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The Dough-Eyed Girl

~ There's no metaphysics on Earth like dessert.

The Dough-Eyed Girl

Monthly Archives: October 2012

Walnut Baguette Surprise at Tous Les Jours

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Dough-Eyed Girl in Bread

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Bread, Cream, Koreatown, Manhattan, Walnut

I am writing this from a café in Park Slope – the first significant amount of time I’ve spent outside my tiny apartment in nearly two days – after Hurricane Sandy made its grand entrée into the lives of New Yorkers and millions of others across the eastern seaboard.

To call the experience surreal is a gross understatement. I sat cozy by my laptop last night, binging on network sitcoms online with a glass of mellow red wine at my side, stopping every twenty minutes to get an update on the horrors taking place outside of my insulated Brooklyn bubble.

First, just after dinner time, my friends in low-lying areas of the city started systematically losing power, courtesy of a cautious Con Ed. Their Facebook posts signing off for the foreseeable future (made possible by waning smartphone batteries) were evidence not just of the modern mode of real-time, social media communication, but of the imminent storm damage.

Then came the reports of the spectacular Con Ed transformer explosion. Pretty soon, downtown was in the dark, along with the east side below 34th Street. The NYU Langone Hospital, on 34th Street and First Avenue, had to emergency evacuate 200-some patients down nine flights of stairs after their basement generators flooded and their first floor was underwater.

Along the way, the unimaginable continued to transpire. Facades literally fell off buildings, exposing their innards to the elements. A crane dangled precariously at the side of a luxury condominium construction site. One Hoboken PATH station was steadily submerged as water gushed in through the sides of a compromised door, and yet across the city a small but tightly packed beach community unquenchably caught on fire, fanned by the relentless winds.

It is hard to reconcile these reports with the otherwise quotidian experience I have had these last few days. It is easy enough to pretend that this is just an uneventful, exceptionally long Brooklyn-bound weekend, but the reality is that we are essentially trapped where we are, unable to access the lifeblood that is the New York City subway system. It won’t be until buses start circulating again and people like me in relatively unscathed areas are able to see more of the damage personally that the effects of the storm will seem like more of a reality, something that happened to us rather than something that happened to them.

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Dough on the Go: Pumpkin Ginger Bread at Baked and Wired, Washington, D.C.

24 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Dough-Eyed Girl in Bread, Doughnut, Muffin

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Bread, Doughnut, Georgetown, Ginger, Muffin, Pumpkin, Washington D.C.

Every now and then, I do leave New York City for other locales. When I do, I will dutifully report on some of the local and/or regional specialties.

Title: “Pumpkin Ginger Bread: A Tale of Heartbreak”

Setting: Our favorite Dough-Eyed correspondent has taken a few days to explore the wonder of our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.  After some expert advice, she has made a potentially life-changing discovery: a breakfast food creation of superhuman proportions, a hybrid so simple yet so ingenious that it could only be the work of a mad-but-brilliant baker. The item: the donut muffin, pioneered at the bakery Baked and Wired.

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Halo-Halo at Talde

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Dough-Eyed Girl in Frozen Dessert

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Brooklyn, Cap'n Crunch, Coconut, Halo-Halo, Jellies, Mango, Park Slope, Pineapple, Shaved Ice, Talde, Tapioca

I have a confession to make. I am a fan of reality TV. Okay, not all reality TV, but I firmly believe that some reality TV is better than other reality TV. For example: Top Chef is (was) an excellent example of reality TV that showcased brute talent, unfettered ambition, and improbable setups that lead to astoundingly inventive creations, much like its Bravo forebear, Project Runway.

Inevitably, all of this talent, ambition, and creativity leads many Top Chef contestants, winners or not, to open their own restaurants. Such was the case with Dale Talde, cheftestant on Season 4 of Top Chef, who opened an eponymous restaurant, Talde, and a pork-centric bar, Pork Slope, within the span of a year, both in Park Slope. Of course, Pork Slope has no dessert on offer. Talde, however, now has two: a newly developed chocolate pudding, and the standby classic, halo-halo.

For anyone who remembers this moment from Top Chef, the choice becomes a no-brainer.


Halo-halo it is.

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Lemon Drop Pudding at Puddin’

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Dough-Eyed Girl in Pudding and Custard

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East Village, Ginger, Lemon, Manhattan, Marshmallow, Pudding

Let us for a moment take a minute to remember the joy of the Snack Pack, the delightful pudding treat that was always ready to eat, regardless of refrigeration or other means of remaining fresh. Strangely, while I’ve lost my taste for a lot of the artificial snacks that made up my childhood (mine was not a household of organic Cheerios and fruit leather), Snack Packs still hold up today as a comforting pick-me-up. Maybe it’s the nostalgia factor, but there is something unusually satisfying about a shelf-stable pudding cup.

But as much as a Snack Pack can cure a pudding craving, sometimes you want a more mature pudding. One with ingredients you can pronounce. One that requires storage below room temperature.

That’s when you head to a place like Puddin’ in the East Village.

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Green Pea Pastry at Paris Baguette

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by Dough-Eyed Girl in Pastry

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Breakfast, Croissant, French, Green Pea Paste, Korean, Pastry

Remember when Asian-fusion restaurants were all the rage in the late 90s and early aughts? And I’m not talking about Chinese restaurants that suddenly (and questionably) started serving sushi. I mean the places that usually paired something Asian (and by Asian, I mean Japanese) with something “exotic”, like the Cuban-Japanese places, or the Portuguese-Japanese places. Fun as it was when it first appeared, like most trends the food soon became rote and uninspired.

Today, there are still some highly visible Asian-fusion joints getting attention, Chinese-Indian and Korean-Mexican most notably, thanks to yet another craze: food trucks. But there is one lesser known fusion blend here that is better known in its land of origin: French-Korean. Specifically: French-Korean pastry.

If you head over to Koreatown, the heart of which lies on 32nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, there are now not one, but two French-Korean bakeries on the street. The one holding residence longest is Paris Baguette, a popular Korean chain with outlets in South Korea, China, and the United States.

At Paris Baguette, you will find the typical red bean buns and airy sponge cakes that are common in many other Asian bakeries. However, you will also find some French classics, like canelés and pains au chocolat. But best of all, you will find hybrids like these guys: green pea pastries.

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Recent Posts

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