Food Made By Jade

Sansa Stark's lemon cakes

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 23:14:00 -0600

If you’re not watching HBO’s Game of Thrones, you’re missing out. My favorite series, second only to Lord of the Rings, it has everything you never knew you wanted in a show—hot men, gorgeous costumes, medieval political intrigue, tons of kickass female characters, and dragons. DRAGONS!

In the books, Sansa Stark is very partial to lemon cakes. Sansa’s a really divisive character, but I love her. People’s usual issue with her is that she’s introduced as a spoiled, somewhat bratty teenager- but the fact is, after season/book 1, Sansa does NOT have a good life. Baby girl deserves some dessert.

These were the dessert for a Game of Thrones dinner I made for my sister’s going away. The proportions for the cake recipe are a little crazy since I cut my source recipe in thirds—if you want to, add a tiny bit extra of each ingredient to make just enough for eight servings. The cakes are a simple base to showcase the tart, citrusy glaze.

Sansa’s Lemon Cakes
(makes 7-8 small cakes)

Ingredients

Cakes
(adapted from a classic recipe for yellow cake)

-2/3 stick (5 1/3 tbsp) unsalted butter, at room temperature
-5/6 cup all-purpose flour
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1/8 tsp baking soda
-1/8 tsp salt
-1/2 cup powdered sugar
-1/4 tsp vanilla or orange extract
-1 egg, at room temperature
-2 tsp fresh lemon zest
-4 tbsp fresh lemon juice (about 1 medium lemon)
-1/3 cup milk (whole is best)

Lemon Glaze
(adapted from Good Housekeeping)

-1/8 cup water
-1/8 cup granulated sugar
-1 tbsp fresh lemon zest
-1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 1 medium lemon)
-2 tsp cornstarch or all-purpose flour (to thicken)
-1/2 tbsp butter

Directions

Cakes

Preheat oven to 375 F. Prepare baking dishes— you can either use eight 2”-diameter ramekins or eight cups of a muffin pan. Spray with baking spray or use butter.
In small bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In medium bowl, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy, about 2-3 minutes by hand or electric mixer. Beat in vanilla or orange extract, lemon juice, and zest. Add the egg and whisk until just smooth.
Alternately add flour mixture and milk, stirring until just combined. Start and end with the flour mixture.
Taste the batter and add more lemon juice, if needed. Scoop into prepared baking dishes or muffin cups (about two large spoonfuls each should do it). Bake in the middle of the oven for 16-18 minutes, or until the cakes’ center are slightly puffed and no longer appear wet, or a toothpick comes out clean. Remove and let cool slightly.

Glaze

While cakes are in the oven, prepare the glaze. In 1-quart saucepan, combine water, sugar, lemon zest and juice, cornstarch or flour, and salt.
Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until glaze becomes thick and comes to a boil. Reduce heat to low and continue to cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Remove from heat and stir in butter. Let cool at room temperature until cakes are done. Invert the warm lemon cakes onto serving plates, spoon the glaze over, and enjoy!

Looking for a New Cookie to Bake this Holiday Season?

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 11:22:32 -0600

Looking for a New Cookie to Bake this Holiday Season?:

usagov:

Try Ginger Crinkles, a recipe from the White House Pastry Kitchen.

I’m so going to try this!

Early Holiday Presents... a.k.a. I'll take any excuse to do math!

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:51:00 -0600

I’m sitting here debating whether or not get myself the early holiday gift of a Nespresso single-serve espresso machine. Today, and today only (hey y’all), it’s on sale at Sur La Table’s website, for $98 with free shipping… and it looks like this.

Cute, right? There’s just a lot to consider. A), ninety-eight dollars is still a lot of money. B), I love coffee, but am one of those horrible people who skips breakfast in favor of sleep (and consequently don’t even drink coffee most weekdays). C), an espresso machine seems like an obnoxiously pricey—and showy—thing to get, for someone unsure if they’ll be gainfully employed after graduating this May. D), it also has a significant ongoing cost- espresso for the machine is sold in prohibitively expensive little pods called Nespresso capsules.

