City Reliquary Praises The Doughnut

City Reliquary, a small museum in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is currently dedicating its exhibit room to New York City's relationship to the doughnut.

Titled "Keep Your Eye Upon The Doughnut," the exhibit relies on the impressive collection of a dedicated doughnut fan, Julie Thompson, a former Brooklyner. New York's first doughnut shop was in Manhattan near Maiden Lane. It opened in 1673 and was owned by Anna Jorlaemon. A Dunkin Donuts is very close to that intersection now.

Among the historical highlights: hot doughnuts were served to immigrants upon their arrival to Ellis Island, the significance of doughnuts on the WWII war effort, and the expansion of Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme. The Donut Creed, which inspired the exhibit's title, and ephemera from current and past doughnut slingers are also on display.

Obviously, this was my favorite item:

The Doughnut Corp of America was based in Ellicott City. In 1945 it received an award from the War Food Administration for its "splendid record in supplying donut mix to the armed forces, allies, and home front workers." How would growing up in Maryland have changed if doughnuts had been as important to America in the early 2000s as they were in the '40s?

Nine New York City shops are profiled in the exhibit: Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop, Doughnut Plant, Mike’s Donuts & Coffee, The Donut Pub, Doughnuttery, Dun-Well Doughnuts, Shaikh’s Donuts, Dough, and Carpe Donut NYC. I made it to two on Tuesday.


The Donut Pub is in front of the 14th Street 1, 2, and 3 train. I've passed it dozens of times, wondered what was inside, and kept going. (Which, admittedly, is out of character.) As my friend and I finished our shared doughnut, we heard a pair enter saying the same thing: "I always pass but never come in." So at least we weren't alone.


The Donut Pub is open 24 hours a day. We shared a plain, old fashioned. It was the best old fashioned doughnut I'd ever had, and I usually hate cake doughnuts. You have my heart, Donut Pub.


We also went to The Doughnuttery, located in the Chelsea Market. The Doughnuttery serves miniature doughnuts, and ours were made to order. The minimum order is six, but we were allowed two flavors, where are served via sugar. (We chose gingerbread and potato maple bacon.)


The doughnuts were good, but a little doughy. At $1 each, and a $6 minimum, they're out of my price range.

When the holidays have passed, I hope to visit Shaikh's.

The City Reliquary exhibit closes in February.

Chocolate Mint Christmas Cream Cookies

My office hosts an (unofficial) Cookie Day every year during the holiday season. This was the first year I was able to participate, so I wanted to make a cookie that would make a great presentation and impress my co-workers. So I went with a chocolate cookie with pastel buttermints.

What's great about this recipe is that is requires ingredients you might already have in your pantry: chocolate chips, brown sugar, butter, and flour. It doesn't require extract, and you don't need to soften the butter. The only ingredient you need to go out and buy is the bag of  buttermints. However, it's possible to use an alternative, because any candy or treat will work with this recipe. (Pastel candies look best, of course.)

The cookies take four minutes to bake. You can whip through the pans in no time, making this a great last minute Christmas cookie.

I had my mom e-mail me the recipe. I've copy and pasted her e-mail here:


Chocolate Mint Christmas Cream Cookies

Here is your recipe:

1  1/4  cup all purpose flour

1/2  tsp. baking soda

2/3  cup packed brown sugar

6  TBL  butter

1  TBL  water

1  6 ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips----1 cup

1  egg

1/2 to 3/4 pound pastel cream mint wafers or kisses

Stir together the flour and baking soda.  In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.  Add the water and the brown sugar, then melt in the chips, stirring mixture until chips are melted.  Do this over LOW HEAT, so as not to burn the mixture.  Remove from heat, pour into a mixing bowl, and cool--approximately 15 minutes.  When cool, beat the egg into the mixture.  Stir in flour mixture till well blended.  Dough will be soft.  Cover and chill for 2 hours or till easy to roll into balls.  (I tend to chill dough overnight.)

