Happy New Year Cupcakes!

These are my Happy New Year Cupcakes, although you can make them any time of the year. I've made these many times. People will love love love the vanilla orange frosting.

Chocolate Cupcakes

12 TB unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 TSP pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup sour cream
2 TB brewed coffee
1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 TSP baking soda
½ TSP salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars with hand mixer. Then add the eggs 1 at a time, and add the vanilla. Mix until fully combined. In another bowl, combine buttermilk, sour cream, and coffee. Then in another bowl, mix flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Then add buttermilk mixture and flour mixture to butter/sugar/eggs in large bowl. Add in increments until everything is fully combined.

Use 1/4 measuring cup to scoop batter into cupcake pans. This will make about 22 – 24 cupcakes. Cook for 18 – 20 minutes.

Vanilla Orange Frosting

3 cups confectioner's sugar
1 stick of unsalted butter, softened
1 TSP vanilla
1/4 cup heavy cream, regular milk works too
1/2 cup orange marmalade


Butter needs to be softened and then creamed by itself in a bowl with hand mixer. Add sugar and beat with hand mixer. Stream in heavy cream until frosting forms. It won't take much liquid. Then beat in orange marmalade

*The cupcakes must be cool when you start frosting them, otherwise the frosting will melt.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups all purpose flour
2 TSP baking powder
1/2 TSP baking soda
1 TSP sugar
1/2 TSP salt
1 stick of cold unsalted butter, sliced into 16 pieces
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg

Mix dry ingredients in food processor. Add cold butter, and pulse about 8 -10 times.

Then add 3/4 cup buttermilk until a dough forms. Try not to mix too much.

Pour out onto a clean surface and form a ball. Roll out dough to 1/4" thickness. Flip over a glass to cut out the shapes. You don't need a special biscuit cutter. Use a glass that has a diameter between 3" - 3 1/2".

This dough will make 6 biscuits.

Place biscuits on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Beat egg and brush tops with egg wash.

Place in 450 degree oven for 10 - 12 minutes.

You can make the biscuits the night before. Just place on parchment-lined cookie sheet and put in fridge. Brush with egg wash right before you pop in the oven.

I made these lovelies on Christmas morning. My husband and I woke at 5:45 AM Christmas morning and drove 300 miles to Connecticut. Being very brilliant, I cooked up some sausage that morning too, and stuffed them into the biscuits.

It was a wonderful driving treat.

Next year, I hope to be enjoying them in my house Christmas morning.

It's the most wonderful cookie of the year . . . .Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies

I ran across a version of this recipe on a cooking blog called the Smitten Kitchen, http://smittenkitchen.com/, and it's my new favorite cookie of all time. It's buttery, crispy, sweet and salty. YUM. It's not possible to eat one, you must have two or three at a time, think Cookie Monster.

This recipe got me third place at my office bake-off, but I was robbed. I should have gotten first.



1 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
14 TB unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
8 oz good-quality white chocolate, chopped up
1/2 tsp kosher salt plus 1/4 tsp for sprinkling


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and the 1/2 tsp salt in a medium bowl.

In another bowl, beat together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add in eggs and vanilla until combined. Slowly add in flour mixture and mix until just blended. Add in oats and chocolate until incorporated.

Spoon up a large tablespoon of dough and roll it into a ball, repeat for remaining dough. Press down on each ball to slightly flatten and sprinkle a flake or two of fancy salt on each cookie. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Makes 24 - 30 cookies, it all depends on how much cookie dough you eat :)

Holiday Dinner: Moroccan Chicken?

You may think Moroccan Chicken is an unusual choice for holiday entertaining, and I agree it's not your all-American traditional dish, but it shares many of the same flavors that you find at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It's savory, sweet, colorful and finger-licking good!

My family doesn't have a lot of standing holiday traditions, which provides a perfect opportunity for me to experiment with dishes. I made this dish recently for an impromptu gathering in Connecticut of my husband, my mother, and my brothers. It was a big hit! Even my brother Greg liked it, and he's a very suspicious eater.

