kitschykitopher

[kitschykitopher]

LATE POST

This Passover, I made my own matzah for the first time! Far less daunting than it seems, I promise — the trickiest part is getting the timing right, but it really does get you in the spirit for the holiday!

The recipe I used as a guide was that of Kibitz Spot, but the ratio is 3/4 cup flour to 1/4 cup water.

I also try new charoset recipes each year till I find a favorite. This year we did Indian style and Persian style. And every year, I end up with way too much. 😂

Second picture is our Seder plate. We include a few extra things not seen in the classic/strictly traditional plate, such as oranges (for queer Jews, and we ritually spit the seeds or pulp) and artichokes (for multicultural and interfaith families). And, of course, since I’m a vegetarian, there’s a beet instead of a shank bone!

Now, I don’t want to get very personal on this account because it’s strictly for my food adventures, but as a firm boundary: Messianics and Jews for Jesus have no place on this page, don’t follow me if you’re one of those groups. Thanks.

Hoping you had a lovely Passover if you observed. Thank you for reading!

[kitschykitopher]

LATE POST

Made a ton of exciting hamantaschen for Purim this year!! Purim is my favorite holiday — and Hebrew calendar birthday 🥳 — so I like to go all out.

This year I made a big batch of rainbow hamantaschen and a batch of lavender chocolate Earl Grey minis!

The rainbow cookies were made following Melinda Strauss’ recipe, and the fillings were:

Raspberry jam

orange marmalade

rosemary, cherry pie filling, and black pepper

spiced orange marmalade

The Earl Grey cookies follow a recipe posted by The C Experience on WordPress, and the filling is simply bits of Honey Mama’s lavender rose chocolate truffle bars. I tried the pinch method with these because they were soooo itty bitty, but since I neglected to do an egg wash (as I had done with the rainbows), they came apart in the oven. I swear by the fold method, I can never get my pinched cookies to stay triangular 😒

Happy belated Purim, thanks for reading! 🎭🥳

[kitschykitopher]

This weekend’s baking adventure was orange creamsicle cupcakes! 🍊🍦

I used Fresh April Flours’ recipe for this after scouring half a dozen orange creamsicle cake recipes — this one doesn’t require a nearly-impossible-to-find-at-the-store boxed orange cake mix, nor does it require instant vanilla pudding!! 🙌🏼 (Deaf applause)

Y’all know my schtick is to make square cupcakes but I didn’t want to deal with greasing or cleaning the pan for the square cupcakes so I used liners in one of the round pans 😅 I have reusable square liners in my Amazon shopping list but they’re kind of a lower priority right now, y’know?

I also didn’t realize we actually did have a brand new bag of powdered sugar and thought we were out — we recently completely rearranged our pantry — so I just made some from scratch. 🤷‍♂️ 1 cup granulated sugar + 1 teaspoon corn starch, chuck that stuff in the blender till it’s a fine dust.

While the original recipe says to make two frostings — buttercream and cream cheese — I only made the orange buttercream. We aren’t really big on frosting in this house, a little goes a long way for us. However, my frosting did turn out kinda grainy and with a weird texture. Not super sure why. Might be to do with the acidity of the fresh orange juice against the butter or something? Insight welcome if you have it.

The overall end result was a satisfying cupcake with good fruitiness. The frosting has much more orange flavor to it than the cake itself so maybe next time I add more zest or juice to the batter and less to the frosting.

I also am trying a whiskey sour for the first time ever. I don’t drink alcohol much, but I like whiskey though I don’t drink it straight unless it’s just a shot. I’d been meaning to try a whiskey sour for awhile so I made some quick simple syrup in the microwave, mixed it with Tullamore Dew (our whiskey of choice), bottled lemon juice and two maraschino cherries. (When it’s not late at night I might use a fresh lemon but I didn’t feel like juicing yet another fruit this evening!)

Shabbat shalom, thank you for reading!

[kitschykitopher]

Last weekend my love mentioned that they greatly enjoy Starbucks’ pumpkin bread and, well, I love to make things for them! Pumpkin bread for my pumpkin!

