There are food bloggers, and then there are food bloggers.

There are those of us who are on top of things… who make a whole Thanksgiving dinner a month before Thanksgiving. That way we can write about all our dishes before the holiday, so our readers can make those dishes for Thanksgiving.

Those of us who already know what we’re going to bake long before December, and have already tested the recipes and taken the photos before there’s even a hint of December in the air.

Those people are probably already starting to think about what they’ll be serving for Easter next year.

Oops…

I… am most certainly not one of those people.

Heh. Yeah. Definitely not.

Holiday baking? Um… haven’t even started.

Right. Gotta get on that.

I’m more the kind of food blogger who cooks for a holiday, like a normal person, and then posts about it after the fact, right about when nobody cares about that holiday any longer. Yeah, I’m timely like that.

Anyways.

I made these cookies, from Joy the Baker way back in June, but at the time I definitely didn’t have Christmas on the mind. (No, these were for my little sister, who was graduating at the time.)

However, these are definitely going to make an appearance for Christmas as well. After all, these flourless cookies made my newly gluten-free grandmother tear up when she realized she could actually eat some! Yes, that totally means I need to make them again…

(Also, as a side note, if you accidentally only put in half the amount of peanut butter, your cookies will turn out very flat. Still delicious, but definitely flatter than they should be… o_0)

Nom.

In today’s edition of ‘Foods Allison hated when she was a kid’ (trust me, this could go on for a while)… CAULIFLOWER.

Growing up, my sister loved cauliflower. Me, I was more of a broccoli kind of girl. (Cauliflower for dinner?! Eeewwww… gross.)

(As an amusing aside, the other day I mentioned to my mom that I’m not a huge fan of bell peppers. She responded, “Really? I thought you like everything?!” I looked at her askance and burst out laughing. “You do realize I’m the kid who wouldn’t eat anything when I was younger…” “Yeah,” she mused, “you were so picky when you were little!”)

Look, mom, I’m eating cauliflower!

I actually had no plans to try making anything with cauliflower in it anytime soon… the subconscious memories of my childhood aversion to it meant that it simply never occurred to me to even consider buying any. But a conversation with a friend about roasting vegetables (hi, Joann!) convinced me that maybe it was time to give that squeaky white vegetable a try once more.

So I bought a head of cauliflower.

And proceeded to look at it for two days, never quite going through with my intention to roast it.

But then I saw this recipe for Creamy Cauliflower Soup and thought… “okay, I can do that.”

Despite a few mishaps along the way (I didn’t check my pantry before going grocery shopping, and found out once I started cooking that – oops – I only had chicken stock, no vegetable stock), the soup turned out wonderfully. The potato adds enough creaminess and the caramelized onions enough sweetness to make the soup taste really decedent, even though it’s really just a bowl full of vegetables.

So do I love cauliflower now?

Well… not quite. The “squeakiness” of it still gets to me. However, I did eat up the entire batch of this cauliflower soup… so I will admit it’s starting to grow on me.

Those croutons are to die for.

There are two big themes that seem to run through my cooking ever since I “grew up”. The first is the realization that I actually like foods that I always swore I hated when I was younger, and the second is the discovery of many foods I never knew about as a child.

Well, that isn’t exactly true. Several of these foods – like Brussels sprouts, for example – I had heard of quite often. Every children’s book talks about kids who refuse to eat their Brussels sprouts. But they seemed a kind of fairy-tale invention… in the same way that curds and whey or Turkish delight did. These were foods that, to my younger self, didn’t really exist in the real world (or, at the very least, my idea of what they actually were when I read about them in stories greatly differed from what they are in real life. I always thought curds and whey was something like oatmeal…)

But it’s these “fairy tale” foods, or the foods that I’d never even heard about until several years into food blogging, that hold the biggest fascination for me. Like Brussels sprouts. (I never had them as a child, and have loved them ever since I first tried them as an adult.) Or zucchini blossoms… why didn’t anyone ever tell me that you could eat flowers?!

I love the vibrant colors of the squash blossoms

Just as with my first encounter with Brussels sprouts, it took a year or two for me to build up the courage to actually buy them. I’ve never cooked these flowers… what if I do something wrong, or buy them and make a disaster of them, or…

But last week at the farmer’s market, I saw them for the first time at one of my usual stands… and on a spontaneous whim, they somehow ended up coming home with me. But now what?

Thank goodness for Twitter. It’s a lifesaver, in times like these. The very awesome Gaby Dalkin rescued me with the idea to put them on pizza (and she even had a recipe on her blog that I could check out!)

Oh my… yum. I had some flatbreads in the freezer from the hummus stand at the farmer’s market that my mom had told me were great for pizza, so I pulled those out, spread them with a little olive oil, mozzarella cheese, pancetta, and these squash blossoms. So good. The squash blossoms have a very delicate flavor, so you don’t want to overwhelm them with strong cheeses or other toppings… but this was perfect.

