Wayne: So, if you had to pick just one thing to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Me: Is that like one really specific thing or a genre?
Wayne: Like what?
Me: Meat.
Wayne: What kind of meat?
Me: Yummy meat?
Wayne: You have to pick one thing.
Me: Ok, curry.
Wayne: What kind of curry?
Me: I can’t answer this question. What would you pick?
Wayne: Probably stew because it has vegetables and stuff in it.
Me: What kind of stew?
Wayne:: Beef. With bread.
Me: There’s no bread in stew.
Wayne: And a glass of milk.
Me: Ok, now you’re cheating.
Wayne: Well, you didn’t even answer the question.
Me: As any teacher will tell you, there is definitely a difference between cheating and not answering the question.

I couldn’t pick a fruit I’d want to eat exclusively either – I like too many! The first strawberries of spring, ripe peaches and berries in summer, and bodywarming mikans (aka satsumas, clementines, and tangerines) and pears in winter. Apples would probably be the strongest contender; Honeykrisp, Jonagold, Granny Smith, Fuji – I’ll snarf down pretty much any apple as long it’s not a mealy Macintosh from school lunches of yore.

This is dessert does a good job of accommodating people with food allergies/sensitivities – by default, it is low-sugar as well as egg, wheat and gluten free. You can leave out the sugar entirely or substitute honey for it. You could also also omit the butter and use apple sauce and a bit of vegetable oil instead as well for milk allergic folks.

The quantities in this recipe will fit neatly into 2 IKEA Smarta dishes. Double it for a 9×9 baking dish or triple it for a 13×9 baking dish.

Ingredients

• 2 medium hard apples
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger (or 1 teaspoon dried)
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
• water
• 1/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• pinch of salt
• 2 teaspoons cold unsalted butter, cut into bits

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Peel and core apples. Cut into thin slices and place in a bowl. Grate ginger and add to apples, along with ginger, half the cinnamon, nutmeg and lemon juice. Lay in dishes – the arrangement is up to you. Go for the fancy spiral pattern or try the “leave ‘em where they fall” Jackson Pollock method. Sprinkle with about a teaspoon of water. Place dishes on a baking sheet, place that baking sheet on the center rack of the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until apples are crisp-tender.
2. Toss oats, remaining half of cinnamon, salt, and sugar in a bowl until combined. Cut the butter into little pieces and mix in – the goal here is to create spice encrusted butter blobs. Sprinkle topping evenly over apples and bake again until a nice golden brown, about 25-30 minutes.
3. Let cool slightly before serving. Keeps well in the fridge for a few days (I can honestly vouch for it keeping well for 2 days after baking. I imagine 3-4 days would also be okay but I can’t keep the researchers out of it long enough to test the data.)

1. The main ingredient had to be chocolate.
2. It had to be baked in Smarta dishes.

Brownies seemed obvious from the start. I imagined them as little chocolate wheels cut into adorable wedges, served on tiny dishes and possibly sprinkled with powdered sugar or drizzled with caramel. Or perhaps an artful sprinkling of nuts on top.

Side note: Like nuts but live with someone who doesn’t? Put the nuts on top of your baked goods so that, when your nut-hating friend/partner/spouse starts whining about how much they don’t like nuts, you can just scrape them off and add them to your own nut pile. Be sure to follow up with a genuine gesture of gratitude for harmonious brownie ingestion.

I have to say, until embarking on this epic journey, I had NEVER messed up a batch of brownies. But I completely destroyed two batches in figuring out this recipe. The first time, a horribly undercooked gooey mass lurked underneath a gorgeous smooth crust. The second time, after knocking a proffered piece on his desk first, my boyfriend refused to even try to bite into them.

The third time, however, was the charm. When I pulled them from the oven, they had actually puffed up and over the edge of the Smarta but they deflated thereafter into lovely, dense, rich things that I honestly didn’t want to give away. I HOPE YOU APPRECIATE MY SACRIFICE, KELLI SHEWMAKER ;)

I adapted this recipe on Epicurious, mainly modifying amounts specifically for Smarta dishes. Lastly, I decided to call them “wedgies” because of their shape.

Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 3 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 cup coarsely nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc.)

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease 2 Smarta dishes* with Crisco, butter, etc. and set aside. Place butter and chocolate in a bowl nesting in a saucepan with water. Bring water to a boil and melt slowly, stirring until chocolate & butter mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool.
2. Beat eggs and sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in chocolate mixture, vanilla and salt. Add flour and mix until just blended.
3. Notes for nut fans: If you want nuts in your brownies, fold them in and pour batter into greased pans. Alternatively, you can sprinkle the nuts artfully across the surface of the brownies. This greatly diminishes the amount of heretical nut-hating during brownie consumption as nut-haters can easily pick the nuts off the top.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until knife comes out mostly clean. Let dishes cool down completely before brownie removal. To remove, cut into brownies into 6 tiny adorable wedges and remove gently from the dish. Serve only to the deserving.

• 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/8 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In food processor, combine oats, all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, salt, and baking soda and pulse until oats are coarsely chopped in a food processor. Move to a large bowl.
3. Beat butter and brown sugar until fluffy with a whisk or electric mixer, 2 to 3 minutes. Add egg, honey, and vanilla and beat until smooth, about 1 minute. Add to oat mixture and mix gently until incorporated. Stir in chocolate and ginger.
4. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough about 2 inches apart onto baking sheets. Bake for cookies have a nice golden color and edges are lookin’ crispy (about 15 minutes in my oven). Cool on cookie sheets for several minutes before transferring to final cooling spot. Once fully cooled, store in a closed container, ideally separating each layer of cookies with wax paper.

Postprandial Notes: This recipe is pretty closely based on this one from Epicurious. I really like these cookies – rich, satisfying and gingery.

• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 5 apples, preferably a baking variety
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, straight from the fridge

Canon EOS 5D with ST-E2 transmitter. 180 sec @ f/6.7, ISO 200. 580EXII @1/8th power bounced off back wall.

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 450°F. Peel & core the apples and cut into thin slices. Grease a 9×9 baking dish or similarly sized pie pan (or 3 small IKEA baking dishes). Combine brown sugar and spices in large bowl. Add apple slices, toss until evenly coated and put in baking dish/pie pan. See apples with coating and without in topmost pic.
2. Mix flour, sugar and butter in medium bowl. Using a food processor or your fingertips to blend ingredients until they resemble a coarse meal. (It is worth fighting the urge to just plunge your hands into the bowl and knead that dough into a textureless, sticky blob. It’s great fun but doesn’t produce great pastry.) Spread flour mixture evenly over apples. See pic above for example.
3. Bake on oven middle rack for 20 mins. Reduce oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking until the crust is golden brown and apples are bubbly, about 30 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before serving.

Postprandial Notes: The apple part was a little sweet for me – next time I make this, I will omit the sugar for the apple mixture (and use better quality apples!). I will also make the crisp part in the food processor – I think I made the dough too consistent for a nice crumbly texture. I thought these apples needed a bit of lemon juice for tartness but a nice baking apple might not need it.

You could also definitely experiment with adding walnuts, dried ginger, dried cranberries or raisins, or mixing in other fruit like peaches or rhubarb (ok, not exactly a fruit but…).

Camera Notes: Canon EOS 5D with ST-E2 transmitter. 180 sec @ f/6.7, ISO 200. Background flash: 580EXII @1/8th power and wide angle diffuser. Cutting mat for gobo. Key light: 580EXII, gridded and zoomed to 108mm @1/4th power. White bowls for stand-ins.

Big things have been heralding the arrival of fall as well: kids once flying around the neighborhood on skateboards and bicycles now encumbered by backpacks and school uniforms, the return of kickball to Marie Reed, and the Vogue Fall Fashion issue.

My personal favorite fall herald are apples. If I had to choose a single scent that defined fall and winter, it would be the thick, warm smell of baking apples and cinnamon. I am a complete sucker for recipes that involve apples and will choose apple pie over even the most decadent chocolate lava cake every time.

