The Blue Plate: Twice Baked Cakes of the Beornings

I'm currently engaged in a food exchange on a blue plate. When the blue plate comes to me it has food on it. It cannot leave my house until I have cleared it and put new food on it. It came with Kaluah brownies (delicious) and now it is leaving with the Twice Baked Cakes of the Beornings.

… twice-baked cakes that would keep good a long time, and on a little of which they could march far. The making of these was one of his secrets; but honey was in them, as in most of his foods, and they were good to eat, though they made one thirsty….

-The Hobbit

This was the description of the cakes given to Thorin and company in the Hobbit. I decided to either find or invent a recipe based on this description, so it must meet 4 criteria: they must be baked twice, keep well, contain a significant amount of honey, and make one thirsty.

So what is a twice-baked cake? No recipe exists that meets all of my criteria, so I decided to invent one. From a little bit of research I have decided that a twice-baked cake is most similar to a biscotti, so I started with a biscotti recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (note; this may change to 325 next time I try this, the insides have not cooked properly at 350)

Cream together (beat the hell out of, for normal people)

¼ cup butter (room temp is best)

½ cup sugar

½ cup honey

2 eggs

Once creamed, add

1-2 teaspoons lavender water (there are a few ways to make this, you can use 2 tablespoons of water and a drop of essential oils, or steep lavender flowers in water like tea; check your local hippie-food store for lavender)

as well as

Zest of one orange

1 teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon clove

slowly stir in

2 ¾ cups all purpose flower

4 oz dried cherries.

Separate into 5 or 6 discs on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and throw in the oven for 20 minutes (25-30 if you lower the temp to 225).

Remove from oven and lower temperature to 225 (210 if you were cooking at 225).

While still hot, cut into halves or quarters and throw back in oven for 20 minutes, or until crunchy.

Boo-Ya!

P.S. I said I would cook Friday, I didn't say I would Post.

Large specialty pizza with extra self loathing.

I've been quiet as of late. Part of the reason for that is the fact that 80% of what I have eaten in the last 3 weeks has been subway, and there just isn't anything at all to say about subway. But tonight I finally have something to say.

Part of the problem with actually being an adult and having a realish job is that I don't have any time to cook (hence the subway) so guess what I had for dinner?

Self loathing. Five eighths of a pizza, and I feel nauseous, greasy... Shameful.

The part that gets me is that it took 45 minutes to get here, and cost $14. I could have easily made dinner for 4 for that price and in that time and it would have been healthier and tasted better.

So it is my goal to cook as much as possible in the coming weeks, and post as much of it here as possible. Payday is Friday, I'm cooking Friday... Game face, bro.

You know what the worst part is? Guess what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow:

Chef Pants: Pajamas of the Gods

I don't cook professionally anymore, but when I did I learned some very useful things. The most useful among them was this; chef pants are the greatest pajamas in the world. I am sitting here comfortably in my chefjamas with my second favorite pair of flannel pajamas next to me, and I can't help but think that there is really no comparison.

Fit – advantage chef pants. To put it plainly, my flannel pajamas look more like a flannel potato sack. After years of wear they are stretched and baggy. My chef pants, on the other hand, look just about the same as the day I bought them, despite the long hours in the kitchen, getting food and hot grease splattered on them. The fit is as baggy as the jeans you wore in the 90's, or before your gastric bypass, and the rugged canvas doesn't stretch and washes easily, but that does – unfortunately – bring me to their one disadvantage.

Fabric comfort – advantage flannel. I'm not saying that the canvas chef pants are uncomfortable, far from it. After 2 or 3 trips through the laundry they're softer than khakis or jeans, but you can't beat flannel for softness. But that softness comes with a price.

Pockets – advantage chefjamas. If I order a pizza at eleven o'clock in the evening – don't judge me – and I put my cell phone in one pocket of my flannel pajamas and my wallet in the other, when I get up to answer the door when the delivery man arrives my pants are not coming with me. My trou will be fully dropped. The pockets in flannel pants are not designed to hold anything heavier than their own lint. Not only do my chef pants have proper pockets that can actually hold things like keys, cell phone, spice grinder, raw meat, discrete plastic bag of what I can only assume is oregano... etc. they also have rear pockets for your wallet, and whatever other unsavory things chefs keep... probably drugs. And if I continue to use the example of ordering a pizza at eleven PM, you wont even want to. Once you put on your chefjamas you will be filled with a magical chefs-light. Ordering food someone else made will be unthinkable. You've got chef pants on. You can make your own damn pizza! Who needs that nasty cardboard grease pile? You're going to make the greatest pizza the world has ever tasted!

Practicality – advantage chefjamas. Despite their comfort and their supreme lounge-ability, these are work pants and as such you may wear them in public, the same as you would a pair of Dickies. And speaking of; unlike traditional pajama pants chef pants don't have a fly. You can wear them to class and rest one leg on the seat in front of you without... trying to say this diplomatically – looking like a hot dog salesman.

Style – tie. You can get pajamas with just about anything you want on them. My favorite pair have blue polar bears on them, but you can get them in tartan, covered in bottles of Tabasco sauce, polka-dotted, solid pink with “juicy” written on the bottom or solid blue with “pink” written the same. Chef pants are available in nearly as wide a range of styles (including the Tabasco bottles, but minus the “pink” and “juicy”), but if chef pants have one tiny stylistic advantage it is this – Houndstooth.

So there you have it. Chef pants are the ultimate in lounge-wear. Appropriate inside and out, from the kitchen to the bedroom. However, my brother works in a hospital and claims that I am wrong. He says that scrubs are the best pajamas. They're appropriate inside and out, they are rugged, easy to wash, have pockets, and are made of soft cotton, but he says that they have one major advantage; scrubs don't have a front or a back, some of them don't have an inside or an outside because doctors can be called into emergency surgery at any time and they need to get dressed for it as quickly as possible without getting tangled up putting their pants on the wrong way around, so scrubs are as easy to put on as humanly possible, and I will admit that there is something to be said for that. But think about this; chefs are in near-constant danger of being set on fire or splashed with hot oil, and when that happens the best way to avoid serious injury is to remove the flaming article of clothing. So while your fancy symmetrical scrubs may be designed to go on faster, my chef pants are designed to come off.

Better.

Photo credit; your imagination.