Jars of Cookies, from sated magazine

It's almost Christmas. I can't believe it. Somehow this year, the holidays have just sort of snuck up on me with no fanfare until a friend pointed out to me yesterday that it's already the 23rd. WHAT! None of my holiday shopping is done. >< I hope you all don't mind receiving Christmas gifts in January instead.... :\

I am super excited, however, to finally get to share a few photos from a shoot I did for sated about cookies for the holidays. I'm especially excited about these photos because while shooting this feature, I basically got to break many of the tenets of modern-day food photography: I shot in direct sunlight and at comparatively small apertures than normal (think f/11 instead of the typical f/2.8s that you see in a good deal of food photography these days). I'm kind of delighted by the results, if I might say so myself, with the sunlight glistening and sparkling off the jars, and the streaks of light piercing through dark edges of the photographs. It's refreshing to break all the rules every now and then!

Also, these recipes, developed by Anita Chu and Jennifer Altman for sated, are delicious. I might have, um, generously sampled them while shooting. :P In particular, the hazelnut thumbprints pictured below are one of my favorite, favorite things that Anita makes, and I'm so excited that she's sharing the recipe over on the sated blog today! Click on over for the hazelnut thumbprints recipe, as well as recipes for buttery Scottish shortbread and spicy speculaas (pictured above).

I hope everyone has a smooth next few days leading up to Christmas! Drink lots of hot chocolate, spiced apple cider, and mulled wine for me!

To you all...

Best wishes for the merriest of Christmases!

<3, Stephanie

PotW: Christmas Morning: Cranberry-Nutmeg Pancakes with Lemon Curd

When it comes to the holidays, I'm a huge stickler for tradition.  I always cook fish on Thanksgiving.  I always make a shopping trip to San Francisco in the days leading up to Christmas, even if I don't need anything.  Despite the fact that my parents have long ago upgraded their tree, my Christmas tree is still this old fake one that doesn't even look like a tree, carted by hand by my grandfather decades ago all the way from Taiwan and decorated with pipe-cleaner ornaments that I made in kindergarten or with ones that I've received as presents throughout the years.  Even the star on top of the tree is an old, taped-together end of a fairy wand that I used to have as a kid.  I firmly believe that tradition gives things character and whimsy, and they let you enjoy just a tinge of comforting nostalgia at the end of every year.

Another Christmas tradition that I always had was waking up in the morning and practicing piano before opening presents--granted, this started out more as a forced lesson in discipline imparted by my parents than a "tradition," but over the years, it grew into part of my Christmas morning routine.  But, after I moved away and my piano moved with me, I can no longer wake up on Christmas morning in my parents' house and play before the day gets started.  So, I've since replaced that musical tradition with a food one: Christmas morning pancakes.

Each year, I ask my dad a few days before Christmas what kind of pancakes he'd like, and the answer is always "blueberry."  While there's nothing wrong with blueberry pancakes, I decided this year that we need a little creativity, so this is what I'm planning on making come Christmas morning: cranberry nutmeg pancakes with meyer lemon curd and warmed cranberries.

I knew that I wanted to make something with meyer lemons, because I always regard meyer lemons as nature's little Christmas gift to me--they show up right before the holidays and mark the beginning of my favorite citrus seasons: meyer lemons and, shortly thereafter, blood oranges.  Then, I've sort of been fascinated by cranberries as of late whenever I've been in the kitchen, transforming them into everything from cranberry sauces and cranberry bavarians to cranberry savory dishes.  Plus, they seemed like a natural stand-in for blueberries to appease my dad: round little colorful fruits in his pancakes.  Together, I love how the sweetness of the meyer lemon curd complements the tart bursts of the fresh cranberries perfectly.  Since it's usually cranberry sauce that's sweet and lemons that are sour, this role reversal is a fun variation for the taste buds.  And, can I mention how Christmas-y the bright red cranberries look?!

