Panforte Ice Cream: California Seasonal Seasonings

I left Thanksgiving under the impression that the complete work-free break would be re-energizing for med school. And it was. For like, 4 hours on day 1. And then.....it was like, wow. I have a lot of things to memorize and I just don't care anymore. So I curled up in a fetal position and learned about the gastrointestinal system while drinking diet dr. pepper and eating twizzlers and jelly belly beans to survive to a much more real 2 weeks of winter break. So here I am, writing about ice cream I made over the teaser Thanksgiving break because real winter break has been filled with skiing and snow rather than lazy house baking.

Despite the abundance of fruit in California, I don't think fruit cake is a particularly common California holiday treat, or like anytime treat. Probably because we actually have fresh fruit to eat and thus do not need to suffer through dried fruit laden desserts to survive winter and plagues and wars. That being said, I'm not actually California born and raised, and California is large enough where fruit cake traditions may vary by regions. Looking at you in a super judgemental way Nor-Cal. Like seriously, if there were to be a part of California that enjoyed fruit cake, it would totally be Nor-Cal.

Fruit cake hating aside, Panforte (aka italian fruitcake) Ice Cream? Totally something I can get behind. This was a surprise find in my favorite David Lebovitz ice cream book. The first time I made this back in June, my brother finished off the entire batch within the span of two days before I could take proper pictures. Panforte ice cream doesn't actually involve dried fruit, but rather deliciously soft candied fresh citrus peels and lots of your favorite holiday spices and California almonds. While you could be lame or efficient and just buy candied citrus peels, they are fun to make in that vaguely mindless way of peeling citrus' and slicing them into the size of toothpicks. If you're into that. But so delicious!!

Given that this will be my last post of 2015, its only reasonable to do some reflecting, even though I think forced gratitude/reflection/affection due to holidays is silly. Well, for one thing, I never reflected last year so I can't go back and go hmm, did I fulfill what I reflected on last year? (You can thank interview season for that).

But anyways, my approach to New Year's (Day) is usually to think about what was old and what was new in the past year. So, new things- starting medical school, wonderful new friends/classmates for life, and taking the next steps to being the bitter uber science doctor nerd that was always within me (or will be forced into me). And old things- returning to california dreamin' and saying goodbyes to the labs that defined and shaped where I am today. But also, good riddance to east coast humidity.

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, but I guess I have 2 for 2016. 1) Run 201.6 miles because Michelle is making me do it. 2) Keep remembering to find small things to be happy about even on the roughest days of med school.




Recipe via David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop, also found on the internet here.

Thanksgiving 2015: Hello

Hello. It's me.
I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet.
To go over, everythinggg
-proceed to hum/belt out the remainder of the song to your desired length-

I was going to just keep posting lyrics, but my end point of Adele "Hello" humming tends to go on for a very very long time. But pop culture references have aligned with my blog coming semi-back to life, so hello hello hello again! I can't really say that this will be as grand of a return as hers, but there are more upcoming holidays with much baking and cooking to be done.



This sounds a bit masochistic, but there are few feelings of happiness that are greater than getting to return home and go on vacation with literally NO school to think about after getting your soul semi-crushed by school. Don't worry, I'm kinda joking on the soul crushing thing. I mean, its not like med school is supposed to be easy, but the problem (or good thing?) about med school is that no matter how much you might hate the 8 AM lectures, the hours of being in anatomy lab, the excessive amounts of time you spend on a powerpoint presentation that is essentially "google x disease and tell us what you found," or the ridiculous ways you remember words like "torus tubarius" by making up a story about a Taurus whose name is kinda like Tiberius, who plays the Tuba and is an asshole, you can never fully hate it. Because ultimately all of this knowledge and nonsense is stuff meant to help us do our best to help keep people healthy enough so that they can go to their thanksgivings, live their dreams, etc. Which is both energizing and just a downer when you're trying to just be grumpy about your life.



