deep dish pizza and some other stuff!

happy pizza friday everyone! i've been glued in my kitchen, testing up a storm (and secretly binge watching unreal and wet hot american summer) all week that it wasn't until eggpop relayed through eggboy that he was sick of reading about carrot cake that i realized i needed to deliver some pizza to you in time to make it for pizza friday. (actually in most time zones you don't have time but there is always saturday and rule #56 of friday pizza night is that if you forget to have it on a friday, you can defo have it on a saturday.)

first some updates from the test kitchen this week:

-wow, my bagel shaping truly sucks! i had my first try at bagel making that was unsupervised by a bagel teacher and they didn’t rise and looked like what i imagine amoebas look like. they tasted like very thick dumpling wrappers though, which i obviously wasn’t mad about, so even though they were a failure they were still tasty. I have a hunch that the reason they didn’t rise was because we turned on our air conditioning this week and I also got impatient when we were late for a party. This is the recipe that I used and it’s the one that bagel teacher dave loves, so I plan to try it again soon with more patience and less a/c. 

-we made lox for our bagels because we received some of the season’s first salmon from alaska (thanks copper river)! i went with a pretty basic cure of salt, brown sugar, and pepper. I don’t think I used enough of it though because it just wasn’t salty enough, or maybe I should add more flavorings. There’s a very citrusy lox recipe in the Huckleberry book that I’d like to try. I’m going to Alaska next month to catch some fishies, so I’ll try it then.

-I’m working on butter cakes. I made approximately one thousand of them over #MDW (this hashtag caught me by surprise) along with a spreadsheet of all of the vanilla butter cake measurements that I could find. My goal is to make a very reliably moist* butter cake, one that’s as reliably moist as oil cakes. And after a conversation with Alana today who swore up and down that she’s never had a dry butter cake, I realized that maybe my moisture tolerance is on the high end, or rather my dryness tolerance is low end, (or that I'm getting the vocabulary wrong altogether and that what I actually want is a soft cake). Dry cakes are right up there with under salted food and death as my greatest fears. So right now I’m working on a part butter, part oil cake, and I’ve made some great ones but they collapse just slightly when they come out of the oven, which can mean that there’s too much liquid. So little by little (when some more birthdays come up, that is... Do you live in Grand Forks and have a birthday coming up? Please email hello@mynameisyeh.com) I’ll decrease the liquid in the recipe until it doesn’t collapse and then see if it’s just as moist.

*the word “moist” is ok now.

-Because bagels and lox weren’t enough multi-day recipes to test in one week (well, because i procrastinated last week), short ribs also appeared on the schedule this week. Oh hell yeah! I spent six days making rhubarb short ribs to the sound of wet hot american summer, and I have a great feeling about this recipe. Very excited. Jazz hands. Confetti emoji. Makes up for the bagel failure. Luckily you can freeze braised meats pretty easily so we did not explode.

furthermore:

unglued camp registration opens on monday!!! and i'm going to be the lunch lady again!! i cannot wait. camp director ashley did a hilarious job with the f.a.q.s so go read them even if you don’t plan to register (but ummm you should plan to register because we’re going to eat hotdish and make cake and dance in banana costumes). thanks zach for these camp photos from last year!

ok let’s talk about pizza:

in the battle of chicago pizza versus new york pizza, i would have a really hard time choosing sides. i would probably cheer from the new york side of the stadium for the first half and then switch jerseys and cheer from the chicago side for the second half, although i’d probably get kicked out of the new york side before halftime anyway since my chicago accent is so strong. the only true difference between my love for the two types is that i could probably eat new york pizza every single day for six meals a day while my capacity for chicago pizza tops out at once, maybe twice, a month. i think of new york pizza more of like an open faced grilled cheese (that then becomes close faced when you do the right thing and fold it in half) and chicago pizza as a thick buttery pie that is weird not to eat with a fork and knife. it’s the perfect special occasion food when your special occasion falls on a friday, and no amount of meditating can produce the patience required for people who say that chicago pizza “isn’t really pizza.” you people, delete your account.

