I’m absolutely astounded at the amount of gorgeous fresh produce that I was able to purchase yesterday at the Copley Square Farmers Market for less than $20. Yes, I still had 25 cents to spare after my vegetable shopping spree that included rainbow carrots and ruby red beets from Atlas Farm, summer squash and zucchini, freshly dug red potatoes, fresh tomatoes, and my favorite garden staple: green beans.

CK and I sampled some of the green beans and potatoes last night and they were so good. It’s easy to forget that this is actually what vegetables are supposed to taste like, not the bland stuff that we tolerate in the North East all through the long winter months. I’m especially looking forward to cooking with the rainbow carrots. Does anyone have any carrot recipe recommendations that they’d like to pass along to me? What are your summer time Farmers Market must haves?

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

$20 and the Copley Square Farmers Market

As an unabashed peanut butter addict who frequently can be caught eating spoonfuls of the sweet and salty goop directly from the jar I am by default also a fan of Nutter Butter cookies. This recipe caught my eye quite some time ago and I found it yesterday while browsing through my extensive collection of recipes that I’ve saved on delicious. If you haven’t already begun using an online bookmark organizing service then I would highly recommend trying out delicious. It’s especially useful for storing and categorizing recipes that you stumble across online and would like to try at some point in the future. It also reduces the need for you to print endless pages of instructions, that you’ll inevitably lose, and save a few trees.

Anyway, back to the cookies. My first observation post baking and tasting is that they are absolutely huge! Too big almost. Of course, this could also be viewed as a positive as you’ll be so stuffed after sampling one that you wont have any desire to go back for a second round. I do think that the next time I prepare these sinful nutty treats I’ll use the smaller 1 inch ice cream scoop to shape the dough. A more bite sized Nutter Butter knock-off would probably be slightly easier to handle in social situations.

I’d like to point out that the dough was not very thick after I mixed it up. The original recipe did not call for chilling the cookie batter but from experience I knew that it was much too thin. Had I cooked the cookies at that point they would have spread much too much and made a big unattractive mess. So I chose to chill the bowl of dough for about an hour. This helped the batter hold its shape and produced nicely rounded cookies. Be sure not to overcrowd your cookie sheet though. Twelve at a time is all that I’d recommend prepping.

An additional alteration that I made to the recipe was to double the amount of filling. I’m a firm believer in the art of overdoing things that are stuffed. If you’d prefer a less thickly filled cookie then reduce the amounts back to their original state. In total this recipe used 6 sticks of butter. Just thinking about that makes me feel fat so I froze almost the entire batch so I can give them away at a later date. This is definitely a cookie that begs to be shared, unless of course you enjoy running eight miles a day in order to burn off your cookie sinning ways.

Homemade Nutter Butter Cookies
Adapted (and slightly altered) from the Bouchon Bakery’s “Nutter Butters” recipe originally published by The New York Times.
Yield: 24 large cookies

For the cookie dough:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 teaspoons baking soda
1 pound (4 sticks) butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup creamy peanut butter, preferably Skippy
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats

For the filling:
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 cup creamy peanut butter, preferably Skippy
3 1/3 cups confectioners’ sugar.

For cookie dough: preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and baking soda; set aside. Using a mixer with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and peanut butter. Add sugars and beat at medium speed for 4 minutes, scraping down bowl twice.

At low speed, add eggs and vanilla. Add flour mixture and beat at low speed until well mixed, frequently scraping down bowl. Add oats, and mix well. (Erin’s Note: Very important! Chill the batter for up to one hour before baking).

Using an ice cream scoop 2 inches in diameter, place balls of dough on parchment-lined baking sheets at least three inches apart. Bake until cookies have spread and turned very light golden brown, about 10 – 12 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside to cool and firm up, 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely before filling.

For filling: using an electric mixer, cream together the butter, peanut butter and confectioners’ sugar until very smooth.

To assemble cookies, spread a thick layer on underside of a cookie. Sandwich with another cookie. Repeat.

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Homemade Nutter Butters

There’s a home movie of me swirling around my family that unfortunately only exists on a VHS tape or I’d happily share it with you. Don’t worry there isn’t any night vision or scantily clad D list celebrities in it. It’s simply several very amusing takes of me around 7 or 8 years of age sporting a purple polo shirt and acting hyper as hell (undoubtedly totally jacked up on Jax and Grape Soda) while seriously hamming it up for the camera.

