coffee Archives | The Vanilla Bean Blog

Espresso Bundt Cake

Sarah Kieffer — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 17:57:55 +0000

There has been a slight chill in the air the past week – so naturally I found myself in the kitchen baking bundt cakes. I used to make an Espresso Bundt Cake back in my bakery days, but I found the recipe slightly lacking and dry when remaking it in my home kitchen. I decided to revamp my Lemon Poppy Seed Bundt Cake, and was very happy with the results. This cake is buttery and rich, with coffee flavor from both ground and brewed espresso, and, of course, one can never go wrong with chocolate glazed anything. ****************************** A few things *I’ve been reading up a storm the last few weeks, trying to get all my summer books in. I just finished Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple and Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Before that it was Leave it to Psmith by Wodehouse (which just might be my favorite Blandings Castle Wodehouse) and I just started The Women’s War by Dumas. *I got to see Over The Rhine perform last week, which was (and always is) amazing. They played a lot of songs from their new album, but also some favorite classics. The highlight of the evening […]

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Coffee Caramel Ice Cream Pie

Sarah Kieffer — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 15:42:37 +0000

This just might be a perfect summer dessert: a chocolate cookie crust, no-churn (and so easy!) coffee ice cream, with a topping of caramel whipped cream and candied cacao nibs. The crust and ice cream base can be put together a day or two in advance, which also comes in handy. If you aren’t into the candied cacao nibs, crushed chocolate covered espresso beans would also be delicious here. A few things: *The Coffee-Caramel combination on my ice cream cake is inspired by this Ice Box Cake over on ZoeBakes. *My summer reading has been fluctuating between Wodehouse (the Jeeves series) and the French Revolution, which has been an odd but interesting combination. I’m currently in the middle of the Twelve Who Ruled, which is a fascinating look at the Committee of Public Safety and their role in the Reign of Terror. *We recently splurged on an outdoor projector, so we could take our family movie nights outside this summer. We’ve just been projecting it onto our garage door, which works just fine! We’ve been showing our kids a bunch of our favorite movies from the late 80’s/early 90’s, and we’ve made it through Goonies, UHF, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, […]

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Dunn Brothers Coffee

Sarah Kieffer — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 06:01:40 +0000

**This post is sponsored by Dunn Brothers Coffee. As usual, all opinions are my own.** Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup. – Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings Spending time at a coffeehouse for hours on end has been a huge part of my life. My first introduction was at age eighteen; my friend Laurie picked me up in her sparkly white Saturn and drove me out of the suburbs into South Minneapolis, where we sunk into beat-up old couches in a grungy-but-rad neighborhood shop, sipping granitas. It was a smoke-riddled, Johnny Cash playing-by-day, Sound Garden-playing-by-night kind of place, where the locals sat around talking, chain-smoking, and drinking java until they were kindly kicked out each night. I was instantly hooked. Sure, I drank some kind of slushy, sugary brew that made the coffee go down easier, but I loved tucking away in a corner and studying all afternoon during the […]

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Granita di Caffe

Sarah Kieffer — Sun, 03 Apr 2016 22:55:55 +0000

I spent several summers in my almost 20’s frequenting Java Jack’s in South Minneapolis. It was a late-night, chain-smoking, Soundgarden-cranking coffee hangout, an odd choice for an early-morning, non-smoking, Sarah McLachlan-loving woman. But my sister and I drove there every single night after we closed down the shopping mall coffee shop we worked at, and spent our evenings out on the patio slurping down granitas with the regulars. They weren’t real granitas, of course, just some sugary coffee spinning around all day in a worn-out slushy machine, but I drank more of them then I could ever count, and enjoyed every single drop. So when I got a copy of Tasting Rome in the mail (Katie Parla and Kristina Gill’s beautiful new book that focuses on both traditional and contemporary recipes from their lives in Rome) and flipped open to find a recipe for a real granita, I got to work right away making it. Strong, cold coffee, a bit of sugar, and whipped cream piled to the sky is a bit more sophisticated than the concoction I drank on those hot summer nights years ago. Both have their place, but I’m looking forward to warm afternoons on the back […]

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Mocha Oatmeal

Sarah Kieffer — Wed, 13 Jan 2016 14:42:11 +0000

This post is in partnership with The Quaker Oats Company. January is often a time of reflection and change, and after spending the past 15 months baking my little heart out for my cookbook and buying and consuming more butter than I ever thought possible, it’s time to pay attention to the foods I’m eating. I’ve always been terrible with moderation; I usually cut all sweets and fat out of my life for a determined amount of time and then find myself slowly back on sugar train, in a never-ending circle of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ eating. There is a place for a variety of food in a diet, but I’m still learning how to integrate them well. Quaker reached out and asked me to be a part of their Bring Your Best Bowl program, a contest that celebrates oatmeal and all the different ways it can be enjoyed (to enter the contest and create your own unique oatmeal flavor, see below). I thought it would be a good fit for this New Year, as oatmeal for breakfast is always something I’ve wanted to incorporate into my routine. I came up with a flavor combination that was a little indulgent; it […]