my mom sent us four lou malnati’s pizzas over the holidays which was one of the best gifts ever in the whole wide world, and we were just starting to run low when shelly’s book, vegetarian heartland, showed up at our door. i had carrot cake batter all over my hands so i intended to just to do a quick flip-through before transferring it to my coffee table, where i keep all of my new cookbooks that i need to go through, but then i couldn’t stop and my quick flip-through turned into a very long combing through with post-its and lists and a sudden desire to start a cookbook club just so that i could try a lot of these recipes at once. the recipes are so original and midwesty, i’m in love. when i got to the page with the chicago deep dish pizza i immediately changed around my schedule so i could make it that friday.

i’ve always considered chicago pizza to be like bagels in that they’re one of those things that are best left up to the experts, like lou and gino. and since i tend to get back to chicago at least a few times a year, i’ve been ok with that. but after having some bagel success (and before this week's bagel failure), i was feeling kind of encouraged so i gave it a try and i was really happy that i did because shelly’s pizza is the bee’s knees bomb dot com!!! The crust is bready and soft, different than the crispy flaky lou mal’s crust but so so good and buttery and not too difficult to make. I loaded ours up with thinly sliced peppers and onions and a bit of spinach for health, and then instead of baking the second one we froze it for a rainy day. I can't wait for that day.

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chicago-style deep-dish loaded veggie pizza

serves 8

from shelly westerhausen's vegetarian heartland

ingredients

One 1 1/4-oz [7-g] packet active dry yeast

1 tsp sugar plus 1 Tb

1 1/4 c [300 ml] warm water (110° to 115°F/43° to 45°C)

1/2 c [110 g] unsalted butter

3 1/2 c [490 g] all-purpose flour

1/2 c [70 g] coarse cornmeal, plus more for sprinkling

1 tsp fine sea salt

1 lb [455 g] mozzarella cheese, shredded

Optional toppings: thinly sliced green bell pepper, thinly sliced onion, diced cherry tomatoes, sliced button mushrooms, pitted black olives, pineapple chunks, sliced marinated artichoke hearts

1 recipe Basic Tomato Sauce (recipe below) or 3 c [720 ml] store-bought sauce

clues

In a small bowl, stir together the yeast, 1 tsp of the sugar, and 1/4 cup [60 ml] of the warm water and let stand until foamy, about 5 minutes.

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the remaining 1 cup [240 ml] water and the butter and cook until the butter melts, about 2 minutes.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the flour, cornmeal, salt, and the remaining 1 Tbsp sugar on medium-low speed until combined, about 20 seconds. With the mixer on medium-low speed, slowly add the butter mixture and the yeast mixture and mix until combined. Remove the paddle and attach the dough hook. Knead on medium-high speed until an elastic dough forms, about 5 minutes.

Oil a large bowl. Transfer the dough to the bowl, cover with a kitchen towel, and let rise in a warm spot until doubled, about 11/2 hours.

Line two 9-in [23-cm] springform pans or two 9-in [23-cm] cake pans that are 2 in [5 cm] deep with aluminum foil and sprinkle with cornmeal.

Punch down the dough and transfer it to a floured surface. Divide it into two equal pieces and form into balls. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough balls into 12-in [30.5-cm] rounds. Transfer the rounds to the prepared pans and press firmly against bottom and sides to keep it in place. Cover again with kitchen towels and refrigerate until completely chilled, about 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 425°F [220°C].

For each pizza, sprinkle half of the mozzarella over the bottom of the dough, spreading it evenly. Cover with up to 1/2 cup [75 g] of toppings and then drizzle half of the tomato sauce over the toppings.

Bake until the sauce is bubbly, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Cut into wedges and serve. Don’t be afraid to use a knife and fork for these pizza slices!

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basic tomato sauce

makes 3 cups

ingredients

1 Tb extra-virgin olive oil

1 yellow onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 c [60 ml] red wine (optional)

2 tsp dried Italian herbs or 2 Tb chopped fresh Italian herbs (such as oregano, basil, or thyme)

One 28-oz [794-g] can whole tomatoes

1 tsp sugar (optional)

1/8 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

clues

In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the wine (if using) and herbs and turn the heat to high. Let the wine simmer until almost all the liquid is evaporated, 1 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, sugar (if using), and red pepper flakes (if using). Using your hands or a knife, break apart the tomatoes. Simmer until the sauce thickens and has reached the desired consistency, 8 to 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and season with salt and pepper. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

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-yeh!

carrot cake with hawaij and tahini caramel frosting

It’s my birthday! Yay! More importantly, however, my pops is turning 60 tomorrow. Sixty! His hair is still heavier on the pepper than the salt, and he wears a Bernie Sanders t-shirt every day. And the other day he told me with a spring in his step that he plans to work for at least like 20 more years, which made me really happy because one downside about living in Winterfell is that I can’t go to his concerts whenever I please. So I’m feeling pretty good that he has 20 years of that klezmer section in Mahler one left in him. 