Stewed apples is a recipe I’ve watched my grandmother make a thousand times. It’s quite easy to make, highly customizable, and only really requires a few ingredients. Truthfully, I rarely measure anything so it’s a bit hard to quantify those ingredients – I thoroughly encourage you to experiment with the spices and amounts you like best.

Ingredients

• 3 apples, peeled and sliced about 1/4″ thick
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• small pieces of lemon rind
• 2/3 cup of water
• optional: 1 tbsp of sugar, 1/2 tsp of ginger, walnuts, raisins, etc.

Preparation

1. Peel and slice the apples. Hard apples suitable for baking are ideal but you can use any apple, really – a softer apple will cook faster.
2. Place the apple slices in a saucepan and add spices, lemon rind and anything else you wish. Add water and stir well to evenly distribute the spices. Cover the saucepan and cook over a low flame for about 20 minutes (check your apples periodically for consistency). If the water cooks down too quickly, add some more.
3. The final consistency should be somewhat less liquid-y than apple pie filling. Slices should be cooked but not completely falling apart. If you wish to reduce/thicken the liquid, remove the lid and increase the heat to medium and cook the apples for a few minutes uncovered.
4. Serve with ice cream, yogurt, whipped cream, sprinkled with granola or enjoy as-is. I prefer them warm but you may like them chilled. Keeps in the fridge for about a week.

Commercial break: If you’re too lazy/busy/etc. to make these on your own, hit up the Florida Avenue Grill sometime for breakfast. You can get apples as a side to their main breakfast courses. Granted, they’re fried but that just ups the addiction factor (for me, anyway).

Camera notes: Canon EOS 5D 1/80 sec @ f/6.7, ISO 200. Canon 580 EXII bounced off back wall at 1/32nd power. Canon 580 EXII zoomed to 105mm & gridded at 1/16th power. Tinfoil draped over a cardboard box for the reflector.

So, when my neighbor brought some peaches over on Monday, I knew I had to act fast. And, by act fast, I mean leave them on the counter until today (Friday).

Brilliant Marketing Idea-Time: a peach timer. Kind of like an egg timer but maybe with some kind of probe to test peach ripeness. Ideally, it could send a Twitter DM just in case you didn’t happen to be home. Perhaps it could be called Tweach.

So I threw together a quick cobbler today. I used whole wheat flour and brown sugar for the crust so it looks a little browner in the pictures than it will if you use white flour and regular sugar (not because of some kind of brilliant art direction on my part, mind you – it’s just what I’ve got on hand, at the moment). The hardest part was slicing the peaches. It’s a dead easy late summer/early fall dessert recipe and highly customizable (add blueberries, blackberries, apples, orange slices, nuts, etc.).

Ingredients

• 5 large peaches
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1/4 cup cold water

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. Slice the peaches thinly in wedges and mix with 1/4 cup of the sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice. Bake this mixture for 10 mins and then remove from the oven.
2. Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix in butter pieces with your hands until it has a similar texture to corn meal. Stir in water until just blended. Alternatively, you can mix the dry ingredients and the butter together in a food processor until cornmeal texture is achieved. Add the water and blend lightly.
3. Using two spoons, drop the batter in scattered spoonfuls over the semi-cooked peaches. Tempted though you may be to even out the mixture or go for an artsy Escher pattern, channel your inner Jackson Pollock and allow the batter to remain where it falls. It will spread and “fluff out” in the oven.
4. Bake battered peaches for 25 minutes (or until the crust is nice and golden brown and the peaches bubbly) and remove from the oven. Tastes best warm.

Recommended chests: Mark Dacascos, David Beckham, and that guy playing the werewolf in the new Twilight movie.. oh, and it must be a shaved chest. Nothing worse than trying to fish a peachskin-hairball out of your teeth…

The combination of tiny baking dishes with a luscious AND easy crust recipe seem to have triggered some kind of fruit tart obsession recently. Although, honestly, I’m about ripe for a new obsession (no pun intended… *snrk) since last year’s exhaustive study of cupcakes.

