Lindacakes

Yes, it's on the Domino powdered sugar box . . . you start by making the icing. Set aside a cup of it to use to ice the cake. The remaining icing becomes the base of the cake. It's quite good.

This is outrageous: biggest waste of money for me was a food processor. Someone had given me one and I really liked it. I bought a new one, and handed the hand-me-down down. Mistake. I liked it becuase the blade wasn't sharp. I don't like my food liquid. I've replaced it with Microplane graters and a mortar and pestle -- I can control the size and texture of the food better. I admit it cuts butter into flour very nicely but the clean-up isn't worth the effort.

I cooked for myself out of an electric skillet for two years when I was in college. I had one of those cube fridges and I put the skillet on top. It was square and non-stick with a cream colored (deep lid). I loved that thing and still think about it nostalgically. You name it, I cooked it in there, including pot brownies. You can use it as an makeshift oven. I'm not sure that's an endorsement for one in a regular kitchen, but they are dandy devices.

Molasses is one of the best flavors on earth. Molasses cookies one of the best applications. Love the bite. Joe Froggers

David Ross, would you mind sharing that recipe? Sounds divine. Apricots and hazelnuts both are underestimated in America . . .

What about using Italian canned sour cherries? Amarena, Luxardo brand. They actually have them on Amazon. You can also get jars of sour cherries in Eastern European groceries.

Use fresh squeezed lemon juice in the pie. I use flour, which works just fine -- I don't use cornstarch in my fruit pies. Less is more, particularly with a blueberry pie.

I'm all for variation, but I believe in New York this is called a baconeggandcheese and it has that, only that, and it's wrapped in paper-lined foil. The cheese is American. The egg is half scrambled, half fried; meaning not scrambled before on the grill. I did hear a cashier admonish the cook that foil out meant meat included and paper out meant no meat included so that she could ring it up without asking. I like egg sandwiches all sorts of ways, I never met one I didn't like, although I'd prefer not to meet one with ketchup on it. Especially not ketchup with high fructose corn syrup in it. I confess to liking Egg McMuffins, and buying them, even when not travelling. I like to make them at home, open face, with lettuce. And, sit down: MIRACLE WHIP. Heheheheheheh . . . Baconeggandcheese is very good with Pepper Jack.

Buckwheat, the darker the better! Especially baked into cornbread.

Will there be more? I'll be in Venice in a few weeks . . . Is there any where to buy interesting kitchen equipment, pots, etc.? I love your fish porn.

I don't think anyone mentioned my favorite pet peeve -- overwrought page design, type design, and poor choice of color. The winner in this category is Gourmet's giant recipe book. I want that recipe book. But I could never buy it. I've touched it maybe four times, every time recoiling with horror. IT'S YELLOW. Yellow cover, yellow TYPE. It's obscene. You can't even read it. I'm a publishing professional and I can't imagine (well, yes I can, it usually boils down to a powerful and vocal and wrong individual) how that got out of the printer and into the warehouse let alone that far. Lynn Rosetto Kasper's new book is atrocious. I bought it, I love Lynn, I love the book. But everytime I pick it up, I wince. I wonder if the designer tried to pack as many different typefaces onto a page as possible, just to see if she could get the design approved. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a cookbook that will have an entire page devoted to how to shape and roll and cut a baked item to produce such-and-such result. Let's say a star shape when all is said and done. AND THERE IS NO PICTURE. Hell, I could draw anything I baked on a napkin and that would say more than a page long description of what it looks like. I'm done. I feel better. Thanks for listening.

I'm just curious about the size of that skillet . . . I have several cast iron pots and I'm not sure which one I'd protect if I had to choose . . .

It's taken me three attempts to read this thread -- I don't have the time to spend on food I once did -- and boy, did I see myself here. My problem was that I would get up in the morning and decide to go to the farmer's market and then bring the food home and lay it out, photograph it, and then store it away. Some of the food went to some long-term food project like candying or soup, etc. This was really pleasureable until I decided that spending at least half of my precious weekend time on food wasn't moving me forward in other aspects of my life. Like weight loss. So I've let food go for a while, and changed my relationship to it. I have a freezer full of stuff from Trader Joe's -- there are a variety of foods I really, really like from the frozen section. The French green beans, the artichoke hearts, the flatbread porcini mushroom pizza, the balsamic vegetables . . . And this may sound like blasphemy here but: I like having the time and moving forward better than I like having a freezer full of fresh soup. AHHHHHHHH! The shock!