This copycat recipe was from fellow ex-Starbucks barista Big Bear’s Wife! I did not measure my spices, though, just — as the meme says — let my ancestors tell me when to stop.

We only keep whole cloves on hand and we use them in a lot; for this, I figured I could just use the meat tenderizer to smack the little guys into dust. That worked well enough but for that reason I did use less than the recipe calls for, and then probably more of the other spices. The cloves were still very forward in the end result.

Also… Okay, hear me out on this. We could only find salted pepitas. And although I was worried about the impact it might have on the loaves, I used them anyway. Believe it or not, it actually turned out delicious! The bread itself was not salty at all, and the salt on the seeds added a nice contrast when you got a bite of crust. In the future I would like to seek out unsalted pepitas but now I know that it won’t be a total loss if they only have salted ones at the store.

The end result was SO PILLOWY AND SOFT, wonderfully spiced, with a most excellent crumb. My partner really liked it!!! 🥰 Sent a huge section of the second loaf home with a friend too.

Thank you for stopping by!

[kitschykitopher]

Tiny pecan pies!!

My love grew up in the South, so I try to follow genuine Southern recipes when it comes to Southern dishes. I did double the amount of cinnamon though.

The crust recipe I used was Simply Recipes’ “Perfect Pie Crust.” I wanted something flaky because that’s what my honey likes in a pie, and I did get some flake from this, but it was more of a crumb flake than a typical flake, if that makes sense. I did accidentally skip the egg wash, so maybe that had something to do with it? For a very first attempt at a pie crust though it turned out very tasty!

The pie recipe itself is from Small Town Woman, but again, I doubled the amount of cinnamon. :) I put the pecans on the bottom before pouring the mixture over, but the pecans seem to have floated to the top during the bake! In troubleshooting with the family, we came up with a couple ideas: maybe I baked them too long because I didn’t adjust for the pies being mini, maybe the size itself was the issue. Hard to say. I hadn’t made a standard-sized pecan pie before I made these minis so I don’t really know!

But when I had my partner taste test for me, they told me it was better than any store-bought pecan pie they’d ever had. 🥰

Thank you for stopping by!

[kitschykitopher]

Raspberry lemonade cookies! One of my favorite flavor combinations!

Not the prettiest, I should’ve chilled the dough longer, but turned out delicious. Soft and chewy, even cakey(?) in texture. I used The Fit Peach’s recipe but with fresh raspberries instead of frozen, and two small lemons instead of one standard-sized lemon (it’s just what the grocery store had 🤷‍♂️).

Thanks for stopping by!

[kitschykitopher]

Cherry pie is my favorite dessert. So with some vegan pie crust and canned cherry pie filling I’d been hanging onto for awhile, I made minis today!

Sometimes, when it comes to baked goods, my partner — who only needs small portions of things — prefers small versions when possible. Like muffins or cupcakes instead of sweet breads or cakes. Pinterest has been an ally to me lately so I poked around for insight from others who had scaled down their pies.

I altered the pie filling because I like mine quite tart, and I find that canned cherry pie filling often doesn’t have enough zip for me. So I added lemon juice and also mixed in some cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and a tiny bit (approximately 5 drops) of Penzeys Mexican Vanilla Extract. It still wasn’t quite as tart as I’d hoped but the spices added a lot for me. 😋

The jar lids I used to cut out the pie crusts was not quite big enough, and thus the tops disconnected from the bases a little during baking. (Also, when people say to add a little sliver of butter on top of your pie before baking, do it! It makes a difference in the crust! 🤩) Additionally, I may have baked a little too long, causing the filling to bubble up and escape some. So I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the pies out of the muffin tin, unfortunately. Lessons learned today.

Lattices are ridiculously hard to do on such an itty bitty scale, so I gave up on those pretty quick. 😅 The rest have little cutesy designs because that’s what I like to do with my pies. The Star of David turned out quite silly but the Rota looks…okay…and it’s hard to go wrong with hearts!

