Tuile garnish is a very versatile garnish to use on cakes or plated desserts. The only enemy to tuile is humidity, keep them in an airtight container and don’t even try these in the sultry days of late August in MN. Read More
Apple Pumpkin Cake
Every year at this time I make apple cakes, many of them. It is our traditional dessert during Rosh Hashanah** and just simply delicious for any occasion. This year I tried a new recipe — this apple pumpkin cake — from Robin Asbell’s latest book on Whole Grains
. It gets its richness from pumpkin puree, a layer of sautéed apples and then the whole thing is topped with spiced streusel. This cake is so amazing, I had to bake two. The first one my family ate before I could photograph it, so I made another, and it’s gone too. Because the cake is made with whole wheat flour, apples and pumpkin I feel great about satisfying my boys’ requests to eat it for breakfast, a snack and dessert.
Clean-out-the-Fridge Lemon Curd Cheesecake Tart!
Today I was inspired to clean out my refrigerator and freezer. Partly because I was procrastinating like crazy. I just couldn’t force myself to sit at the computer all day and work on the new book. The January deadline is getting bigger and more menacing, and yet today I just couldn’t do it. I really did need to clean out the fridge to make room for more buckets of dough and for the hundreds of mini Devil’s Food Cupcakes I have to make for the Children’s Heartlink Gala this Friday. ** Read More
Pear Pomegranate Tarte Tatin
I’m dying to go apple and pear picking. I’ve decided that it is fall and my mind has shifted to the autumnal fruit. Well, there is nowhere to pick yet, so I went to the co-op and bought some seckel pears, from who knows where? I like to bake with seckels because they are very firm, which means you can cook them in the caramel longer and they don’t turn to mush.
It is also the season for one of my favorite treats, the pomegranate. It is one of those foods that is more about the experience than the flavor. Don’t get me wrong, I love the taste, but the fun is picking the seeds out and biting into their tart juices. My boys love them too, because they are a serious mess. I send them out onto the back steps and they eat, with the red juices flying everywhere.
Read MoreCreamy Chai Cheesecake (or is it Pots de Crème?)
As some of you know my oven blew up last week, literally! I am still waiting with bated breathe for the UPS driver to deliver the new heating coil, so I can resume doing the thing I love most. It should finally come tomorrow and believe me I am regretting not paying the extra $37 to have it delivered overnight! Patience is clearly something I need to work on.
Just before the oven combusted I’d made this creamy chai cheesecake. I guess it would be more aptly called a chai cream cheese pots de crème. Unlike the dry, grainy version so many of us are used to and frankly don’t care for, this cheesecake is so smooth and creamy that it is just barely set. It is baked in a cup or ramekin, like a pot de cream, without the distraction of a crust. Read More
Sugar Plums with Fresh Ginger and Sparks Flying in My Oven!
These California Sugar Plums showed up at our market, like a little gift at the end of summer. They are so sweet and lovely that the first bunch I bought were gobbled up, pure and simple. I returned and bought two more quarts of them with the intention of roasting them. Their flavor is so wonderful and the sugars so developed they didn’t need much adornment. When you cut into the plums the flesh is slightly green, and against the purple skin it is really quite beautiful. I left the skins on, as I am apt to do, but this time I’ll admit that the skins, although pretty, were a little too tough. I was afraid that as the flesh baked the skins would remain too firm.
Well I never got far enough to find out. My oven exploded while I was preheating it. Yes, exploded! Read More