A Little Bit of Tiki Room in Cleveland

One of my favorite attractions at Disneyland is the Enchanted Tiki Room in Adventureland.  You know, the show with singing animatronic tropical birds?   The wait time is never more than 10 minutes, it's cool and dark inside, you can sit down, and these robotic birds are just singing to you.    It's wonderful.

But it wasn't until last month that I tried another popular feature of the Tiki Room - the Dole Whip.  Outside the entrance to the Tiki Room (which has been sponsored for decades by Dole) is the Tiki Juice Bar, which serves, along with Dole Pineapple Juice and Dole Pineapple Floats, the Dole Whip, a pineapple soft serve ice cream.  It's one of the most popular treats in Disneyland, like churros and the mint julep. 

If you want to be served quickly though, order from the side of the stand that is outside the entrance, NOT the side that is inside the Tiki Room waiting area like these people.  Trust me.

The Dole Whip is light and sweet and pineappley, and a nice change of pace from the usual concession stand options. 

But now I find I don't have to go all the way to Disneyland for a Dole Whip. 

Because Dairy King has them too!

And at half the price!

Disneyland also did not mention that they are apparently lactose-free, fat-free, gluten-free, cholesterol-free, and vegan.  Which is good, because normally such a list of attributes would make me think it's taste-free.  But it's not sugar-free, so there you go!

TSA Clarifes Its Cupcake Policy

 

The TSA Blog: Cupcakegate

See the difference here?  Normal cupcake, okay to bring to the airport, cupcake in a jar, not so much.

At issue is the cupcake icing, which is considered a gel.

I would think that if the woman had gulped down all the icing from her cupcake in a jar, she would have been allowed to bring it - just as you can bring an empty bottle onto a plane, but not one full of liquid.

That being said, gulping down icing sounds disgusting.  Also, no one sells icing inside the airport, so then you're left with just the cake part, which would be fine by me but not to a lot of people.

Also, I don't think the terrorists are messing around with cupcakes in jars.  I feel like once they started working with cupcakes so much, the hate would just flow right out of them.  I mean, who doesn't get happier when they have a cupcake?


Now I want to make some cakes in jars.  I'm starting with these.  

WWBFD (What Would Brett Favre Do?) and Crock Pot Dulce de Leche

We have made easy and muy delicioso dulce de leche in the crock pot before, using a can of sweetened condensed milk. But could I also use the crock pot to make dulce de leche from scratch? Would that not be better and tastier?

Following Lora Brody's recipe in Slow Cooker Cooking, I put 3 cups of whole milk, a split vanilla bean, 1 2/3 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup water and a pinch of baking soda in the crock pot, left the lid off, set it on high, and went on my merry way.

For several hours, it just looked like this: hot, spiced milk.

And then 5 hours in ... voila! Caramel color! Thickened caramelliness!

But, the recipe dictated several more hours - 4 more hours, for a total of 9 hours in the crock pot.

And this is where I was faced with my Brett Favre moment.

Do I stop here, turn off the crock pot and take what looks to be a good batch, a successful batch, and call it a day?

Or do I keep going? Do I let it caramelize even more, reaching possibly even greater heights of glory? And risk going too long, ending a long, sweet run with the bitter taste of failure?

I took the way of Favre: I waffled about it forever, and finally decided to keep it in a little longer. The recipe, I figured, couldn't be that off. My crock pot, I thought, can't be that hot.

But while Brett Favre is currently generating talk of a possible MVP, my dulce de leche just generated talk of being my LFF - Latest Food Fail.

Because the next time I checked the dulce de leche, less than an hour later, it looked like this:

Burnt.

Not super-caramelly and slightly burnt, which might be good, but kind of curdled and a little too burnt.

Adding the additional cup of milk as directed by the recipe made it seem less burnt. It tasted okay, but it still had that bitter edge, and it wasn't quite the creaminess and sticky goodness I had hoped for, once had, and lost.

Which goes to show you that I am no Brett Favre, and that you should watch the food, not the clock, and not the recipe.

Easy as Pie! Easy as the Ugliest Pie!

