Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, our diet is mostly coffee and cake. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Perfect midnight diner breakfast at home
Not that Midnight Diner, but rather diner food at midnight.
There is a whole psychological spectrum to the art of cooking and eating alone. If on the one end is the Murakami spaghetti, that physical, chaotic manifestation of depression itself; then the midnight diner breakfast is its antidote: Peace and solitude in the dead of the night. Life lived your way, just the way you like it. The way I like my midnight breakfast is simple, but particular: Two eggs over easy with runny golden yolks, fried in plenty of salted Kerrygold butter and one slice of soft white potato bread (it must be white bread and it must be completely un-fancy sliced bread, sorry, rustic loaf), toasted lightly so it’s not crunchy but just slightly crispy. You must slice the bread on the diagonal to form the Diner Triangle, which you must then slather in so much butter it’s opaque, and then use the pointy end to puncture the runny egg yolk. Served with a glass of orange juice (Tropicana only), you haven’t really relished in solitude until you’ve tried it. For a transcendent experience, play Midnight Diner in the background.
Vegan chocolate chip banana cake at home
From Chloe Coscarelli via NYT Cooking, but a simple Google search can help you out ;)
This is such a gorgeous banana bread that I almost regret putting chocolate chips in the batter (but not quite). The cake has such a beautiful, delicate spice palette, with nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves, that it’s a shame to cover it up with anything else, even if it’s melted chocolate. It bakes up with a glorious crusty exterior and a light and bouncy interior, the platonic ideal of a banana bread. It’s a banana bread that calls itself cake, because it is, even though I will continue to ignore that fact, because everyone knows that banana bread was always cake all along. Because I have freakishly small loaf pans (loaf pans apparently have zero standardization), I baked the remaining batter in six muffin cups for 15 minutes. I also used melted coconut oil and whole milk. It’s so plush and dreamy that I’m already dreaming of making this recipe again, one slice in.
Vegan tahini and date banana bread at home
Adapted from Chloe Coscarelli via NYT Cooking
It turns out that I made my dream to make more banana bread a reality by going to the fruit stand and buying ripe bananas the very next day. Only this time, I went for a nutty twist. Inspired by this Sesame, Date, and Banana Cake from Ottolenghi I have been eyeing for months but will literally never make, like all Ottolenghi recipes, because they require speciality ingredients, I substituted the half cup of canola oil with a quarter cup of melted coconut oil and a quarter cup of runny tahini, and used chopped dates instead of chocolate chips. Before baking, I sprinkled the loaf with white sesame seeds, which created a delightful fragrance as the bread browned in the oven. Yes, I have totally buried the lede by writing about this showstopper banana bread three entries deep into this week’s newsletter -- but it is worth it, I swear. This might be my finest banana loaf yet. The tahini gives the bread a savory edge and a firmer (but still extremely plush and moist) texture, and the dates taste almost caramelized. It is the perfect breakfast cake.
Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies at home
Recipe adapted from Melissa Clark’s Classic Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies.
I’ll cut to the chase: These cookies are stellar, in a warm, comforting and unintimidating way (aka, the Best Way). I originally froze half the batch after baking to save as gifts for friends but within three days I had already taken them out of the freezer to eat myself (sorry friends). The synergy of butter, brown sugar, and oats is always magical, but oatmeal cookies can be deceptively hard to perfect, too often dry or cakey. This recipe from Melissa Clark is simple but complex in flavor, with a nice hint of warming spices. I substituted milk chocolate chips for raisins because Why Not, and also sprinkled the cookies with a smattering of flaky sea salt before baking. As a little bonus, because my brown sugar is almost always partly calcified, little pebbles of brown sugar formed nice caramelized pockets of sweetness in the dough.
Intelligentsia house blend, ground at home
Available online, and at Whole Foods.
I am going to leave you for today with a little secret: You can magically improve your entire work week by simply purchasing a bag of Fancy Coffee on the weekend. But Sophie, you say, is Fancy Coffee really worth it when you can just buy a cheaper bean freshly ground, say, at Zabar’s? The answer is, I regret to inform you, Fancy Coffee Beans are absolutely worth it. Even though I purchased these Intelligentsia beans ground from Whole Wallet on sale, they made my mornings way more fun. There’s a distinct difference in depth of flavor when compared to Lavazza or even freshly ground Zabar’s; a zippy light roast (my favorite) stands up to plenty of whole milk without losing any of that floral bean-y flavor.
Talk soon,
Soph
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