I was in France this summer and, like every annoying American undergrad who goes abroad, spent all three weeks pretending I was French. There was a lot of sitting at outdoor cafes drinking espresso and eating croissants. I was even inspired enough to buy this very cute (sale-priced) set of espresso cups.

Clearly, I had high expectations of becoming an at-home espresso drinker… until getting back to the States and returning to my slovenly American ways. C’est la vie. Maybe, though, if I get this machine, I’ll go back to eating like a French person and will be that much more classy and glamorous! (It could happen.)

Still on the fence, I did some research. The lowest available per-capsule price on the market is $1.35, with free shipping via Amazon. Although there are reusable pack-your-own-coffee capsules sold on Amazon, they’re poorly reviewed and look difficult to use (and let’s face it, I’m too lazy to spend a bunch of time carefully perfecting my espresso-packing technique). The best alternative seems to be to reuse the purchased Nespresso capsules as shown in this tutorial, packing in your own ground espresso and sealing with tin foil.

According to the tutorial, you can reuse each Nespresso capsule 2-3 times.
One pound of ground Lavazza espresso costs $13.12, and each Nespresso capsule holds five grams of ground coffee. Converting pounds to grams, that means that your pound of espresso will yield about 90 capsules’ worth of coffee, coming out to 14.5 cents per reused Nespresso capsule. (That doesn’t include the price of tin-foil. Since I’m being a Scrooge, I had to point that out.)
Averaging the prices (1.35 + 2.5 times .145, all divided by 3.5) comes out to 49 cents per Nespresso capsule, overall.

Not bad! I think I’ll get it. Thanks for bearing with my math obsession. Here’s to the holidays! What’s on your wish list?

HI! We here at Film Food really enjoy your blog! You have some great recipes and some really informative stuff on here! We especially love the Food In The Movies posts, as it's exactly what we focus on. Keep up the awesome work, we'll definitely be keeping up with your blog and sharing your posts with our followers!

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 17:00:05 -0600

Thank you so much! I’ll do my best :)

how to make homemade Twinkies

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:50:00 -0600

how to make homemade Twinkies :

And here’s a recipe for DIY Twinkies: because the only way to get a Hostess fix once America has finished ransacking stores for the closing company’s products will be to make Faux-stess cakes yourself. Maybe the apocalypse really is around the corner- at least for this particular part of American life.

R.I.P., Twinkies.

"For me, a child of Vietnamese immigrants growing up in Michigan in the 1980s, Twinkies were a ticket..."

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:34:30 -0600

“For me, a child of Vietnamese immigrants growing up in Michigan in the 1980s, Twinkies were a ticket to assimilation: the golden cake, more golden than the hair I wished I had, filled with sweet white cream. Back then, junk foods seemed to represent an ideal of American indulgence.

Yet maybe that’s exactly why the Twinkie has continued to fascinate: it is already a relic. When I opened one, the smell of sugary, fake, buttery-ish vanilla took me back to my elementary school and the basketball lines on the floor of the gym that doubled as our lunchroom. The underside of the cake had the same three white dots where the cream filling had been punched in, and it tasted like what it was, a blend of shortening and corn syrup, coating the tongue. I didn’t think the Twinkie would thrill the way it used to, and it didn’t. But it tasted like memory.”

- Bich Minh Nguyen, on the Hostess company’s demise in “Goodbye to My Twinkie Days,” published in the New York Times, Nov. 17, 2012.

Nguyen wrote the incredible 2007 memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, which chronicles her experiences with assimilation through her childhood relationship with American food. Food is just one facet of this powerful, visceral book; it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve read. Check it out.

Strawberry mojitos

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:00:00 -0500

It’s cooled off here in Minneapolis, but could very well get hot and humid again in these last weeks of August! After making classic mojitos for the first time a few days ago, I tried out another famous variation. I know this isn’t reinventing the wheel, but when you’re 20 like me, making any drink with a recipe more complicated than vodka + mixer + Solo cup feels like a big step.

