These glorious creations are from my favorite donut shop in the world: Bitchin’ Donuts.
I love it for the name, I love it for the messages, and I love it for the delicious donuts.
At its heart, it’s all about the donut, which in this case is astoundingly good. With gluten-free options that taste as good as (and sometimes better) than their inspiration, they offer an amazing variety of new and intriguing spins on classic flavor combinations. My favorite is the Bitchin’ Creme – a brilliant take-off on the Boston Creme – and I’ve sampled a Neapolitan donut that was like a decadent cherry cordial, and a crazy-good orange-cardamom donut that had the epic message seen in these photos. (And I whole-heartedly support this message.)
After a devastating fire at their Lark Street location, they are now operating at 540 Delaware Ave and 2008 Central Ave in Colonie – both much more convenient for parking. The only warning I have is that these can quickly become a bit addictive – hence a recent pair of weekend trips – and they often sell-out, so get there early.
This new variety of cherry tomato (whose specific name has been lost to my insistence on throwing out the label much too early in the season) has started ripening – and it’s delicious. I always forget how good homegrown tomatoes taste compared to the flavorless supermarket objects we find in the winter here. The tomato is the culinary embodiment of summer in these parts – a giddy taste and force of nature that reminds me of how lovely the sunny season can be, especially in the mouth.
Dad taught me how to grow tomatoes, and for the past several years I’ve put them in pots on the back patio and they’ve been delivering. The cherry tomatoes are the most reliable, so that’s what I’ve focused on lately. The two pots going now are beginning to mature and ripen and the bounty is just around the corner.
When it gets to be this hot for this long, the best sort of cooking to do is that which requires no stove or oven or even microwave. Enter the icebox cake. A bit campy, a bit retro, and a whole lotta sugar adds up to a no-bake dessert that tastes like someone worked up a sweat when really it’s all about the assembly and some maneuvering of the stand mixer. When we invited Suzie and her family over for a Sunday dinner, I decided to make another attempt at perfecting this recipe after a questionable version I served to my niece and nephew (the best guinea pigs since Chester and Cookie).
The same concept that forms the base of this Magnolia Bakery Banana Pudding recipe is at work for the icebox cake: a solid cookie is transformed into a soft cake-like consistency after several hours mingling with a pudding/cream concoction. This time around, I used a recipe for Biscoff cookies and Biscoff butter, which I ended up modifying because I wasn’t happy with an initial test run. (I replaced the cream cheese with mascarpone, and used homemade whipped cream rather than a store bought ‘whipped topping’ – both changes made for a vast improvement, as did some additional ‘soak’ time, which took away the crunchy edge that some of the cookies retained with just a few hours in the fridge.) If you need a solid summer dessert and don’t want to heat up the kitchen, try this one out.
(Upon further contemplation, I may save this one for the fall and holiday season, as the spicy ginger flavors of the Biscoff elements align better with the cozy comforts of that time.)
INGREDIENTS
2 8.8 oz packages Biscoff cookies 13.4 oz jar Biscoff cookie butter 5.1 oz box instant vanilla pudding mix 3 cups of 2% milk ½ cup butter, softened 8 oz cream cheese, softened (I used 8 oz of mascarpone and this was so much better) 1 cup powdered sugar divided into two halves 3 cups heavy or whipping cream
METHOD
In a large bowl, add vanilla pudding mix and whisk in milk until combined. Put in fridge to set (can do the night before). In another bowl, beat together butter, cream cheese or mascarpone, and ½ cup powdered sugar until combined – about 2 minutes. In stand mixer, whip heavy cream and ½ cup powdered sugar until desired whopped cream consistency. Blend vanilla pudding mix with mascarpone mix, then fold in whipped cream mix until well incorporated. Drop 1/3 of pudding/cream mix into 9 x 13 casserole dish, then add one layer of Biscoff cookies in bottom of casserole dish in single layer. Spoon cookie butter into a microwaveable glass measuring cup, heat in 20 second intervals until melted, stirring as you go. Drizzle 1/3 cookie butter over cookies. Add another 1/3 of pudding/cream mix on top of cookie, then repeat layer of cookies and drizzle another 1/3 cookie butter over them, and add last 1/3 of whipped mix. Drizzle with remaining cookie butter and sprinkle with crushed Biscoff cookies as desired. Refrigerate at least overnight to ensure a soft consistency.
Chef, Emmy-nominated television host, and entrepreneur Edward Delling-Williams wears many hats, and all of them quite jauntily. His ‘Paris Bistro Cooking’ show on Recipe TV is what drew me into his charming world, and his ‘Taste of London’ programs have me itching to get back to that enchanted city sooner rather than later. He earns this Dazzler of the Day thanks to a storied career and continued inspiration for finding and making all that tastes good in this world. Check out his website here for further evidence of his brilliance.