His true superhero power though is that he’s like a human garbage disposal in that he eats everything, in monstrous quantities (even if it’s years past the expiration date), and he loves all of  the food. With the exception of goat cheese. One thing in particular that he couldn’t shut up about recently was a carrot cake from the Blue Door Farm Stand, near where he lives. The cake is huge and filled with nuts and my dad just foams at the mouth about it. So this year for my birthday, but more importantly his, I’ve gained an understanding of carrot cake.

When I worked at the town bakery, I dreaded making carrot cake because it required using the food processor, the stand mixer, piping bags to make the little carrots, and (ugh) the can opener to open up the can of pineapple. H8 can openers. But carrot cake is good, and the process of making it is pretty unique, so it was time I got to know it. 

The first thing that aided my understanding of it was the idea that “carrot cake is ultimately a spice cake.” The carrots aren’t meant to be front and center, and Allison confirms this in her non-negotiables of carrot cake, which you all should read right now. It sets the world straight on pineapple, coconut, and raisins. Which I agree with, because a raisin’s place in my kitchen is *exclusively* on ants on a log, and also because I like the idea of achieving the best possible cake with the least amount of ingredients. Pineapple and coconut are for another time and another cake, for now we’re sticking with carrots, spices, cream cheese frosting, and cake. 

I began my testing process with my go-to vanilla cake:

1 3/4 c sugar

2 1/2 c flour

1 1/2 tsp each: salt, baking powder, baking soda

2 large eggs

1 c buttermilk

1/2 c oil

1 tb vanilla

3/4 c water

Combine dry, combine wet, combine em all, bake. 

Then I added spices: a few teaspoons of cinnamon and hawaij for coffee, the yemeni spice mix that’s a blend of all of my favorite sweeter spices, like nutmeg and cardamom, which I thought would go perfectly with carrots and...

Brown sugar: I subbed 1 c of the sugar for brown sugar because a defining feature of carrot cake is that darker, molasses-y flavor. 

And of course carrots: when carrots are added, you’re essentially adding a ton of water, so the water and milk in my recipe went goodbye. The new recipe looked like this:

1 c brown sugar

3/4 c sugar

2 1/2 c flour

1 1/2 tsp each: salt, baking powder, baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp hawaij

2 large eggs

1/2 c oil

1 tb vanilla

2 c shredded carrots

Before I went ahead and tested this, I read about a thousand more carrot cake recipes, and found that, a) most of them had at least double the eggs and oil as my recipe, and b) a lot of them required a method where you cream the eggs and sugar first until they’re fluffy and then drizzle in the fat. In other words, one more step and another dirty stand mixer bowl. Allison’s recipe however required beating together the carrots and sugar first. And then a few of the recipes required oil and sugar first, and then adding the eggs one at a time. I wanted to know what the difference was between each of these methods. 

So I started an internet thread about it and got some great answers from Stella, Allison, Ali, and a whole bunch of other kind people. Here was a selection of the findings:

-Beating eggs + sugar first helps aerate the cake, giving slightly more lift and offsetting the denseness of the sugar 

-Beating carrots + sugar first helps release all of the moisture from the carrots

-More eggs are required for the structure and to help the leavening work, and more oil is required to keep it moist and not eggy (I think I still have some questions about this…)

So here were the new measurements:

1 c brown sugar

3/4 c sugar

2 1/2 c flour

1 1/2 tsp each: salt, baking powder, baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp hawaij

4 large eggs

1 1/2 c oil

1 tb vanilla

2 c shredded carrots

I went ahead and tested the four different methods that I was wondering about and did side-by-side comparisons. Here they are along with their notes:

A: mixing dry, mixing wet, folding in the carrots [the laziest way]

-batter is thick, dark, and chunky and not well combined, kind of oily, almost like a brownie batter

-cake is dense and good! has a great caramelized crust. center is slightly oily.

-baked for about 33 minutes

B: whisking sugar and oil first by hand, whisking in eggs on at a time, folding in dry ingredients and carrots [slightly less lazy, but still doesn't use a stand mixer]

-nice batter that held its shit together. smooth and dark.

