so square

It's so easy to find gifts for friends — the people with whom I have so much in common. It's a pretty safe bet that they'll like the same stuff I like. It's almost a good thing I'm not more well-to-do. If I were, my splurges likely would just junk up my friends' houses with pretty Anthropologie miscellany that nobody really needs but I feel for that moment in the store that they shouldn't live without.

And Dana would own every cute oven mitt that crossed my path. Because remembering that time she had no oven mitt and no choice but to wad up her T-shirt to take cookies out of the oven in our dorm kitchen never stops being funny.

Not to sound like a terrible person, but in a certain selfish way, this gift-picking ease is also kind of a bummer. I had one lovely evening of melting chocolate and cooking caramel with the Baked cookbook before it was wrapped up as a birthday gift and made its exit from my kitchen. Melissa, I will have to come to your house to visit it and gaze at its pictures. Expect for me to do this often. But you'll be there, and you do have a kitchen. So really, maybe it's not such a bummer! I've read that the Sweet & Salty Cake and all its elements are an all-day affair. Get ready.

Getting there. The sugar boils furiously but likes to stay right at about 200 degrees for a long time.

Finally, the soft ball stage!

After my first-ever caipirinha pre-birthday, I came home and made the book's Peanut Butter Crispy Bars to bring to the next night's birthday dinner. I chose it because it wouldn't require a late night of baking (so maybe not the best representation of a book called Baked's contents?), and the bars turned out deliciously. I have to say, I'm most proud of the precise, Deb-worthy corners on these little squares.

Hey, look — turns out she's made them, too!

My only reservation about this recipe is that the bars were unmitigatedly sweet without enough of that contrast you usually get with peanut butter and chocolate. But this could be because I was accidentally heavy-handed with the chocolate that goes in the PB layer. Still, it could benefit from some salt. Maybe flakes sprinkled on top? Or what if you added salted peanuts to the crisp bottom layer? Yum. Melissa, don't be surprised when I come over with candy thermometer in hand.

Peanut Butter Crispy Bars

From Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

For the crispy crust

1 3/4 cups crisped rice cereal

1/4 cup sugar

3 Tbsp. light corn syrup

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

For the milk chocolate peanut butter layer

5 ounces milk chocolate

1 cup creamy peanut butter

For the chocolate icing

3 ounces dark chocolate (60 to 72 percent cocoa)

1/2 tsp. light corn syrup

1/2 stick unsalted butter

Make the crispy crust: Lightly spray a paper towel with nonstick cooking spray and use it to rub the bottom and sides of an 8-inch square baking pan.

Put the cereal in a large bowl and set aside.

Pour 1/4 cup water into a small saucepan. Gently add the sugar and corn syrup (do not let any sugar or syrup get on the sides of the pan) and use a small wooden spoon to stir the mixture until just combined. Put a candy thermometer in the saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat and bring to a boil; cook until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage, 235 degrees F.

Remove from the heat, stir in the butter and pour the mixture over the cereal. Working quickly, stir until the cereal is thoroughly coated, then pour it into the prepared pan. Using your hands, press the mixture into the bottom of the pan (do not press up the sides). Let the crust cool to room temperature while you make the next layer.

Make the milk chocolate peanut butter layer: In a large nonreactive metal bowl, stir together the chocolate and the peanut butter. Set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and cook, stirring with a rubber spatula, until the mixture is smooth. Remove the bowl from the pan and stir for about 30 seconds to cool slightly. Pour the mixture over the cooled crust. Put the pan in the refrigerator for one hour, or until the top layer hardens.

Make the chocolate icing: In a large nonreactive metal bowl, combine the chocolate, corn syrup and butter.

Set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and cook, stirring with a rubber spatula, until the mixture is completely smooth. Remove the bowl from the pan and stir for 30 seconds to cool slightly. Pour the mixture over the chilled milk chocolate peanut butter layer and spread into an even layer. Put the pan into the refrigerator for 1 hour, or until the topping hardens.

Cut into squares and serve. The bars can be stored in the refrigerator, covered tightly, for up to 4 days.

a gigantic pile of corn husks is just out of view

That and this scene are sure signs it's SUMMER!