I am ashamed to say that I have never made my own pie crust. I thought it would be too hard, too complicated. But when I saw a recipe for pie crust and really read the directions, I realized that "easy as pie" might actually be a saying that makes total sense. (Not at all like "sleep like a baby" which, in my experience, means "fight sleep with everything you've got and then wake up every half hour or hour").

I used Mark Bittman's simple recipe. It really wasn't hard, and it didn't take long, and it didn't create a huge mess in the kitchen. Very promising! Since I was making a banana cream pit, I baked it first.

Hmm, okay, so it's not the prettiest pie crust ever. That's okay, it's still crusty and can adequately perform the crust function. Let's move on.

I mixed up a banana cream custard part, with a recipe from the Good Home Cookbook, also a pretty easy process, which includes folding in some whipped cream at the end.

Now into the crust it goes! And topped with more whipped cream! Now, that doesn't look particularly good. Or nice. Maybe it will look better once I cut a slice ...

Nooo, it doesn't. Yup, that's one ugly pie.

But who cares about looks? It's a pie! A banana cream pie! It's for eating!

Foodgoat took a bite of my ugly, ugly banana cream pie, and said to me, "Not bad for a first time."

Which I believe translates to, "Oh my god, that pie tastes awful, but please don't stop making pies because I don't know where else to get them."

My bite confirmed it - it was not only an ugly pie, it was a bad-tasting pie. The banana cream part was okay, but the crust?

Too salty, way too salty. Looking back on my ingredient list, I targeted the problem - the recipe called for unsalted butter, and I had used salted butter. I've never really paid attention to whether I was using salted/unsalted butter in recipes before, and never noticed that it made a difference, but brands of salted butter can vary in how much butter they have - anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 tsp salt per cup of butter. Here, I not only used salted butter, but I added salt as well, as dictated by recipe.

The lesson? Use unsalted (or sweet) butter in your baking to keep the salt levels where they need to be.

Ice Cream Mind Games

I have been married to Foodgoat for two years, together for over twelve years.

And yet sometimes I feel like I don't understand him at all.

For one thing, he thinks that a meeting originally planned for Wednesday but has been moved forward two days, is now changed to Monday, while I think it's now on Friday.*

But that has nothing to do with food.

A couple weeks ago I brought home ice cream. Ciao Bella Gelato in Malted Milk Ball. Malted Milk Ball pieces in rich malted cream.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Sounds tasty, yes? Can't wait to try it, can you?

And yet, weeks later, that ice cream is still there, in the freezer, UNTOUCHED.

He has not mentioned it, not brought it out, not suggested, "Hey, let's try that new ice cream!"

Does he not know about it?

Impossible! I told him about it! He saw me put it in! It's sitting RIGHT ON TOP, where you can see it every time you open the freezer.

Does he not see it?

Impossible! It's ice cream, not a guy in a gorilla suit! One always notices ice cream!

Did he forget about it?

Impossible! Who, in the heat of the Midwest summer, "forgets" that they have ice cream in the freezer?

Could he possibly be uninterested in the ice cream?

Impossible! He likes ice cream! He likes malt! WHO DOESN'T?

So now I'm thinking he's playing some kind of sick ice cream mind game with me. A test of wills about who will cave into the ice cream first. Who will demonstrate their iron will against smooth and creamy hand-crafted gelato first? Who can resist the call of malt candy and ice cream together in a delicious dessert more?

I can hold out as long as you can, Foodgoat! I'm not going to taste that ice cream until you do first, no matter how delicious it sounds, no matter how hot it gets, how tempting Malted Milk Ball gelato is to me!

Or will he drive me slowly crazy by pretending there's no ice cream here, that I've only imagined it, like an ice cream-themed Gaslight?

There's Always Next Year (Or The Year After That) ... And Until Then, There's Cupcakes

Time for another round of baking therapy! Another Cleveland sports team underachieves ... and unlike the Cavs, it's not a so-close-you-could-taste-it underachieves, it's a great big couldn't-taste-it-if-it-was-served-in-front-of-you-with-a-spoon underachieves. Not are the Indians way, way out of playoff contention, they're in full blown rebuilding mode, complete with trading away ... well, everyone that mattered.