So while I'm being forced to not think about the body or the next thing I need to be studying, here's my list of things I'm happy for in my life. Thanksgiving, like a lot of holidays, isn't really super genuine at its origins (like thnx now lemme give you small pox anyone?), but I'll just on the bandwagon for blog purposes:
1) California dreaming
2) Friends, old and new, who teach me about new emojis, snapchat, feed me spaghetti squash, make sure I'm fully caffeinated, and just make sure I don't go too crazy.
3) Slowly turning into adult siblings
4) The ultimately intense privilege that has been my education and will be my education (and hopefully future job?) going forward.
5) Adele
6) Radio stations that have now started to play straight up holiday music 24/7
7) Fuzzy study blankets
8) And of course, premade pie crusts, because we all know how much of a struggle pie crusts are for me. But my first ever Pecan Pie was a raging success! Well, as raging as a Thanksgiving 70% sponsored by Costco could be.

Pecan Pie Recipe via Allrecipes.
Pumpkin Pie Recipe via Libby's (Allrecipes).

Holiday Cookies: Seasonal Seasonings and an Apology

Contrary to my incredibly passive personality that some may consider weak-sauce, I can be incredibly judgmental about things. Like how sometimes food blogs will just go MIA for months on end, and then randomly return. Or just disappear and never come back. I do a lot of judging of online food people it seems (see food photo ramblings in earlier posts). And yet, it seems the more I judge, the more I end up doing the exact same thing. So clearly I need to cut the world of internet people some slack here (someone write up a Pride and Prejudice- Food Blogger Edition or something).

Anyways, while I haven't been posting recently due to a variety of excuses I can make, I have been baking and cooking regularly. I made things for thanksgiving, I failed spectacularly on some meringues, and even made a pot of soup large enough feed a small country's army. But for now, lets just focus on the holiday season that is coming up.



Even though I don't follow or believe the religious affiliations of Christmas, and nowadays not much of the whole gift giving consumerism thing, I still find holiday music and holiday decorations to be fantastic. Not so much nativity scenes, but I'm all about the lights, wreaths, and big fancy trees in all the buildings. It just makes everything so cheery regardless of what you may or may not believe. Then again, I've grown up in the US where Christmas traditions has become deeply embedded in just the general majority culture without much thought of exactly where they came from or why we do these things. I mean, the way we count years is also based off the birth of a guy? And presents come from a clearly unhealthy man?


Obviously being a food blog, I am mainly about the cookies, not the historical accuracy or cultural implications of the holidays. Ok, so that was totally grammatically incorrect, because I'm literally a person. Not a food blog. All of that is rather fascinating, and something I could/should google if I really wanted to delve into it.



Anyways, words. Look at these gingerbread and sugar cookies. Side note: molasses tastes terrible on its own even though gingerbread is delicious. I think I'll try making a gingerbread house at some point in the future--one of the classic holiday baking projects I have yet to complete.



Gingerbread recipe from food.com.
Sugar Cookie recipe from the kitchn.
Royal Icing from Bake at 350 (I used the one batch and was able to decorate with plenty of colors with no problems).

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies: Timely Halloween Post

The stars have aligned. Not only was I on top of the whole seasonal baking thing, but Halloween has fortuitously fallen on the day of my blog entry. So firstly, Happy Halloween and here have a foodie related-themed-tumblr photo.

ANYWAYS. While this post really should stop after that wonderful advice from Ina Garten, we'll continue on with cookies while not store-bought, also not summoned directly from the gates of cookie-doom. Unless you count my tiny little apartment kitchen as a doomsday scenario.

It's a little tragic (yet totally understandable) why as one gets older trick-o-treating no longer becomes a thing you participate in. Or rather, the role should transition from trick-o-treater to treat-giver. But there's that thing called college dorm living that seems to take a sharp turn into the lands of night club Halloween, which is significantly less sweet or cute. But I suppose has it's own charms. Mainly when it comes to punny costumes. Like 50 shades of gray. Or black mail. Or a fork in the road. Half of these were taken from my sister's current struggle to find 4 different Halloween costumes to be honest.



Since I don't exactly live in suburbia (yet), or an apartment full of small families, decorating Halloween-themed cookie is probably the closest I'll get to doing something juvenile for Halloween. The ~awesome~ thing about these cookies is that they aren't just normal sugar cookies with a sprinkle of vanilla and a dash of lemon zest. Rather, in the name of Fall spirit, they're ~pumpkin~ flavored.

