Izy Hossack - Top With Cinnamon
Flexitarian & Baking Recipes from Londoner, Izy Hossack
Gingerbread is one of those cookies that I’m always ‘meh’ about when I think of it. Each year I inevitably end up making some to turn into a gingerbread house (or this year, a Christmas tree made of stacked gingerbread stars!). Every time I end up snacking on the dough scraps and nibbling bits of baked rejected gingerbread. And every time I’m like ‘hmm this is actually pretty delicious’.
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I’m hoooome! Back in London for Christmas break and I’m extremely relieved to be able to chill out for a bit. This has been an all-consuming semester so far. I said to my boyfriend last week ‘I can see now why people drop out in third year. I never understood before but I do now’. It was inevitable that this would be the most challenging year, surprisingly not academically, but mentally. It’s my final year of education after 15 years and I’m so close to being done which is a bit terrifying. I’ve also had less and less time this year for creative release which has always been my respite from academia (hence the existence of this blog). Having my ‘separate food life’ on the side of school has what has prevented me from having stress breakdowns before so it’s an essential part of what keeps me sane.
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I did it! I cooked Thanksgiving lunch for 13 people!! The turkey was spatchcocked (thanks to my brave boyfriend and a pair of poultry shears), the kitchen wasn’t a complete mess and there was enough leftover stuffing to be made into waffles for lunch the next day. HURRAH!
The challah rugelach went down well as pre-lunch snacks for anyone hanging around in the kitchen. They were super easy to make too, they just took a bit of forethought as the dough requires resting overnight in the fridge before baking. They were inspired by the bread-y rugelach I had in New York which Hana introduced me to (pic just above). They weren’t exactly the same but I’ll keep working on the recipe every now and then until I’m happy. For now, here’s the recipe I used, for those who wanted to know!
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NOTE: when I say biscuit in this post, I’m referring to the British word for cookie. I think of a biscuit as a certain type of cookie: one which is thin and always dry and crunchy, never soft or chewy. What I do not mean by biscuit is a scone-type-thing. Okay. Cool. Let’s proceed.
Whenever I go abroad, I bring a packet of HobNobs with me. In fact, when I was in New York a few months ago and I FORGOT to bring them with me, I coerced my friend who was visiting me into buying some in the airport. I had to ration them out for that month, keeping them in the fridge due to the fact it was regularly getting to 30 degrees in the apartment. But a cold hobnob pairs perfectly with a cup of Earl Grey tea (that’s another thing I bring with me always. Tea bags.).
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I used to absolutely hate lemon desserts (obv the tables have turned now). I distinctly remember this fact becuase of the lemon meringue pie we used to occasionally get for dessert at school. I mean yeah I TOOK the pie (yo, I’m not turning down dessert) and just ate the marshmallowy meringue topping. I’m pretty sure that it was basic lemon icing drizzled onto fairy cakes that converted me a few years ago and I haven’t looked back since.
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If you’ve ever been on Pinterest before, you’ll probably have seen a few photos pinned from the likes of the dreamy shops of Food52 Provisions, Herriott Grace, Ariel Alasko and Sweet Gum Co. – gorgeously styled images of beautiful hand carved spoons, rolling pins, cheeseboards and bowls. I have definitely spent a lot of time lusting over all that tableware and the fact that it’s all hand made just makes it extra special. The problem is that they’re all based in the US and either don’t ship to the UK or else the cost of the shipping overseas is like £20 (*sad trombone*).
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Well today has been a bit of an emotional high for me. You know Saveur’s Best Food Blog Awards I was talking about last week? Yeah. You know how I was finalist in the Baking & Desserts category?
Well I’m absolutely stunned and honoured to say that Top With Cinnamon is the Editors’ Choice winner!
The lovely Sarah of The Vanilla Bean Blog won the Readers’ choice for the same category and I couldn’t be more thrilled. Gotta also give a shout out to my girl Molly who was a finalist for the Baking & Desserts Category too <3 (If you haven’t seen her blog yet, go go go read it now).
aaaand super congrats to all of the other winners!
