Coffee cake - a little square of comfort

I bake for lots of reasons, but one of them is to give thank-you gifts. My Grandma is generally the most frequent recipient of such things, as she is often the one I find myself needing to thank. I've gotten in the habit of baking for her whenever she dog-sits, if she patiently and selflessly hangs on the phone allowing to me to vent about the day, or at times because she's coming over for lunch. It also helps that baking is my cure-all. I bake when I'm sad, when I'm happy and when I'm procrastinating - three states I fluctuate between. This week, just back from a trip to Israel, I found myself feeling like I was on a merry-go-round of all three emotions. I was sad to leave my little cousin, happy to be back in my own home, and definitely procrastinating from facing a few big decisions ahead of me. Maybe I just wanted a reason to bake, so I found one  - a coffee cake for a belated Mother's Day. I quickly planned an impromptu lunch date.

My Grams is a serious connoisseur of all types of coffee cakes, though she does not discriminate between them. She loves them in any form, so I decided this would be the perfect thing to surprise her with. I pulled down the first cookbook that really changed the way I thought about cooking, The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook. I devoured this book, and even if I haven't actually cooked all the recipes in it, I still know what's in there when I'm looking for an idea. After finding an open container of buttermilk in my fridge, I recalled there was a simple recipe in my old reliable that I had never tried. It wasn't one with a crumb topping, like I had in mind, but it was the perfect fix for it's recipient. It's a little different than ones I've had (maybe West Coast coffee cake is different than East Coast?), but really moist and all the cinnamon and nuts make it undeniably a coffee cake, but it stops short from turning into a spice cake. As I waited for Ma to drive from Queens to Brooklyn without getting on the highway (double the time, but twice as safe for Sunday drivers), I popped the cake in the oven. As it baked it infused the kitchen with a smell that reminded me that the farther I roam, the sweeter it is to come home.

Cafe Beaujolais Coffee Cake

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup oil (your choice, just not olive oil)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• 1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease your baking pan (8x8 or 9x9).

Combine the flour, salt, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon, ginger, sugars and oil in a bowl. Mix well. Set aside 3/4 cup of the mixture for a topping. Add the nuts and remaining cinnamon to this bowl.

To the bowl with the cake base, add the baking soda, baking powder, egg, and buttermilk. Stir to combine. Pour the batter into your pan. Sprinkle the flour-but topping evenly across the top.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a tester in the center comes out clean. This cake is great served warm. 

Pink grapefruit to keep your cheeks rosy

It's that time of year when an extra dose of Vitamin C is needed. Flu epidemics, coughing, sneezing people on crowded subways, and bleak weather are just some of the facts of life during February in New York City. That, and the beautiful yellow-green undertone in my face. I need sunny things, bright colors, and bracing flavors but not another roasted root vegetable. This is why I crave citrus at this time of year. Citrus in the form of food. A glass of OJ doesn't cut it. I want citrus salads, citrus desserts and most recently citrus-flavored cocktails. When I was a kid, one of my Floridian great-aunts used to send up a package of pink grapefruits every winter. I didn't appreciate it at the time, thinking then that grapefruits were too sour to be edible, but the thought of a package of grapefruit arriving at my door now seems like the best mail you could find, unless of course that package also included a plane ticket to somewhere warm. To hold me over another month or two,  cooking food that evokes warm weather (tacos anyone?) and eating bold flavors (acidic, spicy, pickled to name a few)  is the only thing I can do to keep my taste buds from sinking into hibernation for good. One easy baked good that I make fairly regularly when my Grandma comes for lunch is a simple yogurt cake (aka Gâteau au yaourt that I found on Foodbeam's original blog ages ago) but doused with pink grapefruit juice and flecked with grapefruit zest. You can use any citrus you like, but pink grapefruit is unexpected, and sweet, and tart at the same time. It also smells divine. Before you serve it, pinch your cheeks for an added glow of health. Grandma-ma will approve, even if she tells you, you need a haircut.

Pink Grapefruit Cake From Foodbeam.com 1/2 cup 2% or full-fat yogurt (I use Fage) 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder pinch of salt 1 1/8 cup sugar 3/8 cup vegetable oil (1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons) 3 eggs Zest and juice of 1 ripe Pink Grapefruit

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Prep an 8-9 inch pan with parchment (can use a bundt pan but cake won't be that high). Mix yogurt through sugar in a bowl. Mix in oil, eggs and zest until thoroughly incorporated. Pour mixture into prepared pan. Bake cake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Flip the cake out of the pan onto a platter and drench with reserved grapefruit juice. (The cake will be very moist, and continue to soak up juice as it cools).

How'd you get so smart?

I'm so relieved that I can finally tell you about ThinkFood. It's been hard, waiting for the launch, but today's the day, and now you can know that I've had the honor to be a part of an unique new cookbook. ThinkFood, is a collection of recipes from food bloggers around the world with a common theme. All the recipes feature an ingredient that is considered brain food, or in other words, food that has been shown to have a scientific positive improvement on your brainiac ability. Maybe it'll even help you get better at Sudoku.