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Andre Prost Coconut Milk

Sarah Kieffer — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 04:32:05 +0000

I haven’t baked a lot with coconut milk, but find myself looking to it more and more for various reasons. I have many friends with food allergies or dietary restrictions and most of them are able to consume coconut milk, so I find it’s a good substitute for milk and/or cream in recipes. Also, sometimes I just need a break from all the dairy in my diet, and have found soy and almond milk to not be very compatible with my body. So coconut milk it is. Andre Prost reached out to me a few weeks ago and sent me a box of coconut milk to bake with. I was eager to give it a try, and found it to be a great addition to my kitchen. It is rich, creamy, and flavorful, and is a great substitution (or addition) to any recipe. I also appreciate that it is found in the baking section of the grocery store, as I tend to spend most of my time in that aisle anyway. You can make quite a few things with a whole box of coconut milk. I wanted to make sure I loved it before I wrote about it, and I’m […]

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Espresso Semifreddo

Sarah Kieffer — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 03:46:38 +0000

(1) Turn off the Radio. (2) Read all the good books you can, and avoid nearly all magazines. (3) Always write (and read) with the ear, not the eye. You should hear every sentence you write as if it was being read aloud or spoken. If it does not sound nice, try again. (4) Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means if you are interested only in writing you will have nothing to write about…) (5) Take great pains to be clear. Remember that though you start by knowing what you mean, the reader doesn’t, and a single ill-chosen word may lead him to a total misunderstanding. In a story it is terribly easy just to forget that you have not told the reader something he needs to know – the whole picture is so clear in your own mind that you forget that it isn’t the same in his. (6) When you give up a bit of work don’t (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I […]

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Chocolate Bread

Sarah Kieffer — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 02:00:42 +0000

‘In a way, baking stands both as a useful metaphor for the familial warmth of the kitchen we fondly imagine used to exist, and as a way of reclaiming our lost Eden. This is hardly a culinary matter, of course; but cooking, we know, has a way of cutting through things, and to things, which have nothing to do with the kitchen. This is why it matters. The trouble with much modern cooking is not that the food it produces isn’t good, but that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure. Sometimes that’s the best we can manage, but at other times we don’t want to feel like a postmodern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.’ – Nigella Lawson When I first starting baking I didn’t actually own Nigella’s How To Become A Domestic Goddess (affiliate link), but checked it out of the library a crazy amount of times, baking so many things from it’s pages. It finally made it’s way to my cookbook shelf at home, and it’s still a favorite. I’ve always loved the above quote by […]

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banana-chocolate-coffee muffins with whole wheat flour

Sarah Kieffer — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 03:52:48 +0000

I just got the notice, school is closed again due to cold weather. This never happens here in Minnesota, where we complain about the weather always but secretly pride ourselves in surviving it every winter. We are so strong, we can bike through blizzards! My daughter’s face will light up in the morning when she hears the news: you get to stay home yet again. She likes school just fine, but she loves home so much more. And I like home so much more, too; I enjoy days tucked snug in our little house. But there are moments where the walls feel a bit too close together, and we are bumping into each other all day long, snippy and snappy and dreaming of oceans. We pull out mixing bowls and curl up with the same old books; there becomes less and less to say to each other. ‘Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.’ (The Little Prince) I risk winter every year outwardly, but […]

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spice cake with cardamom-coffee frosting

Sarah Kieffer — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 01:08:23 +0000

I’ve been sick for quite some time – going on 6 weeks, in fact, with this on again off again cold and cough nonsense. I’ve spent the last 3 days under my covers, rereading comforting books and pinning my little heart out. I have lots of things racing through my mind (it always seems to happen when I’m sick), but I just don’t quite have the energy to articulate them. Somehow I did find the strength to sneak out of bed and bake a cake, but, well, I just couldn’t help myself. So, here is a cake, and here is a recipe. My thoughts I’ll keep for now. Spice Cake with Cardamom Coffee Frosting adapted from Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland by Lucia Watson and Beth Dooley I haven’t changed much from the original recipe here; I swapped out some all-purpose flour for whole wheat, and added a bit more cardamom to the frosting. This is a lovely cake, and stays moist for several days. It has a great, but subtle spice flavor, and the cardamom-coffee icing compliments it nicely. I was highly inspired by Beth and Molly’s cakes – I love the ‘naked’ cake look. I didn’t […]

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