Confectiona’s Realm

Yes, it’s been months. Nine long months during which I didn’t post a thing on this blog, despite the fact that I have indeed been baking.

Sheer laziness.

I’ve been eating paleo/primal since the beginning of the year; the main difference from my old life is that there are no grains and no processed sugar. (In theory, mind you. Only in theory. I have had both grains and sugar at various times in 2011; I just try not to bake with them at home.)

I’ve made a variety of primal cookies this year, but I just haven’t bothered to write down what I did.

That changes now.

After his Thanksgiving baking frenzy, Alex left me six egg whites in the refrigerator. That very day I found a recipe in a paleo cookbook for coconut macaroons, and it called for — wait for it — six egg whites.

Who am I to argue with fate?

Of course, I tweaked the recipe a bit. And the result is quite satisfying on a cold Saturday evening.

Even if you haven’t given up everything that makes life worth living, give them a try.

Primal Coconut Macaroons (makes about 30 cookies)

• 6 egg whites
• ¼ to ½ cup agave or maple syrup
• ½ tablespoon vanilla
• 3 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
• ½ cup cocoa nibs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Whisk the egg whites till they form soft peaks. Reduce mixer speed to low and mix in the syrup and vanilla. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the coconut and coconut nibs.

Form into one-inch balls (a cookie scoop helps immensely with this) and bake for about 15 minutes, till slightly browned.

Cool on the parchment paper on a wire rack.

They’re delicious while still warm.

(I apologize for the quality of the photograph. Technology issues. I’ll do better next time.)

So, some of you may have noticed a dearth of posts in the past couple of months. Also, some of you may know that Tim lost 90 pounds last year by following what’s called the primal way of eating.

These things are not coincidental in any but the most literal sense.

Although I lost 30 pounds last year using SlimFast, I hit a plateau in late October and could not lose anymore. At the same time, I started having horrible carb cravings, worse than my standard carb cravings. I think those things were not coincidental either.

So at the beginning of December, I started eating primally.

It was not easy: Two of my major food groups were bread and sugar. But it was necessary.

Regular food has been fairly easy to adapt: no rice or pasta, no bread. No biggie.

But dessert. And snacks. And, you know, good stuff. That was what I missed.

So, here begins a reimagining of Confectiona’s Realm, one in which I work through the issues involved in being a sugar addict who gives up sugar.

Step one: Cookies. I found this recipe on the Internet, and thought it looked like a good place to start. After some tweaks, it turned into this:

These are good. These are very good. They’re not as good as Dorie Greenspan’s amazing chocolate chip cookies, but they’re healthier. Or so I hear.

Next up, cookies not based on nuts!

This week’s Tuesdays With Dorie recipes was Translucent Maple Tuiles, chosen for us by Clivia of Bubie’s Little Baker. I’ve been eyeing this recipe for as long as I’ve had Baking: From My Home to Yours, so I was very happy to have an excuse to bring cookies into our increasingly low-carb life.

Most of my tuiles had nothing in common with the picture in the book, except color. The color was spot on.

I baked two sets of cookies. In the first set I put 12 little balls of dough on an unlined, ungreased cookie sheet. Six minutes later, they’d baked into one large tuile. I waited the few seconds specified in the recipe and tried to pick one up with a metal spatula. No. Almost the whole batch wound up smooshed up into miniature cigars — delicious cigars, mind you, but not what I was after.

I didn’t take any pictures of those, because Ben and I ate them too fast. They were essentially candy, like toffee. Yum.

For my second try I put six little balls of dough on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Six minutes later they’d baked into lovely tuiles, looking very much like the picture in the book.

I followed Ben’s brilliant suggestion to leave them on the cookie sheet longer this time, and it worked! They still weren’t perfect — the edge nearest the spatula wound up thicker than the rest of the cookie — but I put them over a marble rolling pin for about 10 seconds, and they set!

We crumbled them to eat over vanilla ice cream, and the combination was absolutely delicious. Highly recommended.

So go visit the other TWD bakers to see how their tuiles turned out. And if you want to try your hand at making some delectable tuiles yourself, buy the book or visit Bubie’s Little Baker for the recipe. See you next week!

So, a couple of months ago I bought a can of crabmeat at Trader Joe’s. I thought, “Hey, I’ll make crab cakes this week.”

Then I put the can in the meat drawer of my refrigerator and forgot it existed.

Thank heaven for modern methods of food processing.

So, I found the can, and I thought, “Hey, I’ll make crab cakes this week.” But this time I really did.

I love crab cakes. When I eat out, if there are crab cakes on the menu, I order them. So I’ve had great crab cakes and not-so-great crab cakes. Sometimes they’re too spicy for me. (Yes, I hear you, Alex.) Sometimes they’re mushy and unappetizing. Sometimes they contain so little crab that they could be fish cakes.

So when I decided to make them at home, I knew I had to find a good recipe. Through the magic of the Internet, I found these, from a lovely blog called the Wednesday Chef that is new to me, but I’ve added it to my Google Reader. Great writing.

Anyway, the intro to the recipe talks about how these crab cakes don’t almost no filler and are great for people who don’t like mayonnaise. Perfect.

So I cracked open the two-month-old can of crab, which was in perfect condition, and added some onion and panko and Old Bay and mayo and an egg, then shaped the cakes and refrigerated them for a couple of hours.

And then I fried them, in butter and oil. And they were magnificent. I really think these are the best crab cakes I’ve ever had. I must make more, very soon. (The recipe makes eight, which was perfect for the three of us. When Alex is home, we’ll all have to survive with only two each. Tragedy.)

