COUTURE DOLLY CAKE

PHEW! Spackled with blue icing, edible glitter and sprinkles clinging to our hair, food dye seeping into our fingernails, my sister and I finished our most difficult dolly cake to date in a flurry of activity. Emilio Pucci ladies and gentlemen, to celebrate the birthday of lovely Elizabeth from the Rachel Zoe camp. The tough bit is that without fondant or some other kind of pastry trick, getting the exact psychedelic shapes that make Pucci look like Pucci is kind of a bitch. This cake had five different iterations, whether it was from the frosting breaking three times, or me having to redo it completely (twice) because I simply couldn't get it right. Luckily, Amanda was here to guide me in the ways of fashion and dolly cake design. Enjoy!








Amanda hard at work...

KITCHY TV

Kat's Crumble

On Today's episode of Kitchy TV, I team up with Kat Odell of Eater LA and Good Bite to make her super simple spring time crumble. Four ingredients and delicious results. Enjoy!

Kat's Simple Crumble from Claire Thomas on Vimeo.

Ingredients:

3/4-1 cup shortbread cookies, roughly crumbles

2-3 tablespoons brown sugar

3 tablespoons Butter, cubed

3 cups fruit (2 cups sliced strawberry, 1 cup rhubarb, thinly sliced)

Pre heat oven to 375 F. Put the fruit in the bottom of a baking dish, top with the shortbread cookies, brown sugar and butter. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the fruit is tender and the juices are bubbling. Serve with a scoop of ice cream and enjoy!

Kat with the delicious finished product...

Kat with her adorable dog, Oli.

The heartbreaker herself...

SAISON RUEBEN

The Reuben is one of my favorite guilty pleasure sandwiches. Warm pastrami piled way too high, so high I take some out and set it aside to make another sandwich, topped with a little sauerkraut, and warmed with a slice of swiss cheese. In terms of sauces or other toppings there's some variation, but these are the essential elements. When I found myself in a sandwich making/eating mood, I immediately turned to the reuben and to my good friends at The Bruery. I've been developing recipes using or pairing their beer with food (the beer brownies and pork belly sandwiches were my most recent experiments) and honestly, I thought of the pun before I really thought out the sandwich. "Saison Rueben." I mean, how can you not? Luckily for me, the malty rye spice and hoppy grapefruit notes were the perfect counter point to the fatty pastrami and cheese. Even better, the malted rye served as a replacement for the rye bread I usually enjoy my reubens on, so double points there.

The construction of this sandwich is inspired by the grilled cheese and beer nights hosted at Andrew's Cheese Shop. You would think I had been to one already, considering my love for beer, cheese, and Andrew, but for some reason I've never made it. Fate has always torn me and that night asunder. But I've heard enough about the grilled cheese night to know that one of Andrew's tricks for a really mean sandwich is to drizzle a little beer over the bread before you toast it, just to get the beer flavor deep in there. It transformed my baguette into a toasty malted rye loaf and rounded out the flavors deliciously. Reubens are best straight out of the oven, but if you have to wait, they also make perfect picnic sandwiches. Enjoy!

Ingredients

For 3

1 large baguette

2 lbs pastrami (Niman Ranch makes a delicious one)

3 brown onions, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons butter

1 pint sauerkraut (It is a pain to make from scratch, so buy some from your favorite deli)

6 juniper berries, crushed

1 tablespoon olive oil

6 slices gruyere or comte (any swiss cheese will do)

1-1 1/2cup Saison Rue (or any other farmhouse ale)

3 tablespoons whole grain mustard

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Heat a pan over medium heat, add the butter and then the onions. Flavor with a pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper, and once translucent (about 5-10 minutes) add the garlic. Cook until completely caramelized, meaning a deep golden hue. When they look almost done, turn up the heat to medium high and add 1/2 a cup of the beer. Keep cooking until it has reduced down and has been absorbed into the onions. Set aside. Meanwhile, heat up the sauerkraut in a pan over medium heat with the juniper berries, olive oil, and some salt and pepper for seasoning. When warmed up, add bit of the beer, about 2 tablespoons to a 1/4 cup, and cook until the beer has reduced a bit and is absorbed (about 5 minutes). Set aside. Slice the baguette into three equal sections, then in half lengthwise. Sprinkle each side with 2 tablespoons (or more if you want) of the beer and pop in the oven for 5-10 minutes to dry them out, then crank up to broil for a few second to toast them a bit. Add the pastrami and cheese to the bottom half of each sandwich and return to the oven at 350 F until the cheese has melted. Top with the onions, sauerkraut, and a little mustard, and enjoy with a beer!

