I just spent the loveliest six weeks at home. It’s the first time this year that I’ve been home for more than a few weeks at a stretch and boy did I need it. I leaned hard in to the rhythms of being home: cooking dinner, evening runs, couch time with Trevor, grocery shopping, sleeping in, long yoga sessions, learning a new sonata on the piano. I have always been a creature of habit and a bit of a homebody – a few weeks of chill is a type of bliss for me. Travel makes the pleasures of being home that much sweeter.

Since getting home, I turned 29. Trevor turned 29. I got my first pair of glasses, and was amazed by the clarity of trees in the distance, and of our TV. The fruit trees bloomed and faded in a whirlwind few days. Our garden turned from a patch of dirt with a handful of lonely daffodils into a plot bursting with green potential. The first rose opened, and the irises are brilliant in full bloom. Every day we get a few perfectly ripe strawberries – whatever the pesky robin doesn’t get overnight. We had a rainy mother’s day brunch by the fire that turned into a brilliantly sunny walk in the woods an hour later. My best friend from high school got married in the Boston Public Library on a chilly grey day filled with love and champagne. It’s a beautiful time of year to be in Boston and I’m so grateful to be home for it!

For each of our birthdays I made a cake. For mine, a vanilla sponge with strawberry jam and strawberry buttercream. For Trevor, an earl grey sponge with honey-fig buttercream. Both cakes disappeared without a problem, but Trevor’s earl grey cake was truly special. Pretty cakes are not my strong suit (a buttercream expert I am not) but this tasted so good that I covered it up with fresh figs and flowers and snapped a few pictures so I could share it with you. I can’t take credit for either recipe component, only the combination. The earl grey cake is from Liv for Cake and the Italian meringue fig buttercream is from Sticky Spatula. I struggled a bit with the buttercream splitting after a night in the fridge, but the flavor was beautiful and paired perfectly with the cake. If you have a special occasion coming up that calls for subtle flavors and a bit of refinement, I highly recommend this cake!

Earl Grey Cake with Honey-Fig Buttercream

A beautifully-flavored and moist Earl Grey Cake topped with an Italian Meringue Buttercream flavored with fig jam. Elegant and refined for a celebration. This makes a 3-tier, 6-inch cake.

Cake recipe adapted from Liv for Cake. Frosting recipe adapted from Sticky Spatula.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 1 cup whole milk
• 4 bags of early grey tea, divided
• 1 1/2 sticks salted butter, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups AP flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

For the buttercream frosting:

• 1/2 lb. ripe figs
• 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
• 4 TBS honey
• 3 egg whites at room temperature
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

For decorating:

• 6 fresh figs
• honey

Instructions

For the cake:

1. Microwave the milk on high until steaming, about 60-90 seconds. Add three of the earl grey teabags to the milk and let steep for 10 minutes. Remove the teabags, pressing any extra milk out of them with a spoon. and discard the teabags. Set earl grey milk aside, allowing it to come to room temperature.
2. Add the butter and the sugar to a mixer and beat with a paddle attachment on medium until it is pale, creamy and very smooth, about 2 minutes. Turn off. Add one egg and beat on low just until the egg is incorporated. Repeat with the remaining eggs, one at a time. Scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula as needed to ensure that all the ingredients are being evenly mixed.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk togther the flour, baking powder and sea salt. Cut open the remaining earl grey tea bag and pour the tea into the flour mixture. (If the tea is in very large pieces, pulse it in a coffee grinder before adding to the flour). Whisk to combine.
4. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the batter and beat on low just to incorporate, about 30 seconds. Add 1/2 of the earl grey milk and beat just to incorporate, another 30 seconds. Repeat twice more, ending with the final 1/3 of the flour mixture. You should have a smooth, spreadable batter without any lumps.
5. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter the bottom and sides of three, 6-inch cake tins. Cut a round of parchment paper to fit into the bottom of each tin and use this to line the bottom of the each tin. Divide the cake batter between the tree tins, using a spatula to evenly smooth the batter out. Batter should fill a little more than half-way up each tin. Bake the cakes in the preheated oven for 40-50 minutes. They are done when the cake surface springs back when lightly pushed down, and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the inside of each cake tin and invert to release the cake. Let cakes cool completely on a cooling rack before frosting.

