Eats

The Spanish do many things very well. They can produce delicious things with garlic, they can roll their Rs in pleasing ways and they clap very fast without getting tired (at least the flamenco performers can). One thing that they cannot do well, however, (at least in my culturally biased opinion) is make tasty sweet treats. I blame lard. They use way too much of it.

As for real honest-to-goodness American style desserts, they are few and far between. There are a few places that have decent brownies but otherwise, the pickings are slim. Recently I noticed a new American bakery that has opened up in Malasaña. Yes, a good ten years after it began in the USA, the cupcake craze has finally hit Madrid. The Happy Day Bakery is decorated with boxes of cake mix, jars of peanut butter and other "typical" American products, a design scheme that led one Spanish fan to exclaim that "the decoration is like a fairy tale." None of my Spanish friends get why I think this is funny. Anyway, the cupcakes at Happy Day don't really do it for me unfortunately. The cakes are usually too dry and the frosting too fluffy and insubstantial.

The good news is that I recently discovered Lateral in Plaza Santa Ana  which has divine lemon meringue pie made in true American-style. The bad news is that we move to Barcelona in one week so I'll have to start all over again in my search for good desserts in the country of Spain. Wish me luck!

Recently Cooking

-German Chocolate Brownies. These are lovely except that the recipe should definitely be doubled. Also the topping was too dry. For the second batch, I used the coconut-pecan filling recipe from this site instead.

-Mint Chocolate Brownies. I used this recipe but added 1/2 teaspoon mint extract and half a bag of chocolate chips (mint flavored if you can find them) to the batter. Once cooled, I frosted them using the following recipe:

Beat 1 cup (227 grams) powdered sugar (icing sugar) with 2 tablespoons (29 grams) soft butter. Add 2 tablespoons milk and 1/4 teaspoon peppermint/mint extract and beat until smooth.

-Chicken Tikka Masala from The Pioneer Woman Cooks. This was absolutely DIVINE!

-Spaghetti with Meatballs also from The Pioneer Woman. Good but not great.

Recently Reading

-The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott

-Over Here by Raymond Seitz

-Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas