bake sale for japan

Saturday morning is going to be great. I'll be sitting out in front of Hotel San Jose on South Congress with more than 20 bakers who have signed up to contribute to Austin Bakes for Japan. So many things about this event strike me as being really special: for one thing, multiple bake sales are happening at the same time nationwide (Austin alone has five locations). Then there's the fact that people who mostly, I'm assuming, don't know each other and won't meet in person until they arrive to set things up are making this happen. Yay, Internet!

And, of course, the cause of this benefit is certainly worthy of attention. I love the idea that getting together to meet neighbors over treats and good will is just a side effect of something that's already worth doing.

I'm bringing ginger-molasses chocolate chip cookies and linzer cookies with strawberry jam. And, it just occurred to me, cash so I can try other people's goodies. Photos and recipes to come!

Funds raised at this event go to AmeriCares. Find the Austin bake sales at these locations:

Downtown Austin: Woof Gang Bakery

1204 North Lamar Blvd., 78703

East Austin: Nomad Bar

1213 Corona Drive, 78723

West Austin: The Shops at Mira Vista

2785 Bee Cave Road, 78746

Central Austin: Foreign & Domestic

306 E. 53rd St., 78751

South Austin: Hotel San Jose

1511 South Congress Ave., 78704

my name is beth, and i just finished eating barbacoa tacos

I plan to start making a similar statement after each meal.

garam masala improves everything

Here's an odd tidbit: last night I dreamed I was rummaging through a drawer of kitchen utensils, then realized whose it was once I saw a tiny fish-shaped cookie cutter mixed in with some spatulas. My unconscious squealed, "I'm in the Smitten Kitchen!"

I told Miguel this in the morning, and he said he'd dreamed about Kevin Nealon guesting on Weekend Update, just like the old days. Then Jerry Seinfeld piped up and said, "I had a dream last night that a hamburger was eating me!"

Well, anyway. I wonder if my dream means A) I spend way too much time reading food blogs, or B) I should make those Pepperidge Farm replicas myself. It could also mean I should diversify my recipe sources, as crazy as I am for well-tested and well-photographed SK cooking. So tonight I cooked dinner from the Whole Foods website: collards with lentils, tomatoes and Indian spices. For once, I already had all the ingredients on hand, thanks to my delivered bushel, of course.

I admit to feeling a little weird while I took this picture of vegetables.

With a cake or finished dish, it's something I made, sort of an accomplishment.

This, I just found on my doorstep. Still, aren't they pretty?!

I used a green onion that came with my delivery and something that could be either collard greens or kale — I'm honestly not sure. First, the onion is chopped and — get this — sauteed in water. Or maybe there's a more precise cooking term for that. (Do you know it?) Whatever it was, I'd never cooked onions and garlic that way before. Later, I looked at the nutrition info given with the recipe and saw that a serving has zero fat and zero cholesterol. When have I ever prepared something to fit that bill? That's what happens when you skip the olive oil, I suppose. I should really make cookies now.

On to the next step. As soon as the garam masala hit the pan, the smell seemed to slow that 20-minute cooking time to a crawl. When the timer finally beeped, it was full of deep color and an even better smell. Not to mention the taste. Made from a few basic ingredients and somehow with no additional salt, it reminded me of this Moroccan dinner. I'd say simple and from the pantry is the way to go.

Collards with lentils, tomatoes and Indian spices

From Whole Foods Market

Serves 4

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2 teaspoons garam masala

1 (15-ounce) can diced tomatoes

1 bunch collard greens, thick stems removed and leaves sliced into 1-inch-thick ribbons

1 cup red lentils

Bring 1/2 cup water to a simmer in a large deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook for five minutes or until onion is translucent. Stir in garam masala and cook for one minute. Add tomatoes and their juices with 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in collards. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine lentils and 2 cups of water in a medium pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook about 8 minutes or until lentils are tender. Stir lentils into skillet with collards and serve.

it's italian for 'layer'

Loose-leaf lettuces, spinach, turnips, hot house tomatoes,

cilantro, broccoli, oranges, chard and leeks!