For the frosting:

1. Wash and quarter the figs, removing and discarding any remaining stems. Place in a saucepan with 1/2 cup of the sugar and the honey. Gently mash the figs with a wooden spoon. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Simmer, stirring often, until the figs are soft and jammy, about 15 minutes. Strain the jam through a mesh strainer, setting the thinner jelly aside to add to the frosting. Save any remaining fig chunks for another purprose (or just eat them!).
2. Place the remaining 3/4 cup of sugar in a saucepan. Add the 1/4 cup water and stir to fully moisten the sugar, taking care not to get sugar water on the sides of the pan (which may cause the syrup to crystallize). Bring the sugar water to a boil over a medium-high heat. Clip a candy thermometer to the side of the pan and bring the sugar to 240F. As soon as it reaches this temperature, turn off the heat.
3. Add the egg whites to the bowl of a mixer. Beat on high until they are white and frothy and form soft peaks. At this stage, continue beating while very slowly and carefully drizzling the hot sugar syrup down the side of the bowl into the egg whites. Pour in a thin stream until you have used all the sugar syrup up – egg whites should be glossy and hold stiff peaks.
4. Continue beating the egg whites on medium speed until it is room temperature with no warmth felt through the bowl. At this stage, begin adding the butter 1 TBS at a time. Butter should incorporate into the frosting smoothly. Once all the butter is incorporated and the frosting is smooth and glossy, add the fig jelly to the buttercream and beat until incorporated. If you’re having trouble with the buttercream, try reading some of the tips in this article.

For assembly:

1. If necessary, use a serrated knife to cut any domed top off of each cake so that both the top and bottom of each cake is flat. Use a dab of frosting to stick the bottom layer cake to a cake stand. Smooth a thick layer of buttercream on top of the bottom layer of cake, then top with the next layer of cake. Repeat until you have three layers of cake with two layers of buttercream between them.
2. Smooth a thin layer of buttercream all around the cake. If the cake is crumbling into the frosting, pause here and refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to set the crumb coat, then continue frosting so that you have a smooth, thick layer of buttercream on all sides of the cake. Top with fresh figs, sliced in half, and a drizzle of honey.

The post Earl Grey Cake with Honey-Fig Buttercream appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Apologies for the radio silence around here the last few weeks! It’s been a busy month, and I seem to have inadvertently taken a 2-week break from blogging. This week in particular was a whirlwind – we spent last weekend away on our first official food-writing assignment (I can’t wait to share details with you this winter!), and then we dove head first into a long, rainy week piled with work-work, school-work, and freelance-work. I’m getting on a flight to Ireland today, too, so I’m still a bit in heads-down mode, but with a clear break in sight. Trevor and I did manage to spend some solid time in the kitchen yesterday, so we have several exciting recipes to share over the next few weeks (lots of pumpkin and caramel and cheese) to prevent another accidental hiatus.

I’ve been taking an economics course after work this semester, and I’ve learned that sitting through a two hour lecture after a full day of work is a lot harder than sitting through a two hour lecture when it’s the only thing you have to do that day (college students, take note!). Since I can’t drink coffee after 2pm if I want to have a shot at a good night’s sleep, I’ve taken to picking up a chai latte and a few chocolate-covered graham crackers as an incentive for sitting through class. It’s been a while since I drank chai regularly, and I forgot how much I love it’s spicy sweetness. Although a regular chai is a treat in itself, I decided that mixing in a healthy dose of salted caramel and topping it off with whipped cream and, yep, more caramel, would make it a real indulgence, worthy of sharing here. I took the approach of making a light syrup from brewed black tea, fresh ginger, whole spices, and salted caramel, then mixing that syrup with steamed milk. The benefit of this method is that you can store any leftover chai syrup in the fridge for the next time you need a quick pick-me-up, then just mix it with a fresh batch of milk. Hopefully we don’t have another week of weather like last week any time soon, but if we do, I’ll be prepared to curl up at home with one or two of these.