The dismal state of things truly hit home for me when I watched the funny (and wistful) Major League for the first time the other night. "Watch, GoatSpawn, this may be the only time you see a Cleveland sports team go to the playoffs, " Foodgoat said, "It's what you call 'fiction'."

After my baking therapy project for the Cavs' season, someone suggested that it wasn't cake they needed to handle the trauma of Cleveland sports losses, it was whiskey. But why not have both?

To assuage the pain of Cleveland Indians season (and next, this re-building mode will probably last a while), I made chocolate whiskey cupcakes.

Chocolate Whiskey Cupcakes

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
3/4 cup unsweetened (not Dutch process) cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups strong brewed coffee (I used the dark roast from Phoenix for extra flavor)
1/2 cup whiskey
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Preheat over to 325°F.
2. Heat the coffee, butter, and cocoa powder in a heavy medium saucepan over low heat until the butter is melted, whisking occasionally.
3. Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from the heat, transfer the mixture to a large bowl, add the whiskey, and let cool.

1. Meanwhile, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate, small bowl, whisk the eggs and vanilla. Slowly whisk the eggs into the chocolate mixture until combined. Add the flour mixture and whisk until smooth. The batter will be pretty thin.
2. Pour the batter into a cupcake pan (or Reynolds Fun Shapes, which made heart-shaped cupcakes) and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out mostly clean, about 15 to 18 minutes.

You can frost them of course, but rather than run the risk of the ugliest cupcakes in the world, I just dusted them with powdered sugar just before serving. Easier, neater, prettier, and dare I say, tastier.

They turned out infinitely better than the chocolate sourdough cake ... light and fluffy (I learned my lesson regarding types of cocoa powder), not too sweet, moist, and a hint of whiskey.

Cleveland sports may not be improving, but my baking abilities are. And if the first Browns preseason game is any indication, I may be whipping up pies and custards and cookies by the end of the season.

Ugliest Cake in the World

I have been baking up a storm lately - cakes, cookies, cupcakes, muffins, all in the past few days. Since I'm usually only in the kitchen to hand Foodgoat his beer or to look for cheese in the fridge, this sudden outburst of baking can only mean one thing - I must be seriously depressed.

What could I be depressed about? Not GoatSpawn (who's a joy) ... not my job (still have one) ...

Must be the Cavs! A delayed reaction to another Cleveland sports team blowing their chance at the championships. Boo!

So, contemplating at least another year in this God-forsaken sports town, I've taken to baking.

Like Cleveland sports playoff games, the results have not always been so pretty:


This horrifying thing is a sourdough chocolate cake with my first attempt at a homemade frosting, which I was disturbed to find out was just butter and sugar. I feel like I should put a paper bag over it.



The cake itself turned out quite tasty, if a bit dry, with the sourdough flavor not quite as pronounced as you might think. The frosting was sweeeet, literally sweeeet, and so strongly coffee flavored it woke me up.

Not bad, but I like cupcakes better - the frosting/cake ratio there favors the cake and less the frosting. Less is more where frosting is concerned.

And as tasty as it is, it seems not even chocolate cake can relieve CSD (Cleveland sports depression).

Sourdough Chocolate Cake & Coffee Frosting
(from King Arthur Flour)

• 1 cup "fed" sourdough starter
• 1 cup milk (whole milk)
  
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder
• 2 large eggs

• 3 cups confectioners' sugar
• 3/8 cup butter
• 1/4 cup buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons espresso powder
• 1/2 tablespoon hot water

Cake

• 8 1/2 ounces "fed" sourdough starter
• 8 ounces milk (whole milk or 2% preferred) or evaporated milk
• 8 1/2 ounces King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 10 1/2 ounces granulated sugar
• 7 ounces vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 1/4 ounces natural cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
• 1 teaspoon espresso powder, optional
• 2 large eggs

Icing

• 24 ounces confectioners' sugar
• 6 ounces butter
• 4 ounces plain yogurt or buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon + 1 1/2 teaspoons espresso powder
• 1/2 ounce hot water

Drizzle

• 2 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 ounce milk
• 3/4 ounce corn syrup

1) Combine the "fed" starter, milk, and flour in a large mixing bowl. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours.

2) Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" pan.

3) In a separate bowl, beat together the sugar, oil, vanilla, salt, baking soda, cocoa and espresso powder. The mixture will be grainy.

4) Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

5) Gently combine the chocolate mixture with the starter-flour-milk mixture, stirring till smooth.

6) Pour the batter into pan.

7) Bake the cake for 30 to 40 minutes, until it springs back when lightly pressed in the center, and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

8) Remove the cake from the oven, and set it on a rack to cool while you make the icing.

9) Sift the confectioners' sugar into a large mixing bowl, and set it aside.

10) In a small saucepan set over medium heat, melt the butter and add the buttermilk. Dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water, add to the pan, and bring the mixture just to a boil.

11) Immediately pour the simmering liquid over the confectioners' sugar in the bowl, and beat till smooth.

12) Pour the warm frosting over the cake. Try to be neat. If unsuccessful, eat anyway.

Happy 6 Months GoatSpawn!

We celebrated her half year birthday by eating her cupcake (she would have wanted it that way). It was an especially delicious mocha flavored cupcake from the West Side Market.

Filipino Dessert in an Italian Deli

Over the holidays, while shopping at the local Italian deli, I was surprised to come across this particular treat:

Polvorones? Like polvoron? As in the flour butter powdered milk confection that I love so much?

What is a Filipino dessert doing in an Italian deli in Cleveland?

With guava, yet!

It was made by a local Spanish bakery, the Lelolai Bakery and Cafe, which is located right next to the West Side Market. As soon as this freezing cold weather and GoatSpawn moods permit us, I'm heading right over the next time we hit the market to stock up on more polvorones.

Because their polvorones was delicious. A little less buttery than the one I make, a little firmer, and also with a dollop of gellified guava or mango for added sweetness and crunch, the Lelolai polvorones were a yummy holiday treat. I bought and enjoyed several packages.

Alas, Foodgoat did not get to enjoy nearly so many, because he is lacksidaisical in his treat dipping while I am, shall we say, intent and focused where particularly tasty sweets are concerned.

But I did not want him to miss out on all the goodness, so for each box I left the last piece for him.

Monkey Balls See, Monkey Ball Do

Last Saturday was GoatSpawn's first snow day, and we were stuck inside the house, surrounded by a foot of snow. It was time for some warm, baking goodness, but our oven stopped working sometime around Thanksgiving, so warm baking goodness would have to come from the bread machine.

I was checking out the King Arthur Flour website for bread machine recipes, when Foodgoat spotted this photo for the Sweet Pull-Apart Bread, and said "We have to make that":
So, inspired by the photo, we embarked on making the sweet pull-apart bread, also known as monkey bread.

First, you use the dough only setting on the machine to make the sweet dough.

Dough
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

All ingredients go into the machine in the order your machine described. Check the consistency after 10 minutes of kneading to make sure it's smooth and soft and adjust as needed (which you should do anytime you make anything in the bread machine).

Next, put the dough onto a flour covered surface and cut it into 32 pieces.

Next, the yummy topping ...

Topping
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
2/3 cup light brown sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Dip each dough ball into the butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar mix.

Layer the balls back into the bread machine. Allow them to rise for about an hour, then bake in the bread machine for 65 minutes with the light crust. (I accidentally used the medium crust, and it turned out a bit too dry on the crust.)

Voila! Monkey bread! What you end up with very much like cinnamon rolls - pieces of warm, sweet, a little sticky bread that you just pull off the loaf. It was YUMMY.

Not only that, but we could also talk about monkey balls for days.

Lessons in Chestnuts, Continued

Even though the ratio of good to bad chestnuts following the braising was disappointing, we were still left with a bowl of enough tasty chestnut meat to work with. The next step: grinding up the chestnuts, using a rotary cheese grater, which I thought was a clever use of what I thought was a unitasker tool.

Foodgoat then added rum and sugar, to taste. Foodgoat recommends not too much rum, otherwise it just tastes like rum, but of course, it's hard to hold back where rum is concerned. As Foodgoat discovered this time, when he did in fact just a bit too much rum.

And there you have it! Chestnut rum puree. But wait, something is missing ...



