Plum Mascarpone Tartlets

This is my absolute favorite time of the year, the end of summer and cusp of fall. You can still order iced coffee during the day, but it’s too chilly to leave your windows open overnight. When it’s sunny, there isn’t any humidity, and you can feel fall in every breeze.

This fall I’m particularly nostalgic because I won’t be returning to school. A new school year highlights the excitement of the transitioning seasons. For the past 16 years of my life, I’ve defined the new year not as New Year’s Day but as the first week of school. Does the clean slate, newness of fall go away now that school is over?

It doesn’t have to. We just need to create our own fresh starts.

Stone fruit season is almost over, but you can still salvage summer with these tartlets. Plums are the best right now, and I’ve already mentioned my intimate relationship with mascarpone.

P.s. Check out my friend Megan’s awesome new blog, Sequins and Shortbread. She made a killer pie — also with stone fruit!

So what’s your fresh start?

Peanut butter sandwich cookies dipped in chocolate

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I would bake for this blog post. I had every intention of making something that was light and had fresh fruit — a guilt-free something that anyone who’s  from the #paleo school of thought could enjoy.

Who am I kidding? Paleo? ME? Truth of the matter is I knew within minutes of regaining consciousness this morning that I wanted something with peanut butter and chocolate. So at 7:30 this morning, before even brushing my teeth, I came downstairs and started measuring out sugar, butter and peanut butter.

And here’s the result.

Sometimes you just have to shut out all the problems of the world and bake. Bake something that could give you diabetes if consumed regularly.  You have to skip the gym, skip your Chobani and blueberries and eat one twelve of these decadent cookies for breakfast.

That’s what I told myself this morning… it’s what I’m sticking to, and damn do I feel good about it.

Full disclosure — this shot has been glammed-out on Photoshop. I lah-lah-love it.

Blueberry-Raspberry Muffins with Mascarpone

My muffins bring all the boys to the yard. Why? Because they have mascarpone cheese in them, which is smooth, creamy and subtle in flavor. Mascarpone cheese is less rich than butter and compliments any fruit it is paired with. It’s often used in cheesecake, tiramisu or frosting, but when you bake with it, mascarpone creates a dough that’s looser and more pliable, thereby yielding a moister, lighter end product.

In my opinion, mascarpone is really underused. Here’s a pro tip: pair it with Trader Joe’s pumpkin butter when it’s on shelves and put it on toast. Or mix mascarpone with kiwi and strawberries for stuffed french toast. I could go on and on.

Also, I should mention I added lemon juice to these because they enhance the flavor of the berries. You don’t really taste the lemon, but it’s just enough to bring out the flavor of the berries.

Happy almost 4th of July. Love ‘Merica.

Pasta with Fresh Tomato, Basil, Mozzarella and Prosciutto

When the chronology of your day off is: 1. consume enough frozen margaritas to fill a kiddie pool 2. pass out in a sugar/tequila-induced coma in the hot sun 3. wake up famished, disoriented and sunburned, craving a Big Mac (with extra Big Mac sauce) from McDonald’s, your life choices are questionable. I mean #1 and #2 are your own prerogatives, don’t get me wrong. But instead of opting for a Big Mac on this hypothetical (or historically accurate for some) day off, might I suggest a lighter, healthier alternative?

The days of fresh, light eating are upon us. I recommend a bowl of pasta with a dash of olive oil,  plum tomatoes from the garden, mozzarella, basil, rosemary, and prosciutto. It’s simple and cheaper than a few Big Macs that only a margarita hangover would drive a good soul to purchase.

Bring this pasta to the next barbecue you attend. Even if your drunken friends and family embarrass themselves before passing out from all the frozen margs, they will at least thank you for saving them from a potential McDonald’s binge.

White Bean and Escarole Soup

I know what you’re thinking. “It’s summer. Why the hell would I make soup?” Well, because it’s healthy (perfect for your Giselle Bundchen summer beach bod), refreshing, hearty enough so that it fills you and it’s extremely cost-effective for the amount of soup it makes.

The last and most important reason why you should make this soup is because I know my shit and everyone should abide by everything I say.

Often, what I make is inspired by what I eat when I’m at a restaurant. This is my usual process: I figure out what ingredients they used, how they did it and then confidently (or over-confidently, as some would inconceivably say) decide that I can make it and that I can make it better. That’s what happened here. I had escarole bean soup last week at this little hole-in-the-wall Italian joint by where I work in Woodland Park. Theirs was fantastic. Mine was superb.

Happy cooking.

Spinach Meatballs in a Red Sauce

Want to know what my personal hell is? It’s the fact that I’ve been trying hard to get into shape, going to spin class and exercising on the reg and tres leches cake, which my mom got to celebrate my graduation ceremony this week, is sitting in the fridge. My mom’s friend’s mother makes it. She has made this cake all her life — is now 90 years old — and it’s what she’s known for. Truly, there are few things in the universe that parallel this dessert.

