"pink" news and stories

If you want to honor breast cancer awareness month, or if you just happen to like pink, there are a lot of options for pink foods that don't require you to get a new set of cookware or buy cookies. Besides, baking your own cookies is much more fun, isn't it?

A good place to start is by looking back at our archives, because last year some food bloggers got together to make up their own pink recipes. Once you've had your fill of those, you can take a look at the famous pink recipes from KitchenAid's Cook For the Cure collection, as well as looking (perhaps somewhat lustily) at all their lovely pink appliances, as well. iVillage has a complete pink party menu that will get you from appetizers and cocktails through dessert. Speaking of cocktails, there are well over 100 cocktail recipes that turn out pink-hued drinks, or at least use pink in the name. Finally, RecipeZaar, a great online recipe source full of user-submitted recipes and reviews, has 156 pink recipes, including one for Pink Fluff, a sweet concoction that can be either salad or dessert.

Whew! That was quite a list, but you should be able to find plenty of pink foods even without using these resources. How about a medium steak for dinner, followed up by a creamy strawberry milkshake?

[Thanks for some of the tips, Ken!]

Sometimes I think I want sleek. Sometimes I think I want geek. Tonight, I want my salt and pepper shakers to squeak. Like little pink pigs.

These are the cutest salt and pepper shakers I have seen yet, except for the little porcelain ducks I swiped from my parent's garage sale. I love that the pink bodies are made of hand blown glass, but they are made from Pyrex, so no need to be all too delicate. The snouts are brass (and they don't really squeak).

The pair is $65.

Whoppers are candies with a chocolate coating over a malted milk center. They are almost identical to Maltesers, though fans of one will argue that it is better than the other. Maltesers are made by Mars, while Whoppers are made by Hershey. Around Easter, Whoppers adds a brightly colored candy coating to the balls and calls them Robin Eggs. Personally, I am a huge fan of the candy coating and look forward to picking up a bag of these around Easter. The extra crunch that comes before reaching the chocolate layer and melt-in-your-mouth malted center is great.

It's not just sugar cookies that are suited to be dressed in whites and pinks and reds for Valentine's Day. Try this creamy, rich, sultry potato and porcini soup. It cooks up in no time and is filling enough to work as a lunch to pack for your sweetheart.

potato, porcini and gruyere soup for the one you love

Peel and slice four small russet potatoes and simmer in four cups half-and-half along with four large slices dried porcini mushrooms, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and four cloves of garlic, roughly chopped until potatoes are tender. Add in two teaspoons of Better than Bouillon chicken stock base (or one cup of chicken stock) and stir until combined. Put mixture in blender and pulse until desired consistency.

Top with sprinkles of pink Hawaiian salt, paprika and chipotle pepper, to taste, and grate one ounce of gruyere cheese over the top.

We have mentioned both a $10,000 cake and a $950 cocktail here at Slashfood, but we have never before seen a cake like this one. Selling at a department store in Tokyo is a cake that costs $1.7 million dollars. The two tiered fruitcake, created by pastry chef Jeong Hong-yong, is covered in marzipan and a total of 223 diamonds, the largest of which is a heart-shaped, 5-karat stone. Though the article mentions that there "have been many inquiries," it does not say whether the cake has been purchased outright.

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