver lining after all.

P.S. This is my first post of 2011! I promise to start posting more (as I seem to say in every post). Really though, I'll have a lot more free time now that I'm taking time off of school. Get ready, things are going to get delicious.


Apple-Blackberry Brown Butter Cake
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Granulated sugar, for the pan
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter (omit salt from dry ingredients if using salted butter), plus more for the pan, plus 2 tablespoons cut into pieces
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1/2 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
4 apples, preferably Fuji or Gala apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 8 wedges
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 9-inch springform pan, and dust with granulated sugar. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Brown butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Watch it carefully as brown butter can burn very quickly. When the butter has reached a deep amber hue, immediately remove from heat and whisk together browned butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, the milk, and eggs in another bowl (being careful to add the butter slowly so the eggs don't cook). Whisk into flour mixture.

Spread batter evenly into prepared pan. Arrange apple wedges over batter, and sprinkle with blackberries. Gently press fruit into batter. Combine remaining 2 tablespoons brown sugar and the cinnamon, and sprinkle over fruit. Dot with remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Bake until top is dark gold, apples are tender, and a cake tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Let cool. Serve with whipped cream if desired.