I’ve made it my goal to sift through my skyscraper of food magazines. The ever-growing pile that sits in our living room. It had been nicely arranged on the shelf, but when my dishes and props collection rapidly expanded during the shooting of my cookbook, the magazines were relegated to the corner to make room for stacks of plates. The intention was to go back through them, rescue the forgotten recipes, and recycle.

That was 6 months ago.

Although I have been shamefully lazy in completing this task, I do have to say that the system I discovered puts the 3-ring-binder of olde to shame. Enter, the iPad, and the recipe management app called Paprika. It’s not a free app, but it’s well worth the cost.

Typically, when a new issue of my favorite foodie rag arrives, I flip through it once, dog-earing any recipes that sound appetizing. If it happens to be a Monday night, when I’m usually planning our weekly meals, I’ll include a few of those recipes on the menu. But then? What about the rest of the recipes that I may not have flagged the first time or used during that week? Lost and forgotten. Buried in a pile of glossy paper.

Thinking about all those lost recipes makes me sad.

One of these days, I’ll actually make it through the pile. Saving and categorizing all of the appetizing recipes by magazine, category, season… whatever makes sense at the time. And then, during future meal-planning sessions, I can simply scroll through the digital skyscraper (which is so much more manageable than the glossy paper one), picking and choosing based on what we have on hand, what needs to be used up, what is fresh and seasonal at the market.

This was one of those recipes, forgotten the first time around, and rediscovered. We served the spicy beef (seared in a heavy skillet, but it could also be grilled as described in the original recipe) with a cellophane noodle salad, tossed with a dressing of soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, and spice. Lost. And found. Cooked. And thoroughly enjoyed.

Now if I could just get through the rest of the pile…

©2012 Love and Olive Oil

My name is Lindsay and I have a problem.

Apparently I only bake alcoholic cakes.

For the last year at least, every cake I’ve made has been tipsy. Kirsch and beer and bourbon, oh my! It was only a matter of time before I started hitting the red wine.

For Taylor’s birthday this year, as usual, he requested “chocolate cake, just a good, moist chocolate cake.” You’d think he’d know by now that there’s no way I’m going to make him “just” a chocolate cake. But chocolate as a starting point? That I can definitely work with.

For a while now I’ve been eying this bottle of blackberry wine. A sticky sweet wine made locally here in Tennessee. It’s not exactly the kind of wine you pour and have a glass or two with dinner. Way too sweet for that. It’s practically fruit juice. Highly alcoholic fruit juice.

I felt that wine was destined for something more.

Simply swapping the typical black coffee in a classic chocolate cake recipe with the dark and fruity spirit produced a decadently moist chocolate cake unlike anything I’ve ever had before. Subtle notes of fruit came through the rich dark chocolate, tantalizing the palette without screaming “Hey! Look at me, I’m filled with wine!” Layered with blackberry preserves and whipped vanilla buttercream, and topped with a dramatic chocolate ganache drizzle, this definitely isn’t just another chocolate cake.

Looking at these photos now, I should have been more ambitious with the drizzle. I guess I was afraid the chocolate would cascade down the entire side of the cake, overflowing onto the cake stand and the table below (read: mess). While I was going for glamorous, I think what I ended up with was a bit more sanguine. Vampire-esque almost. And kind of creepy. But delicious. Oh. So. Delicious.

©2012 Love and Olive Oil

Project: use up all the greens continues.

I wasn’t joking when I said we got a ton of greens.

Especially when you consider we made both these and the winter greens beignets the same week.

I’ve never had a authentic steamed bun, so making them from scratch was ambitious to the say the least. But the result was incredibly satisfying, despite the fact that traditional bao (buns) are usually filled with pork. There’s nothing about this mushroom, kale, and bok choy filling that comes up lacking. It has a heartiness and a sweetness that masks any and all of the bitterness that most winter greens tend to harbor.

If you don’t have one of these amazing bamboo steamers, I suggest you make room for one in your kitchen immediately (tip: they make great potato/onion storage when you’re not using them). We should really use ours more. And now that we’ve discovered the miracle that is steamed dough, we just might. Simply place the steamer over a pot of simmering water (or if you have a wok the steamer can be placed down inside of it, as long as it sits above the water and not in it). Fill it with whatever fish, veggies, dumplings, or buns you’d like. It’s a quick and healthy alternative to sauteing or even baking.

And I’m all for healthy.

It means I can eat more cake after dinner. :)

©2012 Love and Olive Oil

You can look at this post in one of two ways. Either I’m way late in posting my Christmas cookies, or I’m totally on top of it for Valentine’s day. I’ll let you decide. Because these precious pink and white cookies swing both ways.

The original recipe, discovered via Pinterest, called for rolling the dough into balls and then flattening them with a glass. But after a few less-than-pretty batches, I realized rolling the dough into a log and slicing it was going to produce much more uniform, nicely shaped cookies. And it did.

Just try to ignore the fact that, when sliced, they totally look like salami.

I sent some of these out with our annual christmas cookie shipments, along with (what I called) Jackson Pollock Gingerbread (which really means I didn’t have the patience to deal with royal icing and went freeform instead), as well as some Mexican Chocolate cookies.

These cherry cookies are sweet and buttery, with just a hint of cherry. You can dip or drizzle the white chocolate, but these cookies definitely need the extra adornment to offset the salami-ness. Trust me. No one wants to eat a cookie that looks like lunchmeat.

No matter how cute the packaging might be.

©2012 Love and Olive Oil

I kind of shot myself in the foot when I made that incredible Rainbow Cake last year. As my little sister’s birthday approached, I kept thinking, “how on EARTH am I going to top the rainbow cake?” I mean, seriously. The only things that top rainbows are sparkles and unicorns.

Or booze.

And since a unicorn cake is entirely beyond my skill set, I went with the later. And set out to make the booziest, bourbonyest cake I could.

Bourbon buttermilk cake. Bourbon chocolate ganache. Milk chocolate buttercream. And I did not skimp on the bourbon, either. There’s a half a cup in the cake alone. You can literally smell the aroma the second you cut into it.

I’m not sure if it was the bourbon or the buttermilk or the butter, but this cake was so incredibly moist and buttery that the frosting and ganache had trouble sticking to it. Or maybe it was an issue with the frosting itself. I’ll say that’s why there’s not a slice photo here for you to see, but in reality it’s because we devoured that thing before I could find a free moment to snap a shot. You’ll just have to use your imagination.

What really sealed the deal and made this cake *officially* better than last year’s was the experience that went along with it. A day in Kentucky, experiencing a small part of what they call the Bourbon Trail. Even if you’re not a bourbon drinker seeing the process of how it’s made is incredibly intriguing. The science and precision and craft is awe inspiring. And the 10am bourbon tastings that come with the tours? Let’s just say I’m not complaining.

Yup. I think my sister had the best birthday (and best birthday cake) ever. No unicorns necessary.

©2012 Love and Olive Oil