pistachio nutter butters + a giveaway!

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Hello to my birthday month, the month where I get to chill a little more, eat a little more, and spend a little more, at least at Sephora, so I can get my free birthday lip gloss. Every day feels like pizza friday during birthday month! And this month I’m going to Stars on Ice so like, wow, if you thought I freaked out at the Olympics, just wait until Meryl and Charlie take the ice. I cannot wait.

Here are some photos from over the weekend when I met Nile’s Beethoven dog puppy, Frida, and then went to the Empire gala! We danced our butts off, wore big dresses, sang, it was the perfect eve to birthday month. 

Now I’m kicking off May with two recent objects of my obsession: pistachio nutter butters and jewelry that reminds me of rainbow sprinkles. Pistachio nutter butters felt like such an obvious thing to do, given my love of pistachio butter (see: pistachio buttercream and pistachio pudding pops). So I replaced the peanut butter in my favorite peanut butter cookie recipe for pistachio butter and they came out chewy and amazing. And then when sandwiched with creamy pistachio frosting, they just got better. They are thick nutty wonders of the cookie world. And, yes, they deserve to be rolled in sprinkles.

Speaking of sprinkles, I have the most fun giveaway happening over on Instagram for the colorful ring that I’m wearing in these photos! I have been a fan of Elisa Solomon’s jewelry for years, ever since finding her rings at Catbird. (I sometimes just go onto the Catbird site just to look at this ring). Her jewelry is right up my alley, it’s colorful and whimsical and dainty and every time I look at my ring I think of rainbow sprinkles!! So I could not be more excited to partner with her on this giveaway. To enter, head over to Instagram (but if you don’t have Instagram, you can leave a comment here)! And be sure to check out her other jewelry, like this Sven cat ring!!! 
 

Pistachio Nutter Butters

Makes 8 large cookies

Ingredients

Cookies

1 1/4 c (160g) raw pistachios
1 1/4 c (160g) raw almonds
1/4 tsp kosher salt
zest of 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp almond extract
1 c (200g) sugar, plus a couple more tablespoons for rolling
1 large egg

Filling

6 tb (85g) unsalted butter, softened
1 c (120g) powdered sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp almond extract
a pinch of lemon zest
Optional: splash of rosewater

Sprinkles
 

Clues

Preheat oven to 350ºf. Line two baking sheets with parchment and set aside.

To make the cookies, in a high powered food processor, blend the pistachios and almonds for 10-15 minutes until spreadable. Remove 1/4 c (or 64g) of the mixture and set aside for the filling. To the food processor, add the salt, lemon zest, almond extract, and sugar to the food processor and blend together. Add the egg and blend to combine. Scoop out 16 tablespoon sized balls and roll in sugar. Place on baking sheets 1 inch apart and flatten with two presses of a fork to get a crisscross pattern. Bake for 12 minutes (they’ll still be very soft but they’ll firm up as they cool). Let cool on the pans for 10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the filling, in a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, blend together the butter and reserved pistachio butter. Add the powdered sugar and blend to combine. Add the salt, vanilla, almond, lemon zest, and rosewater, if using. 

Fill a piping bag with the filling and pipe in the centers of half of the cooled cookies, sandwich them with the other half of the cookies and then roll in sprinkles. Enjoy!

-yeh!

photos by chantell and brett quernemoen!

apron from enrich and endure, cookie plate from le creuset! 

chocolate halva spread + a #mollyontherange x stewart & claire chocolate halva lip balm giveaway!

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my favorite lip balm in the whole entire universe now comes in chocolate halva flavor.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i have tried every single lip balm in the world, including, obviously, lip smacker's dr. pepper, and a tragic macaroni and cheese flavor from the candy store near columbus circle. at summer camp, no care package was complete without lip balm, and in college, practically every other laundry cycle was graced with a lip balm explosion. i have since gotten better at this.

so i *know* lip balm, i am never without lip balm, i put it on morning/noon/night/16 times in between, and i can say hands down that stewart & claire's is the best. it's not sticky and it works so well, even in grand forks winters, and it's made by kristin! who just wrote the modern potluck cookbook! get one! so now i am just about bursting with glee because as part of the molly on the range book launch, it now comes in halva flavor. it's made with sesame oil and askinosie cocoa powder, and lisel's endpaper drawings are all over the label. it is a dream come true. i'm giving away a handful of these to those who've preordered (only one more week to preorder!), and if you don't win one or are in need of 12 more, there will be a limited supply available for sale on the stewart & claire site.

and! in case all of this talk of chocolate halva has left you with a massive insane craving, here is a super quick recipe for nutella's middle eastern cousin, chocolate halva spread. it's right out of molly on the range, and it's in a little spread section with white chocolate pistachio butter and marzipan butter. use this on toast, over ice cream, or eat it straight with a spoon!

chocolate halva spread

makes 3/4 cup

ingredients

4 oz chopped milk chocolate

1/2 c tahini

1/8 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

clues

melt the chocolate in a double boiler or by microwaving in 30-second increments, stirring after each, until melted and smooth. stir in the tahini, salt, and vanilla. it will thicken as it cools.

enjoy!

(also hi from new york!!! i just got here yesterday, right in time for the taste talks awards. now i'm sitting in a hotel room in tarrytown silently freaking out about my first ever panel, at the nyt food for tomorrow conference. and on thursday, book festivities start with a trip to roberta's for heritage radio! and some personal news, my hair decided it wanted to start parting down the middle, so that's where we're at. book tour, commence!!)

if you've preordered molly on the range and would like to win a a stewart & claire chocolate halva lip balm, leave a comment here with your dream lip balm flavor! we're giving away 30! open to u.s. residents. enter now through pub date (10/4) and have your preorder receipt ready for if you win!

