Minty Chocolate Malt Cake

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A load of crushed candy canes top this ultra minty chocolate malt cake that's a cinch to make.
A load of crushed candy canes top this ultra minty chocolate malt cake that’s a cinch to make.

Not one, not two, but three mints in one.

Forgive the play on the old Certs jingle (if you’re old enough to remember that), but this cake fairly leaves me breathless in its minty majesty.

“Minty Chocolate Malt Cake” is from the new cookbook, “Snacking Cakes: Simple Treats for Anytime Cravings” (Clarkson Potter), of which I received a review copy. It’s by Yossy Arefi, a fabulous food photographer and cookbook writer, who created the blog, Apt. 2B Baking Co.

These 50 recipes are the types of cakes we all love to bake — single-layered, simply adorned, easy enough to whip up on the spur of the moment, and perfect for any occasion.

Get ready to enjoy everything from “Grapefruit White Chocolate Cake” and “Salty Caramel Peanut Butter Cake” to “Chocolate-Orange Beet Cake” and “Sticky Whiskey Date Cake.”

Best yet, with each recipe, Arefi includes notes on how to bake the particular cake in other pans (loaf, round, sheet, square), if you so prefer.

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Where I’ve Been Getting Takeout of Late, Part 15

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Tan Tan noodles from Chili House. Underneath is a layer of red chili oil to mix in.
Tan Tan noodles from Chili House. Underneath is a layer of red chili oil to mix in.

Chili House, San Francisco

Some like it hot. And if they do, they head to Chili House in San Francisco’s Richmond District for Sichuan and Beijing specialties, most of which will make you feel the burn — in an albeit delectable way.

You know what you’re in for when you see menu items such as “Pork Chop with Explosive Chili Pepper.” Even so, when I was invited by the restaurant to try some of its dishes for takeout, I was game — and at the ready with a yogurt drink to douse the flames, just in case.

Chef-Owner Li Jun Han cooked for two Chinese presidents before immigrating to the Bay Area to open Chili House, as well as Z&Y Restaurant in Chinatown.

Beijing-style pot stickers.
Beijing-style pot stickers.

The Beijing pot stickers (4 for $7.95) are not the usual half-moon shaped ones you’re familiar with. Instead, these are long and slender wrappers rolled around a pork filling. You could even pick them up with your fingers to dunk into the accompanying black vinegar-soy sauce.

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Baking Brown-Butter Crinkle Cookies With My New Helper

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Baking Martha Stewart's Brown-Butter Crinkle Cookies with The Tiny Chef.
Baking Martha Stewart’s Brown-Butter Crinkle Cookies with The Tiny Chef.

Everyone needs a sous chef in their life, right?

Meet mine.

He may be small, but he’s big on heart. He sure knows his way around a kitchen, too. He’s even eaten at Alinea before I have! So jelly.

Yes, I’ve joined the cult of The Tiny Chef. If you’re not yet acquainted with this little culinary cutie who just loves to cook at his teeny stove with button-burners and quench his thirst from a sewing-thimble cup, then you are missing out. Press his tummy, and he even talks. How could I resist? I call him an early Christmas present to myself. Given this crazy year, I’m pretty sure I deserve him, too.

Chef has a sweet tooth just like me. So, of course, the first thing we had to make together were cookies.

He started leafing through a copy of the new “Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection” (Clarkson Potter), of which I received a review copy. He took his time pouring over the more than 100 recipes for treats such as “Chocolate Mint Wafers,” “Pumpkin Snickerdoodles,” “Iranian Rice Cookies,” and “Pink Lemonade Thumbprints.”

In the end, he settled on “Brown-Butter Crinkle Cookies.” I think it’s because he loves butter. I also think it’s because these cookies get especially pretty crinkly surfaces because the dough balls are first rolled in granulated sugar, then in confectioners’ sugar.

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California-Made Holiday Treats

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The treasure trove of Bay Area-made products in the large holiday box designed by Farm Box. (Basket not included.)
The treasure trove of Bay Area-made products in the large holiday box designed by Farm Box. (Basket not included.)

Farm Box Holiday Gift Box

Imagine a goodie box stuffed with 15 delightfuly pampering products all made by Bay Area artisans. Who wouldn’t want to get spoiled with that?

Farm Box, a local company started during this ever-challenging year to help promote products from small family farms, has created the perfect holiday gift box — for your family, friends or even yourself — that can be delivered anywhere in the United States. Best yet, it helps support small local producers at a time when they could use a hand.

Farm Box co-founder Andreas Winsberg, whose father founded East Palo Alto’s Happy Quail Farms, sent me a sample box gratis to check out. Each box includes an extra special touch: a pretty painted card designed by his grandmother. Mine depicted the Golden Gate Bridge.

The filled-to-the-brim box in the large size ($129.99) includes: Nana Joes granola, Maison Verbena rose soap bar, Yerba Buena Tea Co.’s lemon-ginger-mint herbal tea, a Cache Creek Lavender sachet, Winters Fruit Tree’s applewood smoked almonds, Marshall Farms’ cute little baby honey bear, Eatwell Farm’s massage balm, Maison Verbena grapefruit soy candle with a cute little glass jar of matches, G.L. Alfieri dark chocolate and sea salt almond brittle, Charlotte Truffles’ fun Gourmet Hot Cocoa Stick, O’Live Healthy’s extra virgin olive oil, Kuhlmann’s Kitchen’s gourmet pepper jam, Llano Seco’s Chinese five spice salami, Dirty Girl Produce strawberry jam, and Cache Creek Lavender’s shea body butter.

The holiday box includes a sweet card painted by co-founder Andreas Winsberg's grandmother.
The holiday box includes a sweet card painted by co-founder Andreas Winsberg’s grandmother.

For less expensive options, a medium-sized holiday gift box is available for $79.99, and a small-sized one for $49.99.

Mad Crisp

How mad am I for Mad Crisp? These cocktail crisps are so addictive, you practically have to pry them from my fingers to make me share them.

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For Your Reading Pleasure

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“An Onion In My Pocket”

You might think a memoir by the founding chef of San Francisco’s pioneering vegetarian restaurant, Greens, might be too didactic or preachy to take if you’re an avowed meat eater.

The surprise is that it’s not in the least. “An Onion in My Pocket: My Life with Vegetables” (Alfred A. Knopf) by Deborah Madison is a delightful read with evocative prose that envelopes all the senses.

When it comes to what you eat and cook, Madison is far from rigid. In fact, she has eaten meat — and still does — occasionally. It’s just that she most often finds vegetables more interesting.

She came to develop a vegetable-centric palate after becoming enthralled listening to a radio program on Buddhism while growing up. It led to her fascinating journey in becoming an ordained Buddhist priest, and to forming the foundation for arguably the first significant vegetarian restaurant in the country. She set the bar early, eschewing the drab and flavorless vegetarian cooking of the time such as lentil loaves in favor of bold and beautiful dishes of her own creation. In the process, she introduced the world to what vegetarian cooking could and ought to be.

“The French Laundry, Per Se”

Let me just state from the get-go: It’s good bet that I’ll never cook anything from the new “The French Laundry, Per Se” (Artisan). Not when the forward in this book even states that the recipes are even more challenging and complex than those in “The French Laundry Cookbook,” which came out in 1999.

But just because you won’t necessarily be tempted to recreate one of the more than 70 recipes doesn’t mean you won’t find this latest book by chef-proprietor Thomas Keller deeply fascinating.

As the name implies, this lavish coffee-table-sized book showcases the synergy between his two Michelin three-starred restaurants, The French Laundry in Yountville, and Per Se in Manhattan.

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