In my first few days with Farmhouse Delivery vegetables filling my refrigerator drawers, I learned for sure what I had suspected: signing up to have a lot of vegetables around doesn't mean you're set for groceries. It means buying more accompaniments — cheeses and breads and beans and grains are what turn greens into meals. In case I'm making it sound like it, I should be clear and say this is not a bad thing. See below:

Before being doused with egg.

This is a Gourmet spinach and cheese strata I found by way of Deb. What she calls a do-ahead brunch meal, I'm calling lunch and dinner for the next few days. With the exception of eggs, milk and cheese, the major ingredients (you know, not seasoning and oil) for this recipe came from my bushel bin — my first-time delivery came with a free whole wheat baguette, too!

These remind of a calendar I had that cracked me up daily.

It took a small bit of adapting. For one thing, I don't need to eat six to eight servings of an eggy brunch dish on my own (Miguel's not into quiche-like things, surprise), so I halved it. I also used leeks instead of the onion called for and fresh spinach instead of frozen and sort of guessed at how much bread and spinach I could fit in. I'm pretty sure this is fine because it seems like the kind of recipe you could get away with filling any old way.

I accidentally added all the salt and pepper to the vegetables rather than saving some for the eggnog-like mixture that gets poured over the whole thing, but to no ill effect. It's cheesy and satisfying, the two best adjectives that can go with food, and reheats quite well. While the whole point of the strata was to put fresh vegetables to use — and it is a wonderful way to do that — I have to confess: my favorite bites are heavy on baguette.

Finito!

Next up: what to do with turnips? Any suggestions?

Spinach and cheese strata

Adapted from Gourmet

Serves three to four

1 1/2 Tbsp. unsalted butter

3/4 cups finely chopped onion or leeks
1 large bunch of spinach, roughly torn

1/2 tsp. salt, divided
1/4 tsp. black pepper, divided
1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
4 cups baguette in 1-inch cubes (1/2 lb)
3 ounces coarsely grated Emmentaler cheese (1 cup)
1 ounce shredded Parmesan
Just under 1 1/2 cups milk
5 large eggs
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

Sauté onion in butter in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat until soft, about three minutes. Stir in spinach and add 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/8 teaspoon pepper and the nutmeg. Continue cooking until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat and set aside.

Spread one third of the bread cubes in a well-buttered ceramic baking dish. Top with one-third of the spinach mixture and one-third of each cheese. Repeat layering twice with remaining bread, spinach and cheese.

Whisk together eggs, milk, mustard and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper in a large measuring cup and pour it evenly over the strata. Cover the strata with plastic wrap and chill it for eat least eight hours or up to a day.

The next day, let it stand at room temperature for 30 minutes while preheating the oven to 350°F. Bake strata, uncovered, in middle of oven until puffed, golden brown and cooked through, 45 to 55 minutes. Let stand five minutes before serving.

that's right, vegetable escapades

Big News, folks. My first bushel from Farmhouse Delivery is set to arrive on Wednesday! Last week, I went with Melissa and Joji to Rain Lily Farm for an in-the-garden happy hour that felt more like a picnic. We had a tasty mushroom pizza baked in a mobile wood-fired oven (hey, check out that endorsement from Addie!), sampled a bite of plum walnut pie (why have I never thought of using plums in a pie?) and walked through the rows trying to identify the leafy tops of what was growing. This one, we got:

There's a good chance that this very butter lettuce could be on my doorstep in two days. I am thrilled about this! I'm also really looking forward to local vegetables already in my kitchen demanding that I find interesting ways to cook them — I'm thinking that home delivery will really cut past my laziness, as well as my tendency to not think about dinner until I'm starving. (Don't get me wrong — I'm usually thinking about dinner. Just not taking real steps to make it happen.) I've followed Melissa's many cooking adventures related to her delivery box, and I'm ready for some vegetable escapades of my own!

valentine!

At the risk of getting way too cutesy on Valentine's Day, I'm sharing with you these searingly pink desserts I made a year ago. You see, they were made for kids. And kids, I hear, favor searing pink over "rustic," my usual MO.

These dressed-up Rice Krispies treats are among a few baked things (I hope they've been "goods") that I've contributed over the past year or so to an organization called Free Cakes For Kids. It's basically a nonprofit made up of volunteers around Austin who love any excuse to bake, and the best part is that the homemade treats that often make bold use of color are delivered to children who, for various reasons, otherwise wouldn't get a birthday cake.