And the same recipe would work with canned salmon, and probably even tuna. Versatile!

So seriously, if you like crab cakes, try these. You won’t be sorry.

Oh, yes.

I love Tuesdays With Dorie.

This week’s recipe, chosen for us by Nicole of Bakeologie, is a modest little number, a peanut butter blondie with chocolate chips. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

But they’re the crack of the cookie world.

I don’t even like peanut butter cookies, so I wasn’t expecting much from this recipe. I made it only because I haven’t done TWD in a couple of weeks, and the next two weeks involve fruit.

So, blondies. I used natural peanut butter from Trader Joe’s, even though the recipe says not to, because I was at Trader Joe’s and not Wegman’s. I was willing to take the chance, because I really didn’t expect to enjoy them all that much.

Other than that, I made the recipe straight, using mini chocolate chips rather than taking the time to chop chocolate, like I do when I’m expecting to like what I’m making.

Oh, God. These things are so good.

Next time, I’ll throw in some cinnamon chips. Or those cappuccino chips I can almost never find. So very, very good.

I don’t have a lot of pictures, because we ate all the blondies. Really fast. Ben and I scarfed down a bunch as soon as they came out of the pan. Then Tim ate some. Then I took some to a friend. (Who also said they were addictive.) Then we ate some more.

And now they’re gone.

You might be able to find some more photos at the other TWD blogs; everyone can’t be as weak-willed as I am. And Nicole, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’ve been part of the Tuesdays With Dorie group for two and a half years (!) now, and I’ve noticed something about Dorie’s recipes: They often call for rum. Every single time a recipe has called for rum, I’ve panicked, because I never have it — and because I’m always baking at the last minute and so can’t run out for any.

So you’d think that at some point over the last two and a half years I’d have bought rum. I live within walking distance of at least two liquor stores, and we’re not a teetotaling family. But for some reason, I never have rum. I always just leave it out, and I’m always sad.

So when today’s French Fridays With Dorie recipe called for rum, I had a script all ready. But this time I decided to improvise. Creme de cacao? No. Kahlua? No. Peppermint schnapps? Definitely no.

Maraschino? Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

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I’m a Foodbuzz featured publisher (see the ad at right). As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received a nice heavy box full of Illy Issimo coffee in cute little (and easily portable) cans, and they proved instantly popular with the menfolk in the house. (Said menfolk being my husband, Tim, and 13-year-old son, Ben.)

We all like coffee around here, although we like it differently. Tim drinks his with a little half-and-half and no sugar. Ben likes a lot of half-and-half and sugar and sometimes chocolate syrup. Lately I mix mine with chocolate Slim-Fast, but we won’t talk about that.

For a while now, just about all the coffee we consume has been cold-brewed, using the recipe published in the New York Times a while back. It makes fabulous coffee — to the point where I have trouble drinking any other kind now. But it also takes many hours, and sometimes we run out.

So the presence of 12 cans of beautiful caffeine in the refrigerator was a comfort to all of us.

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Oh, this was good. This was really good.

We love shepherd’s pie around here, and I’ve made a lot of different versions. This was definitely up there with the best of them.

That probably had something to do with the whole milk and half-and-half and butter in the mashed potatoes, and the two kinds of cheese and more butter on top. But never mind.

This recipe was a ton of work, though: cooking the meat and vegetables, draining and chopping the meat (after separating it from the vegetables!), chopping and cooking the sausage, cooking the potatoes, mashing the potatoes, seasoning the potatoes, putting it all together …

Ben mashed the potatoes, and added all kinds of yummy things, including garlic and a super-secret assortment of other herbs and spices. He did good.

I put it together and put it in the refrigerator, because I had to take Ben to the other side of Philadelphia for play rehearsal. (At 4 p.m. every Friday. Who thought that was a good idea?)

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Or something like that.

I had a plan. The plan went something like this: I would take a day away from the freelance editing that has consumed the past week of my life and get something accomplished around the house. I would run errands — including grocery shopping, hunting and gathering what I needed to make the latest Dorie recipe and the next couple — and then cap off the day with yummy soup. What could go wrong?

Well, when I went to get into the car, I discovered that the battery was dead, so dead that I couldn’t even use the power door locks. That’s dead.

So, regroup. I found chicken breasts and stock in the freezer, and Tim helpfully stopped on his way home from work and picked up cilantro and limes and alfalfa sprouts (because he couldn’t find any bean sprouts) and egg spaghetti, which generously filled in for the Chinese egg noodles the recipe called for. I left out the ginger and chilies, but I’d have done that anyway.

We managed to eat by 7, which is pretty impressive any evening, let alone one so jury-rigged.

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We went away a couple of weeks ago (yay Tim!), and right before we left Ben and I were at the library. (Stay with me; there’s a point.) Ben grabbed a book called Planet Barbecue!: 309 Recipes, 60 Countries by Steven Raichlen.

I said, “Ben, we’re never going to use that.” And he said, “I will.” (Dialog re-created by an extremely unreliable memory.)

Fast-forward almost two weeks. Ben spends most of a Sunday afternoon paging through the book, waxing rhapsodic over recipe after recipe. (Including South African Springbok or Pork Kebabs with Monkey Gland Sauce, but we won’t go there.)

And then he hits on Bacon Cheese Pork Roulade, on page 255 of this more-than-600-page tome. That was the one.

By Tuesday evening we had acquired the necessary foodstuffs, and the boy could begin to work his magic.

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