August is also the perfect month for fruit tarts here in DC – I can’t go to a farmer’s market without being beckoned by pints of sexy, little blueberries, blackberries, raspberries or baskets of swelling, globular peaches and plums, their seductive seams coyly upturned in a come-hither stance.

Of course, I rarely make anything without wondering how it will photograph. Peaches and blueberries seemed like an obvious combination (complimentary colors – orange and blue – instant awesomeness!). Plus they taste good.

Crust

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons ice water

Filling

• 3 good-sized peaches
• 1/2 pint of blueberries
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 375°. Mix the dry ingredients for the crust and put in a food processor. Add butter cubes and pulse until the mixture loses its fine consistency and looks like coarse corn meal. Add water and pulse until the mixture makes moist clumps.
2. Remove the dough from the food processor, roll into a ball and flatten into a disk. Place the disk between two pieces of parchment or wax paper and roll out to a 1/4″ thickness (placing the roll pin above the top piece of paper). Cut a circle about an inch wider in diameter than your pie pan. Gently peel the dough from the paper and place it in the pie pan(s). Let the dough drape over the edge of the pie pan, if you can. If you’re using two small dishes, repeat the process.
3. Slice the peaches, leaving the skins on, and put them in a bowl. Add the blueberries, vanilla and cinnamon. Mix until the slices are well-covered. Pour into the pie pan.
4. Put the pie pan(s) on a cookie sheet and place in the center rack of the oven. Cover loosely with tin foil and bake for 20 minutes. Then, remove the tinfoil and bake for another 25 minutes. Crust should be golden brown and fruit bubbly.
5. Remove from the oven, let cool, and enjoy!

Learning to draw is pretty much as frustrating as learning to walk or learning to read or learning to ride a bike. The trouble is, learning to do anything (and subsequently discovering that you really like doing it and want to get better) is really a continuously ongoing process of making mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes reveal a path towards something really cool and undiscovered. And sometimes they don’t.

Just like today’s picture.

(The recipe, by the way, is much more delicious than this picture indicates. I swear it on a stack of old, treasured comics.)

Mr. Vilppu was full of inspirational things to say when I would bring him my frustrations. One of the best (albeit over-quoted) was something Chuck Jones used to say, which went something like “Every artist has 10,000 bad drawings to make before they make 1 good one. The sooner you get through the bad drawings, the sooner you’re making good ones.”

I myself used to use this quote to remind my English students that making mistakes is not just ok but necessary for success. Of course, it’s a lot easier to say that as a teacher who’s already made the mistake than it is to hear it as a student who’s just made the mistake.

Canon EOS 5D 1/180th sec @f8.0, ISO 200. Main light: LumoPro 120 @ 1/4th power. Key light: 580EX II @ 1/16th power. Tin foil reflector.

I baked the cake in a 9×9 cake pan and planned to serve it as a single layer with icing. I even photographed it that way, using a folded handkerchief as a stand-in for the icing while I got the light just right. For some reason, I decided to do the final photograph as a double layer square cake. I’m generally happy with the light but I think the shape of the cake is just well, WRONG.

A typical triangular piece of cake would have a nice tapered point that the back light could shine through slightly, giving the cake a light, fluffy feel instead of the dense, asphalt-carrot texture it’s got going on now. Time to clear the plate err, slate – can’t serve cake that’s been sitting out under hot studio lights to guests.. that’s just plain rude.

The recipe comes from this recipe on Epicurious. I halved the original recipe, omitted the walnuts, replaced the oil with apple sauce, used on 1/2 cup of sugar, omitted the marmalade spread on the cake below the frosting and made a non-dairy version of the frosting (recipe below).