This cookbook is the brainchild (sorry) of a company called Posit Science. I didn't know about them before I heard about the project, but since then I've discovered their products, and in my opinion they're onto a great idea. Everyone could benefit from paying a little more attention to their brain health. I mean after all those years in college (and after) of abusing your brain cells (not me of course) it's probably a smart idea to do something that can have a positive effect on your brain now. The cookbook illustrates a tasty way to approach these concerns just by eating. The cookbook covers salads and appetizers, main courses, snacks, and of course desserts. Can you guess which category I picked?

Posit Science will distribute one recipe from the ThinkFood cookbook every Wednesday for the next 50 weeks to all who subscribe. This includes the print version of the recipe for free, more about the brain healthy ingredient in each recipe, and the blogger who contributed the recipe. The actual hard copy of the cookbook will be available for purchase in July. I've seen the list of bloggers who have participated, and I can promise you, this will be the best tasting "health" food you'll ever have.

Join ThinkFood's recipe of the week campaign, sign up here. (It's free).

Of course, my contribution to the cookbook was in the Dessert category, but you'll have to wait until it's my week to hear more...to be continued.

Learn more about Posit Science and their company here.

First day back to work comfort food

I hate going back to work after a long weekend. It makes me behave like a whiny kid being dragged out of bed to get to school. I had wanted to plan a lunch trip to the Farmer's Market for something to look forward to, but I couldn't bare to go outside in the freezing twenty degree temperature we're having. So when I got home Monday night sans fresh produce and craving a home-cooked meal, no one had to convince me that what I needed was some good old-fashioned comfort food for dinner, something like my grandma would make. For me, comfort food is often simple Eastern-European influenced American food, which is what my grandma mostly cooks. Two of the quintessential staples in my grandma's kitchen are paprika (the only spice she uses besides salt, despite my pleading for change) and egg noodles. I quickly realized I needed a recipe for paprika chicken.

I phoned Grandma. "Hello, Ma? You've made paprika chicken, right?" Being that I remember the red stuff sprinkled on everything, it's hard to be sure what I was eating at times. She confirmed she had, but not in a long-time. When I asked if she recalled how, she replied, "Well, you take a lot of onions and put them on the bottom of the pan, and place the chicken on that, and then cover it with water and cook it for an hour." "Ah, yes", I thought, the fundamental cooking technique of my grandma's food, was take some type of meat (roast beef, brisket, turkey, anything really), water and onions and let simmer for an hour. You can vary this with ketchup or paprika for flavor, but it doesn't matter the results always taste the same. This isn't to say she isn't filled with all sorts of amazing wisdom and strength, much of which I have yet to master, but recipes are maybe best left to the internet.

The internet didn't fail me and I found a wonderful looking recipe, from one of my favorite food bloggers, Joy the Baker, that was exactly what I had in mind. It used sweet Hungarian paprika, chicken thighs, large amounts of onions, and sour cream. It was served over egg noodles. I was starving the second I saw it. And, thankfully it delivered. It was old-fashioned, and filling in that eating at grandma's kind of way (when grandma does some of her better dishes, like chicken soup). It is great winter food, every bit as warming as a bowl of soup. The only thing I would try to do differently next time is add a bit of smoked paprika along with the sweet for a sauce that wasn't so mild. Not that mild is a bad thing in this type of dish, perfect for a rough Monday when you're faced with returning to the grind.

Paprika Chicken Recipe

Adapted (very little) from JoytheBaker.com

2 - 2 1/4 lbs. chicken thighs, with skins and bones

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 cups of onions, finely chopped (about 2 small ones)

1/4 teaspoon of salt

2 tablespoons of sweet Hungarian paprika (or a mixture of sweet and smoky or sweet and hot) 

14oz. can of whole tomatoes, drained

1/2 cup of chicken broth or water

2 tablespoons of sour cream, plus more for serving

2 tablespoons of parsley, chopped

Pat chicken dry. Remove skin and reserve. Heat oil in a 5-quart heavy pot over moderate heat until hot, then cook skin until it renders about 1/4 cup fat. Remove chicken skin and set aside.

Cook onion with salt in fat in pot over moderately high heat, covered, stirring occasionally and reducing heat if necessary, until onion is very tender but not browned, about 5 minutes.Add paprika and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in tomatoes and broth, stirring vigorously to break up tomatoes. Add chicken and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes. Simmer, uncovered, until chicken is just cooked through, 5 to 10 minutes longer. Check by cutting a small incision and making sure it's not pink. (Note: My chicken took longer than 10 minutes).

Remove from heat, then season with salt and stir in 2 tablespoons sour cream. Serve, sprinkled with parsley, over egg noodles and more sour cream if you like.