Seriously, whomever wins this one has to make a dessert recipe and tell us how it turns out.

Hey peeps – it’s time for another Facebook Fan Giveaway. So, remember that butter taste test that I did a couple weeks ago – where I kind of oohed and ahhed over the Kerrygold Irish butter (even though it’s ultimately way too expensive to use everyday)? Well, Kerrygold contacted me, and offered to give away one copy of the 2010 James Beard Award winning Cookbook, “The Country Cooking of Ireland” by Colman Andrews, to a ModernDomestic Facebook Fan.

You’ll have until midnight Sunday, August 1st to become a fan to be eligible for the giveaway. If all goes well, I’ll be announcing and contacting the winner Monday, August 2nd – although, I’m having my birthday party the day before, so . . . we’ll see how that timing goes.

I have to admit, I don’t really know that much about Irish cooking – besides my various (delicious) attempts at Irish soda bread. Actually, my mother is probably sighing right now, because her entire side of the family is of Irish heritage, and very proud of the fact. But Irish food never really interested me – well, until I started leafing through the table of contents of this book. Like, seriously, I never knew Irish food could look so deliciously appealing. And there’s a whole chapter on breads, another on cakes, and another on puddings and confections that look rather intriguing. In fact, I think I’ll ask whomever wins this one to try one of the dessert or bread recipes and let us know how they turned out!

As always, I’ll select a winner using Random.org to receive the book and will contact them via Facebook for their mailing addresses (note: I can only ship to US addresses). New and existing fans are eligible, but not my family members or employers.

Good luck!

Yes. It's food blogger happy hour time!

It’s that time again. Food blogger happy hour time. Well, technically next week is food blogger happy hour time – this week is just spreading the word time for the food blogger happy hour. This month we’ll be meeting up at TenPenh, on 10th and Pennsylvania ave. Think Asian inspired small plates, $5 cocktails, and lots of foodie chatting. Also, it’s the day after my birthday. Does that entitle me to some birthday drinks? Well, I’ll see. Also, I know for a fact that it’s the ACTUAL birthday of one Indoor Garden(er), so some celebrating may be in order.

Many thanks to Johanna of Johanna Knows Good Food, who’s the Hostess With the Mostess for this month!

RSVP on the Food Bloggers Facebook Page.

Hmmm. A little rustic, but they really do taste lovely.

One of my favorite things I made last summer was a chocolate mint ice box cake – it was kind of like a giant mint Oreo – only better, because it was enormous and sliceable, and didn’t require turning the oven on. This summer I was determined to make ice box cake again – if only because they’re one of the few desserts I can execute in the hellish weather we’ve been having this summer (I’m seriously over this ridiculous heat wave. Over. It).

Now, my original intention was to make a peaches and cream ice box cake. It’s one of those cute ideas that got into my head that I just couldn’t get rid of. I wanted to flavor the whipped cream with a peach syrup, which you make from cooking peaches in sugar and water and then draining off the syrup. But peach is actually a pretty subtle flavor, and the cream didn’t really take on enough flavor of the peaches when I whipped it with the syrup. Oh well. It still tasted nice – fluffy and sweet and, well, creamy.

The cookies which I made to accompany them, however, were much more successful. I adapted a basic icebox cookie recipe from Baking Illustrated, and added a little cardamom and ginger. They’re crisp and sweet and buttery on their own, and stacked with the cream they become soft and cake-like. The cardamom flavor comes through the most, but the cookies are also sweet and salty and get just a little bit of heat from the ginger. I think that they’d be lovely paired with peaches or another summer fruit – raspberries, strawberries, or apricots.

The only downside to making this ice box cake, as opposed to my chocolate mint version from last year, is that you will have to turn on your oven to make the cookies. So yes, that kind of defeats the purpose of making a no-bake dessert. But, um, that’s what air conditioning is for, right? At least, that’s what I tell myself these days.

