Icebox Cake with Strawberries and Goat Cheese

June 14, 2015 by effingdelicious 2 Comments

There’s a lot of stuff we hope you take away from reading this blog. Little things like making sure you eat (so you don’t turn into a cunt). Jokey stuff about not eating dairy on Valentine’s Day (which is actually very sound advice). Even bigger preachy shit about maaaybe giving yourself a break and NOT viewing weightloss as the pinnacle of being a successful human.

But the biggest thing we hope you remember after reading my dumb little words and looking at Lucy’s photos: food doesn’t have to be fancy to be delicious. Nothing tastes better than getting out of the way of tasty ingredients. And, right now, our ingredient of choice is strawberries.

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Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Shortbreads

May 24, 2015 by effingdelicious 1 Comment

Books were our first boyfriends and, to this day, remain our truest love.

As bored youths surrounded by corn, books were the escape route. They were a free ride from sleepy midwestern towns to places that were big enough hold our personalities and inspire something beyond our freckled, skinned-knee existence. They fed our imagination, giving us dumb ideas like “move to the big city” and “you can do more with your life than be a waitress at Pizza Hut” – and they went oh-so-well with an after-school snack. As grown-ass women, even though food takes up most of our mental space, books are still our favorite form of self-care. Especially when cozied up to a big-ass plate of cookies.

Tomorrow (May 2nd) is Independent Bookstore Day and it might be our new favorite holiday. My (Rachel’s) husband owns Uncharted Books, a used bookstore here in Logan Square. He asked us to make snacks for their day of amazing events– and we immediately knew what we’d make.

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Christina Tosi Corn Cookies with Lazy Blueberry Ice Cream

September 14, 2014 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

Short of the Oreo McFlurry, there is no dessert finer than Christina Tosi’s Corn Cookies. Perfectly crunchy, with a tender, chewy center, we could seriously eat them all day. Add a little blueberry ice cream, and we could eat them all night, too.

These walk the line of salty-sweetness in a big way. It maybe is an acquired taste but, we promise, not as weird as it sounds. Corn, especially when freeze dried like this recipe requires, is so candy sweet, it hardly counts as a vegetable. Instead, it brings a grassy– almost buttery– top note to the cookie that reminds us of the flawless almond cookies at our favorite Chinese takeout spot.

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Strawberry Pretzel “Salad”

August 3, 2014 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

In the grand tradition of our favorite midwestern “salads,” Strawberry Pretzel Salad contains no lettuce. This one doesn’t even have vegetables.

Instead, a layer of vanilla-flecked cream is nestled between a thick slab of strawberry-studded gelatain and buttery, salty pretzels. Not too sweet, and not too salty, it has been served at every picnic in rural Illinois since the dawn of time. Unfortunately, the classic ingredient list is predictably dated. Whipped topping and neon-pink, artificially flavored gelatin “product” among them….

Roasted Strawberry Rhubarb Buttermilk Ice Cream

July 7, 2013 by effingdelicious 1 Comment

The fact that Strawberry and Rhubarb season overlap is almost enough to make us go to church. Kind of like how flour and water alone turn into sourdough bread, or milk plus mold will someday equal cheese; only a higher power could allow such a perfect pair to come together for our gastronomic pleasure.

If dessert were a double act, Rhubarb would be Desi to Strawberry’s Lucy, Keenan to its Kel, Harold to its Kumar, Anne Perkins to its Leslie Knope. Rhubarb, while lovable, isn’t the tastiest or most memorable part of the dish. Instead it is the acerbic foil Strawberries need to taste their best, be their sweetest, and become basically everyone’s favorite fruit….