Anyway, thanks for all of your support guys, I really feel blessed! 🙂
If you’re a reader of Food52 you may have noticed that I’ve had a couple of recipes up on their site!
I’ve done two posts for their Small Batch column – the homemade hot cocoa mix, and also how to make Crumpets 🙂 (NB: not the same thing as English muffins)
In other exciting news: I’m going to be contributing recipes regularly to The Kitchn (!!!!!). As a long-time fangirl-er of their site I’m so thrilled to be sharing my recipes and photos over there, so keep an eye out for me if you frequent The Kitchn too. Just in case you’re interested in the posts I’ve done so far:
– A few weeks ago I had a recipe for some Muesli snacking cookies, which are such an ace on-the-go energy boost. I was cramming them into my face all week when I made them. Bonus points because they’re moderately healthy AND won’t fall to pieces in your bag.
– Today I’m contributing a recipe for Earl Grey Hot Cross Buns :O Yeah, all you Earl Grey tea fans (who I found out about when I posted that lemon/blueberry/tea cake) will love them.
Okay, that’s it! I’m done with all the links, I promise . Sorry for giving you a lot more tabs to look at when you probably already have a bunch open, but I hope you like the recipes.
Ima go eat some celebration cake 🙂
Ciao!
I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had an awesome Thursday! I made rugelach (Alice Medrich’s dough) with loads of different fillings –
apricot jam, bittersweet chocolate, ground coffee
cashew butter, almond extract, raspberry jam
raspberry jam, desiccated coconut
apricot jam, caster sugar, ground cloves + cinnamon
…in case you were wondering. (I’m also making that note for myself because they were DELICIOUS filling combos. Pat on my own back. woohoo)
and of course MAPLE PECAN PIE. Favourite dessert. HeeelllLO.
My mum (who p.s. made all the pretty ceramics I used in this post) also made peanut butter cookies dipped in chocolate and crushed walnuts….which is where the partial inspiration for these cookies came from!
I had been cutting a pomegranate in half last week and of course all the pomegranate juice went everywhere – I’m pretty sure I had some on my face – and some splashed into the salt bowl. It stained the salt a super pretty pink colour. Needless to say, when I saw it I dumped a bunch more pomegranate juice in because THAT PINK SALT IS BEAUTEOUS. And then I had to wrack my brains to think of a cool way to convince everyone else to make the salt by sprinkling it on stuff.
The stuff ended up being Peanut Butter Cookies and Chocolate – duh.
Also guys, it’s the FIRST OF DECEMBER tomorrow. And I think we all know what that means.
It will officially be the holiday season!
Non-stop ultra-warm jumpers, watching Love Actually, drinking pepperminty hot chocolate, scarves (so many scarves) and Christmas music for cooking/dancing/cycling. YEAH.
But also erm, cookies, or as Carey has put it ‘full-on holiday treat mode’ – agreed.
Winter baking is the best, because standing in front of an oven is ah-mazing when you’re cold. It means I don’t leave the kitchen for that 10-minute-ish cookie baking period so I don’t burn things! (I have a tendency to sometimes abandon things in the oven and then become ‘timer-deaf’. It isn’t good)
3 reasons (salt sprinkling, holidays, oven-hand-warmer) to bake cookies now. Okay yep, I didn’t need any more convincing than that.
The peanut butter cookies I made were slightly different to my mum’s – I halved the recipe, used butter instead of shortening and oat flour instead of all-purpose. I like how the oats gives them some nubbly texture and also a bigger protein/fiber boost. Mo’ health, mo’ cookies, you know it. Plus it also makes them conveniently wheat free so I can feed them to everyone I know, heh heh heeehhh.
But also I used baking powder instead of baking soda. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I hate using just baking soda in things like cookies. I can taste it so strongly, it grosses me out. I mean, there’s no acid for it to react with so you just end up with this yellow residue and weird flavour. Cookie let down, major town. The baking soda also normally makes things spread more, so because I used powder I got cute little plump cookies 😀
So seriously if the cookies haven’t convinced you to make the salt, it’s so gorgeous, you should just make it anyway. You can put it in a jar and gift it to people as is. It’s so SPARKLY and icy-looking. Ahhhh.