Mini Cardamom and Cream Ice Box Cakes
Adapted from Baking Illustrated
Makes approximately 4 mini cakes (cookie recipe makes 45 2-inch ice box cookies)

Note – you will have some cookies left over. To avoid this, you can only slice and bake what you need, and then keep the dough log in the freezer for up to one month (just wrap in plastic wrap and place in a freezer bag). This is the great promise of ice box cookies – lovely homemade cookies are just a slice and a bake away. Or just make them all and have the extra cookies with your iced tea (I would say regular tea, but it’s much too hot for regular tea).

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamom
16 tbs unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 large egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla extract
Whipped cream (recipe follows)

Whisk together flour, salt, ginger, and cardamom. Set aside.

In an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy (1 to 1 1/2 minutes). Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat until just incorporated. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low until a dough forms and dry ingredients are evenly incorporated.

Place dough on a lightly floured work surface and form into a log 12 inches long and 2 inches thick. Roll the dough tightly in a piece of parchment paper and freeze for at least 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 325. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Unwrap dough log and slice into 1/4 thick rounds with a very sharp knife. Place rounds on the parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing them 1/2 to 1 inch apart. Bake about 14 minutes, until edges begin to brown, rotating the baking sheets 180 degrees at the halfway point. Cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before removing to a rack to cool completely.

To assemble cakes, place on cookie on an individual serving plate. Pipe with approximately 1-2 tbs whipped cream, leaving a 1/8 inch border around the edge of each cookie. Place another cookie on top of the cream, and gently press down. Pipe top cookie with another 1-2 tbs whipped cream, and then stack another cookie on top. Repeat the piping/stacking process until you have a tower of 5 cookies. Pipe a small decorative dollop of cream on top. Repeat entire process with remaining cookies and cream, until you have 4 cakes.

Place cakes in the refrigerator and let sit for at least four hours, or up to overnight, before serving.

Whipped cream
Makes about 2 cups whipped cream

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted
2 tsp vanilla extract

Beat cream until soft peak stage. Add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until stiff peaks form.

Goat cheese and onion tart - perfect for dinner with friends.

This weekend, I was over at my friend Kristen’s house, where she rather graciously allowed me to cook her dinner. Kristen and I are similar in the kitchen – commanding, authoritative, and . . . well, we like to be in control. We’ve taken to making dinners on the weekends, and we devised a plan: either she cooks and I watch and drink wine, or I cook, and she watches and drinks wine (okay, whoever cooks is also drinking wine). This weekend, I got to cook.

It’s easy, if not inevitable, to overdose on sweet stuff when you write a pastry blog, so I wanted something savory for a change. I’ve also been on a bit of a pie crust rampage, so I was determined to make something with pie crust. Savory . . . pie crust . . . this sounds like it calls for cheese.

Like, say, a goat cheese tart with caramelized onions – a recipe I adapted from Ina Garten. No, it doesn’t sound very summery, and it will heat up your kitchen, but Kristen’s air conditioning is much better than mine. And really, all you need is a tiny slice, and with a side salad and glass of Prosecco it makes a really lovely and light summer lunch or dinner.

Goat Cheese Tart with Caramelized Onions
Adapted from Ina Garten

For the crust
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
6 tbs unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/4 inch cubes and frozen
2 tbs shortening, chilled and cut into 1/4 inch cubes
1/4 cup ice water

For the filling
1 onion
1 tbs butter
10 1/2 oz soft goat cheese
1 cup heavy cream
3 large eggs
1/4 cup chopped basil leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar. Freeze the flour mixture, butter, shortening, and the processor blade for 1/2 hour before using. Fit the blade on the processor, and then add the flour mixture, butter, and shortening to the bowl. Pulse a couple of time, in five second bursts – until the butter and shortening are the size of small peas. Add the ice water through the feeder tube and pulse until the dough just comes together. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

While the dough is chilling, caramelize your onions: very thinly slice the onions. Heat butter in a large saucepan on low heat. Add onions and slowly cook, stirring occasionally until very brown and reduced for 45 minutes to 1 hour (for more info on caramelizing onions, you can check out my earlier post). Remove from heat and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place dough on a lightly floured work surface and roll into a circle (dough should be approximately 1/8 inch thick). Place dough in a 9 inch tart shell with a removable bottom, gently pressing the dough into the corners with your fingers. Cut off excess dough around the edges. Score the bottom of the tart shell with the tines of a fork, to keep the dough from rising.