And not just pumpkin spiced flavored, but pumpkin spiced AND pumpkin butter flavored. So yes, there is some real pumpkins in there. Pretty meta for those pumpkin decorated cookies. I actually didn't like the few pumpkin flavored sugar cookie recipes I found online, so I ended up modifying the same sugar cookie recipe I used for the Doctor Who cookies for these. Luckily, the cookies worked out really well, and I'm probably way more proud of these cookies than I really should be.

Bonus points if anyone can spot the nerdy/fandom-related cookies amongst the midst of normal Halloween cookies and anatomically inaccurate skeletons.

 

Sugar Cookies via The Kitchn with the following modifications:

-substitute almond and lemon zest for 2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice.

-add about 1 tablespoon of pumpkin butter to softened cream cheese.

Royal Icing via Bake at 350.

American Crepe Cake: Waiting For The Right Partner

The subtitle doesn't actually mean anything. I was trying to think of a relevant Captain America quote. For all the "pure good" and lack of redemption arc in Captain America's personality, I love Captain America. It's probably more of the anachronisms that I love. But you know, Chris Evans isn't exactly hard to look at or anything. And even though he has that whole moral righteousness thing going, he also has that David and Goliath thing too. Though, unlike David, Steve Rogers got super muscles that helped him defeat the bad guys. So maybe not David and Goliath. Sorry.

Anyhoo, I still don't have this blogging thing down, as evident by this one week late post. Though, *technically* I did make this over the 4th of July weekend, so in realtime, it was seasonally appropriate. Just not in blogtime. Though some might frown at the idea of a crepe cake as a patriotic dessert. But I would argue that it is 100% American to take the thin delicate dessert of the French and make it into a big, colorful, mega frosting-filled cake and call it our own. Sounds about right.

As second attempts at crepe cakes goes, this cake was certainly better than my first crepe cake, though we still have quite a long way to go before I reach Lady M's status. Decoration wise, its pretty clear that my american flag proportions were a bit off, and my frosting skills need some work. Perhaps I'll try a frosting transfer next time? I tried out a different crepe batter recipe (linked at end) from Smitten Kitchen who got from a NYT article for this cake compared to my first. This one required a bit more work--needing browned butter and steamed milk, plus time to cool, but I think I do like this one better.

 Unfortunately, I had to give in and buy grocery store frosting (oh the shame for a food blog!). As a recent real-adult without a handmixer, cornstarch, or a strainer, a vanilla pastry creme was not particularly feasible. Especially since I'm supposed to be working on a little thing called medical school applications. But hey, they would totally understand if I submit my applications late. After all, I was making a crepe cake for AMERICA. Regardless, at least it was store-bought cream cheese frosting so the weird aftertaste you tend to find in canned frosting was not as strong.



Crepe recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Flag inspiration from Betty Crocker 1000 other food bloggers who love the food dye.

Thanksgivukaah 2013: The random pictures

Well, its been less than an hour since I finished eating Thanksgivukaah dinner (though it was more just straight up Thanksgiving for my family since we're not Jewish). Of course, the necessary thing is to now relive the entire cooking, baking, and eating experience through pictures. I've cooked and baked enough to have several blog posts to tide this poor blog over till my next baking (and maybe cooking) opportunity, so ya'll will get to relive each bit and piece of Thanksgiving throughout the merriest time of year--finals bwahahaha.
But first, since words are lame, here are some general Thanksgiving pictures. Aka the random ones that don't fit nicely in a future post.

 One of the few "in action" cooking shots since, lets face it, messing with your phone while your hands are wet, sticky, floury, etc is hard. Some roasted garlic for what would become mashed potatoes. 1PM. Back when I thought it was tots feasible to get everything done by 5PM.

 Like seriously, our house has TWO ovens so we were able to cook the turkey while baking all the other necessary yams, crescents, cookies, sprouts ect. Even then, we didn't finish till like 5:45PM, almost an hour after our ETA (estimated time of arrival) to the dining table. How do you single oven households do it?

 Of course, if you leave me in charge of dessert, you'll basically get a second dinner spread of just desserts. Individual posts and recipes to come!

To finish, here's a messy picture of pumpkin pie and some very very special ice cream. My cousin accidentally crushed the pie a little while serving, but pumpkin pie is picture perfect no matter what in my opinion.