divine angst

I’m too lazy to blog the Oscars, but Althouse is already on the ball with the pre-show stuff. I’ll be refreshing all night, even as I watch.

Dave! asks how to make strawberry butter.

I will tell you because…mmmm….MMMMMM….strawberry butter is the Best Thing on Earth. Ever.

Soften a stick of butter. It’s got to be nice and soft, but not melted, or it won’t work. Just pull a stick out of the fridge and let it get to room temperature. (You can speed this up by gently nuking the butter on low for 15 or 30 seconds at a time, but be careful not to melt the it.)

Put the butter in a stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Or use a hand mixer—but the butter has to be really soft or it’ll just fly everywhere. Or you can use the food processor if you’re making more than one stick of butter’s worth (one stick usually is too little and just gets stuck to the sides of the bowl).

Whip the butter for a few seconds, to get it nice and light and fluffy. Scoop in a generous spoonful of good strawberry jam or preserves and whip that in. Pick preserves or jam that you would like on toast—it’s got to have the right amount of sweetness for your tastes.

Once the butter and preserves are all nice and whipped together, transfer into a serving dish—a little ramekin, maybe—and smear on warm croissants or other flaky bread/pastry. Store in an airtight container—I have little 8 oz. Tupperware containers for just these sorts of small things. The strawberry butter won’t keep much longer than about 2 weeks, but don’t worry—it wont last that long. You’ll find yourself sneaking into the fridge in the middle of the night to make strawberry butter toast.

(If you want to be really homemade, you can use real strawberries, macerated in sugar, but you have to let them get nice and mushy before you attempt to incorporate them. And you’ll need to make sure to add enough sugar or the butter won’t be sweet enough. And it won’t keep very long at all, since the strawberries will turn rancid after about 4 days. But doing this way will give you lots of kitchen cred.)

I had a morning off of choir, so Mr. Angst and I slept in. We went to his church, which has been recently renovated and has a better choir than my church. I was awash in sensory bliss between the hand-painted detailing and the Gregorian chant.

To make the morning even better, we came home and made brunch. I have this thing where I don’t really order food at restaurants that I can make myself. What’s the point, after all? I can’t always hold to this, but I try. One thing we always love to have at brunch is Eggs Benedict, but to get it at a restaurant on Sunday, you have to deal with hour-and-a-half waits. So I learned to make it myself (and rarely order it out anymore, unless it’s got something special, like crab cakes, which I haven’t mastered).

So Eggs Benedict was on our menu this morning. But because it’s Oscar Sunday, we thought we’d do it up even fancier. I made strawberry butter and we warmed some croissants; our eggs were on puff pastry with breakfast sausage instead of English muffins and Canadian bacon. And we topped it all off with homemade cappuccino and mimosas.

I am, again, awash in sensory bliss. It is sunny out, and just the right temperature, and we are listening to Nat King Cole and sipping our drinks and reading.

I love Sundays.