Place a piece of parchment or buttered tinfoil onto the crust (it should cover the entire crust) and lightly press it down. Fill the foil with pie weights (dried rice or beans will also do). Bake tart for 20 minutes. Remove the parchment or foil and bake tart for another 10 minutes.

While the crust is blind baking, make the filling: with an electric mixer, beat the goat cheese until soft and creamy. Add the heavy cream, eggs, basil, salt and pepper and beat until smooth.

Spread the caramelized onions over the bottom of the pre-baked tart crust. Pour the filling over the onions, until the crust is full (you may have some left over). Return to oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the filling is puffed and lightly brown. Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from tart pan to serve.

Yes - that is STILL MY BORSCHT PHOTO!

As Moment Magazine’s resident shiksa baker, I had to give a plug for their fab happy hour to celebrate their 35th birthday at One Lounge this Wednesday, July 21 from 5:30-11:00. Come meet and mingle with young Jewish professionals – or, um, Jewish food fans like myself. Or just come for the Tel Aviv cocktail, which the One Lounge is mixing up specially for the event. See you there!

RSVP on Facebook.

Yes. It is that time. Ice cream time.

I kind of forgot to mention that I was quoted in this Express article last week about ice cream. Pretty cool, right? You also need to check out Jessica Sidman’s blog The Frozen Fix, who’s featured in the article and is the frozen dessert queen (and, might I add, quite lovely in person).

I was going to ask if you were in the mood for ice cream, but I realized that was a stupid question. Of course you are. Considering this hellishly hot weather I can’t contemplate eating anything sweet that isn’t frozen and freshly churned. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I had sorbet for dinner last week. But they don’t know that I had some for breakfast too. Ah, the secrets I could tell.

But yes. Ice cream. I know you want to eat it. I know you want to make it. So here are some rather delicious ice cream and sorbet recipes from the ModernDomestic archives that I think you should check out.

• Buttery caramel ice cream
• Chocolate stout ice cream
• Chocolate hazelnut gelato
• Almond ice cream
• Peach sorbet
• Pumpkin beer ice cream
• Rhubarb lime sherbet
• Strawberry and peach lambic sorbet

A chocolate and vanilla birthday cake for a friend.

I’m on a cake kick lately. Yes, they’re more old-fashioned than cupcakes, and they’re much less trendy. But there’s something grand about them – the way they tower on the serving plate – that I’m finding rather irresistible these days.

Also, cakes are hard. When it comes down to it, it takes a lot of skill, patience, and technique to properly frost a cake. You have to level the layers. You have to know to do a crumb coat. You have to have frosting that’s the right consistency. You have to know the right way to smooth the sides of the cake with an offset spatula. You have to have cake boards, and an offset, and a decent piping bag. And if you don’t know what you’re doing . . . well, it shows.

Cupcakes, on the other hand, aren’t as hard. I could always make a cupcake look decent, even though I had no idea what I was doing. You can dip the top in glaze, spread frosting on top with a knife and dip it in crumbs or sprinkles, or even do a simple pile of frosting on top with a piping bag.

Of course there are numerous ways to decorate cupcakes that require a lot of skill (like making elaborate fondant sculptures to put in top, or piping writing, etc), but it’s a lot easier to fake it with a cupcake. But cakes? You can’t really fake it.

Now, I’m by no means a cake decorating expert at all – I’m just interested in learning how to get better at it. I get so frustrated with how uneven and un-smooth my cakes are. But at the end of the day, cakes present a fascinating challenge that is slowly obsessing me – and I think they’re much more interesting than cupcakes.

