Liz Denys

Last September, I baked a grumpy fuzzball cake for SIPB. That grumpy fuzzball cake was frosted primarily with rolled fondant, a dough-like frosting that is made with gelatin, food-grade glycerine, and the usual frosting suspects. But I don't love the taste or texture of fondant. And I really hated working with it.

So when I decided to make another grumpy fuzzball cake for SIPB, I opted to use only buttercream:

I like to think it turned out much better than its predecessor. The random fuzz looks more cohesive and even grumpier, the cake is rounder (okay, that has nothing to do with my frosting choice and everything to do with the fact that it's a five layer cake), the eyes look and cut better in buttercream than white chocolate, and the frosting tasted better because it was texturally lighter (and made from butter). The contrast of the plain, smooth white shoes with the chaotic black fuzzball turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.

What all went into this grumpy fuzzball? Five differently-sized sour cream chocolate cake rounds, two miniature white cake loafs, raspberry filling, about 2 quarts of black dark chocolate buttercream frosting, about a quart of vanilla buttercream frosting, and more than a handful of hours of labor. But completely worth it.

I made the graphic with the GIMP, and the typeface used is Helvetica Neue.

Remember how I was craving chocolate chip cookies not too long ago? Well, the ricotta chocolate shavings cookies didn't satisfy that craving for long - probably because I was craving deep dark chocolate in a rich buttery dough.

Normally, I make chewy chocolate chip cookies that I expect to stay moist for a couple of days, which is a couple of days longer than the expected amount of time before they disappear. But yesterday morning I woke up wanting something with more of a crunch - and the comforting scent of freshly baked cookies to help me wake up.

So I took my normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, increased the sugars and decreased the flour and number of eggs. Due to these changes, the dough looked and felt significantly less firm than a typical chocolate chip cookie. But this softness helps the cookies spread so that they bake thin and crispy, so whatever you do, don't chill the dough! If you do, they won't melt down and spread as evenly, which results in burnt edges.

Crispy thin chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter softened (you shouldn't use melted anyway, but you really cannot cut corners and use it here as dough will definitely not come together)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I actually used vanilla bean paste)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon (I love cinnamon in chocolate chip cookies, but if you're not used to it, I'd use a lesser amount to start)
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 2/3 cups good quality dark (yes, darker than semisweet is my favorite) chocolate chips

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. This temperature matters oh so much, and your oven really needs be preheated.
2. Cream together butter and sugars until light.
3. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.
4. Add flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix until well combined.
5. Fold in chocolate chips by hand so that they are evenly distributed.
6. Place golf ball sized balls of dough on a parchment lined cookie sheet. These cookies do spread, so you probably only want 6 to a normal cookie sheet. Do not chill this batter first - it will spread out too slowly if you do. Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown on the top rack only. Rotate halfway through if your oven does not heat very evenly--these cookies have a very high butter and sugar to flour ratio and are thus very temperature sensative. Let cookies rest for a couple minutes before transferring to a wire rack for cooling.

Yields 30 three-inch cookies that are rich, thin, and crispy.

Meet Bernice:

Bernice is a Hobart-motored thirty-two and a half year old KitchenAid stand mixer. My grandma named her. She's a slightly green lemon chiffon color reminiscent of the end of the 70's with which, despite all odds, I've become quite enamored. She's even older than me. But like anyone reaching a seasoned old age, she occasionally encounters health problems. Her base wasn't gripping the mixing bowls - a task essential to her functioning well - like it used to:

As Bernice has always been a trusty stand mixer, not to mention her Hobart motor (I am so, so lucky I have one of the models with one of these) still works like a charm after over thirty years, I consulted her manual to find that I needed to replace the following:

But sadly, they no longer make the screw cap kit with part number 4162529. It has been replaced by part number 4163032, a screw cap kit that looks, well, a little bit different:

The newer screw cap kit is just a few millimeters too large for my trusty old K45. So I called KitchenAid support asking if they still had replacement part 4162529, and they replied that they didn't anymore. Confused, I asked if I should be able to replace Bernice's screw cap kit - "Yes, of course you can. The newer screw cap kit should fit." I explained to them that it was too large, and they told me to try hammering it in with a rubber mallet. After twenty minutes of multiple people attempting to hammer it in, sometimes even with some of the screws part of the way in for extra leverage, no success. I called them back, and they were still dumbfounded that it didn't work, and just kept telling me to keep trying. No apologies, no "we'll look into it." I guess Whirlpool-era KitchenAid just didn't intend for my stand mixer to last forever as the wonderful Hobart-era KitchenAid had promised.

This story has some small amount of a happy ending, though. No, I couldn't find part 4162529 anywhere despite combing eBay, replacement parts companies, and anywhere else that might have a lead on the internet. But I did eventually succeed at tightening Bernice's original screw cap kit, which I'll have you know was nothing approaching an easy task. She works like a charm now, and I expect many, many more years to come from her. However, I'm still worried that the day will come when this piece's grip loosens so frequently that it truly be beyond repair because the manufacturer no longer wants to fix it.

I don't blog that much about savory food: savory food for me is even more technique-based than recipe-based, so I find it limiting to discuss one dish because it's a particular combination of techniques on a very particular set of ingredients. But I really enjoyed this particular butternut squash combination, so I'll settle for describing it without measurements.

The above is steamed butternut squash with lightly caramelized onions and red and orange bell peppers with a cinnamon sage brown butter sauce on a bed of arugula, which I assure you sounds much more complicated than it actually is.

It actually started off two nights before as a sauce for fresh sweet potato gnocchi. I'm not completely sure what inspired me to make that combination because it had the failure mode of most gnocchi I want to make: too many vegetables, not enough emphasis on the gnocchi itself. I guess I'm just not one for snarfing down a bowl of pasta on its own because I never manage to feel anywhere between unsatisfied and overstuffed from mostly starch. But then I remade it again precisely the same without the gnocchi and loved it.

Butternut squash with cinnamon sage brown butter

Ingredients:

• Onions, diced
• Olive oil
• Unsalted butter
• Red bell peppers, diced
• Orange bell peppers, diced
• Fresh sage, finely chopped
• Ground cinnamon
• Butternut squash, diced
• Arugula
• Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Fleur de sel or other coarse sea salt

Preparation:

1. In a small saucepan, lightly caramelize the onions in a little olive oil and butter until a pale brown.
2. Add more butter to the saucepan, and cook on medium heat until browned. Watch carefully to avoid burning the butter.
3. Lower the heat and add red and orange bell peppers, sage, and cinnamon. Cook until flavors meld then remove from heat.
4. Boil or steam the butternut squash in another pan until tender. (You could also pan roast the the butternut squash in the sauce over low to medium heat, but it will require more butter than cooking the squash separately.)
5. Layer arugula, butternut squash, and onion pepper brown butter sauce. Grate Parmigiano Reggiano cheese over the top and finish with black pepper and fleur de sel.