Anyways, I hope that you are all having sweet and wonderful holidays and enjoying your traditions, both old and new (make sure to tell me about them in the comments below!)!  Here's wishing you a fantastically merry Christmas, an awesome winter solstice, and a happy everything else in between!

Read on for recipe...

[previous Pancake of the Week: Chai pancakes with black tea-poached plums]

Christmas chocolate OVERLOAD: Saffron-honey dark chocolates and Blackberry-cassis dark chocolates

Ah, the chocolate craze this Christmas started a few weeks back with ginger carrot dark chocolates and peppermint ganache and continued with no break in the storm through Christmas.  So. Much. Chocolate.

Left to right (bottom to top):

Peppermint candy cane dark chocolate

Blackberry creme de cassis dark chocolate

Caramel chai dark chocolate

Saffron honey dark chocolate

And they all came packaged in these little treat boxes:

Yes!  That's my "company" logo on it.  Okay, I don't really have a company, or really a business in which I make money at all.  But I do make desserts for other people.  I do have real clients and orders, so I wanted to have a name and logo.  I have to say, I'm pretty proud of my business name and logo, which is a play off my last name, pronounced like the feminine pronoun, "she."  Clever, no?

Anyways, back to the chocolate.  As I said before, So. Much. Chocolate.  There were so many people who I had to gift boxes to, in addition to my parents' co-workers, for whom they'd ordered chocolates from me.  The chocolates came out deliciously.  My personal favorites were the saffron-honey dark chocolates--the ones on the far right:

The saffron-honey ganache was just to die for.  I seriously had to restrain myself from eating it all before it made it into the candies.  The combination of saffron and dark chocolate was so rich and decadent, with the incredible fragrance of the saffron and the bitterness of the dark chocolate.  I've honestly found a new favorite chocolate flavor combination.

The other chocolates were hits as well.  (More so, especially, since saffron-chocolate is a bit "out there.")  The peppermint candy cane chocolate used the peppermint ganache recipe here for filling.  In the blackberry-cassis candies was blackberry jam and strong cassis liquor-flavored ganache, for an extra robust berry kick.  The caramel-chai chocolates were filled with soft lemon caramel and Darjeeling/cardamom flavored ganache.  (Quite reminiscent, in fact, of the chai sandwich cookies I posted about a few days ago.)

I am super relieved that Christmas is over, and I can give the chocolate work a rest for a while!  Up next is buttercream and cupcake overload for a birthday party this coming weekend.

Okay, I am off to figure out a way to make champagne pancakes for New Years!  Enjoy the chocolates, everyone.  The recipes for the blackberry-cassis and saffron-honey chocolates are included below.

Happy New Years!

Read on for recipes...

Chai tea sandwich cookies

This Christmas was most definitely not a cookie Christmas for me.  Actually, I was up to my elbows with chocolate making, since pretty much everyone I knew (that I saw) received a box of chocolates.  But more on that later this week.  I did get around to making one kind of cookie, and, given my infatuation with sandwich cookies this year, of course it had to be another sandwich cookie.

Vanilla-cardamom cookies

with Darjeeling tea filling

The original spark of inspiration for these cookies came from leafing through Christmas Gifts from the Kitchen (by Georgeanne Brennan), a book that one of Richard's aunts gave me as an early Christmas present (of course with the string attached that she wanted something out of the book for Christmas this year).  Amongst the recipes that I'd flagged to try during my first flip-through of the book were these awesome-looking vanilla cardamom cookies.  But, these are not it.  For some reason, I wanted something more.  And nothing was more natural a companion to vanilla and cardamom than Darjeeling tea.  :-)

I was hugely lucky also that my roommate, Maria, had brought me some Darjeeling tea from Darjeeling, India! on her trip there last year.  Of course, being me, I had to find a way to bake with it rather than sitting down and enjoying a cup....

Anyhow, I hope that everyone enjoyed a very Merry Christmas!  Have a great final week to 2009!

Read on for recipe...

Christmas cupcakes!

