Fresh Blood Orange Cake

Hope everyone survived the Snowpocalypse! I spent my entire Saturday in the comfort of my tiny apartment kitchen, cooking up my first lasagna bolognese. As soon as the blizzard was announced, I decided that I had to spend the whole day cooking up something delicious, hearty, and comforting. I settled on making a lasagna bolognese, and after braving the storm to make a 10 AM spin class, I came home and spent the rest of the day in the kitchen. I simmered a pot of bolognese for four hours and then cooked up a rich, creamy bechamel. After baking the lasagna, we settled down at the table and enjoyed an amazing meal. The lasagna was hot and cheesy, rich and hearty, and I loved every bite. Sure, there was room for improvement, but for my first lasagna, I was really pleased with the outcome. It was the perfect way to spend this blizzardy weekend; there's just nothing like decadent comfort foods to enjoy in the dead of winter. 

Unless, of course, we're talking about citrus. There are few things better than seeing bright yellows and oranges in the middle of a sometimes depressing season, and there's nothing like enjoying fresh, zesty flavors after eating bowl after bowl of hearty stew, soup, or pasta. I always make a point to seek out as many citrus fruits as I can one January hits, especially Meyer lemons and blood oranges. These two fruits are only available for a short window of time in the winter, so it's important to use them while they're available! They may be a little tricky to find, but they're out there, I promise. This year, I actually had no trouble finding blood oranges for once. I just walked right into the fruit and vegetable market around the corner from me, and there they were!  I was there to buy something completely different, but when I saw a tiny mountain of blood oranges in front of me, I just had to buy a few. Hopefully this scenario repeats itself when it's rhubarb and sour cherry season! 

Orange Poppy Seed Cake

I think I've mentioned before my obsession with simple, everyday snacking cakes right?  The kind of cakes that you can mix up in one bowl with a wooden spoon and have in the oven in no more than ten minutes.  The kind of cake that you can't help but slicing off a small piece for yourself every time you walk past it in your kitchen.  It's the kind of cake that is simple and delicious and satisfying

The recipe for this particular cake comes from one of my mom's cousins, and is really famous among the members of my mom's side of the family.  I've never actually had the opportunity to eat the cake as she makes it, but since my whole family raves about it, I knew this cake had to be worth making.  Fortunately for me, my mom had gotten the recipe from her cousin.  She hadn't had a chance to make it herself, so I was the first one to give it a go.  The recipe was handwritten on an index card, just as a good family recipe should be.  The only issue I had was that I had to do a little bit of guess work when it came to the pan size and baking time for the cake.  The recipe on the index card simply said to use a "baking pan" and to bake the cake for an hour (my cake was for sure not ready after only an hour!).  My mom helped me figure these parts of the recipe out based on what she remembered about the cake, so it really wasn't all that bad.  Mixing the cake up was a breeze, and within ten minutes, I had my cake ready to go for the oven.  

Mini Orange-Chocolate Chunk Bundts

I'm a bit frustrated at the moment.  It's 6:45 AM, and I'm just starting to write this post, because I "Instagrammed" (because that's a verb now), a photo of these lovely orange chocolate chunk bundt cakes with chocolate ganache (more on those later), and said they'd be on the blog today (which they are, because I like to keep my promises). I'm writing this post at 6:45 AM out of frustration because I've been up all night working on my final for my studio workshop class that's due on Monday.  Sure, I have plenty of time until then, but I have other things to take care of this weekend, and that fact that I've been working all night and am still not happy with how my design looks is just annoying.  So, I decided to stop for a bit, and write about cake.  That should solve all my problems..or at least distract me for a bit.  

These next two weeks are going to be so hellish, I can feel it.  I'm SO close to being done with classes and college in general, but it's just so hard to force myself to stay focused.  I can literally count using the fingers on one hand the number of things I have left to do before officially being done with all of my classes and finals (one more lecture, one more studio pinup, one final, and one independent research project to go), and while I know that 2 out of the 4 things that remain will be complete by Monday night, it still feels like that is too far off. I just want to be finished already, I'm exhausted!  I need a nap, both literally and physically.  Ugh. 

Orange, Cranberry & Chocolate Chip Muffins

What a crazy past couple of days it's been!  There's been good and bad, and a lot of just plain craziness. Hurricane Sandy caused much more devastation than I think anyone had been expecting.  Thankfully, my family was relatively unaffected.  Sure, they had neither power nor heat for 8 days, but when you look at the bigger picture and think about how much damage the storm caused, and how many lives it changed, it puts everything into perspective.  Eight days of no power really isn't all that bad.  I went home on Monday so I could be at home to vote on Tuesday, and I couldn't believe what I saw.  A lot of the streets had been cleaned up by my house, but even still, there were enormous heaps of garbage bags in front of almost everyone's houses, along with ruined furniture and appliances, and every now and then, you'd come across giant branches on the street that hadn't yet been cleared off.  The Trader Joe's by my house, literally a ten minute drive, was completely destroyed, with only its four outer walls remaining.  The majority of the traffic lights in my neighborhood were still not working, and the lines to get just a couple of gallons of gas went on for blocks.  I was actually at home when the power finally came back, and the reaction was incredible.  There was a brief flash of power, and my parents and I just looked at each other, and we ran to the front door.  Everyone else on my block must have done the same, because then the power came back for real, and all you could hear were people shouting, "Power! Power!  Power!!!"

More shouting filled the streets last night, but for completely different reasons.  Rather than shouts of relief, celebratory singing, cheering, and screaming could be heard all around campus.  Columbia was pretty happy with Obama's re-election!  I had been looking forward to this day for so long.  I remember I was really bummed out that I couldn't vote in the 2008 election because I was only 17, and I knew there was no way I was going to miss voting this time around!  To be honest though, I found the actual voting experience rather underwhelming. I'm not sure what I was expecting, because filling out those little bubbles on the scantron couldn't actually be that exciting, but I don't know...I may have been underwhelmed, but I still got to vote!  That was the good part of the past couple of days.  The crazy part?  This nor'easter!  We went from having a hurricane one week, to a crazy winter storm only a week later.  Mother nature, give us a break plz.  My hair can't take too many winter storms like this (seriously, not-so-pretty things start happening when there's a ton of winter precipitation...)! Hopefully this storm won't be too bad!  Given that the past couple of days have been a little hectic, I knew I needed something a little stable, something that'll always be good no matter what the circumstances are. Chocolate chip muffins are perfect for this sort of predicament.