ingredient or component ⁽⁹⁾

For The Offspring's birthday party, we have a mold with 2 of every letter that is meant to be filled with melted chocolate, my guess. We do outdoor birthday parties and the birthday is in late July, so melted chocolate would be melted chocolate still. And so instead, we pour hard candy over the mold and get hard candy letters. They don't melt in the summer heat.

Once, many years ago, I heard a rumor that it was possible to make caramelized onions using a slow cooker. I dutifully followed the directions and ... no. I got soft, sautéed onions, but not caramelized like I wanted.

Then came a long series of Reddit rabbit holes which ended up with me checking out The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook from the library (How much do we love our libraries?) and reading the recipe for Caramelized Onion Jam (page 61). Wait a minute, caramelized onions? Hmmm. Can Instant Pot do what the slow cooker couldn't?

I love a good make-ahead spice mix. It helps in terms of economizing if you can make it in a large enough batch and/or have multiple people to part it out between. Much as we did with the makhani spice mix, here's the recipe to replicate a packet of taco seasoning.

If you have been hanging out, snooping my recipe book for a while, you know that I am all about that capsule kitchen, which means that certain items which are pantry staples for others, are just an additional bit of recipe for me. Such as brown sugar.