Shape into 1 inch balls.  Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cooky sheet.  Bake at 350 degrees about 6 minutes.  This will depend on your oven.  You will want the cookies to be set but not hard.  If using a non stick pan, this baking time will be shorter.  Remove from the oven and immediately top with the mint buttermint wafer or kiss.  Let sit a moment and then swirl with a knife to "frost" the cookies. 

Sometimes it is necessary to return the pan to the oven to help melt the mint topping, but I tend to not do that.  If you opt for that method, be sure not to overbake the cookies.  Also, I do not always "ice" the cookies--sometimes I decide they look pretty without spreading the mint, though if you do spread it, you get mint in every bite of cookie.  You will have to decide.  This mints can be purchased at the Hickory Farms Christmas stand or some specialty stores.  Sometimes I get pastel mints from The Candy Kitchen, and sometimes, if we do not have them that year, I get the white kisses with green and red sprinkles from Hickory Farms.

This recipe is from my Better Homes And Gardens Cookies For Christmas cookbook that Aunt Renee and I both received from Grandma Genny for St. Nicholas Day in 1988.  One day while walking through the Kirkwood Mall, Grandma saw a table outside Montgomery Wards which had been set up to sign up people for a Montgomery Wards charge card.  If you signed up, you received a free cookbook.  Grandma Genny really wanted these books, so she signed up for a card.  She then insisted Grandpa John also sign up for a card so Aunt Renee and I could both have a book.  Grandpa John hated Montgomery Wards and did not want their charge card, but Grandma insisted, so he did, we got the books, and they never used their cards. 

Love, MOM

A Day at Brooklyn Flea

I went to Brooklyn Flea last month, and though the Saturday (and Sunday) afternoon event is for shopping, the Flea offers a dreamy smorgasbord. A person go for food alone and leave satisfied.

My intention that Saturday was to try a lobster roll from Red Hook Lobster Pound (they also have a truck in DC), but faced with so many options, I ended up vowing to eat my clandestine lobster roll on another day.





My first treat was a chocolate egg cream from Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain. I had planned to get an egg cream before my lobster roll anyway, so at this point, I was still on track. The egg cream was $4. It was probably the best egg cream I've ever had (and I've had my share of egg creams).  The set up at the booth a little awkward—there were four people behind the counter (three were employees), but only one person capable of serving beverages. Everyone was pleasant, however, so a few minutes of awkward waiting was worth it.






Serving the drink with a pretzel rod is the traditional way of serving the drink. You're supposed to stir the soda with the pretzel, but I was too busy slurping to follow protocol.

You can visit Farmacy in Brooklyn at 513 Henry St. If Red Hook Lobster Pound wasn't already in an ice cream factory on Thursdays, I'd go there after I got my roll. Oh, New York, why do you present these difficult decisions?






It was in line for the lobster roll that I jumped ship on my plan. (I hadn't remember an ice pack for leftovers, so this wasn't the worst thing that could happen.) I turned and saw Porchetta behind me and realized it was time for a new plan.

I've wanted to try porchetta for more than a year, ever since the pork's introduction from The Amateur Gourmet. (Getting my mom to let me make it has been a bit of a struggle.)






The sandwich was an affordable $5. The sandwich was moist and delicious, and just perfect for my needs. (Peckish but otherwise not hungry.) There was plenty of meat:





I'd happily go back for more. Eaters with a larger appetite might need more than one sandwich, and getting a larger portion at the restaurant doesn't look like a problem.

Porchetta is located at 110 E. 7th St. A sandwich there is $10.





I finished my gastro tour with a bittersweet chocolate milkshake from Milk Truck. I was unaware of Milk Truck's reputation before the market. I was drawn only because I heard another young woman murmur, "Ooh, milkshakes!"

Yes, I thought, a milkshake is always a great idea.

It totally was. It was an expensive milkshake at $6.50, but it's also the best milkshake I've ever had, and I'm a certified expert.

Milk Truck offered a berry shake, a vanilla shake, and a bittersweet chocolate shake. I opted for chocolate. It was a long wait, because Milk Truck is wildly popular. (The booth also serves gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.)