Like what you just read? Subscribe to Katie at the Kitchen Door on Feedly or Bloglovin‘, or follow along on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or Google+. Thanks for reading!

Salted Caramel Chai Latte

Serves 4.

• 4 bags black tea
• 3 inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and diced
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tsp whole black peppercorns
• 10 whole cloves
• 6 whole cardamom pods, lightly crushed
• 1 whole star anise
• 1/3 c. salted caramel, plus more for drizzling (I used this recipe but added 1 cup heavy cream instead of 1/2 cup)
• 1/4 c. white sugar
• 2 cups whole milk
• whipped cream for serving

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Pour 1 1/4 cup of boiling water over tea bags in a heatproof bowl, then let tea steep for 10 minutes. Discard tea bags, squeezing out any extra liquid you can with a spoon.
2. Add brewed tea, fresh ginger, cinnamon stick, peppercorns, cloves, cardamom, star anise, salted caramel, and sugar to a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, then simmer on low for 10 minutes. Mixture should have the consistency of a very thin syrup. Let steep 5 minutes longer, then strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a jar, discarding solids.
3. Heat milk until it is just barely bubbling over low heat or in a microwave, then use a milk frother to froth. Divide chai syrup between four glasses, then add 1/2 cup milk to each glass and stir to combine. Top with whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel, and serve immediately.

The post Salted Caramel Chai Latte appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I’m home! We had a great trip – lots of eating, walking, photographing, exploring small villages and oohing and ahhing at all the famous monuments. We even managed to spend a little bit of time, you know, relaxing. Ten days was just long enough, and so far I’m enjoying being home just enough to offset post-trip depression. I will definitely have food stories to share, but I have lots of thoughts and notes and photos to sort through first. In the meantime, I wanted to share this somewhat overdue book review of Try This At Home, the new(ish) cookbook from Top Chef winner Richard Blais that I’ve been meaning to write about since it came out in February.

Try This At Home is a challenging and exciting cookbook. In contrast to many of the books I tend to gravitate towards, its focus is not on seasonal vegetable-based cooking (e.g. Vegetable Literacy, The Chef’s Collaborative), nor is it a photography-driven travel-cum-recipe regional book (e.g. Venezia in Cucina, Every Grain of Rice, The Latin Road Home). Instead, its appeal lies in the new-to-me, modernist techniques and creative twists that it brings to familiar recipes like hamburgers and ice cream. Both during Top Chef and at his restaurants, Blais is known for using molecular gastronomy to elevate classic dishes into something unexpected and exciting. This may sound like a skill that would be difficult to translate into a book designed for home cooks, but Try This At Home makes it surprisingly accessible.

There are certainly recipes that will challenge the home cook, like Spaghetti Carbonara made with Chicken-Flavored Agar-Agar Noodles, but there are many more that require no special tools or ingredients, only an open mind about how flavors work together. Some of his ideas are so creative yet so simple that my reaction is not intimidation, but something more along the lines of “What?! That’s awesome, I’m doing that immediately.” A good example? Freezing blue cheese sauce into ice cream and serving it with a hot steak. So simple, yet if you did that at a dinner party, your guests would be amazed. It’s a book that expands your imagination and you will definitely learn a thing or two from it.

When things do get a bit more complicated, Blais calls it like it is by designating these recipes as “2.0” takes on the simpler version. For example, the Sweet Tea Ice Cream recipe is creative but easy to do at home with a standard ice cream maker; it gets taken to the 2.0 level with the addition of dry ice in the freezing process. If this next level of cooking appeals to you, there are some tools and special ingredients that you may find yourself searching out after reading this book. Some items I’m considering purchasing are an iSi Siphon for creating foams and mousses, a pressure cooker (especially since so many of the recipes call for the delicious sounding Pressure-Cooker Braised Bacon), and maybe someday, a sous vide machine. Before I make any major purchases, though, I’m going to keep testing out the equipment-free recipes – the Vidalia Onion Rings with Beer Mustard, the Lemon Curd and Black Pepper Roasted Chicken, and the Sticky Pudding with Scotch Sauce are all on my shortlist.

I did try out one of these simpler but creative recipes to share with you here – these Cinnamon Brioche French Toast Skewers. It’s a basic french toast recipe except for three clever changes: one, adding dried hibiscus and lavender to the butter in the frying pan or griddle, two, adding the Moroccan spice blend ras el hanout to the batter, and three, skewering the french toast on cinnamon sticks, making a super-fun treat for kids (or maybe even grown-ups at a weekend brunch party). They didn’t have any hibiscus or lavender at my Wholefoods, so I ended up sprinkling a few sachets of Tazo’s Passion tea into the pan (it’s largely hibiscus-based) and I LOVED the effect it had. The dried flowers coated the french toast and gave it a sophisticated and floral tang that was unexpected but so delicious. I would absolutely make it this way again.

The bottom line: Try This At Home is a fun and creative introduction to some of the techniques of molecular gastronomy, made accessible through the use of simple and easy to find kitchen tools and well-loved flavor combinations. Some of Blais’ recipes are challenging, but many of them are simply new ideas that could be executed by any motivated home cook. I’d recommend it to experienced cooks with an urge to explore new methods and new flavors.

Disclaimer: A review copy of Try This At Home was provided to me free of charge by Clarkson Potter, but I was not otherwise compensated and all thoughts are my own.

Cinnamon Brioche “French Toast” Skewers

Reprinted with permission from Try This At Home. Serves 4.

I made this French toast for a very sophisticated audience when I did a cooking segment on the PBS Sprout kids’ program The Sunny Side Up Show, where I appeared with the resident star, a squawking chicken puppet named Chica. The recipe is standard egg-dipped French toast, but I cut slices of day-old brioche into long rectangles and use cinnamon sticks to skewer them, so the overall effect is of French-toast-on-a-stick.

• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped out, and seeds pod reserved
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon ras el hanout (Moroccan spice blend; optional)
• Four 2-inch-thick slices brioche
• 12 cinnamon sticks
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus (optional) more for serving
• 2 dried hibiscus flowers, crushed (optional) [Katie’s note: I used two sachets of Tazo Passion tea in place of the hibiscus and lavender flowers to wonderful effect]
• 1⁄2 teaspoon dried lavender flowers (optional)
• Pure maple syrup, warmed, for serving

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F. Place a cooling rack over a baking sheet and set aside.
2.  In a shallow dish, whisk the eggs, milk, vanilla seeds, salt, and ras el hanout together.
3. Cut the crusts from the brioche slices and cut each slice crosswise into 3 strips. Insert a cinnamon stick into one end of each strip. Dip each piece of bread in the egg mixture, letting it soak for at least 5 seconds on each side, and transfer to the cooling rack to drain.
4. Heat a pancake griddle or electric skillet over medium-low heat. Add the butter, the vanilla pod, and hibiscus and lavender flowers, if using, and cook until the butter is melted and bubbling. Add half of the soaked bread pieces and cook, turning once, until golden, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Transfer them to the rack-lined baking sheet and keep warm in the oven while you cook the remaining bread.
5. To serve, stack 3 skewers on each of four plates. Spread a little more butter on them, if desired, drizzle warm syrup over them, and serve.

The post Book Club: Try This At Home // Cinnamon Brioche “French Toast” Skewers appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

Even though my last post was only five days ago, I somehow feel like I’ve been avoiding writing here, and I feel guilty. What is that all about anyway, blogger’s guilt? It’s unwelcome, and I would like it to leave. I tried in earnest to post yesterday – something healthy, since I seem to have been avoiding healthy food posts since finishing the cleanse. I was planning on sharing lamb-and-beet burgers with goat cheese and fried eggs, inspired by Nigel Slater’s Tender. But they came out more like lamb-and-beet sloppy joes, probably because I skipped half the steps out of laziness, and I also didn’t measure any of the ingredients. My bad.