…and by moment, I mean a three-hour meet-up with Suzie where we did just about everything but the intended task of learning mahjong. The lovely Qamaria Cafe in Latham provided the backdrop and the deliciousness seen here (hello again, honeycomb dessert with pistachio drizzle) for our fun get-together. Based on our initial examination of a small sampling of mahjong tiles, we realized we weren’t about to learn that while in the workforce, but we will slowly make a dent in acclimating ourselves to the game in preparation for when we exit the workforce. (Some sooner than others.) All in all, it was a good meeting.
When it comes to brownies, are you a center-lover or an edge-eater? I’m a corner fan myself… and it looks like this brownie baking tray is just for those of us who like all the edges we can get.
Offering a glimpse of a summer to possibly come, this Greek salad was enjoyed poolside on a day when the temperatures reach into the 90’s – because we can’t just go from winter to spring – we have to have winter, then fall, then winter again, then brutal fall, then winter again… well, you get the sad idea. By the time this gets posted, we may be back in the rainy doldrums, so I’m putting this up to remind myself that there are sunny days behind us, and sunny days ahead.
This salad is simple enough – it’s mostly about the chopping and finding the freshest ingredients. Comprised of garbanzo beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, Kalamata olives, roasted chicken, and lettuce, it’s dressed in a lemon juice, olive oil, oregano, garlic and dijon mustard dressing. (A few sidetracks from a traditional Greek salad as there is no red onion, and I included lettuce for filler.) When it comes to salad, everyone should toss it their own way.
More important is the combination of condiments at work, here we have some basic ketchup with a basic Peri Peri sauce, for a batch of fries we had with burgers the other night. I love the sort of reverse sunny-side-up egg effect accidentally occurred – the best art is sometimes entirely unintentional, and we have to be open to the whims of the universe.
According to the literature and folklore on the walls of the new Qamaria location in Latham, the first cup of coffee was brewed in Yemen, where’s been cultivated and traded for over five hundred years. My caffeine threshold would not stand for any sort of traditional Yemeni coffee, so I opted for their Iced Matcha Latte – about the most caffeine I can safely handle, tempered with a hefty amount of milk. That and the pistachio honeycomb dessert made for a delicate and not-overly-sweet sweet-treat on my first excursion out after a nasty sinus cold.
Both drink and dessert are subtle and refined (or maybe I still can’t quite taste everything) and the older I get the most I find myself enjoying the less bombastically sweet desserts of mile-high frostings and sundaes spilling over with hot fudge and caramel. On this early spring evening, one of the first without a discernible chill in the air, this green pairing is its own elegant celebration of the season.
My favorite store, Smile-A-While (pause for gagging), sold novelty soaps, stickers, and the silly stuff that spoke to my very young gay self. In the center of it all was a little food court where Mr. B’s Best (a roast beef sub shop if I recall correctly) and an Orange Julius presided over a dracaena forest. For some reason we rarely ate there (our parents likely considered it too much like junk food to get us an Orange Julius) but I always felt like I would have loved one.
Cut to this day, when the temperatures were happily warm (false spring in full but all-too-brief effect) and I’m taking this Orange Julie Monkey smoothie for a spin at Professor Java’s. It’s their take on the original Orange Julius, and it’s just as lovely as I imagined it to be. It brings me back to the 80’s, when we roamed the mall, when our main concern and worry was in which sticker to select for the week, and where to place it in my sticker book…
Last year’s culinary homage to ‘Babette’s Feast’ gets a revamp with tonight’s planned Mexican dinner party with Suzie and I preparing a multi-course meal that is markedly less extravagant than our previous endeavor.
To inspire and help us prepare, we went out to a Mexican restaurant a few weeks ago, where we laid out our initial menu, brainstormed ideas, and had a horchata and mockarita. (Neither will end up making the cut, as we’re going easier on ourselves and just picking up some Mexican soda at the store.)
Instead, simplicity and abundance are the orders of the day, with a menu including the following, all made from scratch:
~ Salsa roja
~ Salsa verde
~ Guacamole
~ Carnitas
~ Arroz roja
~ Enchiladas in a verde sauce
~ Mexican wedding cookies
Bowls of avocados and limes, and bunches of cilantro to boot. We’re frying our own tortilla chips too!
A brown sugar vanilla latter it’ll be then, heartfully decorated with the expert design of a seasoned barista. A cup full of hearts. A heart full of latte love.
The occasional cube of tofu, the swirling rings of scallions, and the almost-black jagged clouds of seaweed floating through the broth comprise a bowl that perfectly represents a minimalist stroke of culinary economy – where less is more and the notion of absence as elegance imparts impressive and beautiful restraint.
Winter’s enchantments are often hidden in plain stripped-down sight, but only for those who take the time to slow down and examine – both what is at hand, and what is at heart.
