Gift Ideas (or how to treat yourself extremely well)

We Spice Girls can never get enough...of high-quality spices! 

Penzey's (our closest location is 1048 Rockville Pike) is a great site for blends and hard-to-find ingredients like Z'atar, sumac, potent Vietnamese cinnamon for cinnamon rolls, mellow citrusy Ceylon cinnamon for apple pie and Mexican cooking,  Sunny Paris blend--excellent on eggs, quiche and asparagus, chipotle, satay seasoning, and Peri Peri seasoning. Penzey's also sell towels with "Love People. Cook them tasty food." on them!

Speaking of faraway ingredients and spices, the Jerusalem cookbook provides an amazing way to combine and savor foods and flavors we don't always put together. I also enjoyed the intrigue of Hal Vaughn's revisionist biography of Coco Chanel and her "liaisons" with Nazi Germany.

Silicone baking mats are a great time saver for making cookies, macaroons,  meringues, and brittles. I recommend only using them for sweet or neutral scents since they hold on to aromas. This pizza pan is 16 inches in diameter, big enough for take-home Costco pizzas! Other favorites are a pancake pen-shake 'n' shape your pancake batter, a 3-pack of righteous peelers which includes a julienne slicer and an apple slicer to keep the doctor away!

For fellow extreme home economists, consider cheese, vinegar, bread, yogurt, kombucha and mushroom kits to make your own. Williams-Sonoma has some options for almost all of the above. Recommended cookbooks are Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz, Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart and Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne and Knutzen Erik.

Want a bluetooth speaker and FM transmitter for the car? Sync it with your smartphone and take it to multiple cars, the beach, to an office gathering and picnics. Also useful to transmit music is a cute Panda speaker system.

Looking for something lacy and racy? Sheer lace is one of my favorite ways to amp the vamp. Wear this peplum lace top over a tube top, a simple dress or with a tank top and jeans! Try lace socks for that nice and naughty look when going out, with shorts and lace-up shoes or with a spring dress.

And for gifts that keep on giving, consider public radio and community radio stations, religious organizations, shelters like House of Ruth, job training organizations like DC Central Kitchen, food co-ops, Girl Scouts, and supporting local visual and performing artists.

Season's Greetings!!

Ambrosia Macaroons

My cookie game had to be on point today with two cookie exchanges. Here's how it works: make, bake and take a few dozen homemade cookies, share and bring a few back of the other cookies have shared. We now have several dozen cookies at home. Yikes!!

Here is the ambrosia macaroons recipe I created for this cookie-themed day. There is a recipe on Epicurious.com that inspired me. But I made about half a dozen changes, so now it's my own recipe...and yours, too, if you like.

A good option if you are navigating certain dietary considerations. Gluten- and nut-free. Dairy-free with a butter substitute. And DEE-licious!

Ambrosia Macaroons

--these should make 60-72 macaroons, depending on size

-6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

-Solid coconut cream from 1 14-ounce can high-fat coconut milk. When testing again, I think one can leave about 1/5 left in the can, as these can get oily.
-1 to 1 1/4 cup sugar (less is still pretty sweet!)
-1/8 teaspoon salt
-4 large eggs

-3/4 cup sweetened dried cranberries AKA craisins

-1 tablespoon finely grated fresh orange peel or 3 tablespoons dried orange peel
-1 teaspoon honey and 2 tablespoons water to soak dried craisins and dried orange peel (I put craisins, peel and liquids in microwave 30 seconds, then cooled before adding to other ingredients)

-1.2-ounce bag freeze-dried raspberries (bought at Trader Joe's. Freeze-dried pineapple from Target or other dry versions of fruits in ambrosia also work.)

-1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla, to give a marshmallow flavor

-8 cups loosely packed sweetened flaked coconut (about 1 1/3 bags using a 14-ounce package or just under 3 bags of 7-ounce packages)  mix with dry unsweetened coconut to make less sweet. 

-Optional ingredient: 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Position rack(s) in center of oven; preheat to 325°F. If your oven runs hot, consider setting oven between 300 and 325°F. Line rimmed baking sheets with parchment or silicone pads*. Using electric mixer-preferred, but not necessary, beat butter and coconut fat in large bowl until smooth. Add sugar and salt; beat until blended. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Mix in flavoring, dried fruit, soaked orange peel, then coconut. Drop batter onto sheets by tablespoonfuls, spacing 1 1/2 inches apart.

Bake macaroons until very light brown-almost the color of caramel-on bottom and browned in spots, 25 to 30 minutes. They need to be light brown on the bottom, or they will tend to fall apart. Make sure to switch position of macaroons halfway through if using two racks. Watch very carefully using an oven light if you have one. These can go from golden to burnt dark brown in an instant!!! Cool completely on parchment or silicone before transferring.

*If you don't have silicone pads or parchment paper, try to following: Butter a baking sheet, then line with foil and lightly butter and flour foil, knocking off excess flour. Read more about this tip.


Photo: Romulo Yanes