So I have a local chat board that I like to hang out on. The other day someone had a dinner party and we were passing around the recipe for the dessert, a bittersweet tart found on Epicurious.com. One of the girls wanted me to make the tart and put it up on the blog so she could see photos of it. I totally understood this. I like to see pictures of food too. Don't get me wrong I have several cookbooks that have no photos what so ever and I love them, but I really think I would love them more with pictures. So off I went to make this simple tart. The original recipe called for jasmine whipped cream, which I don't like Jasmine(and neither does my husband....the one who will be eating the tart) so I omitted that. I also didn't make the candied orange peel because it is one of my least favorite garnishes. It is a nice elegant tart that I could definitely see serving at a dinner party. My one gripe is that it gets "sweaty" when it is defrosting which of course makes for a less appeasing … [Read more...]
The Quest for My Aunt’s Mothers Chocolate Cake
So I must admit that I am not a chocolate cake lover(flourless being the exception to this), in fact I will usually pass on it. However, back when I was 9 years old we went back to visit my grandmother and grandfather. My grandmother was a horrible cook and luckily for us, rarely did cook. My grandfather loved to trap us in the car and go for drives in the car that lasted for hours. For a 9 year old nothing is worse. One afternoon we made a stop....thank God, we usually didn't get to stop. We stopped at my aunt's mothers house and she invited us in for cake. I was very excited....released from the car AND cake. Then I saw it, chocolate cake. Ugh. I had already said that I wanted cake before I knew what it was, so I knew I had to be polite and eat it or my mother would have killed me. So there it sat in front of me. It was a homely cake, the frosting all uneven, but piled up nice and high. It sat there with my big glass of milk. And sat there. Until finally, my mother broke down and … [Read more...]
HHDD#6 F is for…..Fritter.
Originally I was not going to participate in this go around of HHDD. I'm just not a fritter girl. I mean I eat them, the apple ones that are all gooped up with icing and such from the bakery but I wasn't sure I wanted to make them. I was uninspired until I ran across a recipe in a cookbook I bought last week, Kathy Casey's Northwest Table. She is a local chef(but you can buy the book anywhere) and I think she is very inventive. I have two of her cookbooks now and I love them both, if you are a more advanced chef I highly recommed you go out and buy her cookbooks. Anyway, I ran across a recipe for Chanterelle Fritters. The only problem was that these were the kind of fritter where you dip the item(in this case a mushroom) in a batter and fry it....and well, I don't like that kind of fritter. So again I thought I would skip this round. I was running out of time but circumstances changed(it is raining big time...and we were suppose to go to the pumpkin patch) and time opened up. … [Read more...]
The Cake That Broke My Will
So in a comment on my last post, Lis, asked if I knew of a recipe for caramel cake. Not yellow cake with caramel frosting, but caramel cake. I happened to have one. I told her in the email that I had not made it but I got to sitting and thought, how dumb to give her a recipe I haven't tried, so I just went ahead and made it today. I have to say that this smelled so good that I had to break down and take a bite(just one) of this cake. It was SUPER yummy. There is definitely more caramel flavor in the frosting than the cake but the cake does have a distinct flavor of caramel and all the extra sugar gives it a nice crispy(yet soft...doens't make sense I know) top. It's also a nice moist cake, which I love. This cake does have quite a few steps. It is important for the cake that you make sure that your caramel for the cake cool or else the minute it hits the batter it will harden up. If this does happen, don't fret, put your mixer on high speed and blend for 3 minutes. You wont get all … [Read more...]
