Spiced Cream Cheese Bites

Okay, I'll admit that I've grown overly fond of these little fillo cups. And yes, I know the spelling could be "phyllo" but the brand I bought calls them "Fillo Cups" so I'll use that spelling here.

These little things are light and neutral. Not sweet, not savory; ready for anything. They're flaky, yet substantial enough to hold a nice bite of appetizer, snack, or dessert.

So when I saw a dessert recipe on the Kitchen Play contest site for pizzelles filled with cream cheese, I thought that the little fillo shells would make a petite version of the dessert, downsized to one bite.

This contest is sponsored my MySpiceSage.com, and when I looked at the ingredients, I was happy to see that I had almost everything I needed. No goji berries on hand, but otherwise I had everything I needed to riff on the dish.

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Turkey Breast with Zatar and Sumac (and Honey. Oh my!)

Since Kitchen Play extended its current contest through the weekend, I decided to take advantage of that option. I had planned on cutting this one close, cooking it on the night of the 31st and posting right away, but when I saw there was extra time, I figured it would be just fine to put off the post just a little.

The Kitchen Play contest this month is sponsored by MySpiceSage.com, and luckily I had the critical and somewhat exotic spices for this dish - zatar and sumac. And I also had fresh parsley.

I considered buying a chicken for the recipe I was going to riff off of, but I had a nice half-turkey breast in the freezer and I was itching to clear some space in there. So turkey it was.

At Thanksgiving I had disassembled two turkeys for the dinner, and had prepped and frozen some of the parts, this was a boneless half-breast that I had rolled and tied for more even cooking.

The honey I had was starting to crystallize, so I melted it a bit in the microwave before I mixed it with the spices. If yours is too thick, a gentle heating will help get it to a spreadable texture.

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Happy Aniversary to Cookistry!

1/1/11 at 1:11 a.m. Seems an appropriate time to post. Cookistry is one year old!

And forgive me if I'm a little self-indulgent here, hmmm?

Although I picked a name for this blog well in advance and had a template set up, I didn't start posting until January 1, 2010. I also set some goals for myself. Or really, one goal. To post, on average, once a day.

After that, I gritted my teeth and decided that Year One would be all about getting my feet wet in the blogging world and maybe asking some friends to read what I wrote. The first year, I figured, would be all about me talking to myself online.

Well, the year's up. I've done more than talk to myself.

Late one night in late March (because earlier in the day, I would have had more restraint), I had the bright idea to send an email to Adam Kuban at Serious Eats and ask him if he wanted a column about bread baking. I almost fell off my chair when he emailed back with an enthusiastic "yes" and my weekly Bread Baking column was born in April.

In September, I emailed Adam a link to my post here on Cookistry about the windowpane test, and asked if he had any interest in publishing it. Again, he said yes. That post let to the Serious Eats team asking me about writing a regular column about techniques, tips, ingredients, and more. That turned into my weekly Protips column on Slice.

Then, in November, my Sourdough Starter-Along series started on Slice, which ran every day for nearly two weeks. I was amazed how popular it was, and the first post in that series ended up being the third most popular post on Slice in 2010.

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