Fresh whipped cream, of course - adding the perfect topping to Foodgoat's favorite dessert.

The verdict - delicious. Not quite as good as his grandmother's torte version, but delicious nonetheless.

Lessons in Chestnuts: If It Looks Like A Brain, It's Good

Foodgoat doesn't usually go in much for desserts ... except when it comes to his grandmother's chestnut rum puree. When made into a torte or eaten straight up with a scoop of whipped cream, the chestnut puree is a delicious yet not too sweet treat and a Foodgoat favorite.

We have just heard rumors about the difficulty and labor involved in cooking fresh chestnuts, so when we came upon a technique of cooking chestnuts using a slow cooker, one of Foodgoat's favorite and most used small appliance, and then found piles of fresh chestnuts at the local grocery store, we decided it was time for a new Foodgoat adventure.

First, we picked up about 3 lbs of chestnuts. We introduced them to GoatSpawn, who was not particularly interested.

Next, with a sharp heavy knife, Foodgoat scored the rounded side of each chestnut about halfway through. In they went into the slow cooker, with enough boiling water to cover them. Turn the slow cooker on high for 2.5 to 5 hours, until the skins peel back.









Once done, Foodgoat excitely took a knife and cut a still very hot chestnut in half, peeled the outer shell and inner skin away, and popped the highly anticipated meat into his mouth. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a moldy one. A moldy, gross-tasting chestnut.








In fact, many of the chestnuts turned out to be moldy. About 30% of them. At first, we weren't sure what a good or bad chestnut looked like, so Foodgoat was doing a taste test on them all. He soon discovered that a good chestnut looks like a brain, and tastes delicious. A bad chestnut does not, and tastes totally disgusting.

Having never purchased chestnuts before, we weren't sure if that 30% failure rate was par for the chestnut course, or a reflection on the poor produce standards at the grocery store. But either way, it almost wasn't worth it. Almost. Because the fresh chestnut did taste very good.

Who Else Like Corbo's Cassata Cake?

Mario Batali, of course! He mentioned it in yesterday's USA Today article on 10 great places to discover Italy — in America:

"Corbo's Bakery has the best cassata (cake) I have tried in the USA," Batali says.

Cassata Cake

This past weekend, for his father's 60th birthday party, Foodgoat hosted his first big dinner party. And so ended any desire for opening a restaurant, because now we know that cooking for over twenty people? It's work. It's hard work. It's fun at any given night to make pork and dumplings, salmon, spinach gnocchi with homemade tomato sauce, black bean and avocado salad, green salad, or roasted vegetables, but all in one day? With your cooking reputation on the line? We have a newfound respect for all who cook for large gatherings.

Fortunately, Foodgoat had the help of his brothers and his mother (good cooks all), and the food came out deliciously and was well-received and everyone was happy.

The one thing we didn't have to make was the birthday cake. While the rest of the menu was not decided until last week, for months Foodgoat had his heart set on a cassata cake from Corbo's Bakery in Little Italy.

A cassata cake is a dessert from Palermo, Sicily, but it's the dessert to get here in Cleveland. They appear at all kinds of special occasions, and locals turn dreamy at the mention of Corbo's cassata cakes.

Traditionally, cassata (introduced by the Arabs) is a tort of plain white cake filled with the same sheep's milk ricotta cream, topped with frosting and sugared fruits. It might have an orange liqueur and chocolate filling and a shell of marzipan or chocolate frosting.

The Corbo's version is a light, fluffy, white cake filled with creamy custard and fresh strawberries and topped with just-sweet-enough whipped frosting. Sooo delicious! It's so good I completely forgot to take a picture, so anxious was I to eat a piece.

Peppercorn - Yes, Peppercorn! - Ice Cream

Foodgoat's first inclination on receiving an ice cream maker is to begin with the basics and make vanill, so as to begin crafting and perfecting one's ice cream technique.

My inclination is to just skip to the weird and bizarre flavors.

And that's why I made a Peppercorn Ice Cream, adapted from a recipe in Chow. I halved the recipe, partly because using 8 egg yolks in any one recipe just seems egregious, partly because I've found that the ice cream maker just works better with smaller quantities, and partly because I figured there wouldn't be a lot of demand for more peppercorn ice cream.

