Rainbow Confetti Cake

I usually make my own birthday cake every year as an excuse to try something from my neverending list of Things I Could Make. Before I could check my list to pick something out, though, I happened to see this on Instagram and it was so colorful and nostalgic (and easy to make) that I needed it to be my birthday cake. Smitten Kitchen seemed to know it was my birthday, haha. I made this cake to share with my friends after my birthday outing, during which we bicycled to a nearby small town and spent the afternoon sitting outside and drinking beer and playing beanbags and lying in the grass. It was sunny and warm as July generally is but not unbearably hot.

I sought out clear imitation vanilla extract especially for this cake, and I sincerely believe this is the thing that I miss from boxed mixes. Literally the only thing. I know real vanilla is superior in basically every way, but it's hard to beat nostalgia.

I loved how the cake turned out and would gladly make it again. Indeed I will have to in order to use up more of this clear imitation vanilla! Oh no. Twist my arm.

Edit: I made this again for my birthday in July 2019, still as delicious as I remember. I made it into 12 cupcakes but the cups were not filled quite as much as I'd have liked; 10 or 11 would have worked a little bit better. They took about 23 minutes to bake. Frosting was enough for a thin layer over the top plus 6 little piped stars on each one.

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RECIPE: Confetti Party Cake

Garlic Scape Pesto

Verdict: Wonderfully garlicky and fresh tasting. Definitely keeping around for later.

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RECIPE: Garlic Scape Pesto (Dorie Greenspan)

Raw Kale and Apple Salad

This recipe was tried out of a necessity to use up fresh kale from our CSA haul (we get it nearly every week in the summer!) and a desire to not have to cook it to use it up. I recently had a raw kale salad at a work potluck that I liked so I thought I'd try to make a similar one. I liked this one so much that it's turned into a regular summer meal!

Notes/substitutions:

• I don't bother mixing the salad dressing ingredients together first, just pour the oil and lemon juice and salt into my bowl of chopped kale.
• I haven't ever eaten this with dates but I'm sure they're good. I usually use a dried fruit I'm more likely to have on hand (golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries).
• I've used sliced almonds instead of slivered. Walnuts are also good. Toasting them sounds a little tedious but adds a lot of extra flavor.
• Instead of just tossing to coat, I massage the ingredients into the kale for a couple of minutes. I find this softens the leaves and makes them easier to eat.
• I also have used other harder, sharp cheeses in place of Parmesan to good effect. Sartori MontAmore is particularly yummy.
• This salad keeps for several days in the refrigerator and travels well.
• It is gluten free and can be made vegan if you leave out the cheese.

RECIPE: Kale and Apple Salad

Spicy Ginger Kombucha Cocktail

It took me a long time to warm up to kombucha. I chalk this up to the gap between expectations and reality. Wikipedia says it is indeed a Japanese word for kelp tea that was adopted as a loanword but used incorrectly. Since Japanese cooking often uses kombu/kelp as an ingredient in savory broths, I was expecting it to be kind of salty and savory, and the first couple of times I tried it were pretty mentally jarring because it is sour and fizzy. Sometimes you end up getting a bad impression of a food because of what your expectations of it are rather than going in with no expectations and trying to appreciate it for what it is. I now remember that it's supposed to be sour and fizzy, and I drink it on purpose because I like it.

My favorite kind is a kind that's made in my city, and my favorite flavor that they make is lemongrass ginger. I first tried it in a cocktail at a local distillery. They had flights of different experimental cocktails made with different flavors of this company's kombucha, and the one with lemongrass ginger was exceptionally good. But they wouldn't make me a full sized drink. So I tried to make it myself a few days later. I'm not sure I got it completely right, but I think I ended up with something close and worth making again.

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RECIPE:

Spicy Ginger Kombucha Cocktail
inspired by the Spicy Ginger Cocktail at the Old Sugar Distillery
Makes 1 serving

1-2 tbsp ginger juice (from 1.5 oz unpeeled fresh ginger)
1.5 oz dark rum
1 tbsp honey or maple syrup
1 tbsp lime juice
4 oz NessAlla lemongrass ginger kombucha, or similarly flavored kombucha
Ice

To prepare ginger juice: Peel ginger with a paring knife. Grate ginger finely on a grater or microplane. Gather the grated ginger in your fingers and squeeze the liquid out (ideally into your shaker or the glass you will be drinking from). If there is any juice on your work surface, you can pick it up with the already-squeezed ginger like a sponge. Squeeze until the pulp is dry. Discard pulp.