At one point I jump into the shot holding a bag of Cape Cod popcorn, greedily munch a handful, and yell, “Cape Cod Popcorn! It’s deeeelicious! Ha ha! I just made a commercial for Cape Cod Popcorn!”

In the grand tradition of embarrassing your child with ridiculous childhood exploits this movie was shown to CK shortly after we began dating and ever since he likes to remind me just how “deeeelicious” everything is.

Unfortunately my love of Cape Cod popcorn was cut short. For years I couldn’t find it in any stores in Maine. Even today when I happen to venture down the chip aisle I  find myself scanning the shelves for this nostalgic favorite but always come away empty handed.

Recently though this all changed when I stopped by a random Roche Bros in Acton and was astonished to see my personal Holy Grail of snack food nestled next to the more commonly available Cape Cod Potato Chip varieties. I did a double take to make sure that I wasn’t seeing things, quickly grabbed a bag, and practically skipped back to show CK what I’d found. Huzzah! Cape Cod Popcorn was mine at last! Of course once I got home and opened the bag I realized that it tasted essentially exactly like the very easy to find Smart Food Popcorn but in my mind Cape Cod Popcorn will always be better. So I ask those of you native to New England, do you remember Cape Cod Popcorn and am I right about it totally disappearing after the 80’s? Or perhaps it just stopped being stocked in my area of Maine?

PS: Interestingly enough, if you go to the Cape Cod company website, they are branding their popcorn products as “new.” Hmm…I guess everything old becomes new again at some point?

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Cape Cod Popcorn

I have a thing for pink. Which is a little odd since pink isn’t officially my favorite color. In reality my favorite color is purple. Growing up my love for all things purple didn’t just apply to sneakers and crayons it also carried over into the food choices I made. Of course there aren’t really that many purple kid-friendly foods that aren’t complete junk. I love eggplant now and harbor an obsessive fascination with purple cauliflower but put a plate of those vegetables down in front of “Little Erin” and a very vocal Kraft Macaroni and Cheese tantrum would have immediately erupted. So I loved grape gum, soda, and popsicles but not purple jelly beans because they were usually licorice flavored. Yuck!

It appears that my affinity for pink coincided with my burgeoning love for cooking. The more comfortable I began to feel in the kitchen the more gadgets and gizmos I coveted and once I obtained the ultimate in pink kitchen couture, my pink KitchenAid stand mixer, the two topics became practically synonymous with one another. So now I have a kitchen full of pink accessories and a blog full of pink recipes.

I played with the original Strawberry Whoopie Pies recipe a bit adding vanilla to the batter and opting not to use their filling recipe. I like my whoopie pies to have a center that is much more icing like in flavor. In the end the filling was the best part of these puffy pink pies. I think it would taste phenomenal thickly slathered on a chocolate cake. As an added bonus, for those of you who eschew food coloring, the vibrant pink that the pureed berries create is completely natural. As an aside, the cookie part of the recipe used oil. Next time I would like to try substituting butter for the oil. I think it would give the cookies a slightly better, and perhaps more firm, texture.

PS: Congratulations to Lindsey for winning a copy of The School of Essential Ingredients in last week’s giveaway! Stay tuned! There are always more giveaways in the works. In addition, if you haven’t already done so, please consider becoming a fan of Erin Cooks on Facebook.

Strawberry Whoopie Pies
Loosely adapted from the Strawberry Whoopie Pies recipe found on Oprah.com
Yields: 10 large pies

Cookies:
1 cup (about 5 ounces) stemmed and halved strawberries
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
2 cups light brown sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Filling:
5 cups confectioners’ sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 sticks of unsalted butter; softened
1 cup of pureed strawberries

To make cookies: Put strawberries in a food processor and pulse in short bursts just until they are chopped into small pieces (about 4 to 5 pulses), and set aside. (Be careful not to puree them). Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl, and set aside.