Blueberry Shrub

March 17, 2013 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

Sometimes it’s hard to find inspiration in (or out of) the kitchen and that low creative tide can feel terrifying, like you’ll never be able to make something again. Like you never actually were able to make something in the first place. Like you’ve been a big phoney your whole life and everything that came before was just one big accident or coincidence or misunderstanding. That amazing soup you made last week? Yeah, that was actually terrible. Everyone who ate it was just being polite. That cake you make for everyone’s birthday that’s, like, your thing? It is, always has been, and always will be horrible and you have irreparably bad taste and instincts for not immediately seeing it as such. Also, you’re going to die alone and no one likes you, not even your cats.

The ebb and flow of creativity is perfectly normal, but it never feels that way. It feels like the deficit is reality and will last forever and every mean thing you can think about yourself is gospel, digging you deeper into a crappy hole of crap, because feelings, especially the rotten ones are not even a little bit logical. Because they’re fucking Rude.

But the truth is that, yes, we are competent and, yes, our cats do love us, and creativity will come back once we get out of our own way and let it happen. And the best way to step aside and welcome your creativity to back into the room is to try something new. Something that will invigorate and refresh and stir up the juju. Something that’s just novel enough to distract you from your big dumb head while all the garbage drains out of it, so you can get back to what you do best: being a total badass.

Shrub is something we’ve been waiting to make since Rachel tried it at Eat Retreat and it is the perfect choice to shake shit up in the kitchen. It’s tasty, idiot-proof, and refreshing as fuck.

Nothing more than a blend of fruit, vinegar, and sugar, Shrub is the invention of the 17th century English need preserve delicate fruits through the long winter. It’s bright and fresh with an assertive tang, but it isn’t overpowering. The quasi-pickling somehow brings out the subtle floral flavors in the fruit and makes a syrup that is basically Kool-Aid for grownup– and we’re happy to report it’s done its job quite nicely.

Blueberry Shrub

Serves: Makes about 3 ½ cups of Shrub

Ingredients

2 cups well-washed Blueberries
1 cup Cider Vinegar
1 cup Honey (you can be fancy and use some yujucha, if you want a citrusy situation)

Instructions

Wash a quart mason jar with very hot water, rinse thoroughly and allow to air-dry completely.
In a small saucepan, combine all of the ingredients. Simmer over medium-low heat for a few seconds until the Blueberries just hardly start to give off juice.
Carefully pour the hot Shrub into your mason jar and set somewhere dark and cool to hang out for at least 12 hours (but no more than 36).
To serve, do whatever the fuck you want. But we recommend putting a tablespoon in the bottom of a champagne glass and topping it up with very dry champagne or club soda (with vodka, question mark) for a super refreshing drink that is classy as balls .

Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries and Lemon

February 17, 2013 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

It’s that time of year where mornings are getting hard. Maybe it’s our S.A.D., or maybe it’s survival instinct hibernation, but we can’t get our asses out of bed. Everything’s grey, and it’s windy, and it’s too cold to put our bare toes on the floor. We always oversleep so there’s no time for the luxuriating over trashy gossip mags with milky coffee that makes our day jobs tenable— but there is time for breakfast.

Baked Oatmeal tastes like cookies. No. Baked Oatmeal tastes better than cookies, because you can eat more of it before you get a tummy ache. With its bright, sunny lemon and juicy blueberries, it can shake the bleak chill off any winter morning. Make a batch on Sunday night and you will have a week of breakfasts that are worth waking up for.

This is one of our many recipes that is a few ratios followed by a couple suggestions. So long as you don’t add wildly different amounts of oats or liquids, there’s no need to be bashful. Fuck around with it. Throw in a handful of walnuts or slivered almonds, swap blueberries for dried cherries, and maybe try classic, comforting maple & cinnamon instead of lemon.