So I’m reverting to cookies. Biscotti, actually, since somehow they seem to me to be a healthier sort of cookie, something just a little sweet and crunchy to have with your tea and help tide you over until dinner. I seem to need a lot of “tiding over” the past few weeks – winter is starting to drag on, and when the light starts to leave the sky and you can tell just by looking that it’s going to be breathtakingly cold as soon as you leave the building, it’s a little depressing. So I’ve been guzzling mug after mug of cinnamon spice tea, and trying my best not to snack mindlessly from the office snack drawer. Tomorrow, though, mindless snacking won’t be a problem – I’ll bring a few of these little guys, and have them to look forward to all morning. A cup of tea, a small plate of biscotti, and I’ll have made it over the hump. And soon, I know the days will get longer and the weather warmer, my seedlings will start to flourish, spring will be back, and maybe I’ll no longer need tiding over. It isn’t so much longer, you know.

Cherry-Hazelnut Biscotti

Adapted slightly from Martha Stewart. Makes about 3 dozen.

• 1 3/4 c. dried cherries
• 1/2 c. frangelico liqueur
• 3 c. flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• 4 TBS salted butter, softened slightly
• 1 c. sugar
• 4 eggs (3 for dough and one for brushing the cookies)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 c. coarsely chopped hazelnuts

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Place dried cherries and frangelico in a small saucepan, and bring to a low simmer over medium-low heat. Cook until cherries have softened, 5-8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain the cherries, reserving the cherry-frangelico liquid.
2. In a medium  bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a separate, larger bowl, beat together softened butter and sugar until pale and creamy. One at a time, beat 3 of the 4 eggs into the batter – it should be pale yellow and fairly runny. Beat in the vanilla, and 2 TBS of the reserved cherry-frangelico liquid. Add the flour to the wet ingredients a cup at a time, stirring between additions, until dough is smooth. Stir in cherries and hazelnuts until evenly incorporated.
3. Lightly flour a work surface and turn the dough out onto it. Divide the dough in half, and shape into two logs about a foot long each. Flatten the logs to make rectangles that are a half inch thick. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Beat the remaining egg lightly in a small bowl. Brush the beaten egg on top of the dough. Bake for 35 minutes, then remove from oven and allow to cool for 20 minutes on wire racks.
4. Reduce the oven temperature to 300°F. Slice each log on the diagonal into cookies about 1/2 inch thick. Lay cookies down on the baking sheet, and bake for 8 minutes. Remove from oven, flip the cookies, and bake for another 8 minutes. Remove and let cool. Store in an airtight container.

The post Cherry-Hazelnut Biscotti appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I mean, I have a post called strawberries and one called raspberries… I need to complete the trend, don’t I?  Next berry season I’ll have to get more creative with my post titling abilities – strawberries #2! – but until then, we’re golden.

I think the thing I like best about blackberries may be that they grow in the backyard and I can walk up the hill with my little berry basket swinging and pluck the beautiful little berries from the far-too-thorny bushes and feel all earthy and wholesome.  As well as like I’m cheating the grocery store out of all that money they charge for fresh berries.  But then, a basket full of berries picked and washed and set aside, I’m not sure what I want to do with them.  Mostly, I feel like they should be photographed, because they’re gorgeous, and nature created them, and they were free, and I felt picturesque when I picked them.  Partly, I just want to eat them, because it’s easy and summery, but I’m not sure that posting a recipe that goes “Pick blackberries.  Wash blackberries.  Eat blackberries.” would be all that pertinent on a food blog.  So I feel like I have to make something with them.  And lately, I’ve been having this problem where the first thing I want to do with fruit is boil it with a bunch of sugar and then mash it up.  I’ve been doing it with rhubarb.  I just did it with plums.  I’m considering doing it with wild Maine blueberries.  It’s a useful thing, because then you can just drizzle your sugary-fruity syrup-butter on ice cream, or yogurt, or pancakes, or mix it with tequila and call it a day.  It concentrates the flavors and colors of these fruits, lasts a long time in the fridge, and takes up less space.  But making so much fruit syrup is starting to make me feel boring.

