rachel!

I'd love the pressure cooking book! It's gotten abruptly hot here (upper 90s all last weekend, gorgeous!), and since my apartment has no air conditioning I'm getting suddenly very well-acquainted with my new Kuhn Rikon. Sent you an email too.

Pamela - Thanks so much! I'll be looking for your report after your trip next week. I did look through the old thread and have passed the names along to the girl I'm going to visit. I always worry about going on recommendations that are a few years old, though, since so much can change. It sounds like Mike Anderson's and Juban's in particular are perennial favorites, though. And thank you for the seafood idea! I had gone crying back to my friend and told her that everyone said if I wouldn't eat meat or fried things I was going to come down there and starve and she was like Um, silly, we're right by the coast? Seafood? Which I'm comfortable with for a meal or two, so we should be able to eat out anywhere. HungryC -- I was really excited about the Vietnamese rec because I've *loved* the few times I've had Vietnamese. Unfortunately my friend said Saigon's has closed down just this winter because they're building something new there. If you know of any other good Vietnamese places in Baton Rouge please share!

I have something similar -- mine's the Nordicware brand, and I picked it up at Target for like $7. Definitely a kitchen *essential* for me! I'm sure you could add oil to it, but I never do, and the popcorn comes out perfect. When I can get it I use popcorn from a local grower -- it's heaven. When I can't I just get the cheap grocery store stuff. I have an itty bitty microwave so usually I have to pull it out when there are still a significant number of unpopped kernels so the rest doesn't burn (never had the issue in my parents' regular-sized microwave), but usually I'll put these back in later that evening or the next day and they pop up with this wonderful nutty flavor. I use the ICBINButter spray, and either cinnamon and splenda or the sprinkles made specifically for popcorn -- the parmesean cheese, onion & garlic, and nacho cheddar are my favorite. Now that I think about it, though, I LOVE salt & vinegar potato chips. I bet a misting of vinegar and some salt would be fantastic on popcorn. Must try it soon.

Well, I'm coming to visit my friend -- I was just hoping to add some fantastic food in the bargain. I find it hard to imagine that vegetarians and people who struggle with their weight are entirely unwelcome in Baton Rouge, but I guess you never know...

I browsed back through this board's archives and wrestled with the Search function, but I've been unable to find a lot of discussion about great places to eat in Baton Rouge. I guess being an hour or so from New Orleans it's easy to get overshadowed! Anyway, I'm planning a trip down there to visit a friend the second week in April, and I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions of great places to eat. I believe she lives near the LSU campus, and we will have a car. I'd love a wide range of suggestions -- it'll be her birthday when I'm down so we could do a bit of a splurge, but she's also a poor grad student and I'm a recent grad, so I'd love to discover great (relatively) inexpensive local places too. I'm hoping for places with healthy options, and while I'm not a strict vegetarian I do prefer to avoid meat, so great veggie options are really appreciated! I know a lot of the quintessentially Louisianan (er, if that's the right term?) food my friend has talked about is fried or otherwise made with lots of fat -- I'd like to stay away from a lot of that as much as possible. Thank you so much for any thoughts on this!

I just had my first tea house experience last month and I have to second this. The pastry course was two snowflake-shaped sugar cookies sandwiching this gorgeous mound of whipped raspberry mousse/cream/something (with this thin coat of glaze and pink sparklies on the top cookie), a little dark chocolate cup filled with mint mousse and topped with this tiny sparkly little star -- no clue what it was made of, but it melted in the mouth, and then a buttery sort of bar. I loved the presence of the bar -- it had just a very stout, straightforward taste that was a great foil to the sweetness of the other desserts. It managed to somehow be hearty and delicate at the same time. For the sandwiches, in addition to the traditional cucumber on white bread we had ham on a heartier wheat-type bread and a Waldorf chicken salad. Again, a great balance of different flavors and textures. For me that balance and the variety of offerings in the three middle courses (we had both plain and sweet scones) was one of the most striking parts of the experience. Edited for the "Oh and!": If you're going non-traditional, you might think about including mini-cupcakes in the final dessert selection. I've been mad about cupcakes lately -- there are SO many different things you can do with them, and they're definitely whimsical and fun. (Er, well, I think that's a non-traditional choice anyway. Either way.)

OMG The mental picture of this bathroom stall maneuvering is priceless. My coworkers probably think I'm crazy, giggling at my computer. Living in MN I find fall and spring the easiest times to smuggle. You have the heavier coat or scarf but it's warmed up enough that you can toss it over your arm to hide what you're holding before coming into the theater without looking insane. Smuggled DQ blizzards in that way once.