Last week, I did something completely uncharacteristic of myself: I baked cupcakes.

For anyone who knows me, you'll recognize immediately that baking cupcakes is soooo not me.  I'm not a cupcake girl.  In fact, I have a huge rant prepared about how cupcakes are NOT cute and mini versions of cakes.  No, cute and mini versions of cakes should still look like cakes.  Cute and mini versions of cupcakes should look like cupcakes.  But really, I should spare you all the rant.

And back to the cupcakes.  The other reason that I tend to steer clear of cupcakes is the same reason that I don't like making sugar cookies: the decorating.  There are just so many frosting colors involved!  And the thought of all those little bowls with all of those different colors of frosting, all of which have to be washed at the end of the decorating session, along with all of the spoons that you used to mix the different colors.  Just the thought of it is extremely exhausting to me.  (background note: I abhor doing dishes.)  So, the short of it is that I don't usually do cupcakes.  Mini cupcakes are my thing.

But, for some unexplained, crazy reason last week, I had the sudden urge to make cupcakes.  I think it was all of the peppermint ganache that I'd eaten.  Really, it was.  After making my molten peppermint chocolate cake, I ended up with a few cakes that were left uneaten.  At first, I didn't think that the peppermint ganache would be good after it had cooled and hardened inside the cake, but, upon trying one of the cooled cakes, it tasted really good!  So, why not put peppermint ganache in chocolate cupcakes?  yum yum!

Alas--there was a problem.  Mini-cupcakes just would not do in such a situation.  There just wouldn't be enough room for cake AND chocolate ganache in the mini molds, so full-sized cupcakes it would have to be.  And that's the story of how my Christmas cupcake extravaganza came to be.





Anyways, the cupcakes were super yummy.  The chocolate cake here is THE chocolate cake recipe I turn to for pretty much everything under the sun.  It's so moist, which is perfect here, because the peppermint ganache sort of melts into the chocolate cake and cools to form an amazing amalgamation of pepperminty-chocolatey awesomeness.  Top with a generous dollop of peppermint-schnapps-infused buttercream and some sprinkles, and you're golden.

Oh, and of course I made mini versions as well (not with peppermint ganache).  I mean, everything is better in miniature, no?

Read on for recipe... (this chocolate cake recipe also works well fresh-out-of-the-oven for molten chocolate cakes!)

Double the fun with peppermint ganache!

Really, what are the holidays without peppermint and candy canes?

Peppermint molten chocolate cake

with dark chocolate-dipped candy canes

Okay--don't answer that.  That was rhetorical (and yes, I do remember what my high school English teacher said about rhetorical questions being a sign of horrible writing, and I apologize).  :-)

Anyways, along with the ginger carrot dark chocolate candies, I made peppermint dark chocolate candies as a more traditional holiday flavor for Christmas treats and gifts.  You know, just in case people snuff at the idea of carrots in their chocolate.

Peppermint dark chocolate ganache candies

But what to do with all of the leftover peppermint ganache?  Ah, here's where the genius comes in:

Pop a ball of ganache in the center of moist chocolate cake, bake in souffle molds, and voila!  Instant molten peppermint chocolate cakes.  And oh my, were these good straight out of the oven.  I made sure to call my friend, Lauren, over in time for the cakes to finish baking, just so I wouldn't have to scarf these all down myself.

The chocolate cake was so rich when it was still hot, and then when you get down to the bottom, there's just a thick layer of melted dark chocolate ganache, laced with cool peppermint.  It was divine.

Ah, but back to the peppermint ganache:

I mean, do I really have to convince you that these were good?

Wait--damn rhetorical questions.

Read on for recipe for peppermint chocolate ganache...  (chocolate cake recipe now available here.)

O Christmas Tree

Richard's family is quite large, so every year, I have to come up with creative gifts for everyone for Christmas. Here's one that I did a couple of years back, inverting ice cream cones and making them into Christmas trees! Then I filled them with Christmas m&m's (or nuts for the health-conscious ones).