Which is why you are not looking at pictures of blackberry syrup.  Nor are you looking at pictures of blackberry pie, or blackberry muffins, because, while perfectly delicious and viable options for fresh summer fruit, I JUST WANT TO BE ORIGINAL.  Therefore, you are looking at pictures of Blackberry Brown-Butter Financiers.  Sounds good, right?  Trendy, even?  Well they were pretty good.  I only use the modifier “pretty” because I’ve never had a financier before, so I’m not sure how these compare to other financiers, but I liked them – they were moist but eggy, nutty smelling, not too sweet, and the blackberry in the middle gave them a sweet juicy bite that was just right.  They’re so cute and easy to pop into your mouth that they disappeared within 12 hours of coming into existence.  I would definitely categorize them as more of a tea-cake or snack then a dessert, and I think that the perfect place for them would be on a tray of other bite-sized goodies at an afternoon party.  But if you don’t feel like throwing a tea party, you could probably just eat them for breakfast.  I did.

Blackberry Brown-Butter Financiers

From Gale Gand’s Just a Bite.  Makes 24.

• 9 TBS salted butter
• 1/2 c. almond flour or finely ground almonds
• 1 c. confectioner’s sugar
• 6 TBS flour
• 4 egg whites
• 1 tsp applesauce
• 24 small blackberries, or 12 large blackberries

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.  Brown the butter – heat butter in a saucepan over medium heat until fully melted.  As milk solids start to separate from the butter, use a wooden spoon to scrape them from the bottom and prevent them from burning.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until butter is golden brown and has a nutty aroma.  Remove from heat and pour through a metal strainer.  Discard solids and reserve the clarified butter.
2. Sift together the almond flour, confectioner’s sugar, flour, and sugar.  Whisk to combine.  Add the egg whites, applesauce, and butter, and mix to combine.  Batter will be thin and pourable.  Pour or spoon into non-stick mini-muffin tins, or buttered financier molds.  Fill only about halfway – financiers will rise quite a bit.  Place a blackberry (or half a blackberry, depending on berry size, but in my opinion the more berry the better) into the center of each tin.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the edges are golden brown.  The cakes should spring back gently when pushed, and a toothpick inserted into the center will come out clean.  Remove from molds and dust with powdered sugar to serve.

The post Blackberries appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

He’s such a tease.   He’s there, tantalizingly close, and then he’s gone, just like that.  I’m this close to giving up on him completely, but some small part of me can’t let go.  If only he knew how much it would mean to me if he could just sit there, quietly, for 45 seconds.  Stupid bird.

OK, maybe I shouldn’t care so much, but I’ve been trying to get a decent picture of this bird for a full week.  Two cardinals live in the bushes behind my apartment, and they are absolutely stunning.  I’ve always thought cardinals are beautiful – they way their red coats match the berries on an iced-over holly bush can really brighten up a winter day – but I’d never seen them in the summer until I moved here.  That red against the vibrant green foliage of North Carolina in May is just incredible.  Sometimes when one of the birds flies past my window I literally catch my breath.  Just ask Trevor – several Skype conversations have been interrupted recently by a rapid head turn and exclamation of “Bird!” a la Doug from Up.  (Incredible movie.  I could watch it 100 times and laugh/cry every time.)   Once I even hung up on him to run barefoot out the door and chase the birds around the apartment complex.  And yet, where is the stunning photographic evidence of this?  Sadly, nowhere to be found. [Fortunately, I have been able to counter this lack of cardinal photography with what is hopefully stunning cupcake photography.  Cupcakes are very cooperative subjects.]

Now, I’ve been in this situation before.  Last summer, my sole mission in life was to get close enough to one of the loons of Walker Pond to take a good picture.  My brother and I took our clunky old motor boat, The Tub, across the lake to work every morning, and on the days that there was a loon in our vicinity I’d hiss “Ryan, I’ve got to get that bird!”  And like the wonderful brother he is, he would dull the engine, and steer us slowly toward the bird, with me in the front holding my breath and desperately snapping long distance pictures.  We’d almost be close enough and then, without a sound, the loon would be underwater, not even leaving a ripple on the surface.  Admittedly, a gasoline chugging motorboat is not really the ideal stealth vehicle, but taking my camera in any sort of unstable boat is not worth the hyperventilation that occurs as I envision my beautiful Canon sinking to the bottom of the lake.  So when my brother left for school a few days before I did and I was on my own on the boat front (i.e. I canoed; the Tub and I are not compatible individuals, much to my parents’ frustration), my pocket camera was all that accompanied me.  As Trevor and I canoed peacefully across the lake one orange-tinged morning, a loon popped peacefully up about 50 meters in front of us.  And then, one by one, six more popped up next to him.  We paddled silently towards them, getting so close that we could see their shiny red eyes watching us.  It was perfect: seven graceful loons drifting through small puffs of leftover fog, the whole lake silent but for the hesitant chirps of the birds.  And the only photographic evidence I have is a grainy, dull photo with seven small blobs.

