Maribel's Kalamansi Blondies

To celebrate the upcoming release of Maribel’s Year on May 9, I’m sharing something special — it’s a recipe inspired by the story.

Kalamansi blondies are one of Maribel’s favorite after-school snacks.  They combine Filipino and American food traditions to create something wholly unique.  Maribel loves them because chocolate chip blondies are like a warm hug after a cold, wintry day at school, and the bright, refreshing notes of kalamansi remind her of the Philippines.

In order to create them, we used America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe for chocolate chip blondies reprinted on Hip Foodie Mom’s blog, and made these adjustments:

— Reduced butter to 8 tbsp.

— Added 2 tbsp. of kalamansi juice to the sugar-butter-eggs-vanilla mixture

— Used white chocolate chips

A couple of notes.  Although the blondies tasted absolutely delicious with white chocolate chips, we have a feeling that milk chocolate chips or semi-sweet chocolate chips would work well, too.  For kalamansi juice, we like using Sun Tropics Pure Calamansi 100% Juice, which you can find at Filipino supermarkets or select Asian markets.  It can also be ordered online from SarapNow.

Happy baking and hope you get a chance to check out my new book illustrated by Sarah Gonzales, Maribel’s Year, which comes out in one week on May 9!

Click here to watch a video of me making kalamansi blondies!

Ghost Pies Inspired by How to Make Friends with a Ghost

We’re resharing these ghost pies we made a few years ago inspired by Rebecca Green’s How to Make Friends with a Ghost.  They were very easy to make.  All you need is:

🌷 A tulip-shaped cookie cutter

🥧 Frozen pie crust

🍎 Apple cider jam (or another fall flavor)

🧁 Glaze (1 cup powdered sugar + 1 tbsp milk + 1 tbsp maple syrup whisked together)

🖌 Wilton’s Foodwriter Edible Color Markers

If you haven’t made hand pies before, check out Hello Wonderful’s recipe for Easy Mini Jam Heart Hand Pies.

Happy baking! 👻🥧🍁

Pizza!: An Interactive Recipe Book

This is probably one of our most favorite interactive series of all time.  It’s a great one to pair with kids’ first cooking experiences, with opportunities to talk about the sequencing of a recipe and the rich language associated with food (all those adjectives, verbs, ingredient names, colors, textures).  It also provides concrete  and experiential math (quantity, measuring and fractions) and science (reactions, cause and effect).  Our strangely and unexpectedly favorite part of this book is the squishy textured dough, which Lotta Nieminen and the Phaidon team executed pretty brilliantly.

Who’s excited for the next book in the Cook in a Book series due out in October?  Any guesses about the starring food?

Pizza!: An Interactive Recipe Book was created by Lotta Nieminen and published by Phaidon Press.

Literary Eats

These were some of the literary snacks we brought to Avery’s class to celebrate some of the books that were read throughout the year:

—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Wonka bars with golden tickets hidden in five of them (golden ticket finders each won a book of their choice to take home)

—The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe — plain and rose-flavored Turkish delight

 —BFG — frobscottle — two kinds (first version: limeade, lime sparkling water and strawberry sparkling water and second version: lemonade and strawberry sparkling water)

PS. I’m sharing photos of the picture books we’re reading aloud during the summer on Instagram stories and saving them on my Instagram page in Highlights section under #bookaday in case anyone’s interested.  Happy summer, all!

maple brown butter popcorn

A hint about what I’m sharing on The Land of Nod's blog today.  Be sure to check it out!