8 chicken thighs (bone-in, skin on)
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Juice of two lemons
1 TB ginger grated
2 garlic cloves grated
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
1 cup green olives pitted
1 cup dried apricots (hydrated: pour boiling water over apricots, let sit for 8 mins, and then drain)
1 finely chopped onion

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Place chicken on baking sheet, season lightly with salt/pepper and put in the oven.

Mix honey, oil, lemon juice, ginger, garlic, cumin, coriander, paprika, cayenne pepper, pepper and salt, and set aside.

Sauté 1 onion in butter until soft, add above mixture, olives and apricots and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and keep warm on stove. When the chicken has cooked for about 30 minutes in oven brush tops with a little bit of the sauce. Cook for another 15 minutes or until the skins start to crisp.

Once the chicken is done, pour olive and apricot sauce over top.

Serves 4. Goes great with couscous.

Christmas with Lord Baltimore

**I'm just gonna throw this out there...if you are a vegetarian, you might want to go ahead and skip this one. You're bound to be apalled by the affection lavished on beef in this particular post. Carnivores, read on!**

Whew! Where has the year gone? I feel like I just got used to writing "08" on my checks and here we are with just days left before we hit 2009. While I do feel like Thanksgiving was yesterday, it seems I now have about 45 minutes to finish my Christmas shopping, so I guess it's time to go ahead and plan Christmas dinner.

Though I know many families do a repeat of Thanksgiving for their Christmas feast, my own dear mom tired of slogging her way through that whole shebang twice in one month well before I was born. The down side? Her lovely sausage & mushroom turkey stuffing comes but once a year. The up side? When the turkey went, she ushered in decades of sumptuous, unadulterated roasted beef. Truth be told, with turkey day only a memory to all of me but my distended waistline, Christmas dinner is my very favorite celebration meal of the year.

If you're thinking to yourself "Roast beef? So what?" I'd like you to hush your mouth right this instant, buster. I'm talking New York Strip roast. Yes, that's right...picture if you will, the cut of beef from whence comes my very favorite steak, the New York Strip. 5 or 6 pounds of it. Mmmmm. Seasoned simply and roasted, this cut makes the perfect - although I think underrated - holiday roast.

But the fun doesn't stop with the giant New York Strip. No. Mom took it the extra mile and, in a nod to my father's sliver of British heritage, she brought in the Yorkshire Pudding. If the word 'pudding' makes you think Jell-O, scrub your brain right now and embrace the Contintental understanding of the word. I'm referring to a delicious, savory bread-ish treat derived from popover batter and drippings from your roast. A brief history: It was invented in Yorkshire, England, the largest count of Great Britain, and it was intended to stretch the best part of the meal - beef - by carrying its flavor (read: fat & juices) into another vastly less-expensive component of the meal. Whenever I think of it, I can't help but assume that this is what the Queen Mum, Charles, Camilla, Wills and Harry are supping on every Christmas.

The thing is, we're totally not particularly British (I fully expect my mom to call me out on this...I might even be making up Dad's British roots), but Yorkshire Pudding is a really lovely holiday accompaniment and it just feels romantic and Old World to me...rustic and tradition-laden and well, scrumptious, like bread if it was made of equal parts flour and beef. Best part? Couldn't be easier. Plus, as a special bonus, it is yet another meal component destined for gravy which I also adore drizzled liberally over all of my holidays.

So, all we are saying is give Yorkshire Pudding a chance. Throw on your best cockney accent, have a gin, watch Sherlock Holmes or James Bond or Mr. Bean or some such nonsense on the telly, and make a lovely roast with some popovers. You'll like it so much that you'll leave the turkey at Thanksgiving and, if you're anything like my family, you'll bounce that ham right out of Easter dinner (no, not your brother...the big, spiral-cut Easter Ham, silly) and have the roast again.


Roasted New York Strip Roast with Yorkshire Pudding

Roast:
1 5-6 pound New York Strip Roast, fat trimmed (by your butcher) to about 1/4"
liberal doses of kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper for seasoning**

Yorkshire Pudding:
1/2 c. pan drippings from roast

1 c. sifted flour
3/4 tsp. salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 c. milk
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 450. Place roast in roasting pan fitted with a rack and season the top (fat side up) liberally with kosher salt and cracked pepper. Resist the urge to do any additonal seasoning. We're going old school on this one.