-cake is dense and GOOD

-baked for about 33 minutes

C: beating sugar and eggs until pale and fluffy in a stand mixer with a whisk attachment, then drizzling in fat, adding dry, folding in carrots [The Stella Method]

-batter is very light, more yellow, and fluffy, so satisfying to beat the eggs

-it rose WAY more, layer is about 1/2” taller than A and B, smooth on top

-needed about 38 minutes in the oven, longer than A and B

-cake was fluffy, less moist than A and B

D: beating carrots, sugar, and salt in a stand mixer with a paddle until sandy, combining eggs and oil and then adding those, adding dry [The Allison Method]

-batter was golden color (between A/B and C), way more liquidy and bubbly

-cake domed nicely, the smoothest top out of the four

-cake was fluffy, less moist than A and B

(left to right: the batters and layers of a, b, c, d. sorry these aren't the best photos, a and b were sitting upside down on the wire rack for a little bit before i took the pictures which is why they have all of those little lines in them.)

(left to right: a, b, c, d)

It was so fascinating to see one set of identical ingredients, all mixed up with different methods. They were all great! With methods C and D, the ingredient list would have to adjust to lean heavier on the fat (and maybe sugar?) to provide slightly more moisture. But in general my cake preference is usually on the denser side, so I chose to fly with method B, excited with the added bonus that it doesn’t require a stand mixer. 

Then I tested something that caught my eye in Stella’s recipe, browned butter! I am fairly new to brown butter but it seems like everyone flips out about it. I used method B. Here were my notes:

-batter looks pretty much the same as B

-brown butter flavor definitely present in cake

-texture very similar to B, slightly grainy, which was good, slightly more structural integrity, also good

-I don’t know that I necessary like brown butter flavor…. am I a monster if I don’t like browned butter?

I’m still going back and forth about whether or not I like brown butter. I really feel like a monster about this. The cake made with brown butter tastes exactly like a brown butter cake with spices, so if you know that you love brown butter, this is the option for you. I’ve included both options in the recipe below. 

Brown butter or not, I am very happy with this cake. It is dense, moist, and fit for my pops' 60th birthday!

Ok, let's now move on to the frosting. Do you know BJ’s story about carrot cake? And you've already read Allison's frosting non-negotiables right? So carrot cake has to have the best frosting and it has to be cream cheese frosting, we’re all on the same page about that. 

I wasn’t going to fuck around with the frosting too much until halfway through my research when I found the halva caramel cream cheese frosting in Soframiz, and girl, it kept me up at night. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve always flipped past cakes that have caramel in the frosting because the thought of cleaning caramel out of a pot stresses me out and I honestly don’t love caramel. But obviously if you add tahini to anything I am sold. So I gave it a shot, using the caramel that Maya and I made for our molten halva lava cakes, and it turns out that such a small quantity of caramel only takes a few quick minutes to make and is actually really satisfying. The caramel mixed with the cream cheese and butter makes for a frosting that is nutty, not too sweet, full of flavor, and an important part of a really nice civilized slice of carrot cake. 

And the addition of tahini all makes sense because carrots go with cinnamon, cinnamon goes with hawaij, cinnamon goes with tahini, tahini goes with caramel, carrots go with tahini, etc., etc., guilty by association, there is a great flavor party happening in this cake. 

Ok I’m done talking about carrot cake for now. 

Oh pistachios! I added them because I like them. And sesame seeds are there because that’s what Soframiz does and I like that there is some sesame continuity now with the frosting. And marzipan carrots are my non-negotiable. 

Ok I’m really done now. 

Happy birthday to me and to my pops! I am spending the day decorating cake and making hotdish and recovering from a weekend of piñata making, taco eating, and rhombus brewery shutting downing!

K bye!

