SpiceLines

The winner of Spicelines Camel Cookie Contest is Lee-Ann Welsh, a Londoner who bakes cakes professionally in her West Hempstead home. She covered her cookie with runny royal icing, then hand-painted the details with a fine brush and edible red paste. But there's more to her story....

Lee Ann-Welsh!

So many great photos were sent for SpiceLines’ First Annual Cookie Contest that I’ve been dithering. But in the end I fell for this jaunty little camel. I love the dreamy contented look on her face, (yes, I’m quite sure she’s female) and the ankle bells, not to mention the elaborate tasseled saddlebag. Actually she looks a bit like the camel I rode in Morocco.

Lee-Ann, who lives in West Hampstead, London, is a talented cake decorator and “stay at home mum.” To see her adorable creations—the Penguin and Igloo cake featured in Women’s Weekly is one of my favorites—go to her blog, Beyond Imagination, at www.allof mycakes.blogspot.com. (Don’t miss the Royal Cupcakes on her homepage, a sweet tribute to last Friday’s extravaganza.)

Lee-Ann, who has two sons—the younger is 14 and still in school—fell into cake decorating when looking for a hobby. She loves working with royal icing which she describes as “a dying art.” Her mentor was Eddie Spence, the “master of royal icing,” who has not only made cakes for Queen Elizabeth, but also created the wedding cake for Charles and Diana. As she said in an email, her work is “all sugar, all edible.”

For the camel cookie, our winner kept it simple, hand-painting the details, but it wasn't easy. I’ll let her tell you in her own words how it went:

“You may think I only made one cookie but I did in fact make many more."

You don't even have to go out for ice cream. Freddo's fleet of Honda bikes will bring your favorite flavors right to your door.

As the website says, "Te llevamos el helado a la casa!" ("We deliver ice cream to your house!")

What's your favorite? Frutos del Bosque? (Forest Fruits?) Chocolate Amargo? (Bitter Chocolate?) Maracuya con Naranja? (Passion Fruit with Orange?)

Make mine Dulce de Leche Tentacion (Temptation). Devastatingly pure flavor. Made with rich leche natural. Deeply caramelized. Very sweet. Entirely seductive.

One kilo, por favor. You never know when you'll need a big bowl of ice cream (or three).

And make it snappy--say 15 minutes?

In my dreams....

At La Salamandra's cafe in Palermo Soho, even a dulce de leche "frappuccino" comes with an extra spoonful of the irresistible caramelized milk and sugar sauce.

One quick taste and there you go, sliding down the slippery slope of addiction.

First there’s the voluptuous mouth feel: oh so smooth, just thick enough to melt luxuriously over your tongue.

Then the flavor hits you full on: Rich, sweet, caramelized. Not especially complex. A straight shot of burnt milk and sugar. The best has a hint of vanilla.

As RunFastTravelSlow wrote, “Resisting is futile.”

But why resist? And how?

In Argentina dulce de leche—literally “milk candy”—is inescapable. At the supermercado there are whole sections devoted to this luscious confection. Made of milk and sugar, slow simmered until it thickens to a gooey consistency, more sauce than candy, dulce de leche takes a star turn in ice cream, in chocolate cups and coconut tarts, in brownies and “frappuccinos,” in scores of pastries, in well, almost everything…

A sure sign of spring: green garlic soup with a runny poached egg and sliced new potatoes. The sliced immature bulb and tender leaves become sweet and nutty when sauteed gently.

I spent yesterday making dulce de leche. It’s harder to get right than I thought, but along the way I downed whole tablespoons of the stuff, just to be sure…

By late afternoon I felt as if I’d eaten an entire jar.

When it came to supper, I was desperate for something savory. Maybe even healthy. Easy to prepare. No shopping, please. I was cross-eyed from stirring a simmering pot of milk and sugar for four hours.