-yeh!

brazil nut cookie dough cups (vegan) + a #mollyontherange preorder sprinkle giveaway!

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a real live copy of molly on the range arrived late last week and i shrieked so loudly, almost as loud as when a fox tried to take a macaroni in his mouth. it was so wild and unexpected, i thought i was unboxing my new business cards and sprinkle envelopes from chelsey, but nope, it was a book! my book! the thing that's going to classify me as an author and qualify me to wear elbow patches! i carried it around with me, to seattle and eastern washington and back, and then last night we used it to make fried rice even though i didn't really follow the recipe. i was mostly just curious to see if i'd used butter or oil (it was butter, thank goodness) and then let the page sit open next to me while i chopped all of my onions. i tried to get onion juice on it as an inaugural stain. 

i'm getting off track: there are three are exactly three weeks left to preorder and that means three preorder giveaways!

first up, magic sprinkle mix! throughout the life of this book, i've dreamt of a sprinkle mix. something with rainbows, various sprinkley shapes, spices, sesame seeds, and salt. a seasoning mix on its own that's as tasty as it is colorful, and something naturally colored, like the sprinkles i keep in a jar on my open shelf. so working with india tree, who makes my favorite naturally dyed sprinkles, i developed a mix that is exactly that! it's got cardamom, black sesames and white sesames, smoked salt, and a secret mixture of their sprinkles that extends beyond their carnival mix. i am so excited about it and if you see me between now and the end of my tour, there's a chance i might have one of these bad boys for you:

why hand out business cards when you could hand out sprinkle packets?? (all of the credit for this idea goes to one of the cool dudes behind the hare's corner, who i met in ireland and instead of giving me a business card, he gave me a little packet of seeds! it was so cute.) aside from the little packets though, there are also six jars of this magic sesame cardamom limited-edition sprinkle mix up for grabs to those who've preordered molly on the range! details on how to enter are at the bottom of this post. 

first i want to show you how i've used them, on these here cookie dough cups that are vegan and inspired by the brazil nut cookie dough bars in anna jones' new book, a modern way to cook. i had never bought a brazil nut before, but when i did, eggboy flipped out! he loves them! anna's recipe calls for blending the nuts with some sugar and coconut oil and adding chocolate chips, and it tastes just like raw cookie dough, it's dangerous and addictive. in order to let these sprinkles shine through, here i've instead coated this dough in chocolate for a fancier peanut butter cup! 

brazil nut cookie dough cups

makes 12

ingredients

6 oz (or 1 heaping cup) brazil nuts

2 tb sugar

2 tb coconut oil (solid)

2 tb maple syrup

1/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

12 oz dark chocolate

sprinkles, for topping

 

 

clues

place the nuts, sugar, coconut oil, syrup, salt, and vanilla in a food processor and pulse until the mixture comes together into a dough-like texture. it may still look crumbly but if you squeeze a bit in your hand, it should hold together. dump it out onto a work surface, divide it into 12 equal parts, and then roll them into balls and flatten them. set aside.

line 12 muffin tins with paper liners and set aside. 

melt the chocolate in a double boiler or microwave until smooth and then spoon about 1 teaspoon chocolate into the bottom of the liners. stick in the freezer for a couple minutes to firm up slightly. place a disk of filling in each muffin liner and then top with the remaining melted chocolate so that it covers the filling completely. top with sprinkles and let harden in the freezer. enjoy!

if you've preordered molly on the range and would like to win one of six jars of limited-edition #mollyontherange sesame cardamom sprinkles, leave a comment here with what you'd use them on first! open to u.s. residents. enter now through pub date (10/4) and have your preorder receipt ready for if you win!

a vanilla prelaunch cake

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how are we talking about cake after monday's pizza overload fourth of july festivities??? i dunno. i ate so much pizza because it was so smoky and good from the campfire, and it was covered in all of the fresh herbs that we're getting from our garden, and also because my new favorite dress that i wear every day is like wearing a pillow case so i have no idea how to gauge when i've eaten too much pizza. meh! happy belated 4th to you!! i really hope you ate flag cake and drank spritzes aplenty. 

today this fun new-to-me thing starts, called a book prelaunch! i've never done one of these before, obvi, but from what i can gather, i think i'm going to approach it as if it's the chrismukkah season (and chrismukkah is actually october 4th, the molly on the range release date). so instead of peppermint/gingerbread/gift guide holiday content, i'll be periodically posting behind the scenes looks at the making of molly on the range and some recipes that didn't make the final cut but are still really good, and instead of secret santa, there will be surprise preorder giveaways scattered about the next few months (!!!), and instead of the eight days of hanukkah arriving at the end of it all, there will be more like 28 days of me showing up in your town* and talking about molly on the range and making you cake! 

*specific towns are tbd and idk if it'll be exactly 28 days

i'm still working on what kind of tree we're going to decorate for the occasion and i'm trying to persuade eggboy to write a song about it. or maybe you're a songwriter and want to write a song for the season?? what's confirmed is that there will be cake (actually two cakes) for those who preorder my book! because this first preorder giveaway includes:

-the recipe for this very vanilla layer cake, along with some choose-your-own-adventure ideas for adding various mix-ins and flavorings and nuts and things

-the recipe for a pumpkin walnut layer cake with cream cheese frosting that is going to make you sooooo excited for the fall

-cake frosting tips!

to download these bad boyz, preorder the book, and then enter your info here.

and preordering now will also make you eligible for the next few giveaways which i'll be announcing soon!!

happy prelaunch season everyone! *throws sprinkles in the air*

-yeh!