This is my latest offering – a birthday cake for my good friend Emily. She requested a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream, so I happily obliged, making the sour cream chocolate cake from Baking Illustrated. No, it’s not perfect. That writing is totally off center, the leaves on those rosettes are all different sizes – I could go on, but the list would be never ending. But it’s better than I could have done two months ago. And I think I’m more satisfied with that cake, with all its faults, than I’ve ever could have been with a cupcake, no matter how pretty.

Speaking of which – do you need a cake for an upcoming event or party? I seriously want the practice – I can’t eat all this cake myself.

See, this writing looks less off center from this angle. I like it.

Peach sorbet. In this heat it's kind of all I want to eat.

I love nectarines. I love plums. I love cherries. But my love for them pales in comparison to my love of peaches. All those other fruits are lovely, but this peach thing – well, it’s serious.

I don’t know what it is about them exactly. Lots of fruit have the sweet and tart thing going for them. Lots of fruit are juicy and sweet and, when they’re ripe, have a perfect firm but yielding texture. There’s just something about peaches – that flavor that makes a peach a peach – that gets me every time.

Now, usually if I get on a peach kick, I’m all about hand pies, or coffee cake, or muffins. But it’s been so hot in DC that the last thing I want to do is bake. So when I had a bunch of peaches on my hands, I decided that it was time for some peach sorbet.

Yes, even in the heat wave, you can handle a peach sorbet. There’s a little bit of stove action required, but it takes all of 15 minutes. And at the end of it, you have a lovely sorbet that really brings out the essence of the fruit – and is perfect for this heat. In fact, some summer nights when I don’t feel like eating, this is what I have for dinner. Just don’t tell my mother.

Peach Sorbet
Adapted from Chowhound
Makes 1 quart

Ingredients
2 1/2 lbs ripe peaches
3/4 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
Juice and zest of 1 lemon

Fill a large saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Place peaches in boiling water and let simmer for one to two minutes, to loosen the skins. Remove from water with a slotted spoon and transfer to an ice water bath. Gently peel the skins off peaches. Pit and roughly chop peaches. Set aside.

In a medium saucepan, bring water and sugar to a boil. Add peaches and simmer for 5 minutes, until the fruit begins to soften (if your fruit is unripe simmer 2-3 minutes more).

Remove from heat and let rest for 5 minutes. Whisk in lemon juice and zest.

Puree mixture in a food processor until smooth and transfer to a clean bowl. Let chill completely in a refrigerator (1-2 hours) before freezing in an ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Thanks to everyone who became a fan of ModernDomestic on Facebook for this last fan giveaway! The lucky winner of Spike Mendelson’s “The Good Stuff Cookbook” is Brooke Berston, ModernDomestic fan #185! Brooke, I hope you try those Red Velvet Brownies for me – they look absolutely delicious.

I’ll be doing more giveaways in the next few weeks so if you didn’t win today, never fear! There will be plenty of chances to win in the future.

The Good Stuff Eatery, Chef Spike Mendelsohn’s casual restaurant on Capitol Hill, serves up burgers, fries, shakes and salads to Hill staff, interns, and hungry DCites. Now the former Top Chef contestant is giving away his secrets to the general public in his new book, “Good Stuff: Burgers Fries Shakes, Wedges and More.” Want to know how to make Spike’s Prez Obama Burger? It’s in there. There’s even a recipe for his much beloved Smore’s Shake. And there’s a whole section on sweets, with treats like red velvet brownies, Vietnamese coffee brownies, and cardamom and caramel corn.

Want to win a copy of the new book, courtesy of Wiley publishing? Just become a fan of ModernDomestic on Facebook by midnight (eastern time) this Sunday, July 11th. I’ll select a winner using Random.org to receive the book and will contact them via Facebook for their mailing addresses (note: I can only ship to US addresses). New and existing fans are eligible, but not my family members or employers.