use real butter

Recipe: passion fruit malasadas

So, I just thought I’d ask… Are you guys tiring of my snow pictures?

more snow and more skiing over the weekend

Because if you are, I get it. See, even though I LOVE skiing and I LOVE the snow and I LOVE the cold, there are times when I think fondly of places that are not cold, snowy, and skiable. I had a typical conversation on The Book of Face a few weeks ago where I declared my love of Colorado winter and my friend Cindi declared her love for tropical beaches. I told her she ought to live in Hawai’i and I sent her a link to my Big Island of Hawai’i write up from a few years ago. I glanced through the post and was reminded of how beautiful the island is.

crazy beautiful waipi’o valley

the ohia flower

green sea turtle snoozing on the beach

And then I saw photos of the (many) malasadas we sampled researched. Oh yeah, I was supposed to learn to make malasadas – those sweet fried doughnuts of Portuguese origin that are now ubiquitous across the islands. My favorites on the Big Island were from Tex Drive In in Honoka’a on the North Coast and I happened upon their recipe online. Awesome!

water, sugar, salt, vanilla, butter, eggs, flour, evaporated milk, quick rising yeast

blend an egg, the sugar, and butter together

add the yeast

and 5 cups of flour

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: bourbon caramel chocolate banana cream pie

Well wow. We have had so much snow lately that I started getting picky about the powder reports. “Oh, just 7 inches of fresh powder this morning?” Crested Butte has received 7 FEET of snow in the past two weeks. Needless to say, we’ve been skiing powder and more powder.

evening ski touring before dinner

ski touring among giant trees (the little green dot at the bottom is jeremy)

ski touring beautiful terrain

quad burns and tele turns on the mountain

This being Colorado, we also have our share of sunshine. After a morning of getting pounded with 2 inch/hour snowfall (and epic skiing – face shots!), the sun came out to play. There is a good bit of snow piled up outside our place. Jeremy has had to dig out a little area for Kaweah to go potty in the yard. It now has walls of snow 3-8 feet high, which is kinda nice because it means she doesn’t wander off.

kaweah for scale in the driveway

jeremy has to chuck the snow quite high

Despite the cold weather, Kaweah enjoys a daily scoop of her banana pupsicle. It’s just frozen bananas. I make a habit of collecting ripe or overripe bananas at the grocery store and blitzing the frozen chopped up bananas for her every few weeks. But right before we came out to Crested Butte, I decided to commandeer a few of those bananas for the two-legged critters in the house. I wanted to make banana cream pie.

pie crust: butter, flour, salt, confectioner’s sugar, cream, cider vinegar, chocolate

pulse the butter into the dry ingredients

add the cream and vinegar mixture

pulse together until just moistened

wrap and chill

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: blueberry pear pâte de fruits

Today was a crazy day, but I don’t want to go into detail now other than to say that (thankfully) everyone in our house is alright. So I’m going to delve into the recipe because it’s something utterly wonderful to look forward to and it will take my mind off of the clusterfuck that was today.

Ever since I successfully tried my hand at making cranberry pâte de fruits, I’ve run up a big list of fruits to transform into these sweet, chewy, tart, colorful jewels. Right before the holidays, I unearthed a bag of frozen blueberries from my freezer and wondered if they could be made into fruit jellies. After some searching, I settled on this lovely recipe that combines pears, blueberries, and lavender. Except I omitted the lavender because you’re not always sure everyone wants to eat something so perfumed, and these were going out as gifts.

liquid pectin, water, anjou pears, lemon, blueberries, sugar

peeling the pears

adding pear quarters to the sugar and blueberries

pour in some water

**Jump for more butter**