Grilled Cheeseburgers

I've always had a huge thing for cheeseburgers. And by thing, I mean unhealthy obsession. I love them. And everything about them. Anytime I see something to the tune of "1/2 lb of natural beef patty"...I just go to pieces. I have no explanation for this burger weakness except for the fact that my mom constantly ate cheeseburgers when she was pregnant with me...cheeseburgers, ice cream and Mexican food, to be exact. She stuffed herself silly with pineapple when she was pregnant with my sister, and now Nicole can't get enough of the stuff. If only she decided to go healthy a few years earlier.

Incidentally, I've never had access to a grill to grill my own cheeseburgers. I do own a grill pan, which is a terrible substitute for an actual grill. I know those folks on tv say that you can substitute a grill pan...this is completely not true. Grill pan grill marks does not equal grilled deliciousness. There is no substituting charcoal. Get a grill.

Mmm...toasty bun! These super juicy cheeseburgers are courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa and are seasoned with Dijon mustard, her suggestion, but whole grain (highly recommended) was used as well as fresh thyme leaves. And of course, arugula!

Don't be put off with the 80% beef. You can offset it with a refreshing tomato salad.

This tomato salad was spicy and lemony, and the perfect side for the burgers.

The recipe is actually for little sliders...but how could you not buy these buns?

Seriously. How awesome.

About 20 minutes after eating my 1.5 cheeseburgers, I had a few scoops of vanilla and hazelnut gelato. Cheeseburgers and gelato! I can't think of a more lovely dinner.

Bagels

When I was in New York last December (pre-blizzard of the century), I was on the hunt for a bagel. The kind of bagels you hear about and lust over. Warm from the oven still crispy and chewy that a toaster is the very last thing you'd want near your bagel. But as I hunted down the bagels from this one, to this one, I was a little disappointed. They were all yummy, crisp and filling, but it wasn't the bagel of my dreams. On one of my last days in New York, I did finally discover Murray's Bagel, which I declared to be just perfect. Chewy crust and not too bready. Positively dreamy.

And I haven't had a bagel since then. Until Sunday. When I made them! Who knew you could actually make bagels, but I found myself with an aimless weekend, and saw bagels listed as a weekend project on this food blog. And so I got bageling.

The first step to bagels is to make the sponge:

Appetizing, isn't it?

Next, you make the dough by adding more flour and mixing. And then kneading like heck for 10 minutes.  That's right. 10 whole minutes. Aka the longest 10 minutes of your life. Don't skimp! I caution you that your arm may become numb. Don't worry. Just switch arms. I figured that out at minute 9. If only I had that revelation at minute 5. My right arm hurt for 2 days. But it was worth it.

Then comes the weighing and shaping. And that's it! You're done for the night. The bagels go in the fridge to retard. This is where they develop all their wonderful bagel flavor. You can retard the bagels for up to 2 days. If you have the patience and refrigerator space, I am infinitely jealous.

Day 2 is the fun part. This is the boiling, topping and baking day!

Boiling the bagels in baking soda and water give the bagels their lovely brown color. It's also what gives the bagels their nice crust and chew.

As soon as the bagels are done boiling, immediately sprinkle them with toppings.

Usual suspects for bagel toppings. Except maybe the crushed red peppers.

And finally after all the proofing and kneading and boiling, your bagels are ready to bake! Finally!!

They are perfectly delicious right out of the oven. So chewy (if you're into chewy, as I am) and crusty and bagel-y. I've been eating them all week long.

And not just for breakfast. Bagels also make for a quick dinner with eggs and asparagus (from the Barefoot Contessa).

Even though I found the recipe on another site, I ended up going with this recipe here. I realize both sites used the same source (Peter Reinhart), but the recipe on the second site was more detailed.

Making a Monkey Cake

Last week, I took the most inspiring cake baking and decorating class and after two nights of diligent weighing, frosting and rolling, I walked out with this little guy.

