#NationalGrilledCheeseDay, Oakland-style

Yep, today is National Grilled Cheese Day, a pretty important holiday for grilled cheese enthusiasts and small children alike. I have two suggestions for you, Oakland. If you're the kind of person who likes to think outside the box, head over to College Point Cafe in Rockridge, a small breakfast and lunch joint frequented by students and staff at nearby California College of the Arts, and home to quite possibly the best tuna melt I've ever had, grilled to order on a Dutch crunch roll.

If you're more of a traditionalist, Oakland has that, too. Try the soup and 1/2 grilled cheese combo at Sacred Wheel Cheese and Specialty Market, in the Temescal neighborhood. This is a delightful little market with yummy grilled cheese sandwiches, delicious homemade soups, and Nutella-filled chocolate chip cookies, to boot!

How will you celebrate National Grilled Cheese Day?

The Town's Hi/Lo Coffee Cake Recipe

Hey, Oakland! Did you know that today is National Beer Day and National Coffee Cake day! I thought surely I'd be able to find a coffee cake recipe that actually tastes like coffee...

... and has beer in it, too!

The internet has everything, after all. And while I found several boozy coffee cake recipes, none that offer both a stimulant (caffeine) and a depressant (alcohol)... #sweetonoakland to the rescue! Try this out and let me know what you think. Better yet, invite me over to try a slice!

Recipe for The Town's Hi/Lo Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour                                          
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/4 cup lightly toasted, chopped pecans
• 1/2 cup chopped dried figs
• a pinch of sea salt
• 1 cup of Linden Street Brewery's Glow Pilsner
• 1 cup of strongly brewed Mr. Espresso coffee
• Powdered sugar (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Grease a 10 cup Bundt pan* with butter and dust with flour. Set aside.

Sift together dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, cardamom - and set aside. Dust the chopped figs with some of this dry mixture.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream the butter with the sugars until smooth and creamy, about 2-3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

Fold in the dry ingredients alternatively with the beer and coffee; blend well.

With a wooden spoon, stir in the nuts and figs, mixing well and scraping down the sides of  the bowl 1 to 2 times.

Spoon batter into a well-greased and flour dusted 10 cup Bundt pan. Bake in a preheated oven for 1 hour, 10 minutes until brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Let your hi/lo coffee cake cool in the pan for about 20 minutes; un-mold the cake and allow to cool completely on a wire rack before serving. Dust with icing sugar, if desired. 

What will you have on the side: coffee or beer?!

Enjoy.

* If you don't have a Bundt pan, you can use any of the following alternatives: 9x13-inch baking pan, 2 9-inch round cake pans, about 18-24 cupcakes, 1 9-inch tube pan, 2 11x7-inch baking pans, or 1 10-inch springform pan. Check for doneness more frequently (e.g. 20-24 minutes for cupcakes) if using a shallower pan.

Oakland Pride Swag Bag

At last, an inaugural blog post about the public school fundraising project that started #sweetonoakland! I recently put together an "Oakland Pride" gift basket for my son's school to auction off at their annual fundraiser this past weekend. I thought it would make a good blog post for one of my other blogs, but those blogs aren't location-specific. I wondered if I could create a niche side-project around a phrase I've been using a lot lately - finally, after more than 17 years here - "sweet on Oakland".

Let me give you a little background information. I moved to Oakland in 1998, after about ten months in a cramped, overpriced apartment in north Berkeley. I don't really count the first place I lived, technically in Oakland, off Dana Street right on the Oakland/Berkeley border. But in 1999, I moved to the little Adams Point triangle in the Lake Merritt neighborhood, where I could walk to my part-time job in the uptown area and take the 51A AC Transit bus to Berkeley for my college classes.

I loved it. I could walk about 15 minutes down the hill in any direction to get to Piedmont, BART, the lake, or the Grand Lake area. We (my then-boyfriend, now-husband) rented a one-bedroom apartment in a small building with a pool for $795 per month and rent increased only nominally from there. We moved two more times within the Adams Point area before eventually moving to Boston for grad school and the birth of our first child. After four years there we returned to Oakland, eventually buying a house in the Laurel district.

Oakland is a complicated city. There are some things I don't like about living here, but the pros usually outweigh the cons and, itchy feet though I have, it's the only place I've felt close to calling home. This project is a shared effort to focus on the positive and highlight the things I really dig about this, in the end, pretty irresistible town.

Much of what I included in this "Oakland Pride Swag Bag", as we eventually called it, I purchased in the Laurel and Dimond districts. Here's what I included:

1. Okay, this one is cheating a little, with Chocolate Fusion, out of San Leandro. But pretty close, right? We love our East Bay neighbors, after all...

2. A tote bag and stickers from Oaklandish - a staple stop in any Oakland-centric shopping trip.

3. A set of diner-style coffee mugs from Oaklandish, specifically from the Dimond store.

4. Coffee beans from Cafe Santana Roasting Company, which recently opened a storefront in the Laurel. Great coffee, super-friendly customer service - highly recommend.

5. A copy of the This is Oakland book, available at Oaklandish stores.

6. A gift card to Peter's Kettle Corn, another relatively recent (a year or so ago?) addition to the Laurel.

7. A gift card to Homeroom, which has been in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland since 2011. I took my son there during their opening week and we've been big fans ever since. In addition to delicious mac 'n' cheese, they make these heavenly, homemade "oreo" cookies. Drool.

8. A bottle of Rock Wall Wine - another technically East Bay pride point as these guys are in Alameda.

9. A set of Oaklandish playing cards.

10. A bar of Handbrewed Soap.

There you have it - 10 great ideas for shopping local this holiday season if you live here in Oakland. Share your hot Oakland tips on social media using the hashtag #sweetonoakland! If you're on Twitter or Instagram, you can follow along there, too!