Quick and delicious!

Very closely based on the Squash Blossom and Pancetta Pizza recipe from What’s Gaby Cooking. If you want real pizza, follow her recipe… mine uses a pre-made flatbread, so the cooking times and temperatures are different.

Ingredients

• 1 8″ flatbread
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 squash blossoms
• 1/2 oz pancetta

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F.
2. Saute the pancetta in a skillet until it gets browned and crispy.
3. Brush the flatbread with olive oil. Sprinkle with the mozzarella cheese.
4. Cut off the bottom of the blossoms and clean out the insides, then tear them into large pieces.
5. Top the pizza with the pancetta and blossoms.
6. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

I was an early adopter, when it came to Harry Potter. My grandparents got me the first book when I was in middle school. I loved it, of course.

I then proceeded to dress up as Draco Malfoy that Halloween. Complete with cape and Nimbus 2000. (My little sister dressed up as Harry Potter. No, you don’t get to see pictures.)

Not a single person at my school had any clue who I was. (Once a dork, always a dork…)

Luscious brown sugar cupcakes…

Flash forward a decade, and Harry Potter is all the rage. And… I’m just not feeling it. Yeah, I know, I know. But somewhere between the 4th and 5th books, I just fell out of love with it.

(I haven’t seen the movies, either… just bits of the first one. But I’ve never been much of a movie person.)

Decadent butterscotch sauce…

My sister, on the other hand, is still a huge Harry Potter fan. So when she and her girlfriend (also a huge Harry Potter fan) came home for a few days before the school year started, I pulled this recipe out of my long list of bookmarked recipes (I’d been saving it up for them).

I’m not sure exactly what I had been expecting, but holy cow these are good. Sweet, but not too sweet, as some butterscotch-flavored desserts can be. Moist, especially after I accidentally poured in an entire cup of buttermilk instead of just half a cup. And ohmygod that buttercream frosting… in the past I hadn’t been much of a fan of the buttercream frostings I’ve made, but I’m a believer now.

And the best butterscotch buttercream frosting ever.

Slightly altered from The Pastry Affair’s Butterbeer Cupcakes, which were adapted from the Butterbeer Cupcakes on Amy Bites.

Brown Sugar Cupcake

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp butter flavoring
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup cream soda

1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
3. Cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Add the vanilla extract and butter flavoring.
4. Fold in one third of the flour mixture, then the buttermilk, then another third of the flour mixture, then the cream soda, and then the remaining flour.
5. Fill cupcake liners 3/4 of the way full and bake for 15-18 minutes, or until the cupcakes are golden-brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.

Butterscotch Ganache

• 11 oz (1 package) butterscotch chips
• 1 cup heavy cream

1. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt the butterscotch chips into the heavy cream, stirring until smooth. (Or heat in the microwave in 30-second increments, stirring in between.) Remove from heat and cool to room temperature before using.

Butterscotch Buttercream

• 6 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup butterscotch ganache (recipe above)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp butter flavoring
• Pinch of salt
• 3 cups powdered sugar

1. Cream the butter until light and fluffy. Mix in the butterscotch ganache, vanilla, butter flavoring, and salt. Beat in the powdered sugar for 2-3 minutes.

To Assemble:

1. Pour the butterscotch ganache into a plastic squeeze bottle. Push the tip of the bottle into the cupcake and fill each cupcake with butterscotch ganache until it starts to overflow. (I made 3-4 holes in each cupcake.)
2. Fill a pastry bag with the buttercream and pipe onto the top of each cupcake. Drizzle with more butterscotch ganache, if desired. (You will most likely have left-over butterscotch ganache – this can be used as a topping for ice cream, or it’s an excellent excuse to make another batch of these cupcakes.)
3. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
4. Enjoy!

Coffee.

Coffeecoffeecoffee.

Cooooofffffeeeeeeee…

I have a weird sort of relationship with coffee. I like coffee. I really do. Except I can never make it to my liking at home.

Office coffee? Yes, please. Hotel coffee? Sure, why not? Starbucks? Mmmm, yes.

The coffee I make at home? Bleh. Gross. Fail. I’ve tried using a regular coffee maker, I’ve tried instant (ew), I’ve tried using a French press… *sigh*. I have no talent for coffee making.

Pouring the frosting over the bundt cakes

Luckily my inability to make good coffee at home has no bearing whatsoever on whether I’m able to make good coffee-flavored baked goods. Thank goodness.

I first tried these mini espresso bundt cakes when I bought one that The Food Librarian made for the Food Blogger Bake Sale earlier this year. I couldn’t stop raving about them, so when Mary replied to me with a link to the recipe she used, there was no doubt I’d be making them soon.

