The Cooking Critic

I love my new air conditioner. Love it love it love it. It is my favorite thing right now (I love it even more than my new white dress that I got from H & M), and it was a long time coming. I ordered my air conditioner online in July of 2005 from evil Wal-Mart, paid far more than I intended once shipping and tax were added, and it didn’t show up until September when summer was over, and I had no use for it. I called Wal-Mart, full of self-righteousness and the knowledge that shipping a seasonal product to a person when the season is over is clearly wrong, and they should make amends.

They felt differently.

They only offered me a measly $20 discount, which they never made good on. And while I’ve heard all sorts of horror tales about Wal-Mart from the book Nickel & Dimed and the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, I felt a little more outraged when it affected me personally. (That’s normal, right?) Therefore, all people should boycott Wal-Mart, if not for their general evilness, then for me and my tale of un-air-conditioned woe and sorrow!

So, anyhoo, the air conditioner was stored in my garage that September and was finally brought out of hiding when its services were needed last month. It should have been released from hibernation earlier, but previously when I opened up the box the air conditioner came in, I found its size and booklet of instructions very intimidating, so I kept putting off its installation. It took an outrageous heat wave and the help of my friend Rob to bring to fruition what should have taken place a year ago when I first ordered the damn thing.

I made Banana Bread after the air conditioner was installed simply because I can (also because I owed Rob an edible thank you, and I needed to make a July breakfast item for my blog.) The oven was on, the air conditioner was pumping, and I felt cool as can be … whenever I was in my bedroom anyways. My air conditioner doesn’t quite pump enough to cool as many square inches as it claims to on its box. But if I strategically place three fans throughout the house to push the cool air into various areas, you can almost feel a difference. And sleeping is way easier in a cool, air-conditioned bedroom than in a hot, muggy one.

Assessment: I’ve made and enjoyed many banana breads in my day, and I’ve determined that this one from the Junior League cookbook is the best. I don’t say that lightly. And since topping always makes bread taste better, I added a Streusel Topping from Family Circle. I blame the heat for the fact may streusel melded and never reached crumbly status when I mixed it together with a fork. My technique could also be at fault, but I prefer to blame the heat (and Wal-Mart too while I’m at it–why not? I’m sure I could think of a way to blame Wal-Mart for my banana bread inadequacies if I thought about it long enough.)

Also, did you know boys love banana bread? I ended up making muffins since my bread pan ran off (the floozy!), but at least this way I got to snag a few muffins for myself and share them with some male friends. Jim said he doesn’t normally care for banana bread, but he devoured mine and especially liked “the stuff on the top.” And Matt, who doesn’t like any food at all, more or less, said the muffin he ate was “like a golden biscuit.” So boys apparently love banana bread. Who knew? And here they are pictured on some hand-me-down plates from your mother.

Apparently, the world is even less interested in salads than I am. Nobody seems to care about the Broiled Shrimp and Spinach Salad I raved about recently. Or at least, few people cared enough to actually access the recipe. The much-less healthy Sausage Balls, however, are wildly popular. So since y’all like cheese and meat, I figure sugar and butter can’t be far behind. Hence, an entire entry devoted to icing.

With multiple Taurus birthdays, which timed themselves well with my practice for a cupcake competition, I’ve been trying out many different icings. Mostly buttercream in nature with an occasional ganache thrown in. Kurt says I’m “a bit dorky” for entering a cupcake competition, but I think most people would have no problems with the fact that I’m bringing more iced cupcakes into the world. You have to make the world a better place somehow. Angelina Jolie helps the children of Namibia; I bake cupcakes then sloppily ice them.

I started with this basic buttercream recipe that we regularly use in my family, and for my first effort turned it into a Peanut Butter Icing by substituting the peanut butter for the butter. I also added lots of salt because I can’t stand super-sweet peanut butter. I made a Chocolate Glaze to complement it (2 cups melted semi-sweet chocolate chips with 1 cup cream whisked in until smooth), and then swirled the glaze and the icing on top the cupcake to make a cupcake version of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Mmm, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupcakes.

I decided to turn another batch of buttercream icing into Chai Icing by adding cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, even some crushed black tea leaves—though sadly, didn’t bother with measurements. It was an unusually spicy and mysterious icing. I’m trying to think of its female celebrity equivalent. Grace Kelly? Sophia Loren? Hmm, not sure. But it would go well with a pear or apple cake.

Next up was a White Chocolate Ganache. This was my first foray into ganache-making, which typically consists of heated cream, some form of chocolate and a liqueur mixed in. I’ll be visiting ganache again. As much as I love buttercream, ganache was a nice way to mix things up, especially when it topped a thin layer of raspberry preserves or lemon curd.

Maple Syrup Icing is next on the icing queue (possibly with some stewed apples mixed in or used for garnish), and then I think I will be cupcaked out. I may even be forced to eat another salad….

My title sounds like a really lame National Enquirer headline.

So I woke up to a rainy, cold day, and for whatever reason, this brings out a strong urge to bake. I determined I would prefer to make cookies (wasn’t a cake sort of day), and then it occurred to me I should pick out cookies that ship well and send some to my brother, who has gone way beyond the call of sibling duty of late and spent 45 minutes of his Saturday evening on the phone helping me with this blog you see here. I chose Almond Cookie Slices from the FamilyCircle Best-Ever Cakes & Cookies, a gift from my Grandma when she discovered I liked to cook. Reasons for picking these cookies are: they were different than my usual fare, they called for icing (and I really felt like icing), I have a bit of an almond thing lately, and they sounded ship-able. I can’t quite remember my brother’s stance toward almonds, but I’m trusting his non-picky nature.

Baking these cookies turned into the never-ending cookie extravaganza. You have to blanch the almonds, pop them out of their skins, toast them, grind them, etc. Once you have your dough, you have to freeze it for twenty minutes. The whole process took me 2 hours. Granted, I was carrying on a conversation and drinking wine while making the cookies—not particularly conducive to efficient cookie-making—but I think the estimated 58 minutes was way off. (But check out my picture–I’m pretty proud of it. You can see the steam coming off of the tea!)

Adjustments: The recipe called for 1 1/4 cup ground almonds and 1 1/4 cup whole almonds. This sounded like a lot of big ole almonds, so I opted to include a 3/4 cup of sliced almonds instead of folding the second 1 1/4 cup in whole form. This suits me too since I’m more a fan of the almond flavor than the nut itself. I also had to adjust the Almond Glaze since I didn’t have a full cup of powdered sugar (so basically, I included less water.) Also, when you slice up the cookies, the instructions forget to tell you to give a slice down the middle, so you have reasonably sized cookies and the 3 dozen the recipe claims.

Assessments: Though good, I will probably never make these cookies again because they were far too much trouble. Also, they were more or less biscotti! And I’m no big fan of biscotti. I looked up a recipe to see the difference, and it turns out biscotti has egg (my cookies did not) and are baked twice (who knew?) The biscotti recipe claimed baking them twice gave them that “delightfully crunchy” texture. And all this time I thought they were just hard and overrated. Still, if you like biscotti but would prefer a slightly softer texture, these Almond Cookie Slices would be the ticket. And I have to say I really looked forward to my cookies and tea the next afternoon. It’s going to be hard to ship them too. They were so much work, I feel I deserve to eat every last one.