SarahR made Beet Cupcakes!
Camera phone pictures clearly demonstrate that though beet cake batter is pepto-bismol purple/pink (!) and beet cake is not red.
Batter is purple/pink:
Baked cakes are brown:
All iced up:
Recipe review, via Gchat:
5:59 PM me: were the muffins yummy?
6:16 PM Sarah: fine–i prefer carrot cake, though.
I was eating the leftovers of raw beet slaw along with carrot cake for lunch and thought, if beet cake exists, it must have an awesome color.
Unfortunately, when I turned to the internet, I learned that’s not the case. According to this recipe from Cooking Light, beet cake can indeed be made just like carrot cake and the batter is bright red but the cake bakes up to a golden brown:
From Cooking Light
This is really disappointing. Shredding that many beets would be way too messy to justify a golden brown cake.
Travel food – Fennel Confit and Caponata (though for traveling I didn’t use my fancy bento box)
First – you may have noticed that Salty Week didn’t happen. I overestimated my ability/desire to post while making a poster for a meeting, attending that meeting, and attending two graduate school interviews. Lesson possibly learned. Salty week is still to come.
To make up for it, I want to share some tips about eating and traveling from my past year of travel. (According to TripIt + mental calculation of road trips in the past year, I’m at 30,000+ miles. I need to go carbon offset shopping.)
Like Caponata, fennel and garlic confit is a regular on my recipe rotation. It’s flexible with what I have in the kitchen (garlic can be replaced or supplemented with shallots or onions) and can be made more or less healthy or vegan by modifying the butter and oil quantities. And once I’ve got some in the fridge, with some toasted pita it’s the perfect satisfying snack or part of dinner.
Since I have been making it, I have modified it slightly from the original recipe from The Kitchn. (If you look at the original recipe, the fennel fronds burnt and the thin lemon slices resulted in a bitter confit so I dropped them.)
Recipe and pictures after the jump…
My formative cooking years included a vegetarian coop and an Armenian roommate. From the two, one basic cooking strategy I have developed is: buy fresh vegetables, chop them up, saute them with whatever you have around, add canned tomatoes. Caponata falls into this strategy and having a recipe taught me to add red wine vinegar and put the tomatoes in later than I would have otherwise. The result is very tasty.
The recipe is really easy and can be modified to your heart’s/taste’s desire. I only faltered at toasting pine nuts. I am a terrible toaster. If anyone has any no-fail toasting tips, send them along. To quote a Food Network chef, “toasting takes as long as it takes you to forget that you’re toasting.” Which is exactly my experience both in the oven and on the stove.
Pictures and recipe after the jump…
Salty on your taste buds, how salt brings out other flavors, salting to taste, double salt licorice. All before I go to Salt Lake City on Thursday. (A coincidence, I swear.)
To start you off:
Salts of the Earth, an article about sea salts.
My favorite fancy salt:
Lavender Salt from Eatwell Farm
As The Flavor Bible describes it, taste is “what is perceived by the taste buds.” In common use, “taste” also includes what is we perceive through our noses while eating, but we’ll start by just addressing taste in the mouth. In the mouth, most taste buds are on the tongue (though taste buds have also been found throughout the mouth). Taste buds are visible to the naked eye by using a mirror and sticking out your tongue. (They’re the little bumps.)
This is a diagram of the inside of a taste bud:
From Wikipedia Images
While food is in your mouth, it is broken down by chewing and saliva. Some molecules find their way into the taste pore (labeled on the top of image). Read the rest of this entry »
Greek Panzanella Salad
My mom and I made this tasty bread salad from House Beautiful’s Ask the Barefoot Contessa column last night. (The recipe itself is not on House Beautiful’s website yet.)
Review = Yum. I love bread salad, specifically, all the different textures and how the flavors soak into the bread. This Greek version had a nice balance of crunch (cucumbers and bread), sweet (tomatoes, bell peppers), salty (olives), and tangy (onions, dressing). Also it assuaged my guilt for not finishing really good Ciabatta from Bread and Cie.
Even with the simplest of recipes I often mess something up and this was no exception. Read the rest of this entry »
eating journal and scientific exercise
eating / science / culture Recipe Radar music about science