It’s summer. It’s hot. And I’m all out of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream (always a sad event). At the grocery store, I was tempted to simply pick up another one of their cartoonish pints and call it a day… but I didn’t. What type of foodie would I be if I never make my own ice cream from scratch? For the longest time I didn’t own an ice cream maker, so I didn’t feel guilty in turning to my friends Ben and Jerry or their buddy Breyer for my ice cream cravings. Now that my machine finally arrived in the mail, I decided to get in the kitchen and give it a whirl.
Category: Sweets
The Middle East is famous for its sweets or halawiyat (حلويات), which include classics like baklava (بقلاوة), buttery phyllo dough layered with crushed walnuts, and nammoura (نمورة), a semolina-cake sweetened with a floral simple syrup infused with orange blossom water. The region is also home to lesser known desserts like heytaliyye (هيطلية), a silky milk pudding topped with rose ice cream and crushed pistachios that made its way to Aleppo from China along the Silk Road.
Taking the Danish on a Middle Eastern Date
Special thanks to Kelly from Sass & Veracity and Ben from What’s Cooking?for hosting this month’s challenge!
Continue reading “Taking the Danish on a Middle Eastern Date”
Habibi, I’m home!
Ever since graduation a couple of weeks ago it seems as if all my time and energy has been consumed by the process of unpacking. Seriously though, where did all these boxes come from? I see now that two jars of whole nutmeg are unnecessary and a third bottle of balsamic vinegar is overkill. Meanwhile, my room is still in shambles, hidden somewhere underneath piles of unopened boxes that have constructed a fort around my bed. The kitchen, however, was the first space to be thoroughly unpacked. To commemorate this occasion I decided to blog about one of my all-time favorite Middle Eastern desserts, haytaliyye.
Is Cardamom the new Cinnamon?
This entry is dedicated to Karen, my brunch-loving friend who will always have a soft spot for Oreos!
Has anyone else noticed this? Cardamom is everywhere now; in blogs, recipe books and other food-driven media. For centuries, Middle Easterners used this unassuming pod to flavor teas, coffees and the occasional desserts. Now, the humble cardamom pod has been given the 90210-celebrity treatment and is making its way to pantries around the world. If you need to see it to believe it, you could check out these blogs featuring delicious cardamom Christmas cookies and cardamom roasted cauliflower for yourself.
Eliminating the Middle Stick
Special thanks to Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell for hosting this month’s cheesecake challenge from Jill O’Connor’s cookbook, Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey.
For me, cheesecakes fall under the small category of mystical foods. It might just be my over-indulging tendencies, but it seems like I can never say no to a slice of heavenly cheesecake, no matter how full I am. Of course, in order to make myself feel better before taking part in one of the seven deadly sins, I always preface my request by asking for a tiny slice (adding more and more diminutive adjectives relative to how stuffed I feel at the moment).