Shake all ingredients except kombucha in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into rocks glass. Top with kombucha and stir gently to mix. Alternatively, place ice in a rocks glass with ginger juice. Add rum, honey or maple syrup, and lime juice and mix until sweetener is dissolved. Top with kombucha and stir gently to mix.

Almond Rhubarb Picnic Bars

I made these for a dinner party I hosted at my house. I was daydreaming about the nectarine bars Sarah made for my first tea party, as well as looking for a good use for some of the fresh rhubarb growing in my garden, and I had never tried almond and rhubarb together but it sounded delicious.

I made them exactly as instructed and they turned out great. Our guest loved them too! I'd definitely make them again.

RECIPE: Almond Rhubarb Picnic Bars

Chocolate French Silk Pie

I first had this pie at Perkins when I was in high school and quickly fell in love with it, but it was only recently that I got the motivation to make it for myself when I saw The Pioneer Woman's recipe. I found several different versions but they are all basically the same, with different pictures.

Notes/substitutions

• I made a graham cracker crust for something a little different. It was good but I determined that I prefer regular pie crust over graham cracker crust for this particular pie.
• I was a little wary of using uncooked eggs in the recipe but ultimately I used regular eggs because I eat them in raw doughs all the time and decided to take my chances. If you're really concerned or are serving it to people who have to be really careful, you can buy pasteurized eggs to use for this pie.
• I used bittersweet chocolate instead of unsweetened because it was what I had at home. I would probably put a little more chocolate in next time.
• Since I'm not good at making chocolate shavings/curls and I already had mini chocolate chips, I sprinkled mini chocolate chips on the top before serving.

RECIPE: French Silk Pie

Flan (Caramel Custard Pudding)

Epicurious calls this The Perfect Flan recipe, and while I'm pretty skeptical of people and websites that use superlatives in their recipe titles, I tried it anyway because the reviews were good. While I can't prove it's -the perfect- recipe for flan, it is certainly very, very good and I don't feel the need to try another one because I liked this one so much.

I have known what flan is for a long time because my mom once bought a Jello brand boxed flan mix by mistake when I was a kid. She never made it and for many years I saw it every time I looked through the pantry. Then in middle school I started learning Spanish, and I think some of our class materials, especially in high school, mentioned it and the teacher explained what it was. I thought it sounded pretty good. However, no one ever made it for class parties that involved cooking food, probably because you have to keep it cold and high school kids don't usually have access to a refrigerator at school.

My first taste of something like it was in Japan, oddly enough. Caramel custard pudding with liquid caramel sauce (purin) is a pretty common dessert option there. You can even buy it at convenience stores, which sounds sketchy, but the food at Japanese convenience stores is often reasonably good depending on what you get. I clearly remember the first time my host mother brought some home for us from a bakery because it tasted incredible. I enjoyed it a few other times I was there but didn't really seek it out once I came home.

What inspired me to try making flan is a recent potluck party. I work with a lot of people that are not originally from the US, and one of the graduate students I work with had the idea to have a potluck party where everyone contributes food from their respective country. One of my coworkers has relatives from Puerto Rico and she brought two things that often show up at her winter family gatherings: coquito (a coconut based eggnog-like drink, super yummy) and a large pan of homemade flan to the party. After trying hers and falling in love immediately, I needed more of it in my life.

Deviations from the above recipe:

• I used 2% milk instead of whole milk because it was what I had, and it was fine. As long as you're using milk with a decent amount of fat it should work properly.
• Instead of putting it in ramekins, I put it all into one 8x8 glass pan and baked it for 60 minutes but that was a little too much. It probably only needed 50-55 minutes.

Verdict: As I said above, this was absolutely delicious. The caramel sauce is incredible. It's wild how delicious caramelized sugar is for how very simple it is. Fair warning, if you make it in a glass pan it might look like the glass is cracked after you bake the caramel in it but it's the caramel, not the glass. It is dangerous to keep around :) I ate it too fast. I would definitely make it again.

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RECIPE: The Perfect Flan