If there's ever been a time we need a three day weekend, it's now
Hi friends! I don't know about you all, but I am very much looking forward to having three blessed days to attempt to disengage, read piles of books, hang out with friends, and eat delicious food. Maybe some of this inaugural edition of my tinyletter will help you as we tick down the seconds and hours until the weekend.
I almost always wear lipstick, and I towards glossy, but highly pigmented, reds, pinks, and oranges. But look, sometimes if you're going to a party, or a wedding, or something else where you know you'll be eating and drinking a lot and people are going to be taking pictures of you all the time, you need a matte lipstick with some staying power. And the one matte lipstick that I will love forever is Sephora's cream lip stain in Always Red. Not only does it stay on for a long time, but it's an almost perfect red that looks good on everyone, and I don't say that lightly — most of the time when people say lipstick looks good on everyone, they mean "a whole range of white skin," but Always Red looks great on both medium brown me and my very pale friend Amy, and a whole lot of other skin colors besides. I discovered this lipstick a few years ago when I went to see Aisha Tyler do stand up in San Francisco. After the show, I tweeted about how funny she was, and also about how much I loved her lipstick. And God bless her, she tweeted back at me and told me what lipstick she was wearing. Since then, I've tweeted at quite a few celebrities to ask them about their lipstick, and I often get a response from either them or someone on their team (makeup artists love to give you this info). Twitter can be full of horrors, we might as well get some fun makeup intel out of it.
I am currently in the midst of writing what will be Jasmine Book 2. (Book 1, THE WEDDING DATE, comes out in February, 2018, which seems both so far away and also so soon). When I'm deep into drafting, I can't read anything at all like what I'm writing for fear of it getting too deep into my head, so it's lucky that I've been on a huge mystery kick for the past six months. Right now reading mysteries is so satisfying for me — there are bad guys, and they get caught, and then they get punished, and I get to sigh happily at the end of the book that everything in that world, at least, is as it should be. I started the Phryne Fisher series a few weeks ago, and people, I cannot get enough of these books. They are about a rich, independent, elegant, smart, and hot as hell British woman in the late 1920's, who goes off to Australia and becomes a lady detective. Every paragraph is a delight, from the lipstick, to the clothes, to the way she smacks down irritating men. The first book, Cocaine Blues, made me grin and hug it to my chest within the first few pages. And the best thing about it is that it's a big fat series, so there are a ton to dive into. You could easily get through six or seven over the course of this weekend, if your idea of a perfect long weekend is to stay inside with a pile of books.
If you must go outside, and you're looking for an easy and crowd pleasing dessert to bring to a barbeque or brunch or dinner party for this weekend or sometime this summer, you have come to the right tinyletter. I start making Blueberry Buckle as soon as blueberries are in season, and I mourn when I can't find them anymore. (I'm sure you can make this with frozen blueberries, but I haven't, mostly because this is such a summer dessert to me). This also works great with peeled and sliced peaches, if you're more of a stone fruit kind of person. I originally got this from Kim O'Donnel (who used to write for the Washington Post and now writes cookbooks and other great stuff) but I've tweaked it some. I also included the measurements by weight, since I much prefer to weigh things in baking -- not just for accuracy, but for sheer ease. Putting a bowl on a scale and dumping stuff in and pressing tare after each ingredient is far faster and easier than pouring things into a measuring cup each time. But even the long way, this takes no longer to throw together than your oven does to preheat. It also doubles very easily if you have a bigger crowd; just double everything and bake it in a 9x13 inch pan.
Blueberry Buckle
Ingredients
Batter:
1/4 cup (or 1/2 stick, or 57 grams, or 2 ounces) unsalted butter
1/2 cup (or 100 grams or 3.5 ounces) sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup (or 90 grams, or 3.1 ounces) flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk (whole is best, but if you don't have whole, use what you've got!)
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of one lemon
2 cups blueberries
Topping
1/2 cup (or 90 grams, or 3.1 ounces) brown sugar
1/3 cup (or 40 grams, or 1.4 ounces) flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional, was in the original recipe but I often don't use it)
6 tablespoons (or 3 ounces, or 3/4 stick, or 85 grams) butter, cold, cut into dice
Preheat oven to 350. Butter an 8 inch baking dish. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, then add the egg and mix until it's combined. Add vanilla and lemon zest and stir in. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with the milk.
Topping: stir together the sugar, flour, and cinnamon (if you're using it). Add the butter and rub between your fingertips until it's crumbly and mostly integrated with the dry ingredients.
Pour the batter into the pan and sprinkle the berries over the top. Sprinkle the topping over the blueberries. Bake for about 35-40 minutes until the topping is golden brown. Serve warm or room temperature and eat with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.
If you read any great books, or cook anything delicious over this holiday weekend, email or tweet at me to let me know!
xo
Jasmine