Many customers waited behind the booth, in an eating area, to get their food. I waited in the back too, because it gave me a view of the behind-the-scenes:





When my milkshake was ready, I popped up, grabbed my shake, and left. I slurped it all the way to Target, and now that I'm writing about it, I'd like some more.

You can only visit Milk Truck at the flea markets, every Saturday and Sunday. You can read more about that here.

250 Classic Cake Recipes

In addition to going home with the marachino cake recipe featured last week, our family friend lent us a booklet titled 250 Classic Cake Recipes. Published in 1954 by the Culinary Arts Institute, and edited by Ruth Berolzheimer (then director of the Institute), the booklet features "Successful Cakes", spongecakes, budget cakes, chocolate cakes, white cakes, party cake, angel food cakes, "cakes with fruit", "cakes in general", upside-down cakes, fruit cakes, and fillings and frostings.

I scanned a few pages for my archives, and again look forward to sharing those pages with you.

First, advice and general information from the booklet:

I scanned these pages for the Lady Baltimore cake. Look at the fantastic photograph on the right!

And I made sure to get the rolled cakes. Our friend seems to have referenced these pages often, so I think this was probably a good decision.

The reason we borrower 250 Classic Cake Recipes was so my mom could have a copy of the burnt sugar cake. My grandmother made a great burnt sugar cake (she had to burn the sugar twice before she could make the cake), and we thought this recipe might be similar. (If it sounds like we don't have any of my grandmother's recipes, that's not the case! We do.)

I thought it might be a good idea to snag the caramel icing recipe.

Same thought for the divinity icing recipe. I don't like seven minute icing (too tacky) but my family likes it.

 The book provides very little commentary, so I think the caption above (These funny little figures will be welcome at any party) is fairly pleasant.

Marachino Cherry Cake

My mom's tenth birthday cake was a maraschino cherry cake. She made the cake for my birthday one year, in a time where everyone saved his or her files on floppy disks. The recipe has been lost, and there has been much to-do and hand ringing as a result.

We visited a family friend in late August. Mom asked if she remembered the cake from her tenth birthday, and our friend stood up, walked to her kitchen, and procured the recipe above. We made the cake, and my mom thinks this is the recipe. We used Crisco instead of Spry, and my mom thinks she'll use butter next time. (There's a difference between butter and vegetable shortening, but my mom thinks her mother used butter.)




Spry, by the way, was a vegetable shortening introduced in the mid-1930s and phased out by the 1960s. (Wikipedia says 1950s, but that would make this recipe ineligible for my mom's birthday, and she's certain Spry was used.) I stray from recipes requiring shortening (or lard and sometimes even vegetable oil), so I'm not sure what to do here.

Alternatively, I could buy Spry from Cyprus, where it is available. (Manufactured for Unilever!) Surely the Internet could come through for that.

I Need Ice with Syrup, Please

I went to a monster truck show last month (detailed here, if you're curious), and the grand stands were full of small children slurping snow cones (there was a heat wave). We really wanted a snowball, and they looked especially attractive in commemorative light up cups and mugs.

...Unfortunately, the snow balls were $10. Eventually I vowed to get one anyway (I really wanted that mug, too), but the mugs never appeared, and we went home without snow balls.

Frederick County, Maryland is not the snow ball haven Baltimore is. In Baltimore, there's practically a hut, truck, shop, or stand on every corner. (If you've ever been to Oregon, snow balls are to Baltimore what coffee is to Oregon, minus the drive through lanes.) In Charm City, it's always a sno-ball, never a snow cone, and there's often marshmallow pumped on top of the product. Henry Hong for City Paper explained the importance of a sno-ball in Baltimore's culture in 2009, and how they're served:

The shaved ice made for effortless consumption and better syrup retention (and more in line with the "sno" part of the term), and the Styrofoam cup it was served in was more durable, better insulating, and more voluminous than a paper cone. Other advancements included utensils--a spoon straw (to handle the initial solid and final liquid phases), and toppings, namely marshmallow and chocolate syrup.

