I Guess I'm a Butter Influencer Now

Catching up with Kerrygold's latest Butter Club Inductee

Hello Food & Stuff friends,

Once again, many months have passed since the last edition of Food & Stuff, and a lot of cooking, baking, and life has transpired since I last slid into your inboxes! The biggest and best update is that I somehow became a butter influencer??? Well, that’s being a bit over-the-top, but here’s the story:

Best club ever

A few months ago, Kerrygold Butter’s Instagram account put out a post for a contest to win a pair of limited edition raw denim jeans by Native Denims in Dublin, Ireland, which was part of a promotion they were doing for a new line of cheese sticks. I never win anything so I sort of forget I entered…until one day, I got a package in the mail from Kerrygold! IT WAS THE JEANS!! Devastatingly, the size they sent was too small for me, BUT when I reached out to the brand rep to see about exchanging, they told me they wanted to send me another package and welcome me to "THE BUTTER CLUB!" Last week, I received all sorts of goodies in the mail, and I couldn't be more thrilled!!! 🧈☘️🌈🤩 I can’t wait to sport these items all summer, especially as the hype builds for my culinary school program in Ireland!

This is the only conceal and carry I can support.

Which speaking of, 3 months from today, I’ll be leaving the States to fly over to Ireland for 5 weeks at Ballymaloe Cookery School for their summer course. I have a lot to say about how I feel about this opportunity and how NERVOUS I am, but I’ll save most of those comments for another post. I’d rather use today’s newsletter to send you guys some recipes I enjoyed over the last few weeks/months, including:

1. An incredibly moist and delicious chocolate cake with coffee frosting

2. A delicious roasted carrot salad with a spiced dressing

3. An easy, very Midwestern buffalo chicken meatball bowl

4. A simple, crunchy, addictive spring salad

Let’s get started!

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“Oh! Are you having cake?”

Mmmm…cake

Let me tell you something, Mr. Ratburn would love this cake. I was eager to do a bit of a project bake a couple of months ago and continue my tradition of making a lavish layer cake for no particular reason at all. My friend hope told me about this really tasty recipe for chocolate cake from Sally’s Baking Addiction, which proved to be eveyrthing I want a chocolate cake to be: not too sweet, very chocolatey, moist, yet still fluffy and not too dense. I used a different coffee buttercream frosting recipe, which you’ll find in right below! The cake turned out soooo good, which is not usually how I feel about cakes; I typically find them dry and a bit of a disappointment. Not this time! This cake also freezes well.

Coffee Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

• 3 ⅓ cups confectioners' sugar

• 4 tablespoons cocoa powder

• 2 sticks (½ cup) butter

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• 6 tablespoons strong hot coffee

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Sift confectioners’ sugar and cocoa powder into a bowl, set aside.

2. Beat butter with a stand or hand mixer before adding in sugar/cocoa gradually. Blend these ingredients until creamy.

3. Add in salt coffee and beat for 2 minutes.

4. When the icing is cool, add in vanilla extract.

5. Let stand 5 minutes. Beat one more time and then spread.

Carrots are underrated, IMO

This meal, every day

I could eat this carrot salad daily and never tire of it. It is SO good. You can even add some feta and do as I did and swap in red cabbage for radicchio to save a bit of cash. I made this once again at Easter and the spiced shallot dressing is really the star. You could even sub in sweet potatoes for the carrots or another root vegetable like turnips or radishes and it would also be delicious.

If you’re looking to serve it with salmon, I like this Roasted Salmon With Citrus Salsa Verde Bon Appétit.

Midwesterners, make some noise

Blue cheese fandom, where you at

I don’t know what happened, but this winter, I was craving buffalo sauce like a mad woman and went into the archives of Featherstone Nutrition’s recipes for this super easy Buffalo Chicken Meatball Bowl. These bowls can be served with rice or quinoa, over a crunchy bed of kale or with a side of broccoli. Don’t forget the blue cheese and ranch! If you’re in a pinch, you can just use frozen turkey meatballs from the store.

This tastes like spring!

In her wonderful cookbook Smitten Kitchen Keepers (which you all should buy), Deb Perelman (who I got to meet by the way!) has a great recipe for a snow pea salad, which you’ll see in the image below. Inspired by that amazing salad, but wanting to use the more economical and springy snap pea, I found this recipe for a salad that is just perfect for spring, including snap peas and fresh mint, highly inspired by Deb’s recipe.

I could eat this all up.

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It is very exciting to have spring fully here in Northeast Ohio and see the return of different produce at the Farmers’ Market! As always, I’m SUPER interested to hear what you’ve been cooking and baking lately, too, so feel free to reply here in the comments or via email and share…I would love nothing more than to connect about food.

Finally, I thought I’d share a Substack post I wrote last week titled “Reject the Spirit of the Age of Ozempic.” It is half a love letter to food, half an encouragement that the point of life is not to make ourselves smaller. I hope as you nourish your body, you can truly enjoy the gift of food and with the ones you love gathered around your table.

Until next time,

Grace

Reject the Spirit of the Age of Ozempic