Not only do these mojitos feel grown up, they bliss you right out. White rum is so smooth, you barely taste it. Mojitos are all about the fresh ingredients, and what you get after muddling is this refreshing blend of tart lime, clean sharp mint, and basic, bubbly club soda. Two tablespoons of sugar might seem like a lot, but it’s all that’s needed to push this drink out of sour territory and just into the realm of fizzy perfection. It’s very hard to be in a bad mood (read: impossible) while drinking one of these!

Ingredients (makes one)

2 strawberries
1/2 small lime, in wedges
12 mint leaves
2 tbsp sugar
4 ice cubes
1” (about 2 oz) Bacardi Superior or other white rum
Club soda

Stack lime wedges, strawberries, mint leaves, and sugar in a highball glass. Muddle well with a wooden spoon, making sure to crush the strawberries and limes to release lots of juice.

Add ice cubes, top with about one inch Bacardi Superior, and fill to brim with club soda. Serve immediately and relax.

London 2012 Olympians tweeting about food, part two. Man, do I...

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:52:00 -0500

London 2012 Olympians tweeting about food, part two.

Man, do I miss the Olympics :( Do you think that Olympic athletes would accept edible fan mail? Like, if I sent Nathan Adrian funfetti cupcakes, would he be able to eat them, and then consider marrying me? This is a serious question.

London 2012 Olympians tweeting about food. Of course not...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:32:00 -0500

London 2012 Olympians tweeting about food.

Of course not everyone gets as philosophical as U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, but these are all pretty endearing.

Beet, blueberry & mango smoothie

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 15:11:00 -0500

To celebrate a red velvet cake-loving friend’s birthday recently, I tried out a natural cake recipe using beets in place of artificial food coloring. Red velvet cake grosses me out— though flavored with cocoa powder, it usually just ends up tasting like the whole bottle of red food coloring most recipes call for!

The cupcakes were a hit, with a mellow strawberry-like flavor playing off the traditional cream cheese frosting (and really, aren’t cupcakes all about the frosting?). With all the gorgeous magenta beet puree we had left over, my sister suggested making a smoothie in the healthy spirit of summer.

Blend:

About 1/2 cup beets, roasted and cut in chunks
1 cup blueberries, frozen
1/3 cup fresh mango, chopped
Juice of one small orange, freshly squeezed
1/4 cup strawberry or other flavored yogurt
4-5 ice cubes
Agave nectar, to taste

Serves one.

We used organic beets- there’s a few ways to roast them. The boiling/roasting method utilized in Sophistimom’s recipe yielded a perfectly soft, fine puree; the Kitchn’s roasting method of loosely wrapping beets in foil took longer and gave more solid end product.

Beets have a distinct, earthy taste- and the color is magnificent. Packed with folate, magnesium, potassium, and the antioxidant beta-carotene, this smoothie is gorgeous and good for you.

Bacardi Wednesday: rum cake & mojitos. My baby sister made...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:57:00 -0500

Bacardi Wednesday: rum cake & mojitos.

My baby sister made the rum cake in small molds, from Brown Eyed Baker’s recipe. She used golden, not dark, rum, and only 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp rum for the glaze. So the result was a little less alcoholic than the original, and so good.

I made the mojitos from the classic recipe that ran in Bacardi’s 150th anniversary ad campaign. Lacking a mortar and pestle to muddle the lime wedges and mint, I used the back of a wooden spoon instead and added extra lime juice at the end. With lots of ice, it was so refreshing, the perfect thing for this steamy July afternoon.

In breaking news, President Obama’s favorite Girl Scout...

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:03:00 -0500

In breaking news, President Obama’s favorite Girl Scout cookies are Thin Mints.

Thin Mints are also the Girl Scouts’ best-selling cookies, at 25% of the organization’s total sales.

I like both of these things.

Source

For a healthy snack, fill a halved avocado with salsa. The...

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:01:00 -0500

For a healthy snack, fill a halved avocado with salsa.