Though, arguably, these images are also pretty convincing:

Miguel cooling off in the mist outside the LBJ Library

The world's cutest baby — to whom I'm a pseudo-aunt — after her first swim

I stuffed myself with cherries, and now it's time to do the same with peaches, corn and tomatoes. I made this protractedly named Shell Pasta With Corn, Tomato, Caramelized Onion and Basil for the first time three summers ago after finding it at Not Eating Out in New York, and since then it's been the first corn-and-tomatoes recipe I cook to ring in the season.

I have the recipe saved in my e-mail and found in the thread this excited note to my brother, written after I'd first had it for dinner. I hope you won't think less of me.

"this was so delicious when i made it the other day, i was actually shocked. the trick is getting a fresh ear of corn (which is like 30 cents!) and shaving off the kernels with a knife. the day i made this, i had been to h-e-b three times for separate things, so when i got home with my ear of corn and unhusked it to find a dead worm (!!!) burrowed into the top of it, you know what i did? you betcha. i whacked that end off and used the rest. i was tired of waiting in line at h-e-b, and i sure wasn't going to go back for trip #4. he probably died a nice death though. the corn was really sweet."

I'd also included this equation made up of Cathy Erway's photos to prove how easily he too could enjoy such a meal.

This recipe is seriously magic, and it must be in the caramelized onions. There's no garlic! There's no cheese! (OK, I added cheese. Parmesan never hurt anything.) It also has the fabulous step of stirring in a blob of butter at the end. I felt pretty smart when i remembered to scrape the back of my knife down the stripped corn cob, a trick for getting the last bit of that sweet, milky corn goodness into your meal. But I was getting ahead of myself because a moment later I dumped out all the pasta water, forgetting the step to save a cup or so.

Still, it turned out well. And it felt like a bit of a rescue recipe — I haven't been in the mood to cook for a few weeks now. In fact, I'd had the ingredients for this pasta sitting around since the beginning of this week but hadn't felt up to slicing and chopping. Even as I've been reading My Life in France and longing to taste buttered-up fish in a tucked-away spot in Paris, I hadn't ventured into the kitchen. This summer humdinger brought me back. More to come!

'member? you 'member.

I know the mystery of the plated, edible version of that freshly dug fennel bulb I was handed a few weeks ago has kept you guys breathless. It was awful of me to keep it from you this long. Exhale. You can relax knowing it turned out deliciously.

I went with the Ina Garten recipe, mainly because all I had to go to the store for were tomatoes. It was tasty, but a little deep in dressing and escaped tomato juice, so I made it into a regular salad by adding spinach and carrots and tossing it all around. (The decorative-looking carrots pictured were of the bagged and presliced variety. I wouldn't want you to mistake me for someone unlazy enough to crinkle-cut vegetables.)

Speaking of laziness — and, at the same time, moving on to regret — I'm wishing now that I'd found this fennel recipe sooner. What's easier than walk-away instructions like "soak" and "roast"? Or I could have gone with this awesome-sounding broccoli/fennel salad; it's basically two vegetables and some flavorful liquids. In case it's not clear, a lot of my hunting for weeknight, feed-me-now recipes is steered by my desire to get to the eating part quickly so I can start slacking off on the couch as soon as possible. I don't want to keep track of a lot. I have important things to do, like get peppy with Jessica again. And I need to have time allotted for rifling around food52.com, possibly my new favorite website. It's user-submitted content with all the crap weeded out! And a lot of what's there has made it through the filter of being tested in Amanda Hesser's kitchen!

Let's wrap this up with a few of the dishes this site has me itching to try:

Strawberry refrigerator cake

Lazy Mary's lemon tart

Roasted bagna cauda broccoli

Andouille and dijon polenta

Ancho chili-cinnamon chocolate bark

Plus, holy moly, photos like this are the norm over there. It reminds me of that time I went to a macaroni art party and saw one well-lit paper plate bearing an egg and tiny piles of flour and salt. It was entitled "Origins."

Sarah Shatz photo courtesy of food52.com

Sticky business

If I had a husband and four children, perhaps then I could have a cherry tree in my back yard. Though I'm doing just fine without a full house right now, this crossed my mind as I pitted about 3 cups of cherries for a cobbler Friday afternoon. About 1 cup in, I was already tired of it and wondered who could possibly do this with cherries by the tree full.