Isn't he so so cute?? It's hard to believe that he started out as a bowl filled with layers of vanilla buttermilk cake and mounds of Italian meringue buttercream. But he did. And I'm glad because it made him all the more delicious.

Cake class, besides filling, was so educational! Here are a few a-ha! moments I had:

1. The "butter" in buttercream is no joke. This frosting is essentially all butter. Like 1 pound of it for a surprisingly modest amount of frosting. But boy is it good stuff.

2. Butter really does make everything better. Complete fact. Between the frosting and the cake, we must have used at least 6 sticks of butter. I don't think I have ever made anything with such shameless use of butter, but this could be why none of my cakes turn out as tasty as the one we made in class. The lesson here is to always use more butter.

3. Bakers are really strong. If you've ever seen a baker and wondered why they weren't a million pounds, its because they spend their day mixing and lifting and rolling pastries. Exhausting stuff. I could hardly lift up the little KitchenAid bowl to the table or flip my cake over. And don't even get me started on rolling out the fondant. Butter is heavy, and bakers are strong. Does that mean butter makes you strong?

I just realized all my revelations are about butter. The things I do for a monkey cake.

Getting Old(er)

About this time last night, I had a massive headache.  Not like one of those little in-the-back-of-your-head headaches either.  This was one of those throbbing ones that you think should have gone away 15 minutes ago since you took 2 Advil.  And the worst part is that this was a post-drinking headache.  The kind that you should get after countless drinks and indiscriminate shots and bad decisions.  But really, it was after a couple shots of vodka, a Coors Light and 1 vodka 7-Up and a basket of chicken tenders and fries. 

A couple years ago, I wouldn't even consider that above mentioned run down as "drinking", but there I was sprawled out on the couch last night wondering why I agreed to drink warm vodka in the afternoon.  I proceeded to lament to my sister, my younger sister, but she quickly stopped me, saying that she didn't want to hear about what it's like being old.  I told her about my drinking and bad eating habits that day, and how I was detoxing myself on water and veggies.

And then I told her when I kneeled down, my legs hurt.  Hopefully that's another side effect of the alcohol...and not age.

Crumbs

So the last time I was talking about the cupcake craze, I was telling you how I was over it.  And how I've only had one overpriced cupcake that really made me want to take another bite.  I'm here to say that I was wrong, but happily so since this totally awesome cupcake bakery is right in LA.

I heard about Crumbs as I was food researching NY.  And it sounded amazing.  The flavors were so inventive!  And they even had flavors based on candy! Like Reece's Peanut Butter Cup! Yum!  But as anyone that has been to NY will tell you, there are simply not enough meals in a day to eat every amazing taste the city has to offer.  It's just not possible.  Sniff.  Needless to say, that while I saw the Crumbs shop, we were just too stuffed silly after our lunch at Hale and Hearty Soup to eat another bite.

But as it turns out, Crumbs is not only in NY, and is in fact here in California!  And I was lucky enough to be the recipient of one of their heavenly cupcakes.

Coconut cupcake!

These are totally amazing.  The crumb texture is fluffy and light and not too sweet.  And the frosting is creamy and soft.  Not like the unnaturally hardened buttercreams you may find at other cupcake shops.  And because the cupcake was so light, it didn't feel like a heavy snack.  Absolutely the perfect cupcake!

 Crumbs

Macarons

If I'm going to spend $5 on a portable dessert, I'd take a macaron over a cupcake any day.  Frosting, especially in equal amounts of cake, just isn't my thing.  Macarons have just a slick of jam or buttercream sandwiched between 2 light and chewy cookies, and they come in tons and tons of flavors.  Plus, they're cute.  Looks definitely count.  But perhaps most importantly, I can eat more than one.  And after having  the big mama of all macarons from Laduree in Paris and from a tiny macaron shop in Nice, I'm hooked. Both of which were hand carried all the way from France for me by my mom, by the way.  Thanks Mom!!