The outlook brightened as soon I opened the freezer and a batch of homemade chicken broth came into view. In the pantry there was a little bag of new potatoes. In the fridge, eggs of course. But the real find was a big bunch of green garlic that I bought at the farmer’s market last Saturday.

Palermo’s Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays holds over 5000 types of plants, shrubs and trees. Some exotic specimens inhabit another world where they can just be glimpsed through the splotched and speckled glass of a decaying 19th-century winter house.

Don’t get me wrong. Big public gardens are wonderful. Swaths of green grass, broad sidewalks, ponds for sailing toy yachts. Room for joggers, jugglers and soccer players to put on a lively show.

But it’s in the smaller, more hidden gardens, the ones that are tucked behind iron railings or locked doors, the ones that have neglected corners where the cobwebs aren’t whisked away, where the manicured gives way to the jungle, that real enchantment lurks.

In Palermo one morning, we forded the cacophonous traffic on Santa Fe Avenue and slipped in through an open gate on the other side. Suddenly we found ourselves in sun-dappled silence. The only sound was our footsteps crunching the gravel paths of the Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays. We felt as if a century had melted away.

Were you hungry this morning?

I was ravenous. That’s what swimming an unaccustomed mile will do, especially if you’ve been dipping into the dulce de leche jar(s).

But the moment I sat down at the table, I knew it was going to be a wonderful day.

Because Aurora made my favorite all-day breakfast: Two eggs scrambled with tangy nopalitos and a luscious cooked tomato salsa with cilantro, garlic and green onions, served atop not one but two earthy corn tortillas browned in a cast iron skillet.

Now that’s a breakfast that will hold me till suppertime.

What about you? Oh, OK. Here’s the recipe:

Lunch in La La Land: At the Rincon Atamisque, guests linger under the trees drinking wine while trout caught in the owner's pond is cooked to order.

We heard this again and again as we drifted through the Valle de Uco:

“It’s just like Napa, only 50 years ago.”

Argentina’s highest altitude vineyards—900 to 1,200 meters above sea level--are nestled here in the foothills of the Andes, about an hour south of Mendoza. Road signs point to clusters of bodegas, many of them, like Salentein and O. Fournier, owned by European winemakers who’ve been lured by cheap land and the kind of growing conditions (dry climate, hot days, chilly nights) that produce knockout wines with big, intense flavors.

But except for the occasional trucks loaded with dark purple grapes, we see almost no one else on the road. The vistas are magnificent: expansive blue skies and neatly ordered vineyards stretching almost to the rugged Precordillera and the shimmering snow-capped peak of Mt. Tupungato. At the wineries, there are half empty parking lots, rose bushes baking in the sun, the sound of gravel crunching under your feet (and only yours), and a deep, meditative tranquility.

Nowhere did I get that sleepy oldtime Napa vibe more than at Rincon Atamisque.

Gremolata--an Italian condiment made of parsley, garlic and lemon zest--turns freshly caught trout into a delicious and super-easy supper. Olive oil-mashed potatoes are a tasty accompaniment.

A confession: I don’t like trout. I especially don’t like it smoked. Even fresh it always seems a little tasteless. Sometimes it has the faintest flavor of silt.

OK, OK. I can hear all you trout-lovers and fishing fanatics snorting in disbelief.

But trust me. I was secretly dreading the lunch that Adriana had planned for us at Rincon Atamisque in Argentina’s Valle de Uco. Once there, however, I was so seduced by the setting—wooden tables scattered under the trees, golden leaves drifting onto pale blue linens, snow capped mountains in the distance—that I said to myself, “Just go with it.”

I was wrong, of course. That is, I was right to go with plan. The trout, freshly caught from the Rincon’s own pond and cooked to order, was superb. It may have been the most delicious meal I had in Argentina.

Groan. I hear all you steak lovers saying, "Whaaaat?!"

But back to the trout: The just-caught freshness of the fish had a lot to do with my enthusiasm. Still, I suspect that the gremolata made all the difference.