Typically, a roast of this sort and this size should be roasted for about 15 - 20 minutes at a higher initial temperature (450) and then the heat should be reduced by about 100 degrees to 350 to finish roasting for about another 35 minutes for medium rare. Roast should be allowed to rest, uncovered (it'll keep cooking) and unmolested (quit poking at it and slicing off little slivers for your own greedy purposes, you early-eater you) for at least 20 minutes.

While roast is resting, turn the heat back up to 425 and remove 1/2 cup of drippings and goodness from roasting pan and pour into an 8x8 pyrex dish, or spoon a generous tablespoon or so into 9 regular muffin tins. Place dish (or muffin tin) into 425 degree oven for about 2 minutes to heat drippings. Remove from oven and pour popover batter (flour through veg. oil, mixed until smooth) into dish (or equally into muffin tins) and return to oven to bake for 35 - 40 (less for muffins) minutes until pudding is gloriously puffed up and a bit golden. Cut into squares and serve along sliced roast with gravy and maybe some brussel sprouts or peas & mashed potatoes to your impressed and grateful guests.

Merry Christmas!

Interview with Lars Rusins of Baltimore Foodies

Recently, I had the honor of meeting (over email) Lars Rusins. He is owner and founder of Baltimore Foodies, an organization that offers its members opportunities to take part in dinner parties at locally owned resaturants.

He believes in "good food, drinks and fun". Isn't that wonderful! I belive in the same, although I would like to add that I also believe in smiling and laughing. They go well with good food, drinks and fun.

I sent Lars a few questions about his eating habits. Here they are, with his answers:

What's your favorite meal to cook at home?

I'm a guy, must cook over fire. Love grilling, especially beer can chicken

What's your favorite meal to eat out?

I always want to get something I can't make, or make well at home. "Favorite Meal" is tough to quantify, it's more about wanting a certain cuisine, or a certain type of venue

What's your favorite cocktail?

Vodka on the rocks, potato vodka preferred, with a lemon twist. On a side note: I don't take fruit in my beer. I take my vodka on the rocks, and my tequila straight.

What's your favorite meal to eat for lunch?

Three Lengua Tacos from the Taco Truck in front of the Church on Broadway in Fells Point

What's your favorite breakfast food? (Feel free to offer a list of items. I wouldn't be able to say just one thing.)

Eggs, and coffee, regular, maybe some buttered white toast, and/or some sausage/bacon

At the moment, where are your favorite places to go for breakfast, lunch, drinks and dinner in Baltimore?

Many favorites, again, depends upon the mood.

Italian (lunch or dinner) – Sotto Sopra, best in town, I have been going there since they opened over ten years ago

Sushi (primarily lunch) – Minato, love their new location and Tammy and Alex do a great job

French (lunch or dinner) – Petit Louis, excellent, again, been going there since they opened

Pizza (lunch) – Iggies, get me an Alice please

Fun time (dinner) - Jack's Bistro, fun food and people, never disappoints

Oysters (lunch) – Ryleigh's, Patrick is working wonders here

Pad Thai (lunch) - Thairish

Fish & Chips (lunch) – Mick O'Shea's, nobody does them better, and I have tried all of them

Quick Lunch & Beer – Cross Street Market

Overall Experience (dinner) - Woodberry Kitchen – Probably doing some of the best work in town right now

Besides our blog, what's other food/cooking sites do you visit?

Elizabeth's Large's blog, dining@large

The Most Wonderful Cranberry Sauce Ever

This recipe is adapted from my hero, Ina Garten. I made it for this Thanksgiving, and it was a huge hit. I am still a fan of the canned cranberry sauce -- I am no snob -- but I recommend giving your guests a choice. My mother-in-law had both kinds at her Thanksgiving table.

1 (12-ounce) bag of fresh cranberries, rinsed
2 cups sugar
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and chopped
1 orange, zest grated and juiced
1 cup golden raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts

Cook the cranberries, sugar, and 1 cup of water in a saucepan over low heat for about 5 minutes, or until the skins pop open. Add the apple, orange zest, and juice and cook for 15 more minutes. Remove from the heat and add the raisins and nuts. Let cool, and serve chilled.