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carrot cake with hawaij and tahini caramel frosting

makes two 8" one-layer cakes (pictured) or one 8" two-layer cake

ingredients

for the cake:

2 1/2 c (340g) all-purpose flour 

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda 

2 tsp cinnamon 

1 tsp hawaij (or sub 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cardamom, and a pinch each of nutmeg and cloves)

1 c (166g) c brown sugar 

3/4 c (154g) c granulated sugar

1 1/2 c (320g) oil (to sub browned butter, brown 400g butter using stella’s directions and cool

4 large eggs 

1 tb vanilla bean paste or extract

2 c (200g) freshly shredded carrots 

Optional: 2 tb toasted sesame seeds and/or 90g chopped roasted pistachios

for the frosting:

6 tb (76g) granulated sugar

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1 tb water

1/4 c (63g) heavy cream

1/2 c (114g) unsalted butter, softened and divided

3 tb (48g) tahini

8 oz (226g) cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

to assemble:

Shaved carrot flowers

Marzipan kneaded with orange and green food coloring and shaped into flowers

Pistachios

Sesame seeds

Sprinkles

Birthday candles

clues

for the cake:

preheat the oven to 350ºf. grease and line two 8” cake pans with parchment and set aside.

in a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and hawaij and set aside. in a large bowl, whisk together the brown sugar and granulated sugar with the oil. whisk in each of the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each. whisk in the vanilla extract.

using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until about 90% incorporated. add the carrots, sesame seeds and pistachios (if using), and mix to incorporate (and by this time all of the flour mixture should be incorporated as well).

pour the batter into cake pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, begin checking for doneness at 30 minutes.

cool for 10 minutes in the pans and then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely. 

for the frosting:

first make the tahini caramel: place the sugar and 1/8 tsp salt in a saucepan. stir in the water and cook over high heat until it starts to bubble. stop stirring and continue cooking for 2-4 minutes until it turns a medium amber color. reduce heat to low and carefully drizzle in the cream while stirring (it will bubble up quickly and make a weird sucking sound, don’t be alarmed). continue to stir until the mixture smooths out. add half of the butter (1/4 c), cube by cube, stirring, until mixture is thick and homogeneous.

remove from the heat and stir in the tahini. let cool and refrigerate until ready to use. this can be made a day in advance. 

To make the frosting, combine the caramel, remaining 1/4 c butter, cream cheese, vanilla, and remaining 1/8 tsp salt in a stand mixer and mix with a paddle attachment until smooth. 

to assemble:

frost each cake liberally with frosting and decorate as desired! or, stack the two cakes for the two-layer version. 

enjoy!

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-yeh!

rose rose cookies + philly scenes

hey everyone! great news, i still fit into my mom jeans after my trip to philly where i ate at every single one of michael solomonov and steve cook’s restaurants in 48 hours. i’d like to thank benjamin franklin for having his bridge so close to my hotel which, paired with the coldplay spotify radio station and consistent 69º temperatures, allowed for highly enjoyable 3-4-mile morning jogs that helped me feel less irresponsible about engaging in so much eating research. also, defo could not have done it without the help of brandiego, jorge, brett, zoe, and sarah, who were also miraculously in town visiting and helped me tackle mountains of donuts and boloney sandwiches and more.

every single bite was sooo great, which i expected. but at every meal there were things that were more than great, which had that wild over-the-top x-factor that left me no choice but to stop mid-bite and do an audible o-face. they raised the bar for what a donut should taste like and how a fried cauliflower should crunch, and there was a caesar salad that kept me up last night. a caesar salad! 10 out of 10, this trip was a solid success and i am filled to the brim with inspiration. also the panel was a blast!! and an added bonus: philadelphia is no longer ex-boyfriend land (see: spaghetti and my boyfriend’s meatless balls in molly on the range), now it is food inspiration land. 

here were the top o-face worthy things:

the insanely rich chocolate tahini shake at goldie (and their perfectly crispy fries, dipped in the shake, duh)

the schug-a-rita at rooster soup, cilantro-y and spicy!

the smoked matzo ball soup (#teamsinker) with a fried boloney sandwich at rooster soup

the cookies n cream donut, followed closely by the honey donut at federal donuts, mmmm, hot and melty 

the fried chicken sandwich at federal donuts, the bottom bun was like lined with pickles, it was the pickley crunch that every fried chicken sandwich needs

the za’atar fried chicken at federal donuts, with a crispy salty shell that wouldn't quit

the ceasar salad with fried rye bread pudding croutons (!!!!) at abe fisher

actually, all of the things that came on fried rye bread at abe fisher

the lamb and persian wedding rice at zahav, i don't normally love lamb but this lamb, i loved

the very hazelnut-y carrot basbousa at zahav

the hummus at zahav and dizengoff (especially the zahav one bc it came with laffaaaaa)

my only regret was that i didn't have time to cook in my really pretty jersey ice cream co hotel kitchen. instead i just looked at it and instagrammed it. (shout out to the lokal hotel for an awesome stay!!!) 