Then I thought of the only cherry tree owner I know personally, a woman named Kitty. She's my friend Dana's mother-in-law and she has a husband and four children — a household equipped with enough pairs of hands to pit bushels of cherries. In my imagination, the cherry tree (perhaps even trees?) and the four children are all part of the same life plan, because how else could you handle so much fruit? Now that all those kids are grown, I hope she has neighbors who don't mind getting sticky.

I've never seen this tree because it's in Pennsylvania. But I have eaten its fruit, coincidentally, almost exactly five years ago now. It was the weekend of the wedding where Dana became Kitty's daughter-in-law. And Andrew's wife, of course. You know how I said weddings demand cake? That's not completely true. This wedding was an all-pie affair, which made it a thrill dessert-wise. It was thrilling in lots of other teary and moving ways, too, but one thing I loved about the reception was that instead of one tall vanilla tower of cake, a whole table was dedicated to all kinds of fruit pies. Really: pie after pie after pie.

And get this: the pies were on tiers Dana's dad built. Picture one of those wire cupcake trees but with nooks large enough to hold pie plates. And because he's a dad who loves nothing more than functionality, the welded stand was set on caster wheels. Mobile pies! Which makes me think of the pie trailer down the street... whoa. Did Cedric foresee Austin's food trailer boom??

The rehearsal dinner the night before was topped off with pie, too. Cobbler, actually, but lattice-topped, which to me is just about enough work to earn the title of pie. The cobblers were made with cherries from Kitty's own back yard, brought all the way to New Mexico. (Dana, remind me: Did she bring the cherries in and do the baking in Ruidoso, or did she bring the pies already baked? Also, how? Either way, I'm amazed.) Not only was it delicious, but entirely personal and memorable.

The other thought I had at my kitchen table was that people who have cherry trees probably also own cherry pitters. I don't. And let me tell you, it's slow going without one. Especially with the method I chose: a paperclip and a trick I learned on Youtube. I ended up with cherry juice running from my hands all the way down my arms and dripping — cascading — off my elbows and onto the apron I was soon thankful I had tied on.

So all this to say that when I sat down in my now juice-stained apron with a bag of cherries, I wasn't planning for my mind to wander to that wedding weekend in the mountains. But I'm pretty sure I can't eat a cherry now without thinking of lovely friends and all the fun we had. Dana and Andrew, happy anniversary. And thanks for getting married at the height of cherry season!

Congratulazioni!

I had a little thought today. Part of what I love about baking is that it's so often tied to a Big Occasion. Weddings, birthdays, graduations, Mothers Day — they require cakes. The moment demands it.

I am not a great froster. But congratulazioni anyway!

My thought was this: Whipping up lemon cupcakes and an owl-themed cake for a graduation party is fun — it beats the heck out of washing the dishes to come — but it's also kitchen time that's like active anticipation. Cracking eggs and zesting lemons become ways of proclaiming, my friend is smart and accomplished and we're going to celebrate her with all this sugar! Also: moms are terrific!

The other magical part of dessert-making happens when there is no big to-do in sight. When it's a weekday and we want something sweet.

So this one time, Melissa and I were making broccoli slaw with buttermilk dressing and something else I can't remember now for dinner, and she said this thing. She said, "Hey, you have leftover buttermilk. And sugar and butter. Why don't we make a cake for dessert?"

And then, get this: we did!

Now, I know there's plenty of time after work for cakes to be baked and enjoyed soon after. But even so, I always plan out my baking. I know in the morning what I'll be doing later and look forward to it all day. I never simply have the thought of making a cake, then have ingredients combined in the next five minutes. Doing so was a revelation. This is just one more part of Melissa's diploma-worthy genius.

Chocolate Bouchons

A Thomas Keller recipe from the packaging of my bouchon mold

As delicious as the weekend's lemon desserts were, these chocolate bouchons — which means "corks" in French — are up there with the most amazing brownies I've had the joy of putting in my mouth. I have this special doodad for baking them, but I'm sure a small muffin tin would work just as well.