Baked Oatmeal with Blueberries and Lemon

Serves: 8

adapted from allrecipes.com

Ingredients

3 cups Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
¼ cup whole Flax Seeds
1 cup Brown Sugar
1 Lemon, Zest only
1 tsp Ginger
½ tsp Cardamom
¾ tsp Salt
1 cup Blueberries (or more, if you feel feisty)
1 stick Butter, melted
1 cup Whole Milk
2 Egg, beaten
1 tbsp Vanilla
Some ice cold Milk or Half and Half for serving

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 375°.
Combine all of the dry ingredients, along with the Blueberries, in a 13x9” casserole dish.
In a small sauce pan, melt the Butter with the Whole Milk. Allow the mixture to cool enough to not curdle shit, and add the Eggs and Vanilla. Thoroughly blend the mixture and pour over the Oats n Stuff.
Give everything a stir, and make sure it’s evenly distributed.
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until set and no longer jiggly.
Serve immediately or allow the Oatmeal to cool to room temperature and stick it in the fridge. Serve warm, topped with some cold Milk (or Half and Half) and maybe a scattering of extra Blueberries

Berry and Disappointing Peach Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Vinaigrette

August 19, 2012 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

Sometimes simply prepared fruit makes the best dessert- especially in fucked-up hot weather like this. But, when weather’s weird, harvests don’t always work out as expected, and sometimes your favorite fruits taste like garbage.

We found ourselves with some serious garbage peaches last week and it took us by surprise. They smelled great!! They seemed perfectly soft without being mushy!! They tasted like Granny Smith apples… if Granny Smith apples also tasted like saw dust. We were heart broken but we didn’t want to waste them.

Vinaigrettes bring a new depth of flavors to otherwise kind of Meh foods and, in addition to making foods taste just generally better, their assertive flavor profiles can cover a wide variety of culinary sins. We paired our shitty peaches with the Lemon Poppyseed Vinaigrette we had intended for melon, and turned a boring, disappointing bowl of fruit into a bold, delicious treat that we couldn’t stop eating.

Berry and Disappointing Peach Salad with Lemon Poppy Seed Vinaigrette

Ingredients

3 Peaches- Disappointing ones are ideal, but this obviously tastes wonderful with sunny, sweet, ripe peaches
½ cup Blackberries
½ cup Blueberries
2-4 tbsp Lemon Poppy Seed Dressing
A sprinkle of Poppy Seeds or a little twist of Lemon Zest makes a nice garnish, if you feel fancy

Instructions

Serves: 2
Thoroughly wash your fruit. We like to slice Peaches the same way we do Avocados: take your biggest knife and cut all the way around the fruit, stem to bottom, and then give it a twist until one half breaks away from the pit. Cut the pit-free half normally into bite-size slices. Slice the pitted half with the pit intact, breaking each slice off as you go.
Add your Berries and sliced Peaches to the bowl you will be serving from. Toss with the Dressing and let it sit for at least 5 minutes in the fridge, or on the counter. As we write this, we just realized how fucking awesome this would be with vanilla custard or on top of yogurt for breakfast with granola.

Strawberry Coconut Milk Fudgepops

August 5, 2012 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

It’s fucking hot outside. We don’t want to move. We don’t even want to type this. We just want to stop sweating for ten goddamned minutes and lay in front of a fan and eat fudgepops— but the only fudgepops we can ever find at the store are gross sugar-free fat-free chemical monstrosities. So we made our own. And they’re fucking tasty.

To mimic the sort of strange but sort of amazing soft texture of store bought fudgepops, we used coconut milk. Its relatively higher fat content gives it a creamier mouth feel and we were pleasantly surprised with the yummy coconut aftertaste. You can use cow’s milk if you want but we implore you use full fat and stay away from soy. We tried this recipe with 2% milk and with chocolate soy milk. Both came out weird and icy— not fudgy.