i can't wait for my next trip to philly. whenever that will be. first i should eat some kale.

for my second flower practice session, i made cookies because i was inspired by this instagram post and also i thought that maybe with cookies, i could forgo the parchment paper step altogether. but it was actually kind of hard to pipe directly onto the cookies so i went back to the method of piping on parchment squares, freezing them, and then peeling off the flowers and plopping them onto the cookies. it didn’t add that much time, maybe only one or two episodes of the mindy project. and eggboy was planting late that day so it all went by really quickly. 

i used italian buttercream this time. my lack of patience got the best of me and i ruined it because i added the butter while the egg white mixture was still hot. so it looked like poop for a while, but then i poured in a couple of tablespoons of cold heavy cream and beat the crap out of it and it came back to life!! that was very satisfying. 

i liked how it tasted. it’s a lot lighter and probably more suitable for eating a big blob of frosting in the shape of a rose than american buttercream is. but my hands were so used to a stiff heavy american buttercream that piping with italian felt almost too delicate. it was like switching to the lowest gear on a bike. but the lightness made the petals and succulent nubbins stand up more easily on their own, so i feel like once i get it down i’ll be able to do more with it. the biggest downside is how long it takes to make. if i’m going to be making a million zillion flowers for eggsister wedding i’m going to need a hot tub of buttercream, but i still have some time to experiment with more recipes.

my favorite part about this cookie situation is the cookie part! i was obsessed with cookies n bloom cookies when i was little, they were so thick and almondy and cakey, and this recipe yields cookies that come super close to those! the princess emulsion gives them that little boost of nostalgic bakeriness but you can sub it for more vanilla if you don’t have princess emulsion. and as far as the actual piping of the roses and succulents, i still don't feel qualified to tell you how to do it or make a video about it (honestly i don't think that i ever will haha, look at my roses, they are so *rustic*) so i will send you back to my post about my last practice session that has a bunch of links to how-to videos! 

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rose rose cookies

makes about 20 cookies

ingredients

4 c (480g) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1 c (226g) unsalted butter, softened

2/3 c (137g) sugar

2/3 c (80g) powdered sugar

zest from 1/2 of a lemon

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp princess emulsion (or another tsp vanilla)

3/4 tsp almond extract

for the frosting:

this recipe, plus a few drops of rosewater and food coloring

clues

in a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside.

in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and the sugars until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

add in the lemon zest and mix to combine. add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each, and then add the extracts.

add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, one-third at a time, mixing until just blended.

turn the dough out onto the counter and divide into two large discs. wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour, or up to two days.

when ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375ºf. line two baking sheets with parchment and set aside.

working with one dough disc at a time, roll it out on a lightly floured surface to 1/2” thick. use a cookie cutter to make 2 1/2” circles and then transfer circles to a baking sheet, 1" apart. re-roll scraps and cut out more circles.

bake until they're barely starting to brown on bottom, begin checking for doneness at 12 minutes. let cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

make your frosting and then decorate as desired (see notes above)! 

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-yeh!

ramp malawach

This weekend totally nailed it. Nothing was too strongly out of the ordinary (except that brunch club member emeritus Abby came back to town for a visit with her new special man friend and it was sooo great and, ugh, we’ve gotta find a way to convince them to move back to grand forks you guys), I just did some simple errands, cooked fun things for family and friends, and engaged in my favorite saturday mid-morning ritual of going to the gym and then getting a turkey tom with onions on 7-grain at jimmy john's. “gym and jimmy john's” is its official name and it’s basically a way for the chill of pizza friday to take a victory lap. I don’t have to make any real decisions, I can sleep in and then cruise around town, ideally with a met opera broadcast la-la-la-ing over the radio, and then have a big mayo-y sandwich at the end. 