Non-Dairy Cream Cheese Marmalade Frosting

Ingredients

• 8 oz Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• A heaping 1/4 cup of orange marmalade

Preparation

1. Throw it all in a mixing bowl and mix it with a whisk or a mixer, if you’re lazy or a perfectionist. Slather on cake immediately or refrigerate until firm-ish, put into a pastry bag and pipe frosting on in a delicate basketweave lattice pattern. Eat on small dishes with tea, silver forks and pinky finger extended.
2. Freezes well for longer-term storage. Makes about enough frosting for the top of a 9×9 single layer cake

Canon EOS 5D 1/180th sec @f8.0, ISO 200. Main light: LumoPro 120 @ 1/4th power. Key light: 580EX II @ 1/16th power. Tin foil reflector.

This recipe is based on Bake and Destroy‘s Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes and Chocolate Buttercream. My methodology is a little different (“Wet to dry! Always add wet ingredients to dry!” I hear my grandmother cry…) and I change up the ingredients a bit: I omit the cake flour, add more vanilla and reduce the sugar by 1/4 for Nevitt, and a 1/2 for Wayne. Trust me when I tell you the super, buttery, creamy, sweet frosting more than makes up for it!

Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 325°. You can use cake cups or grease a cupcake pan with Crisco (or shortening of choice).
2. Mix dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl until well combined. Cut the butter in small chunks and mix in until chunks are coated with flour.
3. Mix wet ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Add to dry ingredients (I always hear my grandmother’s voice at this step: “Wet to dry!”) and mix well but not overly thoroughly.
4. Spoon batter into cups. Fill the cups halfway full and you should get 18 smaller cupcakes with a pretty rounded top or fill them 3/4 full and you get 12 larger cupcakes with a subtle muffintop shape.
5. Bake til a cake taster (knife, piece of straw, wire, etc. will do fine) comes out clean, about 20 minutes in my oven.
6. Cool completely before frosting. If you bake directly in the pan, cupcakes will be much easier to remove once cooled.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

• 1 stick o’ butter (8 tbps), at room temperature
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Mix sugar and cocoa powder together in a large mixing bowl with a whisk or sifter or fork, if you’re really lazy (like me!).
2. Add the milk, butter and vanilla. Mix on low speed til evenly combined, then open up the throttle and mix on medium til light and fluffy (about a minute or so). If you think the frosting is too thick, add milk (a tsp at a time) to soften it a bit.
3. Pipe frosting onto cupcakes with a pastry bag (I use this one) or slather ‘em with a healthy dollop. If the cupcakes don’t get eaten immediately, I store them out of the fridge (they seem fine for 3 days) and the frosting in the fridge. Give the frosting up to an hour at room temperature to soften up before frosting. It also keeps fine in the freezer for extended periods.

Make ice cream without 1. milk and 2. an ice cream maker.

Amazingly, neither of these proved to be a real obstacle to making ice cream. As David Lebovitz pointed out on his blog:

People have been making ice cream far longer than the invention of electricity so there’s no reason you can’t make ice cream and sorbets at home without a machine.

A small confession: I am an inveterate label reader. If I think a food has too many ingredients, I won’t buy it. Especially if a lot of those ingredients are things I’ve never used myself (i.e., guar gum, wood esters, tbhq, anything with a number after it or a multi-hyphenated chemical name.) When comparing two items, I will always choose the one with the shorter list of ingredients, unless one of those ingredients is msg or another acronym food product.

That said, my recipe for Coconut Ice Cream is incredibly short and could be even be shorter, depending on your fondness for coconut.

Hey Ma, No Milk! Coconut Ice Cream

• 3 cans of regular (not lite) coconut milk
• 1/3 cup of sugar
• optional:1 tbsp of vanilla

Preparation:

1. Mix it all up nice and smooth with a whisk and pour it into a shallow dish or pyrex pan. A shallow dish isn’t necessary – a large pyrex or metal mixing bowl will work well too but it won’t freeze as fast or as evenly.
2. Place the dish in the freezer and check it every 30-45 minutes. Using a spatula, metal spoon or even a beater set on very low speed, mix the ice cream til smooth. Keep repeating until evenly frozen – about 3-4 hours.
3. Enjoy!