The easiest way to pit an avocado is to cut it in half around the pit with a chef’s knife, impale the pit on your knife with a little force, and then score the avocado in a grid pattern. The sections are then scoop-able with a spoon!

Blueberry balsamic with mint Caprese salad

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:54:00 -0500

Ingredients
Serves 2-3

Blueberry balsamic
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup blueberries, crushed
1 small piece ginger, the size of a nickel, 1/4” thick
1 tsp sugar

Mint Caprese salad
Beefsteak tomatoes, sliced
Fresh mozzarella, thickly sliced
Mint leaves

Directions
Bring balsamic vinegar to a boil, then add remaining ingredients. Turn heat to low and simmer, until reduced to half original liquid. Remove from heat and let cool, removing ginger.

Layer tomato, mozzarella, and mint leaves. Pour balsamic reduction over.

Eat with knife and fork, and serve with crusty French bread to mop up the sauce! It’s perfect for a summery alfresco meal.

Variations: Substitute any type of berry or omit ginger. This could also be made savory, using fresh herbs (rosemary would be good) in place of fruit and leaving out the sugar.

Bacardi’s 150th anniversary...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:30:00 -0500

Bacardi’s 150th anniversary commercial.
Music is Chambermaid Swing by Parov Stelar.

I love how the retro setting emphasizes the brand’s heritage. They even use vintage Bacardi bottles!

"All this and the Grateful Dead’s cooks in the kitchen! There were two or three girls crafting..."

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 07:58:00 -0500

“All this and the Grateful Dead’s cooks in the kitchen! There were two or three girls crafting midnight munchies on the big old stove while growing pot in the basement. That’s all we knew about them—that they had cooked for the Dead. It wasn’t very good food… and it was dosed. They’d put assorted drugs in our dinners. We never knew what was coming. One time they made pot brownies and Joey got so stoned he couldn’t record that night. We started buying our own food. Man must choose his poison… not be surprised by it in his soup.”

- Steven Tyler, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir (2011)

Aerosmith was locked away on an estate in upstate New York in spring 1977, attempting to write and record their album Draw the Line.

4th of July icebox cake

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 20:38:00 -0500

I’ve been making this cake for Fourth of July for years. This photo is actually from 2009! (It was one of the prettier attempts. When you’re running out the door to go to a barbecue, attention to detail falls pretty low on your priority list.)

Anyway, teenaged me made this up as a bastardized version of “Bavarian cream”, which in the Midwest is the unholy mixture of Jell-O pudding pie filling and whipped cream. It’s actually delicious: you can add canned or frozen fruit, Maraschino cherries, marshmallows, pecans, and so on. I probably learned it from my grandma, and was very surprised to later discover that Bavarian cream is actually a fancy, old European dessert requiring lots of egg yolks and special preparation. My years in California also taught me that “Bavarian cream” is a regional specialty unique to the Midwest— friends’ grossed-out faces when I tried to describe it were priceless.

This is really good though, and incredibly easy to make. The creamy, cool vanilla filling sits on a crunchy graham cracker crust, with the decorative blueberries and strawberries providing the perfect fresh complement to top it off. It’s also about as down-home as you can get… seeing as this was a recipe invented in a Northern Minnesota cabin. What more could you want on the 4th of July?

