jump to navigation

Recipe: Lemon Bundt Cake 22 April 2010 2:54 pm

Posted by Tracy in : America's Test Kitchen,baking,cooking,dessert,friends,kitchen gear,recipes , View Comments

I think this cake might be the very first one I ever made from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe (it’s either that or the fabulous huevos rancheros also in this issue, January & February 2006). In any case, I am not much of a baker or even a huge cake fan, but for whatever reason this recipe captured my imagination and I had to try it. Maybe it was the buttermilk? I don’t know, but I’m pretty darn sure that does not hurt the deliciousness of this one bit. Anyway. I dedicate this post to Ansley, who has been awesome at reminding me that she really, really wants to know how to make this delicious dessert.

Notes

This recipe is super-wordy because I am not a baker and lots of instructions are helpful to me, but I have cut it down to size on Twitter, like so:

Lemon bundt cake! 9oz butter, 2c sugar, 3 eggs+1 yolk, 3 lemons’ juice+zest, 3/4c buttermilk, 3c APF, 1 tsp powder, 1/2tsp soda, 60min 350F.

7:23 PM Sep 7th, 2009 via web

That’s a little misleading on the lemon juice, but otherwise right on. Also, it leaves out 1 tsp vanilla (oops).

The only other really important thing to know is that in addition to these ingredients you’ll need an extra tablespoon of buttermilk and 2 cups (8 ounces) of confectioner’s sugar, to make a light glaze of super-deliciousness. Armed with that information, experienced bakers can probably feel fine to ignore all my directions.

Last thoughts: the last time I made this recipe I used demerara sugar (Sugar In the Raw, to be exact) and the cake turned out a little crumblier than usual, but still delicious. I think this cake is even more delicious when it’s a day or two old; like many other baked goods, it gets denser and crumblier with time, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. (more…)

Monkey Monday: cookies and random 29 March 2010 1:28 pm

Posted by Tracy in : baking,cookies,dessert,eating,friends,fun,monkeys,people,photos,pictures , View Comments

So first things first, big thanks are due to Sam, for bringing homemade Oreos to one of Greg’s dinner parties and saying stuff like “they’re super-easy!” and “just Google for ‘homemade Oreos’” because I did and the results were delicious:

Homemade Oreos
Oh yes.

These are almost exactly the recipe at Smitten Kitchen, with the somewhat-less-sugar version of the cookie parts and a heaping teaspoon of instant coffee thrown in for extra bittersweet chocolatey goodness. The only drawback was (more…)

Ask TracyFood: should I freak out about genetically modified foods? 10 March 2010 11:05 pm

Posted by Tracy in : GMOs,Marion Nestle,agriculture,books,economics,environment,food safety,food snobbery,friends,geekery,health,history,politics,science,sustainability , View Comments

So I got a message from the splendiferous Ms. Lara earlier today:

Hey, Tracy! Someone on FB is arguing that GM crops are categorically horrible and bad and whatnot. Can you send me some informative links to help educate her (and myself!)? (I seem to recall you linked to an article about the death of an agriculturalist who saved millions of lives with his crops, so of course I thought of you…)

Many thanks to my favorite foodie!!
-L

Well. How could I resist the chance to go all run-on sentence on that? (more…)

What I’m up to: awesome weekends. 26 February 2010 11:30 pm

Posted by Tracy in : consumerism,eating,events,fangirl,friends,fun,movies,not even vegetarian,nyc,photos,pictures,pizza,random,restaurants,reviews,school , View Comments

So this weekend Peter’s out of town for macho male bonding stuff which I sincerely hope does not involve getting buried by the snowicane or whatever I’m supposed to call this mess of wet and cold slushing everything up all over the place for the snowiest NYC February on record, wow (shouts out to Ansley for that fun fact, and also a pretext for delicious, delicious lunch at Veselka this afternoon, nom nom nom). But seriously, just look at the poor planters at our building’s entrance, for monkeys’ sake:

Entrance to our building, with lots of snow.
I think the super’s whole family has been worked keeping that path clear these past 36-odd hours.

Anyway. I have two excellent reasons to brave the frozen wilds of New York City this weekend, and I am going to tell you all about them, starting… now.

The Foodprint Project

To be perfectly honest, I’m not 100% sure what The Foodprint Project is, but there are so many awesome people involved that I cannot wait to be a part of it any way I can. And oh darn, hearing awesome people talk about the art and culture and politics of urban food systems and more? Geez, it’s like exactly what I came to grad school for, only free and I get to design my own homework! So that’s tomorrow, Saturday, February 27, from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., at Studio-X, 180 Varick St., Suite 1610, New York, NY 10014.

Just Food’s CSA in NYC conference!

Ok, I do know what this event is about, which means the conference should be pretty freaking awesome. Community Supported Agriculture is the answer, doncha know, and I am eager to learn more about how it works in NYC and how I can help, because: awesome.

So that’s my plans for this weekend, but last weekend was pretty excellent, too, so (more…)

A few more odds and ends. 21 January 2010 11:50 pm

Posted by Tracy in : friends,funny,health,health at every size,news,random,reading , View Comments

I’m not even going to try to lead smoothly from story to story here, but I’ll try for catchy headlines so you can pick and choose what paragraphs look interesting, short attention span theater-style. Here we go!

Health likes big butts, and it cannot lie

Big thanks to the fabulous Chiara for posting this excellent news item to Twitter back while I was in the land of needing all the good news I could get. “Science could look to deliberately increase hip fat” for health, according to the British researchers cited in this article. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to reading the original paper.

A TracyFood picture is podcast-famous!

So two weeks ago I got a Flickr comment on the picture Breakfast, annotated, which you may know from theAbout Tracy page on this here blog. Turns out my breakfast now plays a supporting role in Episode 2 of The Flickerman web radio serial, which you really must hear to believe. (more…)