Yup, a stack of bacon! It’s breakfast, right? Well this is more about technique than a recipe per se. Everyone has their own way of cooking bacon. In the pan, in the oven, even in the microwave. My method involves the oven, covering the pan with aluminum foil, and by placing the bacon on a wire rack placed on the prepared baking sheet. This increases the airflow so the bacon cooks evenly and makes it crispier, and reduces clean up and splatters in the oven. Very much a “set it and forget it” for at least 45 minutes (and then I usually check until it is the crispiness of my liking). It might not completely count as a full breakfast, but it IS bacon, so I’ll eat it! 🙂
It’s a cookie in bar form! Not brownie but a blondie! In essence, you can use the exact same recipe to make cookies, but I was in the mood to make bars, so here we are. These are easy to make, flavorful and easily substitutable — in other words, don’t like dried cranberries or pistachios or white chocolate, swap out for raisins, walnuts and semi-sweet chips. Lots of options!
Winter Salad — although frankly, this is pretty good for a summer picnic too (no mayo!): Wild Rice, Corn + Sprout Salad, with Hot Smoked Salmon. Simple to put together, healthy and is a spectacular lunch. While I think that the smoked salmon is integral, I can see that without it, it would also be very nice (somehow, a totally different salad).
Back to the usual weekly sourdough experiments, Up this week, another bread on the sweet side: a Maple Cinnamon Sourdough Breakfast Bread, with Raisins and Pecans. I know that raisins can be a controversial baking subject, so the nice thing is that you can just omit them, with no harm done. Delicious bread, great toasted with a bit of melty butter.
Here is my annual Cake Day cake. I mention this every year, but I don’t make cakes all that often — I’m not very good at decorating / frosting, and even more so in the days of a global pandemic, making cupcakes as not to share food is better anyway. That said, one day out of the year, I do make a cake, so this year is no different. I love the combination of coconut and chocolate so this celebratory has both cake types and frosting types, in addition to garnet-colored sugar flowers as they are the January birthstone color. Here’s to being 50, I guess!





