It's Not Easy Being Green

The other day someone said to me, "Your shoes are green. Just like Kermit the Frog." And I replied, "Hey, it's not easy, you know."

But that person was right; my shoes are indeed green -- and a rather Kermity shade of green, at that.

You know what else is green? Pistachios.

They also make an excellent ingredient in double-chocolate biscotti. Maybe it's not so difficult being green, after all...

Balls.

Ya heard me: balls. That's today's theme. Mostly just because the other day my husband made meatballs for dinner, and I followed up with cake balls for dessert. All the balls were scrumptious.

Let's start with dinner: Turkey Sriracha Meatballs (thanks for the inspiration, Marni!). Turkey meatballs range anywhere from amazing to horrendous, depending on what you do to them. Luckily, these were on the "amazing" end of the spectrum. They were a delightful blend of ground turkey, ginger, onions, scallions, and sriracha (of course). Yum.

 

 

They were browned to perfection -- crisp on the outside and still juicy inside (They were not burnt at all, I promise that's just my camera! The colors are off). And they taste great with a little marinara and a side of asparagus.

So, inspired by these bite-sized morsels, I decided to make Cake Balls. The first time I made a cake ball was at my in-laws' house in Vermont. I used boxed red velvet cake mix and a can of prepared icing, and coated them in melted semi-sweet morsels. They were dreamy.

But, this being a baking blog, I wanted to try to make the cake and frosting from scratch. (If you're considering doing the same, I will tell you not to bother. Just use the mix! Both version are equally tasty, so save yourself the trouble and grab a box of Funfetti).  Luckily, I happen to love using my Kitchenaid stand mixer, so this was a great project for me!

Nothin' Sour About It

Yesterday I went to a baby shower, for which the host requested that guests bring brunch food.  Instead of making breakfast cookies (What? That's a real thing.), I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out a traditional Sour Cream Coffee Cake.  Originally I was going to make this King Arthur Flour recipe, but then I remembered that the cookbook I'd recently acquired also had a sour cream coffee cake recipe. The two are actually quite similar, so I did some picking and choosing from each and came up with what I think was a lovely little immense cake. [Note: I will use the terms "coffee cake" and "crumb cake" interchangeably in this post, since I don't really know what the difference is.]

So it turns out that coffee cakes are a lot of work. And I definitely have a newfound respect for William Entenmann (real guy!) because he made a lot of crumb cakes back in the day. I also just learned from the Entenmann's website that his first bakery was in Brooklyn, NY. (Represent!)

Back to the cake. First, you need make the Crumb Topping (also known as the cinnamon streusel) and set that aside. In my opinion, a good crumb topping has lots of brown sugar, a little cinnamon, lots of butter, a tiny bit of salt -- and no nuts (not everything needs to have nuts in it!). So that's what I made: my ideal crumb topping.  It is, after all, the best part of the cake, isn't it? It should look something like this:

Mmm, crumbly goodness.