To my surprise, Peppercorn ice cream, even made with black pepper, is not nearly as bad as it sounds. Even though I used more pepper than suggested in the Chow recipe, you don't taste the pepper right away - it was more of building aftertaste than an immediate assault on the tongue. Even then, I didn't find it offensive at all. Someone said it was like the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans in Harry Potter.

Still, it's not exactly dessert material. One wouldn't sit down with a big bowl of this. However, I could imagine it as a nice accompaniment to something savory. Like a steak.

Peppercorn Ice Cream

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• 3/8 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns, crushed with the bottom of a heavy pan
• 4 egg yolks
  

1. Heat the heavy cream, milk, sugar, and pepper in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring mixture to a simmer, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.
2. Remove from heat and let mixture steep for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, place the egg yolks in a medium mixing bowl and beat well with a wire whisk.
3. Return the cream mixture to medium heat and bring to a simmer again. Remove from heat. Temper the hot mixture into the eggs by slowly pouring the cream into them in a thin stream, while constantly whisking the eggs with a whisk.
4. Strain the egg-and-cream mixture through a fine-mesh strainer back into the saucepan. Return it to the stove and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often with a wooden spoon, until the custard base has thickened enough to coat the back of the spoon.
5. Cool the custard overnight, or until it is completely cold.
6. Freeze the custard in an ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Place in a covered plastic container and store in the freezer overnight.

Slyman's

While in Cleveland, our President made his best, most commendable and irreproachable decision of his two terms of office today.

He decided to have a corned beef sandwich at Slyman's.

We have been so remiss in not posting about one of the most glorious food places in Cleveland that we rarely get to go to. It's only open on weekdays until lunch, and since the lines are notoriously long, Cleveland's best deli mocks us with their famous corned beef sandwiches.

So last week when Foodgoat and I got off work early for the 4th of July, there was just one place we wanted to go.















The lines were only a little long (just out the door) but it's a fair price to pay because their corned beef sandwiches! are! so! good!
The perfect combination of just the right amount of fattiness (which is to say, not too much) to indescribably yummy beef ...

Order one "all the way" and you also get swiss cheese, mustard, and horseradish (plus bonus points from the staff for knowing the lingo).

After experiencing the goodness again, Foodgoat has decided that trekking out across the city to Slyman's for lunch is well, well worth it.

Best Birthday Cake Ever

Last week, on Foodgoat's birthday, he was summoned to his grandmother's house to personally pick up a mysterious birthday present. An odd request, considering they knew they would see each other later that day at their joint birthday lunch.

What could it be?
Why, it was only the best birthday cake ever! Foodgoat's grandmama made him his very favorite dessert - a luscious rum torte with chestnut filling, topped with fresh whipped cream. A whole torte, just for him. He has had a yummy slice every night since.

Foodgoat was so happy that his birthday present to her was to finally get his hair cut.

Cake Overdose

Closing out the Halloween week ...

Saturday afternoon - Foodgoat's nephew's 4th birthday party. Featuring not one, not two, but three, count 'em!, THREE!, cakes, one of which was a huge and delicious chocolate mint ice cream cake from Cleveland's own Mitchell's.

Saturday night - Foodgoat's aunt's surprise 60th birthday. Featuring a full dinner of Italian food ... and more cake!

Sunday - Foodgoat's cousin's bridal shower. Featuring a huge brunch buffet ... and then? Cake.

Well, how's a blogger supposed to follow that?

Before we dive headlong into a year or so of wedding pie selections and whether the lechon should be served at the reception, my week in California included other developments aside from the sparkly-sparkly kind. For one thing, my brother graduated from UCLA.


For another, while we were in town, I was introduced to Westwood's famous Diddy Riese Cookies.


Each time we walked by, there was a line at least fifteen deep that trailed down the street. But if you are patient, at the end you can buy one delicious, freshly made cookie for only 35 cents. Or you can get two cookies with ice cream packed in between them. Yummy.

Or you can get a cookie and a hot dog and have yourself a dinner for about a buck fifty.