I'm planning a trip to St. Petersburg. I have a long time to plan it, which is unusual for me. I want everything to be perfect. I want food like the scene in Babette's Feast: Blini Davidoff. I want any sort of sensual delicious food experience that will go with the architecture, the weather (winter), the history, the ballet . . . I want it all. Can anyone help?

I've always wanted to make an avocado pie. Last night I made a macademia cream pie and I screwed up somehow, because I think it was the single most inedible thing I have ever produced. With beautiful macademias that I'd brought home from Hawaii, no less.

Since I keep all my personal recipes digitally, and since all of those recipes are backed up on a CD that's kept in my safe deposit box, I can say with confidence: Pots. Especially the two Le Creuset pots that I own in discontinued colors. French blue and some incredible green they made for ten minutes. Really, I don't understand the fool who is playing with the pigment for the enamel on those pots. I would need to load them in my granny cart, though, because they are spread over two apartments, in five locations, including the bedroom. Where do YOU store a twelve-inch cast iron skillet with cast iron lid? Yes, next to the bed! But what about my DISHES for Christ sake? The ones I scoured the world of antique stores for? Dug through baskets of castoffs for? Carried home from Mexico on my lap? Wheedled out of my mother over decades?

I believe Nick's brown butter hazelnut financier is in the Modern Baker. Another superb recipe.

There's a whole History of Cherries in the brandied cherries thread. This all came about because of Prohibition. One could no longer put a brandied cherry anywhere, so one needed a substitute. Hence the birth of the maraschino cherry and it's cousins as we know them.

Surely the pendulum will swing the other way? Bacon and organ meats are hip as a response to the so-yesterday hipness of veganism. Bad boys react, the trend begins. So, then, if bacon is hip today, what is its opposite? Show me an egg salad with bacon pieces in it, and I'll eat it.

Thanks for that. I just got this book. The recipe for date walnut bread is really wonderful, a real winner.

I don't have a color problem when I candy cherries -- they come out a very dark red, however, not a bright orangey-red. I blanche the cherries for a few minutes. Less is better, I think. I have read that including corn syrup in with the sugar bath retards the color change. I've also heard of people adding coloring agents. I've never done it -- I've sorely wanted to, but I've had batches that are brown and then turn red by the end of the candying process. That cake above is absolutely heavenly looking, especially the cranberries. I tried candying cranberries this year and they didn't come out very nice. Very sticky. I'll try your method. Commercial candied cherries are bleached and dyed, hence their nearly clear color.

Well, I'm a food hoarder. Same Italian Depression. It wouldn't be a problem for me, and I'm in the process of doing it right now because there's certain food I want to clean out. Like a 5 pound bag of cornmeal. Polenta. Every. Night. I have something like 9 jars of esoteric jelly in my cupboard and I don't eat jelly. Lately I've been eating prune flavored yogurt to use up a giant jar of pureed prunes I once thought was a good idea. I have five pounds of organic walnuts . . .

Just saw Libra20's comment -- they taste like they always did. I wouldn't call it "good", but it has that smell, that texture. My mother never would have bought such a product (Bisquick was her pleasure) so it smacks of forbidden indulgence on top of the faux baking powder/butter aroma.

As far as baking goes, there is very little I can tolerate that I don't make myself. I don't think it's so much my incredible pampered palette as the ingredients have cheapened up to the degree that they are generally unpalatable. I don't know (well, I do know, I read Fast Food Nation) how food manufacturers stay in business at the prices they charge. I figure one of my fruitcakes cost about $100, maybe more, when I figure the price of the booze, the fruit, the butter, the Muscovado sugar, the time. I can't eat Ben and Jerry's any more -- I'll eat Hagen Dazs once in a while, a simple flavor. Can't tolerate Kozy Shack rice pudding any more. What I do like are those little cinnamon bear-shaped cookies . . . Once in a blue moon (are you ready for this?) I actually want some of those biscuits or rolls from the can. The crescent rolls. Isn't that sick?

Invite some Greeks over and ask them to teach you to dance.