He also describes the snow cone of my childhood, which is what I really desired:

My first such icy treat was the Good Humor Snow Cone. Kids from the '80s will recall that it was crushed ice flavored in bands of blue raspberry, lemon, and cherry, in a leaky wax-paper cone. So the "cone" part made sense, but "snow" not so much--the exposed dome of already crunchy ice particles invariably hardened into a tooth-rattling, syrup-less barrier. Chiseling down to the money zone--within the cone, where the syrup mingled with melting ice--took actual work, delaying gratification. Plus, the flimsy paper always fell apart, resulting in precious syrup lost down one's arm, or worse, irretrievably to the pavement.

Any colored ice reminds me of the tri-colored cone, and it reminds me of the National Zoo and its sizzling heat. The National Zoo always seemed like the hottest place in Washington, DC when I was little, and though I'm not sure I ever had a snow cone at the zoo more than once, the two are forever entwined in memory.





The difference between the two products almost doesn't matter now, because retrieving either product in Frederick is nearly impossible. Frederick has a Rita's, but it's not the same, and Frederick has plenty of ice cream shops, but Frederick has nary an authentic sno-ball stand or snow cone hut. My rural town has a shaved ice truck, but the chipped ice swims in a sweetly sick pool of sugar water, and I knew my nostalgic dreams would be crushed under a poor imitation.

Which isn't to say I wasn't willing to settle for something.  Plus, at some point, I'll have to let go of Baltimore. Luckily, Beef N Buns N Paradise, which serves not only burgers, but also ice cream, shakes, ice cream pies, sandwiches, and sno-cones.

In this tropical-themed establishment, sno-cones (also called "penguin ice") are shaved ice and flavoring in a Styrofoam cup. I ordered a cherry ice, and my mom ordered a lime ice. We asked the woman behind the counter which flavor was the most popular, and she said all flavors were the most popular, with a variety of flavor combinations. Post-consumption, I realize this friendly, year-round establishment would probably pump toppings, too.





Beef N Buns is one of the few places in town for ice 'n' syrup. A Google search yielded only Beef N Buns, and the establishment said many people are returning because their options are limited!

If I return for marshmallow, I'll let you know.

Rice to Riches

In addition to my clandestine visit to the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck last month, I was presented with the momentous opportunity to try rice pudding. I grew up in a house that would only consider instant pudding, served cold, or add to a cake mix '70s style. (So that means I've never had bread pudding, either! I bet it's delicious but I'm too scared to find out. What if everyone is right?) This is all a shame, because now that I've visited Rice to Riches in Nolita, I realize I've squandered the last 24 years, because I love rice pudding.



Located at 37 Spring Street, between Mott and Mulberry Streets, and very close to Lombardi's, Rice to Riches mimics the frozen yogurt craze with a bright, friendly interior, multiple flavors of a product, and many toppings.

I arrived just before 11 a.m., when Rice to Riches is scheduled to open (oops!), and saw only a few flavors. (I was puzzled, but I understand now.) This made it easier for me to make a decision, given my predilection to struggle with choosing flavors (or places to eat—never ask me to pick where we're eating dinner). Of the flavors, I can confirm I saw Cinnamon Sling with Raisins, Category 5 Caramel, and Hazelnut Chocolate Bear Hug.

I politely asked for a taste of the Hazelnut Chocolate and was instantly smitten. The pudding if soft, smooth, and light. The rice is also smooth—I hate having chunky items in my food, but the rice did not stand out or provide a weird texture.

Choosing a topping was more difficult. I felt inclined to order something, because the signs in the store strongly encourage conformity. The woman behind the counter recommended mixed nuts, but I chose toasted coconut.

A single serving (SOLO) is $6.95. Sizes increase dramatically, and all sizes are available for local delivery. A five serving, 40 ounce SUMO is available for overnight delivery for $55. (I'm seriously considering placing an order.) My single serving was huge. I couldn't possibly eat all of it, and ended up throwing the rest out (because I couldn't bring myself to throw out the container).



The problem now, of course, is that I don't know where to find chocolate hazelnut rice pudding in Maryland or DC to tide myself over until I'm ready to order.