Strawberry Coconut Milk Fudgepops

Ingredients

1½ cups of Coconut Milk— We like the new-er-ish stuff you can find in the dairy case next to the soy milk.
2 tablespoons of Chocolate Ovaltine or hot cocoa mix left over from winter
4 ounces of dark chocolate, roughly chopped
⅛ tsp of salt
6 large strawberries, cleaned and hulled
1 tbsp honey

Instructions

Serves: This makes about 2 cups of mix. In our molds that makes 6 fudgesicles (with a little extra that we obviously drink), but yours is probably different.
Combine coconut milk and Ovaltine in a small saucepan or microwave safe bowl. Gently heat the mixture (on the stove or in the microwave) until it’s hot and steamy, b a r e l y starting to simmer. Off of the heat, add the chocolate and salt. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes. The melting point for chocolate is pretty low, about 89° F. As long as your liquids were plenty warm, the chocolate will eventually melt even without directly heating it. The finer your chocolate is chopped, the less time this process will take.
While you wait, mash your strawberries with the honey. Distribute evenly into each popsicle mold.
Once your chocolate is melted, whisk the mixture thoroughly. Sometimes we use our immersion stick blender thing to get a really creamy, emulsified texture, but it isn’t necessary. Whisking well will work wonderfully. Pour the mixture into popsicle molds, give it a little shake or stir to distribute the strawberries, and freeze for at least 2 hours before eating.

Strawberry Sundae with Balsamic Vinegar and Pistachios

July 1, 2012 by effingdelicious Leave a Comment

The first time we heard about using Balsamic vinegar with strawberries, we gagged. We incorrectly insisted that vinegar is for salad, for pickles, for condiments; it’s not for dessert and it’s certainly not for fruit. Balsamic is cider vinegar’s syrupy, umami cousin that is for swirling in olive oil and eating with warm baguettes. It’s rich and inky and makes cheese taste more like cheese. The second time we heard about using Balsamic vinegar on strawberries, our lovely friend Esther ignored our protests and made us taste it anyway. We are so glad that she did.

Something magical happens when you put vinegar on strawberries. It’s pungent but delicate, and makes sweetness sweeter without tasting sugary. You know the part of berries that just tastes “red?” It makes that taste…redder? Better. Something. Fucking gooooood.

Even though you don’t really need to do anything beyond putting vinegar on strawberries and putting that in your face, we decided to turn the surprising combo into an ice cream topping. Initially we tried it because the milky whiteness of vanilla ice cream with the deep purpley brown of the balsamic and redness of the berries looked super striking. Now we use it because when the ice cream melts and mixes with the balsamic it makes, basically, adult Strawberry Quik. Pistachios were added, because they were on hand, and the salt they contributed did what salt does and made everything taste more like itself.

If you don’t have vanilla beans handy, spare yourself the pathetic, over priced, misery that is the super market vanilla bean. At damn near $10 a bean, the stuff at the Jewel (or even Whole Foods) has probably been sitting on the shelf for a year, suffocating in a plastic bottle. It’s not worth your money, and you’d be better off using a splash of vanilla extract or omitting it all together. However, if you are into getting your hands on some real beans, you can find prize beauties on Amazon for less than $0.25 a bean. Rachel ordered a pack for $27 bucks from JR Mushroom & Specialties, and got well over 100 of the plumpest, juiciest, oiliest vanilla beans that she’d ever seen.

Strawberry Sundae with Balsamic Vinegar and Pistachios

Ingredients

12 strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 pint of vanilla ice cream– if you feel fancy, we love this recipe by David Lebovitz
½ cup of balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp sugar– we used vanilla sugar, but any will do. Brown, white, Turbinado, honey, whatever.
1 vanilla bean, scraped
A handful of shelled and salted pistachios

Instructions

Serves: As far as we’re concerned, One. But, if you’re feeling generous, this could serve 4-6.
In a non-reactive saucepan, bring vinegar, sugar, and vanilla bean guts to a boil. Use low heat. Reduce to the consistency of pancake syrup. You’ll need to watch it closely, and stir almost constantly, because there are a lot of natural sugars that taste horrible when they burn, but love to do it anyway. Once reduced, let the syrup cool. Or don’t. Just don’t burn your face.
Top scoops of ice cream generously with the strawberries and a sprinkling of pistachios. Finish everything with a generous drizzle of balsamic syrup.