Miguel wrote a story about the organization when it was first coming together, and the group's director said she received 74 e-mails from potential volunteers by 10 a.m. the day it was published. Free Cakes For Kids has grown a lot since then and now even offers volunteer-led classes on decorating techniques — something I could benefit from since I can barely frost a cake without a crumb disaster.

With hot pink frosting and holiday-colored M&Ms, that dessert was a far cry from the so-called Grown-Up Birthday Cake I discovered just in time to bake for my 30th birthday, which I celebrated this weekend with dear friends I've been lucky to collect over time — perhaps the biggest perk of acquiring 30 years.

I cannot recommend this cake — not pictured because photos taken at midnight in the middle of a birthday party are not the best — enough. I'm even tempted to say it's the tastiest I've ever made. I don't know what role the white wine plays, but I'm pretty sure it's the cup of olive oil that makes it deeply yellow and moist. And I might never make another frosting recipe again — this one was super easy to spread onto the cake, and not one crumb made its way to the surface. It must be magic. If you like magic and moistness and chocolate or just fall for recipe titles as easily as I do, please bake this.

Pink-frosted and M&M-coated or not, I hope your day is sweet!

pour some milk

361 days of the year, it doesn't matter that I don't own a hat. But Austin's in the middle of this winter's coldest week so far, with some snow expected overnight and a forecast that I'll keep wearing basically the same outfit for the rest of the week, as my cold-weather wardrobe is very limited. My boots and biggest coat are starting to feel less like a fashionable winter uniform and more like I'm Rooster Cogburn. I do much better with summer clothes.

So as an excuse to keep the oven on for a while to warm up the kitchen, I baked brownies. On a recent episode of America's Test Kitchen, the methodical Cook's Illustrated folks took on the challenge of recreating the chewiness of box-mix brownies with the super chocolateness of homemade ones. This challenge involved diagrams of molecules and a very precise ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats (29 percent : 71 percent).

This could be the very nicest kind of mosaic I've seen.

To me, it just looked like a pretty good one-bowl recipe, so I gave it a shot. Unfortunately, I didn't see until after I'd begun that I was out of bread flour and sugar (I know!). The good news is that while my substitutions of all-purpose flour and brown sugar might not please Christopher Kimball, the brownies certainly did please me.

You'll need it.

Chewy brownies

Adapted out of necessity from America's Test Kitchen

ATK's notes: For the chewiest texture, it is important to let the brownies cool thoroughly before cutting. If your baking dish is glass, cool the brownies 10 minutes, then remove them promptly from the pan (otherwise, the superior heat retention of glass can lead to overbaking). Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.

My notes: These are the quantities I used to halve the recipe to make an 8-by-8-inch pan of brownies. I used all-purpose flour instead of bread flour and only a quarter cup of the sugar was white — the rest was brown. Still OK. The original recipe called for finely chopped unsweetened chocolate and roughly chopped bittersweet chocolate, but I bought one 4-ounce bar of bittersweet chocolate to cover both.

2 Tbsp plus 2 tsp Dutch-processed cocoa

3/4 teaspoons instant espresso

5 tablespoons boiling water

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, divided (1 ounce finely chopped and 3 ounces cut into half-inch pieces)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

5 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups sugar

3/4 cups plus 2 Tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tsp plus 1/8 tsp table salt

Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Make a foil sling by lining the pan with two perpendicular lengths of foil long enough to extend down the sides of the pan. Grease the foil with butter.

Whisk cocoa, espresso powder and boiling water together in a large bowl until smooth. Add 1 ounce of finely chopped chocolate and whisk until chocolate is melted. Whisk in melted butter and oil. Mixture may look curdled (but mine wasn't somehow). Add egg, yolk and vanilla and continue to whisk until smooth and homogeneous. Whisk in sugar until fully incorporated. Add flour and salt and mix with a rubber spatula until combined. Fold in the larger pieces of bittersweet chocolate.

Scrape batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted halfway between the edge and the center comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer the pan to wire rack and cool for 1.5 hours.

Using the foil overhang, lift the brownies from the pan. Set the brownies on a wire rack and let them cool completely, about 1 hour. Cut into 2-inch squares and serve.