Not an eco-gingerbread house.  That’s already been done.  And it’s not a gingerbread partridge in a gingerbread gingerpear tree.  I wish I could say I did that.  Not Martha did it.  It’s gorgeous!  The tree is two pieces, the partridge is another piece, and all the pears are little cookies.

This year we’re expanding the scale – it’s going to be a gingerbread house party!  The massive amounts of dough are ready to be rolled out.  And soon they will be made into lovely decorated houses.  And whatever else people are inspired to do.  I hope it goes well… there’s the potential for gingerdisaster.  Will post photos of the results!

How did our weekend of cake tasting go?  It was fun, and mostly quite tasty.  That was all expected.  But I didn’t expect to be so confused.

Here are the results.  If you want the names of any of the bakeries, let me know and I can tell you.

One egg cake

One egg cake from Mark’s father – He makes this every year for Mark’s birthday.  It’s quite sweet.  Both Mark’s father and the cake, especially the frosting.  But that’s not for the wedding.  That was just bonus cake.

Wedding cake baker #1

Wedding cake baker #1 – We liked the design options and we like the cost.  The design consultant was really nice and we talked about a custom-ish design that combined various designs that they already do.  And since we sort of designed it ourselves, we’re a bit attached to it.  But the cakes were either too moist (chocolate) or too dry (swirl or white).  The fillings were good, but not great.  So this would be a good option, but not perfect.

Wedding cake baker #2

Wedding cake baker #2 - These cakes were considerably tastier.  The flavors are also more interesting and the slices look much prettier (if you ignore the saran wrap – we picked up the slices from the baker and ate them at my sis’s apartment).  This baker would be more expensive, and we’d have to use one of the basic designs unless we want to pay even more money for a custom design.

Cupcake place #1

Cupcake place #1 – Not very good.  Not worth talking about

Cupcake place #2

Cupcake place #2 – Better.  But not what we’re looking for.  All the cupcake places would be cheaper, but probably more effort for us.

It would have been nice to try other non-wedding cake cake places, but there’s only so much cake you can eat in one weekend.

We’re probably leaning toward tastier but more expensive.  I hope that I don’t see any leftover cake next July!

Speaking of leftovers, Thanksgiving leftovers have been turned into a curry turkey pot pie.  It’s baking in the oven right now.  I used turkey, gravy, and leftover cranberries from a pear-cranberry-almond tart.  And I also used some of the extra onion soup.  The curry part is inspired by our visit to a cooking class that my sister teaches.  It’s a class for HS students at a charter school.  We stopped by and enjoyed some curry chicken and roti and some creamy pasta.  It’s a neat idea for a class.  Each student has to do a little research on a country.  Then they bring in a recipe from that country, often where their families are from, and they cook it together in class.

The curry chicken is stuffed inside the roti before it's all pan fried in butter!

It was all really tasty!

Before all our leftovers turned into a curry turkey pot pie, this is what it looked like:

Turkey!

Dinner is served

Designing the pear tart

The result of their hard work

The curry turkey pot pie is done!  Good timing!

Post-makeover

I made caramel apple ice cream a few weeks ago.  And I’ve just made a batch of caramel pear ice cream for Thanksgiving.  It’s David Lebovitz’s recipe from The Perfect Scoop.  It’s ridiculously easy and spectacularly tasty.

It’s so flavorful and rich.  It has the feel of a custard ice cream, but with no eggs.  In fact, it only has 3 ingredients.  4 if you count the little pinch of salt.  5 if you count the squeeze of lemon juice.

The basic idea: caramelize sugar (3/4 cup + 2 Tbsp), throw in a couple pears or apples chopped (3) and cook those in the sugar.  Pour in 2 cups of cream.  Blend.  Recipe calls for straining, but I never do that.  Fiber’s good for you.  The last few things just brighten the flavor, but they’re so easy that I don’t really count them: Pinch of salt, squeeze of lemon juice.  Chill and churn in ice cream maker.

It’s going to be my go-to ice cream now.  And I imagine that in the future, I’ll be tweaking it a bit and trying some variations.

I’m on the bus to Boston now.  For a weekend of cake tasting!  It all starts with the infamous, annual one egg cake… Stay tuned.

We’ve been enjoying the fall in NYC again!  Crisp cool air, blue skies, flaming trees!  It’s the best time to be here, in my opinion.  Certain people, like Mark, may try to convince you that it’s best in the summer.  But hot in NYC means hot and sticky and muggy and stuffy and stinky.  Don’t be fooled.

Why is fall considered the time for harvesting?  It seems like at least as much stuff is harvested in spring and summer.  Maybe it’s because stuff you gather in the fall is stored to help you get through the winter.  But then they should call it storing time, not harvesting time.

