It took me years and years of cooking and canning with inadequate measuring utensils and obsolete recipes to memorize how many teaspoons are in an ounce (which is 1/8 of a cup). All that would have been easier with this handy conversion chart from S.B. Lattin Design. Print yours out and hang it on the inside of the cabinet door where you keep your baking supplies. Link -via mental floss
Jackie, the Beeroness, is a master of cooking with beer. She made biscotti with cocoa, espresso powder (which apparently exists) and a chocolate stout. You can find her full recipe at the link.
Link -via Tasteologie
The latest Hank Green video from mental_floss is a quiz about cereal. If you've been reading the articles at Neatorama over the past few years, you should know the answer to every question. Because we've already told them to you!
Crumbs Bake Shop says that it serves 6-8 people, but I think that's 6-8 unambitious people. No, I won't need your help to finish it. Step back and watch me work.
You can tell that Vinnie's Pizza in Brooklyn, New York, is a classy joint just by looking at its daily specials. Co-owner Sean Berthiaume's Special Bored tumblr documents the pop culture-inspired menu: Link - via Pleated Jeans
They're on a Game of Thrones kick right now, but rest assured that other pop culture references aren't neglected.
In Italy, the custom of celebrating Easter with eggs and candy has evolved into the custom of giving gifts tucked inside chocolate eggs. There are mass-produced chocolate eggs with treats inside for children, and beautiful artisanal eggs made by chocolatiers, that are either wrapped in fancy paper and ribbons, or decorated with intricate edible art right on the chocolate. And the gifts can be customized.
In mass-produced eggs, the hidden prize is often a simple trinket, such as a key chain. But artisanal chocolatiers also abound — and many will make customized eggs for clients with a personalized gift hidden within. And the gift-giving can get quite elaborate.
"Engagement rings and car keys are typical gifts," says Maurizio Proietti, a second-generation chocolate maker and owner of Rome's La Bottega del Cioccolato, naming some of the gifts he's been asked to conceal. "Two tickets to a tropical island — that was something unusual."
The surprise inside, adds Minchilli, depends on whom it's for. "A typical gift would be a charm for a necklace or bracelet," she tells The Salt. "But if it's for your wife, you might get a very small egg with gold earrings inside. A child might get a small toy."
Read about the chocolate eggs of Italy at NPR. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user blese)
Photo: Kathleen Reckling
It's almost Easter, so you know what this means: seal flipper pie! This local delicacy is a must if you live in Newfoundland:
The meal, which originated in the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, tastes as strange as it sounds. The meat is dark, tough, gamey and apparently has a flavor similar to that of hare (appropriate for America’s favorite Easter mascot, no?). Most recipes suggest that the seal meat is coated in flour, pan-fried and then roasted with onions, pork fat and root vegetables like carrots, turnips, potatoes and parsnips. Once the dish has a nice, flaky crust, it is often served with a side of Worcestershire sauce.
K. Annabelle Smith of the Smithsonian Magazine has more on this curious culinary tradition: Link
You can build an oven that cooks up to 200°F with a pizza box, tape, plastic wrap and aluminum foil. First, cut a flap into the lid of the pizza box. Cover the lid and the bottom of the box with aluminum foil. Seal your food inside the pizza box with plastic wrap and tape to create an airtight compartment. Finally, place the oven in direct sunlight.
Cadbury creme eggs--they're nature's perfect food! Once you pull them out from under the hen, you can scramble them, deep fry them or bake them inside cupcakes. Jessie Oleson added frosting and sliced cake donuts to make an Eggs Benedict version. You can find her recipe at the link.
I have a 50-year-old box of vanilla extract that I keep around for the novelty and the vintage package design. I don't know what the bottle looks like because I've never opened the box. But that vanilla is downright fresh compared to some unearthed foodstuffs studied by archaeologists. Can you imagine a bowl of soup 2,400 years old?
While excavating to make way for a new airport, Chinese workers struck liquid gold. Well, liquid gold if you happen to be an archeologist. Or really into soup. The soup, sealed so tightly in its bronze cooking pot that it was still in a liquid state, was discovered in a tomb near Xian. It didn’t look too savory, having turned green from 2400 years of bronze oxidation. It also still contained bones, which delighted archeologists, probably because they didn’t actually have to eat it.
That's one. There are six other examples of food surviving a very long time in a recognizable form (even if only after testing) at mental_floss. Link
A post at Cake Wrecks featuring the pictured cake of a lamb with a cigarette in its mouth led me to a previous collection of such cakes, which led to a post about the possible meaning of what appears to be a tradition, although not common enough to be well documented. Lamb cakes are baked for both Passover and Easter, and sometimes for a Catholic child's First Communion. The blog Romantoes gathered several theories from commenters.
* It's Joe Camel.
* The lamb is smoking to signify the end of Lent, and the enjoyment of vices one might have given up for Lent, such as smoking.
* The cigarette is supposed to represent a paintbrush, and is colored on the end to suggest the lamb's blood that was used to paint door frames during the original Pesach.
* What looks like a cigarette is actually a scroll, and is in the lamb's mouth to illustrate a passage from Revelations: "Then I saw, between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. The Lamb went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne."
I looked around at forums that discussed the matter, but no one knew with authority what the "cigarette" meant. However, a few people mentioned that they had seen such lambs for sale at Jewish delis, which leads me to think the third explanation may be the one. Link
(Image source: Cake Wrecks)
Scotch eggs are boiled eggs covered in sausage and breadcrumbs and then fried. This recipe is not that at all -it just looks like a Scotch egg. It's a sweet treat consisting of a Cadbury creme egg covered with a sweet batter and rolled in cookie crumbs. Sweet all the way through! Get the complete recipe at CakeSpy. Link -via Laughing Squid
Bwahaha! Jill's delightfully mischievous prank is one I'll have to remember. Her April Fools Dunkin Phonuts will get bring joy to anyone's heart right up to the very first bite. The frosting isn't sugar, but mashed potatoes and cream cheese. The donuts aren't made of dough, but an onion and pepper meatloaf.
Victoria Belanger's jello eggs look like Cadbury creme eggs, but they're actually made with Irish cream and cocoa powder. You can find her recipe at the link. I suggest serving them alongside the real thing.
Link -via Tasteologie