With the extra pie crust and filling, I made a funny little pop-tart looking thing. That’s what’s in the second picture. 😂

In conclusion, my takeaways are thus: (1) make sure your bottom crust always peeks out over the edges or else the crusts will divorce no matter how hard you try; (2) use more lemon juice in the filling; (3) trust that the tiny pies actually need less time to bake than a full-sized one!!

Thanks for stopping by!

[kitschykitopher]

First attempt at masala chai!

It ended up tasting a bit more…watery(?) than I would really like, but I think I can identify potential missteps enough to try and workshop it in later attempts.

I followed Real + Vibrant’s recipe, but since I prefer iced drinks 99% of the time, I didn’t add the milk to the simmering mixture and I iced it. This may have contributed to the “watery” flavor. My partner says when they make traditional chai, they roast their spices on a pan first — I may have to try that next time! The original recipe also says to use fresh, whole spices, and though I had whole cloves and whole fennel seeds, the rest of my spices were ground. I might add more of the spices next time?

The tea I used was Bigelow’s Constant Comment black tea and I used almond milk since dairy and I aren’t as friendly as I’d like us to be. (Admittedly, normally I’m an oat milk guy, but our Instacart shopper had to replace it this time and almond milk is a good replacement.)

Thank you for reading!

[kitschykitopher]

We got a free (well, we paid $11 for shipping) meal kit box this week through a referral gift from someone else. I've got a bit of baking experience under my belt by now, but cooking, particularly for all 3 of us, is still quite uncharted territory to me.

This is a meal the service refers to as "chickpea fritters" and Greek salad with garlicky white sauce and pita. Pita is not pictured because I burnt the crap out of it attempting to oven-toast it.

These meal kit service recipes are very Weird. They are also, tragically, extremely bland, so with my beloved's help, this recipe was heavily modified to get some actual flavor!

Here is our modified recipe below. The service claims it's 4 servings, but they also claim that from prep to dishing it'll only take you 1 hour, and let me tell ya, that's a damn lie.

Ingredients:

3-4 mini cucumbers, cut in half-moons

2 tomatoes, diced

2 shallots, 1 thinly sliced and 1 minced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

164g of tempura mix (ours was premade but this recipe should do the trick)

shawarma spice blend (copycat recipe here)

vegetable stock concentrate

sour cream

1/4-1/2 of a lemon

1 cup feta cheese

1/2 oz dill (ideally fresh, if possible), roughly chopped

Hungarian hot paprika

Penzeys Sunny Paris blend

Imperfect Foods' Seasoning for All of the Things blend (another gift from a couple years ago that gets good use)

cumin

coriander

ginger

salt

black pepper

turmeric

4 pitas, toasted till soft and cut in halves (they gave us whole wheat, you do you)

olive oil

cooking oil (we used vegetable oil)

And here is our modified recipe:

Prep. Process your produce (do not forget to wash and dry!); halve and slice your cucumbers into half-moons, dice your tomatoes, slice one of your shallots into thin strips, mince the second shallot, roughly chop your dill, and quarter your lemon.

Make salad. You'll need two small mixing bowls. In one, mix up your cucumbers, tomatoes, shallot strips, half of your dill, and half of your feta cheese. Drizzle in some olive oil and squeeze all the juice out of a lemon quarter. Mix.

Get saucy. In the other bowl, mix together approximately ten generous dollops of sour cream, a pinch or two of your minced garlic, and a tiny bit of lemon juice. Eff it up with some hot paprika, Sunny Paris, and coriander. Gradually add water till it's a salad dressing consistency you like. Refrigerate these, because the fritters will be a tick and nobody likes a soggy room-temp salad, ew.

Mash those peas! Get a medium bowl and squash up your drained, rinsed chickpeas. You can use a potato masher or a fork. I highly recommend keeping the texture varied; some big chunks create a nice texture in the finished product! Throw in a crapload of hot paprika, cumin, Sunny Paris, Seasoning for All of the Things, ginger, pepper, salt, and turmeric. Trust me, you need all the zhuzh you can get. Any herbs you want to add should go in this mixture so they don't immediately burn in the frying oil.