We’re going apple picking this weekend to do some harvesting of our own.  In the meantime, I’ve been gathering lots of goodies from the farmers’ markets.  Summer may have the tastiest produce, but fall has lots of stuff that is fun to cook with.  I made a pumpkin-pear cider-apple cake.  And delicata squash with swiss chard and cipollini onions (spiced up with coriander, turmeric, and cinnamon).  Yum!  And some “Lakers soup” – butternut squash-corn-leek soup with purple cabbage.  And it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!

And since we’re on the topic of harvests, my pepper plant is growing fruit!  I think there are 3 baby peppers growing!  It’s a little late, but it’s probably just confused because it’s in a yogurt container inside an apartment.

I threw these tarts together from bits and pieces that I had lying around.  It came together so well, probably much better than if I had planned it out.  These are goat cheese cake tartlets topped with slices of white peaches.

Since I was using bits and pieces, I only made three tartlets.  Seems like three wouldn’t be worth the effort, but they were so delicious.  And they weren’t much trouble to make.  The crust was super easy – I used a French tart dough that I found through David Lebovitz.  Easiest crust AND most delicious crust ever.  I’ll be using it again.  And the goat cheesecake part is modified from another recipe online.  After the crust and filling were baked, I topped it with some thin slices of white peach, sprinkled some sugar on top, and threw it under the broiler.  I was trying to get a little bit of a creme brulee-like crust.  That didn’t work out.  Maybe I’ll try it again with a blowtorch, once I find myself a blowtorch.

Even without a blowtorch, it was still delicious!

… a.k.a. structure and function, for those of you who are in the protein biology, computational biology world.

Check out this pho bowl.  It’s so smart and beautiful and efficient and functional!

I’m not doing ceramics these days, but seeing this makes me want to do it again.  Even though I don’t have the skills or patience to throw something like this.

We’ve made our first appointments to look at wedding dresses.  One place is a non-profit shop that sells donated dresses and the proceeds to go to supporting education in New York City.  I’m not sure what type of education.  I’ll have to find out.  Given that this is NYC, there is a wide range of types of education.  And some types need more help then others.  Oh, I’m glad that I checked more thoroughly on the website – they actually say that they support a charter school in Brooklyn.  That’ll do.  I’m not sure what they’ll have in their store this weekend, but I figured that it’s worth checking out.

The other place is a bridesmaid dress shop that was recommended by my friend, a soon-to-be bride.  When I called this place, I mentioned that I was looking for bridesmaid dresses to use as a wedding dress.  They were super friendly and suggested that I check out some designers that have “bridal alternatives.”  Suspecting that they didn’t fully understand what I had in mind, I told them that I was looking for non-white dresses.  The woman on the phone said, “Oh, I’m glad you told me.  Like dresses in champagne?”  Ha ha!  We’re not sure where the dress will fall on the color spectrum, could be white, could be champagne, could be colorful.  We’d like to consider all colors at this point (well, maybe only colors that are flattering to me).

Reminds me of a conversation that MP had a few weeks ago.  I wasn’t there, so I might be getting some of the details wrong.  Some new acquaintances were asking him about wedding plans and he mentioned that I was thinking about a non-white dress.  One woman said something like, “Oh, I did that too!  My dress was ivory!”

But in the wedding world, at least for wedding dresses, words relating to color seem to have a different meanings.  I’m going to have to develop my vocabulary for describing colors that I currently categorize as white!

Dried flower puffs

Da laughing with her tongue sticking out

I’m still learning and figuring things out, but so far, I’m finding that using my new toy is very liberating!

You may have guessed from the paucity of posts.  And when I do post, I might sound different.  I’m learning to think and talk in the language of education research.

And my camera appears to be broken.  Every single photo comes out as a nice dark rectangle.  So there won’t be too many photos until I either get the camera fixed or I finally jump in and buy a digital SLR.  The digital SLR that I’ve been talking about getting for years now.

I was just in California and I got caught up on strawberries and peaches and cherries.  Now I just have to wait for them to get going in NY.

While we’re talking about cherries, they don’t usually last very long when I get my hands on them.  But maybe I’ll make a cherry clafoutis one of these days.  It’s one of my favorite desserts.  For those of you who know what nien gao is, it’s like that, but less sticky and chewy.  And I found this neat trick to pit the cherries – http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/no-cherry-pitter-use-a-pastry-tip-088418 – with a pastry tip!

Cupcake truck! It debuts on June 3!  I don’t actually like cupcakes all that much.  I like making them.  And I like the idea of them.  And I love the idea that there’s a cupcake truck!

The Union Square Greenmarket is finally showing some spring goodies!  Winter is over!  And the first (albeit expensive) strawberries are showing up!  I know you guys out in California will mock me for rejoicing over leeks and peashoots, which you have had for months now!  But you have to imagine half a year of just onions and apples!

And Mark’s coming home from Paris soon!  Just in time for summery BLTs and tomato-bread salads!