My little sister, who’s almost as much of a coffee-lover as I am (who am I kidding, she’s way much more coffee-crazy than me) graduated from college this year. So, like the loving sister I am, I baked her a box full of delicious things as her graduation present. This box included some delicious Churro Cookies, some ridiculously simple but so freaking good Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies, and, of course, these mini espresso bundt cakes.

They were a total hit, of course.

To be honest, I’m craving them right now… espresso bundt cake is an acceptable replacement for morning coffee, right?

Don’t judge. Just make them. You’ll see…

Mini espresso bundt cakes

Visit The Food Librarian for the recipe!

Do you remember when you were little, and your parents would eat peas and tofu and cabbage and tomatoes and all sorts of other disgusting things? You would look at them with your nose scrunched up and wonder, “How can you possibly like that stuff? It’s so gross, it doesn’t taste good at all!” And they would smile and tell you that liking icky vegetables is the sort of things that happens when you grow up and your tastes change. So you always wished your tastes would just change already, so dinnertime wouldn’t always be such a battle between you and those horrible vegetables your parents would make you finish before you got to have anything else.

(…or maybe that was just me. I always was an exceedingly picky child.)

Well… it seems my tastes are finally changing.

Fresh out of the oven

Case in point: a few years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated to inform you that I absolutely, positively hated dill. Yuck. Gross. How could anyone possibly like it?

Now, well, I’m kind of addicted. The scent makes me want to bury my face in a dill plant and inhale. It’s amazing.

(Sound familiar? Yeah… it’s been happening more often in the last couple of years.)

So pretty!

I think this chicken is one of the best possible applications for dill. It’s spicy, creamy, hearty, and of course dilly (yes, I looked it up, and realize that doesn’t mean what I intended it to mean, however both meanings apply beautifully here. Go look it up… you’ll see what I mean.), and altogether awesome. I discovered this recipe when my dear mother gifted me with a bunch of dill (this was back when I still thought I hated dill – she had used a third of the bunch in a recipe, and didn’t have any way to use it up, so of course she gives it to me) and I did a half-frantic AllRecipes search trying to figure out how on earth I was supposed to use all that dill.

That was the turning point. Now I love dill, and make this chicken again and again and again… Love, love, love.

Om nom

Chicken with Curry Dill Sauce, adapted from AllRecipes

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 1/8 tsp salt
• a dash of pepper
• 1 cup milk
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 tsp fresh dill weed, chopped
• 1/4 tsp curry powder
• 6 chicken breast halves
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil

Cooking Directions

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour, salt and pepper; stir until smooth. Gradually add milk and bring to a boil. Boil and stir for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add the mayonnaise, dill and curry; stir until smooth. Set aside.
2. In a skillet over medium heat, brown chicken in oil. Place in a greased 9×13″ baking dish. Pour sauce over chicken. Bake, uncovered, at 350°F for 50-60 minutes or until meat juices run clear.

My current sandwich obsession: honey-roasted turkey and pickles on toasted Hawaiian bread (with a little bit of mayonnaise and dijon mustard, of course).

However, I do have a confession to make… up until about a month ago, I was convinced I hated pickles. I’d pick them off of sandwiches and burgers (and transfer them to my mom’s plate if she was around – she loves pickles).

But then I split the most amazing burger with my dad at Betty Burgers in Santa Cruz, CA… and had such a long day (the family drove up from LA that morning, for my sister’s graduation, then went out for dinner with my sister and her girlfriend afterwards) that I was too darn tired to bother picking them off my half.

And wow. Pickles are actually good! (No, I’m not pregnant. Promise.) It seems I’m getting older, more mature… or at least, my tastes have gotten more mature, even if I’m not. ~_^

Forming Umami Burger patties

Umami Burger Sliders on Hawaiian Rolls, with Bacon Jam and New York Cheddar Cheese.

Burger condiments

Ooooh, mommy indeed. Trust me. You want to make this.

Hijacking my dad’s BBQ for burger grilling

I made Crunchy Coleslaw to go on top of the burgers… but it never made it there. Instead, it ended up a side. And that was perfectly fine. (I replaced the malt vinegar with rice vinegar to give it a more Asian flare. Next time I’d add in daikon – I couldn’t find any this time around.)

Burgers, burgers, burgers

Of course, I had to make the Baked Sweet Onion Dip that I’ve had a couple of times before, at dinner parties thrown by Todd and Diane, served with toasted bread sices. (I refuse to make this for just myself and Son… it’s so addictive, I know I’d eat it all. Believe me… any leftovers were gone in a flash. This stuff is dangerously good.)

Sweet Onion Dip

Another side I’ve had bookmarked for a while: this Spring Asparagus Pancetta Hash from Smitten Kitchen. I had nearly everything in my fridge already (save the pancetta), so it was an obvious choice. Loved it.