Ingredients
Cooking time: 30 minutes + 2 hours chilling, at least

2 sleeves of graham crackers (2/3 of a box)
1 1/2 sticks (12 tbsp) butter
1 packet of instant Jell-O pudding mix, vanilla or French vanilla flavor (French if you’re feeling really classy)
2 cups milk (per pudding instructions)
1 8-oz container Cool Whip
2 pints strawberries, tops removed, sliced
1 pint blueberries
Whipped cream in a can (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 375° F.
Pulverize graham crackers into crumbs. Melt the butter and mix it all together. The mixture should be firm enough to stiffly hold together, so add more crumbs or butter as needed.
Press mixture into the bottom and sides of your desired cake pan. A 8.5 x 11” is perfect for a flag.
Bake for 8 minutes until crust is golden and dry. Remove and let cool in the fridge (or freezer, if you’re impatient like me).
Meanwhile, prepare the Jell-O pudding per the instructions on the box. It takes only five minutes to set. Perfect!
Once the pudding is set, beat in the Cool Whip. Let chill at least 30 minutes, to give crust enough time to cool.
Spoon the pudding mixture into the chilled crust. Smooth top with a cake spatula.
If you’re in a hurry, proceed immediately to step 9. However, if you have time, it’s best to chill the mixture until just ready to arrange the fruit and serve, so that the fruit doesn’t bleed or sink into the mousse.
Arrange strawberries and blueberries on top in your patriotic configuration of choice. Go classic and do the flag, or get crazy and make fireworks, the lyrics to Party in the USA, or Obama’s likeness. Whipped cream out of the can is perfect for making little white “stars,” if you want.

Happy America Day!

"The band always stayed at their favorite bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel when we were in L.A...."

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:14:00 -0500

“The band always stayed at their favorite bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel when we were in L.A. Mine was Bungalow 12 where I knew Marilyn Monroe had made sweet love to the likes of Arthur Miller, Joe DiMaggio, President Kennedy… Bungalow 12 was attached to another room that Joe [Perry] and I booked as a suite. The only way you knew what bungalow we were in was by the caravan of room service trays lined up outside our door stacked with champagne, fifty-year-old brandy, and enough Beluga and Savruga caviar to embarrass the Great Gatsby.”

- Steven Tyler, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? A Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoir (2011)

Pasta primaria

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 03:12:00 -0500

This is a cross between pasta primavera (“spring” pasta, made with lots of fresh vegetables) and pasta puttanesca (“whore’s” pasta, made with tuna and black olives-so called not because the dish is inherently whorish, but because it was allegedly a quick, easy meal that Italian prostitutes could whip up between clients).

I dubbed this “pasta primaria” because, due to my minimal knowledge of Italian food, any attempt at a pasta dish had to be really easy. Primary, easy, primaria… my faux-talian makes sense, right? Luckily, the building blocks of Italian food are simple enough to understand- enough olive oil, garlic, basil, and cheese, and anything will taste good. Since I’ve read a lot of pasta recipes featuring cherry tomatoes lately, it seemed like a good idea to use them. The cherry tomatoes are added last, along with a splash of lemon juice. They’re barely cooked at all, so the overall effect is very light and fresh, but still filling.

Ingredients
serves 2

1 small onion
4 garlic cloves
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sea salt
1/2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp dried basil (or fresh, sliced)
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 Roma or regular tomatoes, in 1/2” cubes
1 can of tuna, in oil
8 black olives, diced
3/4 to 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Parmesan, to garnish
Cooked whole-wheat spaghetti noodles (about 1/3 lb will be enough for all the sauce)

Directions

Thinly slice the onion and garlic cloves. Saute in olive oil with sea salt, black pepper, basil, and cayenne for a few minutes, until onions begin to turn translucent.
Add the large tomatoes. Saute for a minute, then cover pan and let steam for about five minutes.
Add tuna, with oil, and olives. Stir together, recover, and leave for five minutes longer. The tomatoes should be cooking down into a very chunky sauce. You can mash them with your spoon to get more of a sauce-y quality if you’re unsatisfied. Taste and adjust seasonings to your liking.
Gently stir in your cherry tomatoes until incorporated. They should really only get a minute or two of heat. Squeeze your lemon juice over, adding more to taste.
Serve immediately over spaghetti and garnish with Parmesan, as well as salt and pepper to taste.

Mmm! I just found this amazing 1970s article by James Beard on how to make homemade pasta and all the simple, classic pasta sauces— no pasta machine necessary. So, that’s my next hurdle, and I’ll write about it soon; my goal for the summer is to get a lot better at Italian cooking. I still can’t make a decent tomato sauce from scratch… it’s sad. But that’s all about to change! Stay posted…

This is true.

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 22:44:00 -0500

This is true.