This particular saturday morning was extra good because in my first internet check of the day I came across this video of my friend matt playing the mozart sinfonia concertante with the minnesota orchestra. It is pure joy!! Is his mozart face not the best?? (The eyebrows! The delight!) So that set the jolliest, most civilized tone for the weekend and inspired me to listen to more mozart and then some mahler during my jimmy john's eating and new cookbook studying. At 5 o’clock, A Prairie Home Companion came on and I watched the video broadcast as I chopped cabbage. I really really love Chris Thile’s PHC. Even though he’s not from the Midwest, I’ve always associated his voice and music with the midwest since I listened to so much Nickel Creek on road trips to Michigan growing up, so I’m extremely happy and proud that we’ve adopted him. Being able to hear him play new songs live over the radio on the regular is such a gift. 

Yesterday I harvested our first bit of rhubarb!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I used it to make a sauce for mother’s day blintzes. We had a nice big mother’s day brunch of blintz soufflé, zucchini quiche, challah, butter with chives from the garden, this rose rose cake which I finally defrosted, and some salady things. The quiche and blintz soufflé were made from recipes that I was testing for Leah’s forthcoming book and they were delicious, I can’t wait for her next book. 

Today I’m flying to Philadelphia for this panel tomorrow! (It is sold out but it will be live-streamed on facebook I think.) I am also planning to eat at all of Mike Solomonov’s restaurants in a pokémon-style gotta-catch-em-all early birthday present to myself. I am so excited. Wish me and my waistline luck. 

Here is a recipe that helped me get through all of the many bunches of ramps that eggboy bought the other day! At first I was going to make scallion pancakes with ramp greens instead of scallions but then I dug a bit further and learned that making malawach (a flaky yemeni flatbread) is a very similar process except that it uses butter instead of sesame oil and the dough gets stretched way thinner so you get more flakiness. I was in a buttery flaky mood, and I had just almost died over the amazing malawach at kismet in l.a., so I went with ramp malawach. 

Malawach is like a rustic flat hot croissant that’s way easier to make than a croissant. There truly is life before your first malawach and life after because there is no more perfect bite than a piece of malawach, hot out of the pan, topped with grated tomato, a plop of labneh, and a splatter of spicy zhoug. Grated tomato is traditional with yemeni buttery breads and it delivers just the right amount of freshness to balance everything out.

The dough here is pretty much the same as the scallion pancake dough in my book, but I read here that the kismet ladies use some pastry flour in theirs so I tried that and loved the extra bit of lightness that it added. The process of shaping malawach and getting the dough to be paper thin requires massaging it with a shit ton of butter. It's a lil messy, but it doesn't need to be perfect, and bonus: you'll moisturize your hands and butcher block countertops (if that's what you're using) in the process. 

Obviously if you're not up to your eyeballs in ramps, or maybe you're sick of them by now, you can use scallion greens, chives, or nix the idea of green things altogether. I threw the white parts of the ramps into some zhoug in the place of garlic which was a thing I'd do again. 

Happy Malawach-ing!!! 

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ramp malawach

makes 6

ingredients

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

3/4 c pastry flour

2 tsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

3/4 c water

3/4 c butter, very soft

10 ramps (green parts, finely chopped, add the white parts to zhoug or reserve for another use)

for serving

zhoug

labneh

2 large tomatoes, grated

3 or 4 seven-minute eggs

clues

in a large bowl, combine the flour, pastry flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. create a well in the center and add the water. mix the dough until you have a shaggy dough. 

turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead dough for 5-7 minutes, adding additional flour as needed, until smooth.

transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and rest for 30 minutes.

turn the dough out onto a work surface and divide into 6 balls. Keep them covered with plastic wrap when you're not working with them. Using your hands, spread 1 tablespoon butter on a large work surface, top one of the balls of dough with another tablespoon butter and pat the dough and butter out into a flat circle.

Using a flat hand, gently massage it in circular motions (kind of as if you’re washing a window) to flatten it out into a very large translucent circle. It’s ok if it’s tears, it doesn’t need to be perfect, just try to get it as thin as possible! 

Top with a sprinkling of the ramp greens and then roll it up into one long, skinny log. roll the log into a coil and set it on a plate. repeat with the remaining dough.

roll out the coils into 7" circles by placing them between two pieces of wax paper and rolling with a rolling pin. the dough will probably want to stick to the wax paper, but it's ok if it tears while you're peeling it off. (alternatively, you can stick the coils in the fridge for about 30 minutes, which will make them slightly easier to handle.)

Heat a skillet over medium heat and cook fora few minutes on both sides until golden brown. 

Serve hot with zhoug, labneh, grated tomatoes, and 7-minute eggs. Enjoy!

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-yeh!