So you can understand why this is such a quandary for me. And if you’ve read Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit, you can understand why, if I were a character, for eternity I’d be doing p90x ab ripper as a single slice of unadulterated tres leches remained in a seemingly reachable, but not actually reachable, place right in front of my face.

In that play, Sartre famously said: “Hell is other people.” Hell isn’t other people. Hell is tres leches cake. That version of hell is far, far worse than fire and brimstone. I know because it is in fact my living hell.

Enough of Sartre. He was a depressing dude. I don’t have tres leches on this blog, because that recipe is a guarded family secret, but I do have some dynamite spinach meatballs that are test-kitchen approved. Do you like how quickly I switch gears like that?

I brought these meatballs to work every day this past week. Typically, I can’t stand to eat the same thing every day (first world problem) but daamn they were so good. I tried adding spinach to regular meatballs, and I was so glad that I did. You can cook the meatballs in the sauce or bake them separately. I recommend cooking them in the sauce, because it makes the sauce more complex. Because you’re cooking the sauce for such a long period of time, I can assure you that the meat does cook and you won’t end up with anything raw.

This is a good recipe for a girl (or a guy) on a budget because it makes a lot and anything you don’t finish you can freeze. I kept mine for a few days in the fridge, as I kept taking it for lunch, and still had a container I could save for another week.

Blueberry Oat Scones

If you’re having a bad day, these scones will solve all your problems. They might even solve the ills of the world. They’re not too sweet, and they hit the spot with a cup o’ joe. They especially hit the spot if you’re looking at the whatshouldwecallme tumblr simultaneously.

I may or may not have wrapped them up and hid them in the back of my closet in a Forever 21 bag. Don’t judge me…. it’s the length I go to to avoid all the food I make being eaten in my house.

I adapted this recipe from Bon Appétit, as a budget chef like myself can’t afford raw sugar. And our food processor is broken, so I did my own thing. I turn my swag on.

Use fresh blueberries if you know what’s good for you.

Spicy Chunky Guacamole

With Cinco De Mayo a day away, who isn’t planning for what they’ll eat after a few shots of tequila? Amiright? While this is guac is super duper easy, I recommend not making it post tequila consumption. Ya know, I don’t want to be held liable for anyone who cuts a finger off while dicing a red bell pepper.

I prefer my guac chunky, so I didn’t bother using a blender. If you like yours smooth, by all means go for it. And make sure your avocados are ripe enough before you make it… none of the avocados at the grocery store seemed ripe enough, so I left mine in a brown paper bag for 2 days with an apple inside. The apple releases ethylene gas, which speeds up the ripening process for the avocados. Expert tip right there. Also, if you leave the pit of the avocado in the guac and add lemon to it, it helps the guac to retain its pretty green color.

I was going to add tomato to this too, but someone in my house used the tomato I bought (notpointingfingersbutitwasmymom). The guac ended up tasting great without it, so my recipe doesn’t include it, whereas many others do.

I wish I took more photos! I used this guacamole in my lunches — I put it on grilled chicken sandwiches and in salads and boy, it was so much tastier than the store-bought stuff. And for the amount you get from this recipe, it’s definitely cheaper.

Banana Nutella Muffins and an Almond Steamer

I am a Nutella enthusiast, in case you didn’t know that about me already. I add it to anything I can get my hands on. I am apathetic about a lot of things in this world, but Nutella is not one of them.

If I were president, I’d make Nutella Day a national holiday that warranted closures for schools, companies, government offices, hell, even the stock market. It would be on June 5, my birthday, and all good American citizens would spend the day with loved ones, enjoying Nutella appetizers, entrees and desserts. Nutella Day would become more important than Thanksgiving, and it would certainly give Christmas a run for its money. Who’s with me on this?

Enough of my rambling. Nutella and bananas are a match made in heaven, which is why these beautiful little muffins will rock your world.

Raspberry Almond Kiss Cookies

It’s been awhile! Committing to writing regularly can be tough, but I’m ready to start this up again.

I’ve been trying a lot of different recipes lately, but I’ve made these at least three times in the last month and they’re always such a hit. The pink drizzle makes them so pretty, and the almond Hershey kisses compliment the raspberry nicely. And boy, are they easy.

I can tell you what’s not easy… henna-ing a sun and a moon on your wrists after you’ve (very responsibly) had 2 or 3 club sodas with vodka. I learned that the hard way this weekend. My moon came out a shriveled up banana. The sun is a circle with spokes coming out of it. As you would imagine, both hennas look they were illustrated by a blind person, who I allowed run wild after they had a very bad day. In reality, the blind illustrator is two friends from school. I have two blind illustrator friends.

Each celestial body encompasses roughly three inches each of real estate on my wrists. Yeah, I know…

Thanks to my artistic vision, I’ll be wearing sweaters to work for at least a week. It’s late April. Yeah, I know…

It’s really hard when you make poor decisions as an adult. Friends who will graduate in May, you will realize this all too soon. And then once you’re in my position, you’ll wish you had remembered what happened the time Megan thought it would be cool to have parts of the solar system on her wrists.

Thank me now, thank me later for sharing this story and saving you the embarrassment.