It has been a food filled week over here at the Naked Baker! Brunches, lunches, dinners, and tons of coffee shops in between… my life is so hard! There are a few things I can’t wait to tell you about, including a peaches and cheese dinner party, a new found block of European restaurants in SF, and some Macadamia and Cashew Maple Shortbread Bars I stole from Martha.
But before we dive into all that I just have to show you this ice cream I had last night!
This is the easiest cherry pie you’ll ever make. And I definitely played this song while channeling Bobbi Brown in my kitchen this morning while I made it. I highly suggest you do the same.
Taking a break from Project Bikini Bod today to give you an awesome recipe for the dark chocolate lovers in your life. By using a lighter cocoa powder, you can take the dark chocolate edge off of these, but I especially like how the dark chocolate mixes with the white chocolate icing on top. I used a white chocolate infused with coconut for my icing, and the flavor worked perfectly (I think I might be starting to like coconut!) so try to find a flavored white chocolate if you can.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a grazer. Yes, like a happy cow grazing the fields all day, I like to snack. This might seem detrimental to Project Bikini Bod, but if you are prepared and armed with tasty, healthy snacks then grazing is just fine. Here are a few of my favorite low cal, healthy snacks.
It’s that time of year… we all break out our bikinis for the first warm day of summer and suddenly realized where we’ve been putting all those cupcakes and donuts and cheese and cookies and custards and pies and bacon. Well, I had the initial freak out and was inspired to start Project Bikini Bod. I’ll be doing my best to create tasty and healthy treats, conducive with getting the bikini bod you want this year. The first recipe of the series is a little impromptu breakfast from this morning: Roasted Bananas with Yogurt and Pecans. All three of these ingredients are a super healthy way to start your day, and trust me that this really fills you up and the caramelized bananas make it taste like a treat!
Hey ya’ll! There’s a Naked Baker page on Facebook where I post some extra love now and again. Next time you’re stalking old friends (nemeses?) or wasting time at work (not that I do either of those things…) come by and check it out. Or just click here and then click that you “like” it. Every “like” will increase my self esteem greatly, and with bikini season almost upon us I can use all of the self esteem I can get! I’m not here to share any ridiculous body issues with the world, but I’ll tell ya: baking your heart out often means eating your heart out and that can have its consequences!
Love you guys!
This semester has been nothing if not gruelling, and on Tuesday my favorite professor threw an awesome soiree on the last day. After months of studying brain waves and electrode placement, EEG and ERPs, alpha, beta, theta, and delta rhythms, slow wave and REM sleep… and even the mysterious and elusive P300, we got to let loose.
There was beer and pizza, like any normal pizza party should have.
But we’re a bunch of over achievers who love science here, so it didn’t end at that.
I’m not sure if there is some kind of clinical name for this disorder I seem to have, but it is impossible for me to enter a Williams Sonoma and not buy something. Generally it’s something small and unnecessary, and usually overpriced. One of these impulse buys was a heart shaped pocket pie mold. I mean how sweet is that… little heart shaped individual pies? Well, I’ve used this contraption a grand total of ONCE in the last YEAR that I’ve owned it, so I decided to bust it out to make some Peach Rhubarb pocket pies.
Pie is actually my favorite thing to make, believe it or not. Fillings are so easy to improvise with what you have on hand, and once you find a crust recipe that you are comfortable with, pie is no longer some intimidating undertaking leaving you anxious over the flakiness (or lack thereof) or dreaded bitterness of a homemade crust. I use the sweet crust recipe from Joy of Cooking, and I always at least double the recipe and freeze the extras. That way I can whip up a pie whenever I might need one. Which is more often than you’d expect.
Depending on where you live and how old you are, the word “maverick” can bring to mind all sorts of interesting things.
If you live in the Bay Area, you can add another thing to your “maverick” list… Maverick Restaurant on 17th and Mission in San Francisco. This teensy weensy place on 17th street is easy to miss, but it is definitely worth checking out. We had our mother’s day dinner here and thoroughly enjoyed everything we had to eat and drink.
I totally cheated! I’m not even going to pretend about it… I cheated on mother’s day breakfast and it was rad. I was sitting in my office yesterday wondering what to make my mama for breakfast this morning. I really wanted to make her donuts, but if you check out my post on that, you’ll realize what a crazy undertaking it is. It was then that somewhere in the damp, dark caverns of my long term memory, something popped into my head. A donut miracle!
My first job was at this fancy little grocery store in the suburbs of Santa Cruz. Well, more specifically, the Peets Coffee bar inside that fancy little market. This market had a deli. And the people who worked in the deli sometimes got bored and used their minimal cooking equipment to make little snacks. Mmm deep fried avocados… I swear this story has a point. One day, a boy from the deli came over to my coffee bar with a gift. Fresh donuts! How was this possible!!?? They were tasty, fluffy even! So cinnamon and sugary, I couldn’t figure it out. Of course, since I was 16 and (dare I say…) a tad, uh, ditzy at the time, that deli boy found it so funny to refuse to honestly answer my queries as to his method of creation. Disbelieving (well, not completely… I was/am pretty gullible) his tales of complex yeasty dough making and whatever other nonsense he flung at me, I had to get crafty. Soon after that day, I asked this boy from the deli to make donuts again. He agreed! I strategically took my lunch break and spied on him as he gathered ingredients from the store. And guess what… his tales of complex dough making WERE false! The secret to the deli donuts was Butter Tastin’ Biscuits. I confronted the blue-aproned, donut-making deli boy, and now that the Butter Tastin’ secret was out he was willing to share his technique.
The Naked Baker 