I don't have time to bake (or sleep)

I quite literally had one day off in the entire month of June...and it's already past. So I have no time to cook (or clean or watch tv) or most importantly, to blog. All my time is spent teaching, stage managing and riding the subway between 112th street and Union Square. So I don't really have anything to show on my blog. Plus, I can't even plug my show anymore because there is no point - we've sold out the entire run.

Luckily, I have friends who bake and send me pictures! See this nice pie that my friend Ellen baked?


She has a nicer pie plate than I do - I've got to work on that. She made my Strawberry Rhubarb pie recipe! I feel special. It looks really delicious.


I wish I had time to make more pie! Thanks, Ellen for giving me something to blog about. Hope the pie was good.

Finally, I think summer is on its way

Today is the first day of my CSA! That's Community Supported Agriculture for those of you who don't know. You can read about it here. Basically, I get a box full of farm fresh vegetables and fruit from a local farm every week for six months out of the year! It's awesome.

I just had to bake something right off. I made a Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble. But that's not actually what I'm blogging about - I'm blogging about this pie that a made a few weeks ago (back when I didn't work 50 hours a week). But the crumble is very similar to this pie.

First of all, I had some pie dough lying around in the fridge. That's just the kind of girl I am. So that made this a lot easier. You could just buy pie dough if you wanted. Or you could make your own, like I did!


This is basically what I did. I chopped up some rhubarb -


- which is a vegetable, not a fruit. Did you know that? It's a very yummy vegetable. It goes well with pork too. But you probably don't want to put pork in your pie. So I mixed together some strawberries (all sliced and diced), one and a half Tbs flour, some lemon zest, lemon juice, a pinch of salt, 2 Tbs melted butter, some ground ginger (to taste) and 1/2 cup sugar along with the rhubarb.


Then I cut thin strips out of more pie dough and made a nice criss cross pattern. I had too much filling, so I made a few tiny pies too.


I baked it in my stupid broken oven at 300 degrees for about an hour (I really don't recommend this - stupid lousy oven) and then I got so annoyed that I put it in the broiler so that it would get brown on top.


It all turned out well though! I took it to a BBQ and everybody loved it. They all ignored the store bought pies that were there. Store bought pies cannot compete with my homemade goodness! I rule. And you can too! Make some pie. People like pie.

Frosting! Finally!

Oh my goodness, it sure took me a long time to get here. After stage managing all day, I really don't want to look at a computer or type anything else. But today, I'm finally alone in my apartment for a few minutes (ah, sweet bliss. I mean, I love Zack. But I'm around 20 people all day. I need some break time). So I figured I'd blog before I lost my nerve.

Frosting! Wedding frosting. For Bryn and Paul. Remember them?

Ok, so we've got cupcakes all ready to go. Now it's frosting time. First, you melt 12 oz of chocolate chips over a double boiler (or a metal bowl inside a pan of boiling water - or in the microwave. I won't tell). Set that aside.


Melt another 12 oz of chocolate chips in two cups of cream over low heat, stirring constantly. This will be your frosting.



You're supposed to cook it for 25-35 minutes, which made mine look a little weird. Cooking it for so long made it split funny. See?


That Martha, she sure is persnickety. She makes you do all kinds of annoying things.

Okay, combine one cup of the frosting you just made with the melted chocolate. Refrigerate until hardened.

Put the rest of the frosting over an ice water bath (that means you put the bowl of frosting into a bigger bowl with ice water in it. Just in case you didn't know). Frosting is still split weird.


I thought it was ruined, but I mixed it up like Martha said to and finally, it looked like frosting again.


I kind of thought it looked like frosting before it ever went in the ice bath. Why I couldn't I have just let it cool and spread it then?

Whatever. I frosted the cupcakes.


Then I used a spoon to make little chocolate curls from the hardened chocolate/frosting mixture. It didn't go as well as I had hoped. They looked kinda weird. I sifted a little bit of cocoa powder on them and called it a day.


But they tasted good! Emma liked them (Emma is Bryn's cousin).


I hope it was worth the wait! Enjoy.