VEGAN TRUFFLES, HOT COCOA, AND THEIR 19TH CENTURY ORIGINS

I love food nerds. We're an odd group, nomads mostly, traveling from city to city, restaurant to restaurant, cameras in hand, scrawling notes and demanding answers from an already flustered wait staff. Always hungry, always searching, never satisfied. So when you bump into another one, there's a moment of recognition, like ex pats meeting in a foreign country, "You speak my language" our smiles seem to say. This moment occurred when I walked into Intemperantia in the Pacific Palisades. I had come to check out the vegan truffles and French hot cocoa, because though I'm not a vegan (bacon! cheese! sushi! not together, but individually they get in the way of any possibility of veganism) I truly appreciate food that's good not in spite of its challenges, but because of them. In LA, there's no excuse for crappy vegan food. Our produce, resources, and creativity should be more than enough to get past the "no animal product" caveat, and the results can be as good or sometimes better than their derivative. End rant, back to the chocolate. I bumped into the Heidi, the owner, who was in the middle of heating up their vegan hot cocoa. She explained that their vegan chocolates utilize the cocoa butter, the vegetable fat extracted from the cocoa beans and what makes white chocolate "chocolate," for that smooth ganache texture that cream usually provides. The result is pure chocolate flavor, with a clean richness from the cocoa butter. When I approached the French hot cocoa and Heidi spooned a thick, sonorous ladleful into my cup, she told me about the origins of her recipe. Pulled from a French cookbook published in 1820, her hot cocoa emulates the thick, rich cups served in shops before coffee and cafes replaced them in the 19th century. Brillat Savarin, the ultimate food nerd, explains it best:

"Chocolate crossed the mountains with Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip II., and wife of Louis XIII. The Spanish monks also made it known, by presents to their brethren in France. The Spanish ambassadors also made it popular, and during the regency it was more universally used than coffee, because it was taken as an agreeable food, while coffee was esteemed a luxury...Thus to make chocolate, that is to say, to make it fit for immediate use, about an ounce and a half should be taken for each cup, which should be slowly dissolved in water while it is heated, and stirred from time to time with a spatula of wood. It should be boiled a quarter of an hour, in order to give it consistency, and served up hot. “Monsieur,” said madame d’Arestrel, fifty years ago, to me at Belley, “when you wish good chocolate make it the evening before in a tin pot. The rest of the night gives it a velvet–like flavor that makes it far better. God will not be offended at this little refinement, for in himself is all excellence.”

The Physiology of Taste, 1825

Instead of blending my hot cocoa mix with water like they did at Versaille, I chose almond milk for a fuller flavor. The results were pure old world Europe. Simple and decadent, with little getting between you and the chocolate. For vegans and the rest of us alike, these truffles and hot cocoa are a unique treat. Enjoy!

Vegan Dark Chocolate Truffles

Vegan Hot Cocoa with Almond Milk

Not vegan, but lovely chocolate covered almonds.

PROENZA SCHOULER DOLLY CAKE

To commemorate my sister's last day as an intern at Who What Wear, we put together this psychedelic tie-dyed Proenza Schouler Dolly Cake. We dip dyed her hair for an ombre effect, and made multi color glazes swirled with tooth picks for the tie dye. My favorite eureka moment was when we died coconut flake to match the ruffle of the multi colored skirt. It's a shame about the insipid smile, the only thing cracking the facade of bad assness. With graduation on the horizon and an ultra cool job in the future after that, I can't wait to surprise Amanda's next office with these couture creations.