Put brown sugar and oil in a large bowl and mix well, using the back of a spoon to break up any lumps in sugar. Whisk in chopped strawberries, vanilla, and yogurt until combined, then whisk in eggs, one at a time, just until combined. Fold in flour mixture in two parts, being careful not to overwork the batter. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°. Using a medium cookie scoop, drop heaping mounds of batter onto a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet (Erin’s Note: I used a silpat) to form each cookie, spacing dollops about 2 inches apart. Working in batches, bake until cookies are set and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, 12 to 15 minutes. Remove cookies from oven; cool completely.

To make filling: Puree strawberries in a food processor until smooth (about 15 seconds); set aside. Cream together the butter, confectioner’s sugar, and vanilla. Then add the pureed strawberries. Combine until smooth. The filling should be fairly thick. Add more sugar if the mixture is too thin.

To assemble: Generously frost the flat side of half of the cookies, then top each with an unfrosted cookie to form sandwiches. Transfer to a platter and serve.

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Strawberry Whoopie Pies

Happy second day of summer! I don’t know about you but I’m a huge fan of summer reading lists. Not that we’re having much of a summer yet in New England but I fully intend to spend some quality time at the beach slathered in sunscreen and surrounded by a stack of good books, waiting for their brand new covers to be cracked open for the first time, just as soon as the sun decides to come back out. In the meantime, one of the best foodie stories I’ve enjoyed in quite some time has been named as an NPR recommended summer read and the author, Erica Bauermeister, contacted me to see if I would like to giveaway a copy of her novel on the blog. Well of course I do!

To win a copy of The School of Essential Ingredients all you have to do is leave a comment on this post.

In addition, If you share a link to this contest on your own blog, Twitter, Facebook etc… you may have one additional entry for a total of two possible chances to win. If you choose this option please leave a link to your shout out as your second comment. A winner will be selected via the nifty random number generator this Friday, June 26th at 8:00 PM EST and then I’ll promptly arrange to have the book shipped to your home.

Curious as to what the book is about? Below is my review re-posted from the original entry back in February:

Once a month an eclectic group of strangers meet in the kitchen of Lillian’s restaurant to participate in The School of Essential Ingredients. Shy and cautious at first they soon build a supportive rapport with one another, and under Lillian’s intuitive culinary tutelage blossom and grow in ways they never imagined possible.

Each chapter reveals a single participant’s story. Joy, heartache, personal failure, and successes are lovingly interwoven into the larger context of the cooking class. Some of the character’s you’ll meet inside Lillian’s kitchen include: Claire, a young woman struggling with balancing her personal identity with that of being a wife and mother; Tom, who is recovering from a seemingly insurmountable loss; Chloe, a shy and clumsy teenager desperately in need of a confidence boost; and Carl and Helen who have been married for decades, but harbor painful secrets from one another.

Erica Bauermeister’s ability to write about the human emotional connection with food is outstanding. Reading about the luscious dishes being created in class made me crave everything from roast crab to white cake. Of late, it has become popular for many books with a culinary slant to include recipes. However, as Lillian does not use recipes and encourages her students to feel, taste, and judge the timing and texture of their cooking on their own, the reader is only granted the same level of access. I definitely found myself repeatedly hoping that I’ll be able to recreate the elegant food so sensually described in the story, while also wishing that I could be a part of this amazing and personally transformative class. Where do I sign up?

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

An ErinCooks Contest: Win a Copy of The School of Essential Ingredients

When the weather is cold and dreary like this I always think about Glo Worm toys. I didn’t have the plush version with the battery operated light-up face. I just had one of the plastic ones that you held under a table lamp to charge. Then when I turned out my bedroom light the Glo Worm would light up, sort of creepily, and I’d play with it until it died out and repeat the process again. I’m absolutely like those little toys and right now I desperately need a sunny day to recharge my gloomy mood. We’re building arks in New England and suffering from sever cabin fever but the rain just wont quit and it doesn’t appear to be letting up anytime soon. Thankfully I have the memories of one of the last truly lovely sunny days we had to keep me going, and even better than sunshine that day also involved picking a massive amount of fresh strawberries at Shelburne Farm.

The first thing you need to know is that warm berries freshly picked off the plant taste like a Country Time Lemonade commercial come to life. This is the only time of year that you can get a strawberry that tastes so unbelievably heavenly. It makes the fruit we buy the rest of the time taste like watered down bits of nothingness. I wish I was exaggerating the extravagance of their flavor but I’m truly not.