Spring Asparagus Pancetta Hash

And for dessert? I could have baked something, and would have, except… I had a huge hankering for root beer floats. It had been way too long since I had one. So I had my dad buy root beer and vanilla ice cream (since I bought most everything else)… the perfect ending to a fantastic meal.

Root beer float

Too much food? Well… you could say that. Personally, I’d say it’s exactly right… just enough to feed four people, with plenty of leftovers! (We love leftovers.)

Overall, it was a perfect meal. Or, in my case, the perfect fuel so I could get to work figuring out what (if anything) is mine in the disaster zone that my sister left in the room we shared growing up… (gah… send help, please!)

Every year, I make Dorie Greenspan’s Thanksgiving Twofer Pie for my family’s Thankgiving celebration.

Every year, I have leftover pumpkin filling and pecan topping.

And every year, I don’t know how to use it up. I’ve tried making extra little pies, but those never got eaten since I make two full pies and we always have leftovers.

So this year, I decided to do something a little different.

I poured the extra pumpkin filling into a baking dish, and baked it along with the pies. Then I scooped it out, and layered it with fresh whipped cream to make some beautiful (and delicious) parfaits. They were gone right away!

I no longer have to worry about what to do with that extra pie filling… and you’ll see in a day what I did to use up the pecan topping. ^_^

Pumpkin pie filling adapted from Baking from My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Whipped cream adapted from AllRecipes.com.

Ingredients

• 2 cups of pumpkin puree
• 1 1/3 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 tsp walnut liqueur (or rum)
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tsp walnut liqueur (or vanilla extract)
• 2 tbsp powdered sugar

Cooking Directions

1. Mix the pumpkin puree, 1 1/3 cups of heavy cream, brown sugar, eggs, egg yolks, vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. Pour into an 8×8″ baking dish.
2. Bake at 300°F for 1 hour, or until no longer jiggly.
3. Whip the 2 cups of cream until almost at stiff peaks. Add the liqueur and sugar, and mix until just blended in.
4. Starting with the pumpkin, layer the pumpkin and whipped cream in a tall glass until full. Top with a little dollop of whipped cream, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
5. Enjoy!

When you order fish from I Love Blue Sea, you essentially have to order an entire fish. It makes sense – the fish has to be extremely fresh so that it will be sashimi-grade, and they can’t just have half-fishes sitting around waiting for the next order. That would be wasteful.

So after making a few different dishes for Sushi Day, I had a good bit of fish left over. Obviously I wasn’t going to throw it away… I spent good money on that arctic char! No… I had to find a good way to use it up.

When I need to use up an ingredient, I look to my kitchen to see what other leftover ingredients I have sitting around that also need to be used, and see if there’s a way I could put them together.

An onion.

Some garlic.

Heavy cream.

A sweet potato.

Hm…

SOUP!!!

So I turned to my bookmarked recipes, to see if I had any links for salmon chowders (since arctic char is in the same family as salmon, but it’s pretty rare that you’re going to find an arctic char recipe on most food blogs).

None. Dang.

However, I did have a recipe for garlic soup that I’d been wanting to make, which would use the onion, garlic, and heavy cream.

Garlic soup probably would go pretty well with some sweet potato and arctic char… right?

So I looked to AllRecipes.com for a salmon chowder recipe (for years AllRecipes.com has been my go-to site when I need a recipe for anything… at least, after I’ve looked through my list of bookmarked blog posts), and sort of fudged the two recipes together to come up with something that I hoped would work.

Let me just say, my apartment smelled like heaven while this was cooking.

Trust me… if you only ever make one thing from any of my sites, this is the one you want to make. On a cold, stormy, wintery day when the scent of it cooking will fill your home and make everything seem warm and comfy. And then cuddle up next to a fire with a bowl of soup and your loved ones, and… okay, I’m getting carried away. And overly romantic. Anyways.

You want to make this. Heck, I want to make another batch of this… right now. I think I’m going to have to order another couple of pounds of arctic char now…

… with a yummy garlic soup base.

I adapted this recipe for garlic soup for the base of my chowder (because we LOVE garlic in this household), and then took inspiration from this salmon chowder recipe to figure out how to add the fish and potatoes into the soup.

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp rendered pork fat
• 1 onion, diced
• 12 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 cup white wine
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
• 1 quart chicken stock
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1 fillet arctic char (about 1/3 lb), skinned, boned, and chopped
• 1 tsp dill, chopped

Cooking Directions

1. Melt the fat in a hot pan.
2. Add the onion and garlic, cook until caramelized.
3. Add the white wine, simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
4. Add the stock and sweet potato. Bring to a boil, then simmer for half an hour.
5. Add the heavy cream, arctic char, and dill. Cook just a couple of minutes longer, until warmed through and the arctic char has turned a opaque light pink.
6. Enjoy with crusty bread or white rice.