And now this cardinal is playing the same game with me.  Oh we’ve had some close calls, the cardinal and I.  There was the time he landed on my drainpipe while I was waiting there, camera poised, only to realize that my shutter speed was way too high, and as I frantically spun the camera wheel, he flitted away like it was nothing.  And then, when I had the camera poised and perfectly adjusted on him resting on a distant branch, he dove out of the field of vision, leaving me with a dramatic red blur streaked across my photo.  Just the other afternoon, he landed on a cannister right outside my window, but I knew if I opened the back door he would leave in a hurry, so there will forever be the stains of my dirty window in between me and that beautiful red bird.

His wife has been more cooperative, but, no offense to her, she’s just not as attractive.  Sure, her beak is nice, and she is certainly distinctive, but she just can’t hold a candle to her male counterpart.  I have a few shots that are OK, but I’m just not satisfied.  With each frustration, the amount of respect I have for the patience that wildlife photographers have in their pursuit of nature’s rarest creatures grows.  I can barely manage standing on my own back porch for half an hour, and so I can’t imagine what standing in sub-zero temperatures for 48 hours waiting for the instantaneous migration of a rare goose in China would be like.  (Yes, someone did this, I saw the exhibit in Prague.)

So, wow, if you came here expecting food and read all of that bird-chasing-nonsense, I definitely owe you a recipe of some sorts.  Unfortunately, I do not know of any cardinal recipes.  And I already shared the only recipe I know that has the world cardinal in it here.  And as Megan just pointed out, eating a loon is probably a felony. So…

Cupcakes!  Everybody loves cupcakes, even if they have absolutely no relevance to the 800 words they just read.  And hopefully you’ve made it to this point because of the tantalizing cupcake photographs that have accompanied my bird saga.  These are cupcakes that I’ve been mulling over in my head for a while – I love the idea of spicy, chai flavored baked goods, and I just couldn’t shake the image of a chai cupcake topped with a tangy raspberry frosting.  So I made some, and they were good.  And they were very pretty.  So I’m happy.

Chai Cupcakes with Raspberry Cream Cheese Frosting

(Adapted from Sky High Cakes via Une-Deux Senses)

For the cupcakes (makes 12):

• 2/3 c. whole milk
• 5 bags chai tea
• 2 whole eggs
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 1/3 c. cake flour
• 1 c. sugar
• 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Line cupcake tin with liners.
2. Bring milk to a low simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally.  Add tea bags and remove from heat.  Allow to steep for 10 minutes.  Squeeze milk from teabags and discard tea.
3. In a small bowl mix together 1/4 cup of the chai milk with the eggs, egg yolk, and vanilla.
4. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.  Add butter and remaining chai milk and beat until fluffly.
5. Add egg mixture in two batches and mix just to incorporate.
6. Divide batter evenly among cupcake cups.  Bake for 18-22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean.

For the frosting (makes enough for a lot more than 12 – halve, or plan on having extra):

• 1 8oz package of cream cheese, at room temperature
• 3 TBS butter, at room temperature
• 1/4 c. – 1/3 c. raspberry jam
• 2-3 TBS grenadine or raspberry flavored syrup/liquor
• 2 1/2 c. powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter together until fluffy.  Mix in jam and syrup until desired color and flavor is reached.  Mix in powdered sugar a half cup at a time, stopping when desired consistency is reached.  Chill for an hour before using.

The post Quit Playing Games with My Heart appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.