I love popcorn but for health reasons avoid the movie-theater sort. So if the movie's not too close to a meal we'll pop up a bowl in the microwave (there's this great bowl that air-pops in the microwave with no added butter or anything) and add some of the flavored seasonings (or a mix of sugar and cinnamon, mmm). I have a special 'movie purse' big enough to hold the bag of popcorn and drinks for everyone, plus my regular purse. No way am I going to pay $3 for a bottle of water when I can fill one for fractions of pennies at home! I had a friend in college whose family was famous for what they snuck into the theater -- once she went with her uncle, who brought a whole rack of ribs.

Ellen - I'm probably way over-pre-thinking this -- I've never worked with cream before, though, and I feel like every recipe I read warns against overbeating -- creams, batters, eggs. I'm terrified of beating anything because I have no clue how sensitive any of these things are or how you can tell when you're at the right point. I think I can figure out 'almost stiff' but I'm wondering if you could provide even a general time frame on that -- is it two minutes? Ten? I know it will vary depending on how you do the beating too. Would it be possible to whisk this by hand, or totally unadvisable? I have neither a stand nor a hand mixer, though I have an immersion blender with a few different attachments. Thank you so much for all the help! Everyone here is so fantastic.

This is a different recipe than the one you followed, but in this picture the cream cheese part is a little sunken. Maybe this type of cupcake is meant to sink a little in the middle? Is this what yours looked like? http://www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/coo...ck_bottoms.html ← Mine aren't that pretty, but they do look sort of like that. I think I did underfill them -- they came just to the top of the papers, so they didn't bake over the edges of the cups and form that cupcakey ridge -- the mushroomish shape. Also, I didn't have that much of the center showing on mine -- to some extent the filling did sink into the rest of the batter, which came up over it a bit. I think the suggestion to reserve some of the chocolate part to cover it would probably help with the sinking, though I also think you may be right about this style just looking that way. There's something appealing about a bit of the cream showing, so people know they're getting a filled cupcake. Anvi - The recipe Jujubee linked to is extremely similar to the one upthread -- there are no eggs called for in the cake part, just in the filling. Though I underfilled my cups (and may have overbaked them, despite earlier suspecting I underbaked them -- oi this whole baking thing is complicated) I still think they have a good flavor. Being a complete novice myself I have no clue what eggs do or don't do as a component of baking recipes, but I can say that no one would mistake mine for anything other than cupcakes. I'd say go for the recipe as written.

I know the recipe for the Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Filling was posted to this thread quite some time ago -- I hope I'm not breaking etiquette bringing up the topic again, but I've just baked a batch tonight and was wondering if anyone might have any insights on why mine fell in the center. To my very, very inexperienced eye it looks like the cream cheese center bits weighted the middle down, rather than baking up, and the chocolate cakey part didn't really bake up around it (well, except insofar as the sides are taller than the middle, so obviously baked up some). I'm explaining it badly, but basically...the middles fell. I made them as treats for my sister's birthday, which is this Thursday (I plan to freeze and then thaw them, having read here that it generally improves all cakes), so I halved the recipe because she only has a few coworkers. I have a brand new kitchen scale, so weighed the flour after measuring it -- I came up with 192g (for the 1.5 cups). I used Gold Medal AP - just bought it tonight. My baking soda is also a recent purchase. I wound up with 2 dozen smallish cupcakes -- some of them reached just to the top of the muffin pan, and some were a bit below, so I may have underfilled them? I may have underbaked them a little as well, since I was paranoid about overbaking them. Could that have made them fall? I did the filling with half full-fat cream cheese and half reduced-fat -- I have no clue what that might've done, if anything. I did let the cream cheese and the egg sit out at room temp for quite a while, but they may have still been a little cool -- again, I don't know if that would give them the dipped-in centers. I omitted the nuts entirely, but otherwise made the recipe as stated (well, halved). And those are all my best guesses on where I went wrong. I do have an oven thermometer and my oven was right at 350. Lastly (sorry this is so long already!), does anyone have suggestions for an easy frosting/topping for these to help hide the sinkyness? I don't have any fancy baking anything -- I do have an immersion blender, but I don't have a stand mixer or a hand-held mixer. And I've never made any sort of frosting before. I was thinking of the fudgey topping mentioned upthread that was a mix of chocolate and evaporated milk (14oz chocolate to a can of evaporated milk) -- would it be too rich for an already decadent cupcake? Thanks so much for any insights or suggestions!!