Cozy Kitchen Strawberry Brownies, Birthday Bundt Cake + More | Our Best Home Cooking Bites, with Adrianna Adarme

Food Friends: Home Cooking Made Easy

Hosts Sonia and Keri share nostalgic 'best bites' from their week, ranging from roasted bell peppers to a childhood-inspired bundt cake. The

Key takeaways

• Sonia shares a technique for roasting bell peppers using steam to make peeling easier.
• Keri recreates a nostalgic cinnamon and pecan bundt cake inspired by the book 'Rosie's Bakery'.
• Adrianna Adarme organizes her cookbook, 'A Cozy Kitchen', by moods rather than traditional meal types.
• The viral strawberry brownies discussed are technically blondies using freeze-dried strawberry powder.
• Adrianna highlights the cultural fusion in Peruvian Lomo Saltado, blending indigenous and Cantonese influences.

Main topics

• Nostalgic recipes
• Bell pepper preparation
• Bundt cake baking

Notable quotes

Really good things are not that complicated.

Conclusion

A heartwarming episode that provides both practical kitchen tips and e

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to Food Friends, a podcast inspiring home cooks to try new dishes in the kitchen by sharing trusted recipes, tips, and friendship. Hi, Speaker 3 (0:12) I'm Sonia. And I'm Keri. We met in Los Angeles over 15 years ago as personal chefs and haven't stopped talking about food since. We're so glad you're here. Hi, Sonia. Speaker 2 (0:25) Hi, Keri. Speaker 3 (0:26) Sonia, what was your best bite this week? Speaker 2 (0:28) My best bite was something very simple, but very nostalgic, which is I made my grandmother's roasted marinated bell peppers. So we're in this time of year where there's so many peppers still at the farmer's market and some of the farmers just have too many. And so there's been this one stand that's selling like huge bags for five or six bucks. And I just can't pass that by. But then once you're home with a huge bag of peppers, you're like, what do you do? And my grandmother's voice comes in. She always had a very specific kind of marinated red pepper. It was something that was. kind of on our table year round. But all you do is you roast all your peppers, just put them on a sheet pan, no olive oil, no salt, no nothing. Just roast them till their skin gets all brown and blackened. Then I throw them into a bowl and cover the bowl so they can keep steaming. You could also do this in a paper bag. Some people like to use that method. It's not that it's not fussy, but it's kind of worth the effort when you're doing a big batch because then you have to peel all those peels that come off once they're steamed. And then you take out their seeds and then you have this beautiful pile of soft roast. red peppers to which all you need to do is add a little oil, a little vinegar, a little garlic, some black pepper, and stick it in a jar and put it in your fridge. It lasts for weeks. I've just been adding it onto like my snacky plate lunches, or I'll do a piece of buttered sourdough bread toasted and add some marinated red peppers on top. Jonathan has been loving them too. And every time I open the fridge and I see it there, I just think of her and it's just been my best bite. Speaker 3 (1:57) I mean, I think that's so beautiful. And I do think that there are these rituals right in the season. Like you said, you can't pass up this giant bag of peppers and then you get home and you're like, what am I going to do with all this? I think sticking them under the broiler. blistering their skins. And then by steaming them, it does make those skins come off a lot easier. I think I forgot that step when I did it last summer. And I was sort of like, oh, this is taking forever. But really, if you give them like 20 minutes to steam, it really makes a difference. And it's also one of those nice things that you could take to a friend's house if you were invited to Speaker 2 (2:34) someone's house for dinner. Yeah, it's such a beautiful gift. Well, Carrie, what was your best bite of the week? Speaker 3 (2:39) Well, Sonia, it's funny that you were feeling nostalgic because I was too. I made the birthday cake that my mom used to make for me when I was growing up. And the birthday cake that she would make was a yellow cake. She would put it in a bundt pan. And at the bottom of the bundt pan, she would put a layer of cinnamon, sugar, and pecans. And then she would take that same mixture and she would kind of layer it in between the cake. But my mom would use the box mix. I don't remember which brand that she typically used, but at some point she stopped making that cake because they changed the formula of the box mix and she would find that it wouldn't release from her bundt pan. And so then she would make the cake and then it wouldn't look very nice. And so I just haven't had that cake for many years. And I was thumbing through one of my cookbooks the other day and I came across this book. It's called Rosie's Bakery, All Better Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed Baking Book. And it's from this Rosie's Bakery. that was in Boston. It is just full of cakes. And I saw this recipe for golden layer cakes. And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to try this. I have a bundt pan, a client. gave me a Bundt pan many years ago. I've never used it. You know, I've been getting some confidence in my baking. I basically replicated that cake that my mom made for me. And it was really lovely because it's really more of kind of a coffee cake vibe. It has the cinnamon sugar. It's very simple. That cinnamon Speaker 2 (4:03) sugar swirl is so part of coffee cake. Like I guess Bundt makes it a little different, but those flavors, a yellow cake with that sort of spiced crumb is so classic. Speaker 3 (4:13) Yeah, exactly. And the thing that I forgot, to do this time. I texted a picture of it to my mom and I said, didn't you used to put a glaze on this? And she said, yeah, I would usually glaze the top of it with a very simple milk, powdered sugar, add a little bit of butter and vanilla to it. So I'll do that next time. But I have to say it was a nice cake to have around. I packed it in my son's lunchbox and we had it for a couple of days. I shared a few slices with Malin and I've been afraid to make cakes like that for a really long time. You know, my mom would always just use the box mix and now I made it myself. And it was very satisfying. Honestly, it was satisfying to get out my standing mixer and to pull this cake out of the oven. And one of the pieces did stick a little bit like it didn't come out perfectly. And so that