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 sticks unsalted butter, melted and just slightly warm
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
Powdered sugar for sprinkling or frosting for writing


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter your tin and set aside.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt into a bowl; set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the eggs and sugar on medium speed for about three minutes or until very pale in color. Mix in the vanilla. On low speed, add about one-third of the dry ingredients then one-third of the butter and continue alternating with the remaining flour and butter. Add the chocolate chips and mix to combine.

If using a bouchon mold, put it on a baking sheet. Fill each well nearly full — within an eighth of an inch from the top. Place in the oven and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, turning midway. When the tops look shiny and set like a brownie, test one cake with a toothpick. It should come out clean but not dry (there might be some melted chocolate from the chips).

Transfer the bouchons to a cooling rack. After a couple of minutes, invert the mold or tin and let the bouchons release, then turn them right side up to cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar.

Around town: In the garden

This weekend was yet another that's made me happy to live in such an active city. Austin felt lively with an arts fair on Sixth Street, a May Day rally at the capitol, an accordion competition and the opening of Yellowbike's new and totally impressive headquarters.

Another instance of this: a few Saturdays back, the calendar was filled with one of many spring 10Ks, a crawfish jamboree, a psychedelic music festival and a tough choice between Yeasayer or Vampire Weekend — this place is great! Mind you, I'm not a runner and I don't listen to much psych rock, but I wholeheartedly appreciate the scope of interesting things happening around here seemingly at all times.

Part of this past weekend's fun was dropping by the Blackshear Neighborhood Garden, which was one of 11 stops on a citywide community garden tour. It's on a lot across the street from Nathan and Caitlin's house. Along with some other friends who live nearby, they got the garden going by securing a grant from the city so folks in the neighborhood have a place to pitch in and grow vegetables together.

The space has really come along thanks to their hard work; neat rows of broccoli plants sit right at the entrance and narrow pathways meander through the beds of garlic, kale, artichokes and tomatoes. Not only that, but they've got the community-building part of this project covered, too. While other folks weeded and shoveled dirt, I helped squeeze lemons for lemonade and chatted with a neighbor named Fay, who I'd guess is in her 70s. She pointed out the corner house as her own, saying it's also where she was born. She told me about the gravel roads the neighborhood had until East Austin's streets were paved in the 1960s. She said her grandfather once owned this lot that's now a garden and that Zavala Elementary, just a few blocks down, became an integrated school once her children enrolled.

I loved talking to someone who knew this city before it was an epicenter for fests. I kept thinking, I need a neighbor like this, someone to tell me the backstory of my own street's small houses and the people who have made homes there. Our street could use a grandmotherly figure whose conversation flows easily from Austin's civil rights history to a secret she learned for keeping her couch cushions clean.

Fennel: awkward to photograph

Just before we left, my friend Willard plucked some broccoli — the greenest I've ever seen! — and a few of the plant's leaves, which he said could be cooked like collards or any other sturdy greens. He also dug up a fennel bulb for me to take home. Here's where we take this garden's community cultivation online: help me figure out how to prepare this thing! I don't think I've eaten fennel before, and I certainly haven't cooked any myself. Anybody out there have a suggestion? As it stands, I'm choosing between these...

• Ina Garten's tomato fennel salad

• Pizzeria Bianco's fennel and apple salad with cider vinaigrette

• Molly Wizenberg's celery root and apple salad with hazelnut vinaigrette Although A) this sounds too wintry and B) hazelnut oil would be absent in my version. As my barista buddy likes to say, I'm not what you'd call a powerful consumer.

• Another Molly Wizenberg recipe, this one shaved fennel salad with mushrooms and Parmesan. Pluses for this one: I have all the ingredients except mushrooms, and it comes with one heck of a Julia/Alice pedigree.

What to do?

P.S. More bounty: bonus Yellowbike photos just because I was so dazzled by the place!

card catalogue of parts

wall of forks

As if I could love KUT any more

Lunchtime music! It's not packaged as such, but all week I've been catching food-related songs during my midday break. Something about the process of a DJ selecting tunes to eat by really tickles me. Boy, I love radio.

A taste:

She's Puttin' Something in My Food — Bobby "Blue" Bland

Everybody Eats When They Come to My House — Cab Calloway

The Whole Tzimmies — David "Fathead" Newman

You guys have any favorite meal-time music?