As I had big plans for my personal harvest CK and I opted to pick a very large box of berries. It took us almost half an hour to fill the monstrosity but we enjoyed ourselves. When you live in the city it’s easy to forget what being outside just to be outside truly feels like. We may walk to the T or pop over to Harvard Square but it’s almost always with an indoor destination (restaurant, move theater, bar) in mind. Standing in that field of ruby red berries really made me feel alive.

Of course this sunny fruit excursion didn’t come cheaply. At $3 a pound our very heavy box cost over $44 but I think I’d pay double that just for the privilege of having my apartment smell like a strawberry field for the leisurely two days that it took me to cook, prep, and freeze the various treats that I made.

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Picking Strawberries at Shelburne Farm

I embarrassingly admitted to the fact that I’d never been to the Penzeys Spices store in Arlington the other day and several of my fellow bloggers demanded that I make a command appearance as soon as possible. What’s a girl to do? Well obviously I obeyed and made it a priority to stop by that Saturday.

I’m so incredibly glad that I did. They have absolutely everything you can imagine there from Kosher Salt to Cocoa. The best part is that you can smell all of the spices before you purchase them. Interestingly enough the testing spices are held in large jars that remind me of the candy jar my grandmother always keeps pink Canadian mints in. We refer to them as “Pink Peppermints” though.

I essentially bought out the store. My treasure trove of booty included: Smoked Spanish Paprika, Ancho Chili Pepper, Peppercorns, Vanilla Extract, Sesame Seeds, Poppy Seeds, Kosher Salt, Sea Salt, Onion and Garlic Powders, and Dutch Process Cocoa. Needless to say I’m deeply in love (and apparently Watson is too). Also, I fear that any duplicate supermarket spices have an upcoming date with the trash bin.

Did I forget to buy one of your favorites? What are your must-have items from Penzeys? It’s only a few miles from my house. I can easily go back for more!  At some point I may need a spice rack intervention but until then I’m going to continue my goal of possibly moving to using only Penzeys Spices at home.

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Penzeys Spices in Arlington

On Friday afternoon I finally got to meet the one and only Carrie when she dropped by for a short visit. We squealed and hugged when I let her in my building. She commented on how tall I was. I admired her funky glasses. It was simply a fabulous first encounter. Carrie came bearing gifts not only for me but she also brought toys for Watson. How sweet is that?! Thankfully I had whipped up a batch of my favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies for her or I would have felt like a super heel.

Carrie could only stay for a few hours so CK and I took her to Harvard Square, which we essentially sprinted through, and then had a nice lunch at Wagamama. Not exactly a truly Cambridge oriented outing but I really can’t get enough of their Yasai Katsu Curry dish. Then we sadly had to say goodbye. If you aren’t familiar with Carrie please stop by her personal blog or her food blog to say hello. She’s one of the warmest and most generous people I’ve ever encountered and I’m so glad to have finally met her in person.

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Meeting Carrie

What are we going to do with all of these luscious magical red berries?! Only Watson knows. Stay tuned…

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Watson and the Strawberries

This is one of my favorite photographs of my grandmother and I. Look! It’s my natural hair color. Amazing… Anyway, today is my grandmother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Gram! Now she doesn’t own a computer and still uses a camera that holds actual film which has to be developed at the drugstore but she always takes the time to have my sister Nicole show her the new posts on my blog when she visits. A few weeks ago I received the following email from Nicole:

Grammie asked me to send you these pictures and she wrote this for you -

Erin,
Show Chris how real coffee is made. No, french press for me! In the background is my lettuce and spinach garden. In the creamer is evaporated milk. The other coffee pot (Pyrex) is 50-years-old. I got it for a wedding present. Have fun with this!
Gram

I hope you enjoyed my grandmother’s first “blog post.” The biscuits in the above picture are one of her signature dishes. Perhaps someday I’ll share the recipe but in the meantime whenever I go home to Maine I ask her to make them for me. Then we all pile into my mother’s car and drive over to Gram’s house in our pajamas to enjoy them with real butter or sometimes homemade strawberry jam. If you have time today please wish my grandmother a “Happy Birthday” in the comments. I know she’d love it!

Originally posted on Erin Cooks

Happy Birthday Gram! A Guest Post of Sorts