Corn Cakes with Smoked Salmon

If you're looking for a brunch dish that's a little indulgent but not heavy, and just fancy enough for weekend guests, this is it.  I made these on Easter and just loved them, and they'd be great for treating moms on Mother's Day morning.  This savory spin on pancakes is made with cornmeal and corn, topped with slices of smoked salmon, and dolloped with light sour cream.

I also experimented with popovers recently.  These are my first ever.  Look at that pop!  This is a plain one, but I also experimented with crumbled bacon and want to play more with them.

For those of you who prefer a better corn product for the corn cakes, I found an organic yellow cornmeal made by Arrowhead Mills at my local health food store.  No luck in the supermarket organic section.  If you don't eat fish, you can substitute the smoked salmon with slices of ham, or top it with a fried egg.  The recipe is pretty easy, and if you have a large electric griddle you can make all the corn cakes at once in one batch.  That equals a little more time for weekend relaxin'.

Polish Babka

Babka has been on my to-bake list for years.  Even after I grew comfortable with baking yeasted breads, babka seemed like a big project.  I've bookmarked a few recipes, but this one looked so easy I jumped on it almost right away. King Arthur Flour writes that the bundt shape is supposed to be reminiscent of a grandmother's skirt.  The dough comes together easily in a stand mixer, and the two risings are brief.  What you get is a rich bread that is a bit like cake, in the style of brioche, but denser.  I adore the rum syrup, which turns the babka into something like baba au rhum.  I could do without the white icing on top, which I found cloying and unnecessary, and just double down on that rum syrup.

Other babka recipes will call for shaping, and filling with chocolate or cinnamon (or both), and I fully intend to tackle one.  By Easter, I hope.  But I'm mostly about the easy and quick recipes these days.  In fact, some (very few?) of you may have noticed I've been posting way less.  I'm stepping back my blogging because life is just getting too hectic.  Also, I've recently adopted a healthier lifestyle that doesn't fit with baking cake and pie every week.  And I feel great!  But I've gotta say, sometimes I get an itch not necessarily to eat, but to bake something like pie.  I'm working on another dining review for the paper this week, but maybe I'll get around to baking that chocolate babka!  Fingers crossed.

Easter Chocolate-Covered Marshmallows

Have you ever had a homemade marshmallow?  The first time Joe suggested we make them, I couldn't imagine their being worth the trouble.  Storebought marshmallows are all right in hot cocoa or crispy rice treats, but otherwise spongey and kind of like styrofoam.  Homemade marshmallows, on the other hand, have a creamy texture inside and are flavored with vanilla or whatever else you put in them.

This chocolate-drizzled chick is nesting in toasted coconut.  It was a fun switch from my blog posting last year, where the marshmallows were just covered in colored sugar and sprinkles.  You can also submerge the bunnies and chicks completely in chocolate.  The thin layer of chocolate will crack and give way to the soft marshmallow, and the two flavors melting in your mouth are incredible.  Give them some Easter flair with colorful nonpareils, or sprinkle the coconut over the chocolate for some fuzzy bunnies and chicks.  Bag them up or tuck them in Easter baskets, and you'll have some happy campers.

For this look, dip a spoon in melted chocolate and let most of the excess drip off.  Then wave the spoon around in zig-zags or swirls, and sprinkle with nonpareils.  For the eye, dip a toothpick in the melted chocolate, then spin the toothpick to get off most of the excess.  Use the toothpick to make a dot on the marshmallow, avoiding any drips.  To cover the marshmallows in coconut, dip them in melted chocolate and then sprinkle with the toasted coconut flakes.  Set aside to dry.

A marshmallow syrup is made, then cooked later with more ingredients to make marshmallows; when that mixture is added to a gelatin mixture in the stand mixer, it steams and bubbles up furiously; after 10 minutes of whipping, the mixture has billowed into white marshmallow; the marshmallow is extremely sticky and must be spread out quickly in the pan before it begins drying and setting.

A couple more tips.  Don't even try to get every last bit of marshmallow off that beater and bowl -- it ain't gonna happen.  It's also not worth it.  You'll get marshmallow strings everywhere, and your marshmallow slab will begin to dry and set.  Also, when smoothing out your marshmallow into a slab, wet hands are your best friend.  Get your hands very wet with water, then use them to smooth the marshmallow out quickly.

This post was shared with:
Bunny Hop Easter Link Party
Tea Party Tuesday
Sweet Treats Thursday
Sweets for a Saturday

Easter Ham and Pineapple Pizza ... a.k.a. "The Debby"

When my friend Debby and I were college roommates, we'd wake up hungry after the occasional (or semi-frequent?) night of too much drinking.  Debby would phone in a Hawaiian pizza for delivery.  A short time ago, she said I should create a dish for her on the blog, something salty and sweet.

So this one's for Debby: on this Easter Sunday I skipped roasting a whole ham and made a Hawaiian pizza, which is topped with ham and pineapple.  I threw on some grape tomatoes for a quick roast on top because Debby loves tomatoes, and a few pepperoni strips for good measure.  Have a slice with some beer!

The dough recipe makes 6 small pizzas.  Not feeding a frat party?  Throw some dough balls in the freezer for when the next craving hits.  That's 4 pizzas in the making in my freezer.

Forget Peeps... Make Easter Marshmallows!

These are not the marshmallows of Jet-Puffed fame.  Those styrofoamy things taste OK if you've never had the  homemade, creamy variety.  And they're a really appropriate treat this Easter weekend if you cut them in the shapes of bunnies and chicks.  Then coat them in sparkling pastel sugars and fun sprinkles.

They were a bit hit at book club, where I passed out cellophane bags filled bunny and chick marshmallows nestled into Easter basket grass.  The crowd favorite was the Easter egg sprinkles.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this recipe, unlike many others, had no egg whites.  The list of ingredients is smaller than usual as well, but the end product is still perfect.  Interestingly, my first batch using Domino brand sugar produced this honey-colored syrup, while a later batch of generic sugar produced a champagne-colored syrup; the marshmallows from both batches tasted and looked identical.  I had the usual fears of crystallization when cooking with sugar, but after a few batches I had not produced a single crystal.  So, what are you still afraid of?

Maybe a wonderfully sticky mess.  Because it is sticky.  And stringy.  Don't try to scrape the bowl and beater clean, because it's futile.  Not to fret... you'll still have plenty of marshmallows.