Surprisingly, I have made quite a few cupcakes, but not a single macaron.  I have made other cookie sandwiches, but I try to limit those.  I feel like eating two cookies at once with a filling is a little much.  I usually like to have my cookies by the pair, but if I eat two sandwich cookies, that's 4 cookies!  Hence the dilemma.

Macarons are different.  There's no butter or oil or shortening.  They are basically little chewy meringue cookies.  And they're flourless.  And there's almonds!  Healthy, right?  I think so.  Pratically health food status, if you ask me.  But while I've always enjoyed them, I've never really had much motivation to make them.  They seem too fussy.  Whisking egg whites.  Folding.  Piping.  Cooling. Sandwiching.  Too many dishes.  I prefer the single bowl chocolate chip cookies that involve scooping, dropping and eaten immediately out of the oven.

But at the risk of being a one trick pony, I buckled down and made me some chocolate macarons.  I blitzed the almonds in the food processor with the powdered sugar and cocoa powder.  Very important to do these altogether, as I found out.  Blitzing the almonds by themselves long enough will inevitably give you almond butter in no time.  And I whipped the egg whites with sugar.  So far so good.  And then came the piping.  I don't have the patience for piping.  And I think it wastes precious cookie batter.  I estimate that at least 3 cookies are lost in the pastry bag.  Cookie batter is a terrible thing to waste.  So I scooped them with my teeny-tinyest cookie scoop.  Apparently, it was not teeny tiny enough because my macarons baked up huge!

They look like whoopie pies!  The tops crackled slightly.  Not sure why.  Maybe over whipped egg whites.  And worst of all, most of them didn't have their little "feet".  I think maybe only the ones that baked first on the upper third rack grew some "feet".

See?  This one was ok.  Still big though.

So they were macarons for Paul Bunyan.  Despite their seemingly non-natural size, they tasted ok.  I'll have to try them again.  Maybe there is something to this piping business after all.

Happy New Year!

Every year at Christmas, I make my annual migration back to Maui.  And this year, insteading of flying straight back to LA, I took a little detour to Lake Tahoe!

Bye bye Maui!  I like flying out of Maui in the morning because you can see the sunrise and the volcano from the air.

Hello Tahoe!  Well, Reno actually.  There was snow on my bag!  Snow!!

We flew into Reno and drove down to Tahoe and drove through possibly the most snow I have ever seen.  Literally, the roads were covered in ice and snow and it was freezing!  But not as cold as NY.  Thankfully.

But the snow was so wonderful and fun (as long as you're not driving in it).  And perhaps best of all, it was so soft and pillowy!  I would literally step and then have snow up to my knees.  This also meant that the snow was the absolute perfect landing for the occassional (or frequent) fall when snowboarding.

Look at all those snow covered trees!

I recently started snowboarding a few years ago, and it's been an ongoing learning process.  This was also my first time snowboarding since last season...so some re-learning was needed before I was on my way.  The good news is that I can finally go down on my left side...previously, I liked to switch sides depending on which direction I needed to go.  And the soft snow made falling much more enjoyable.  However, the little rain cloud situation is that I did have a minor meltdown on the mountain!  It just gets overwhelming sometimes, but my skills really improved post meltdown. 

I was pretty sore after 2 days of going up the mountain.  It was literally the most snowboarding I've ever done in my life!  According to calculations, we did at least  one third of the mountain, and I even saw the Nevada side!  So by day 3, I decided to take a break and make a snowman. 

My first snowman!  I had no idea how to make a snowman, so I googled.  It was amazing how many how-to snowman guides are out there!  I first tested the snow for "packability", and then started rolling away until I got a completed Twiggy.  Took me 1.5 hours.  But totally worth it.  I even gave him a pinecone moustache.

Later that day, we also went sledding at a hill near some houses.  Sledding is really fun!  Although, I think I'll wear my goggles next time.  At one point, the snow from my sled flew up on my face until I couldn't see and I had to emergency crash land.  Yay for soft snow!