Batter up! In a big mixing bowl, add your tempura mix, shawarma spices, more cumin(!!!), coriander, ginger, hot paprika, turmeric, vegetable stock, salt (approximately 1 & 1/2 tsp), 2/3 cup water. (Add more water if you need to thin it out; the original recipe says it should be pancake batter consistency but I like my pancakes thicker anyway and these are kind of like if falafel and latkes had a baby? So I left it thick.) Mix in your garlic, minced shallot, and remaining dill. Combine your mashed chickpea mixture with this batter mixture, just mix it up real good and thorough.

Toast your pita. The original recipe card says to leave them in the oven at 425F while you're frying. That was quite poorly phrased to me and since I had so much going on I left them in too long and they charred on the inside, rendering them totally inedible. Try it more like frozen naan at about 400F for three to four minutes maximum. Or you can microwave them, your choice.

It's all over but the frying. Get your oil good and hot in a big frying pan; test it by plopping a tiny bite-sized bit of batter in and frying it. Taste test once it's golden brown on both sides. Be really careful flipping it, the oil might splash! Don't do your fritters any bigger than 1/3 cup at a time. I did mine flat, but my partner says they might have considered doing them smaller and rounder. Transfer fully-fried fritters to a large plate or pan with paper towels on it.

Serve. When everything's all good and ready, portion out and eat! We really liked putting salad and dressing on top of our fritters. You could also stuff all that into the pita halves like a sandwich if you'd prefer. Again, our pita was inedible so we didn't have that experience but we were fully satisfied without it!

Thank you for reading!

[kitschykitopher]

I had a busy day in the kitchen today! Not only did I cook dinner by myself, but I also made muffins!

These are glazed, spiced cranberry orange muffins — a modification of the Krusteaz boxed mix. I used a premade mix because I had been wanting to make cran-orange muffins for awhile anyway but wanted cranberries that weren't dried. Truly I was open to anything but dried cranberries but they were hard to come by! So I got a box of mix. I'll stay on the hunt for cranberries and make these little suckers again at some point because I love them a ton.

As I typically do, I used a square pan for my muffins. We just happen to have one and a few months ago I was trying to use up some bananas with banana chocolate chip muffins, and my partner liked the idea of square ones. I've stuck to that pan since, including for cupcakes! It just makes me happy.

There's not much of a recipe for this one since it's a boxed mix, but here's what I changed:

Add 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Add 1 teaspoon nutmeg

Before putting the pan in the oven, plop a whole clove on top of each muffin; you can also stick them in when they're done baking and pull them out when they finish cooling, but make sure you don't leave them in and eat the cloves!

The spice level turned out quite pleasant! When I use fresher fruit I may try spicing it even more.

I also made two kinds of glaze just for fun! One was orange glaze, one was coffee glaze. They could have been much better, honestly, but (A) I didn't have orange juice so I subbed with Penzeys Pure Orange Extract, and (B) I guess my cold brew wasn't quite strong enough! Both followed this simple powdered sugar glaze recipe. I think if I try these glazes again I will brew some instant coffee and be sure to have orange juice on hand! The consistency was all funny and didn't stick to the muffins at all so it mostly just ran off onto the plate. :( But hey, just a learning opportunity. That's what this blog is for, after all!

Thank you for reading!

[kitschykitopher]

🧑‍🍳 About Me 🧑‍🍳

My name is Kit, I’m about to be 26, and I use they/them pronouns!

Over the past couple years, I’ve been trying to seriously learn how to bake and cook. I had minimal experience before then. During a recent baking endeavor, I thought it might be cool to start documenting the stuff I make both as a record for myself and as something to show my friends and family.

A few fun, relevant facts:

I like to make square cupcakes as opposed to round ones or full-sized cakes 🧁

My favorite dessert is cherry pie 🍒🥧

My favorite flavor combos in baking are white chocolate + raspberry and cranberry + orange 😋

I am a lifelong vegetarian 🌱

“Muffins are ugly cupcakes” / “bagels are ugly donuts” are hateful propaganda statements that shan’t be tolerated here 😤🚫

I don’t really know how to operate a proper blog in this way, so I’m testing out Tumblr and Instagram to see which works better for such a purpose! Throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, so to speak.

Thanks for stopping by!