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I HAVE SUCH A COOL POST FOR YOU TO READ/WATCH TODAY – IT’S SO EXCITING THAT CAPS LOCK IS STAYING ON FOR THIS SENTENCE, BUT I PROMISE I’LL GO BACK TO LOWER CASE SOON.
I MAKE COOKIES AND TALK IN THIS VIDEO.
Yeah, you actually see my face and hear my voice (I’m always intrigued when I finally get to hear/see a blogger when I’ve been following them and reading their blog for a while, but that miiight just be me – cue stalker Izy). I explain a little about how I make my videos too, so if you’ve been wondering how it’s done, it’s yo LUCKY DAY, SON.
p.s. make sure you watch the bloopers riiiiight at the end. They’re quality.
The awesome team at SORTED invited me to their studio a few weeks ago to film one of my signature gif-ideos (a.k.a. super long gifs, a.k.a. kinda/not really-stop-motions, a.k.a. videos that some people are really confused by/ hate/love). So of course I said heck yeah and rocked up to the studio like ima make you some cookies.
I revisited my nutella and salted caramel cookie recipe – this time making the cookies with caramel-filled chocolates (I COULDN’T FIND ROLOS ANYWHERE so I settled for Cadbury’s caramel dairy milk which was still A+++) instead of making salted caramel sauce. So they’re actually EASIER and more delicious than before.
So now you’ve seen me make them – you do it tooooo. Grab the recipe below and, for some top bant and delish recipes, be sure to check out SORTED’s other videos on their YouTube channel and website.
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Sooo quite a lot of things
– I went to Mallorca for a week. This girl got herself a taaaan and ate loads of ice cream and peaches and cherries. It was a treat yoself week.
– As I’ve posted recipes instead of link love posts for like 2 weeks now, I’ve been waiting to say that I was featured in the Teen Bloggers Article in Foodiecrush Magazine! I made these crazy ass chocolate + vanilla marble cookies sandwiched with a MALTED VANILLA BROWN BUTTER GELATO.
*Chhst* Public Service Announcement: There has been a spillage of AWESOME in the TWC ice cream isle *Chhst*
– aaaand I also did some more photography for Buzzfeed!
– If you subscribe via some way that lets you see my whole blog layout, then you may have noticed I did a tiiiny bit of a revamp on TWC. I added some buttons to the side bar (they’re not very fancy, it was like 5 mins in photoshop :/ )
– I’m finally going to be posting that Angel food Cake you may have seen me talk about on various social media (about a month ago. woahh. Okay, sorry for that!) soon, and a reaallly really quick savoury lunch dealie (although I’m naht too crazy about the photos. Dull lighting, why you maka me cry???)
– and hollly schmoly, the Kitchn named me as one of The Top 15 Food instagrams accounts to follow. Excuse me for a second (*doesn’t* go do 1-person Mexican wave…) What, who ever said anything about Mexican wave?? who even is that?..
– I want to stand around all day and talk about these Cinnamon-Brown Sugar Chickpeas.You have got to be crazy town to not want those.
– Billy made cheddar jalapeño bread. and crouton-ified it. It makes me feel like this.
– These Tomato, Goats Cheese and Basil Pesto tarts are SO GORGEOUS and easy! Heather, how do you make such beautiful food!?!
-Tracy layered up popcorn with toasted coconut flakes. It’s like a parfait, but crunchy and COCONUTTY (i.e. 314% better) . That popcorn, I just… (and my mum subscribes to Shutterbean too, and I knew she’d opened the post because I heard her, FROM UPSTAIRS, going “AHH COCONUT POPCORN”)
-Megan, Megan, Megan, could you put any more things into a sentence that I’d like to make all at once? Ice cream, brownies, cookies and crafts. I’m so there.
– and then there’s Ashley’s Coconut stuffed ice cream. Pretty dreamy stuff. Okay. Well I think we’re seeing a pattern here. Obviously layering coconut flakes into food is where it’s at, and I am all for it. #5ever.
