Strawberry Coffee Cake

Remember the raspberry sour cream coffee cake I made? This is a variation of that. Instead of sour cream, I used fat free Greek yogurt. It made the texture of the cake a little bit tough but it tasted pretty much the same and made the cake lower fat and cal. Next time I think I'll try regular fat free yogurt (instead of Greek yogurt) since it has more moisture and, hopefully, will make the crumb a bit more tender. I also substituted sliced strawberries for the raspberries because I happened to have strawberries in the fridge that needed to be used up but no raspberries at all. I think I liked the raspberries more, but generally I like raspberries more so I'm not convinced it's a reflection on the cake. Overall not the perfect cake, but yummy nonetheless and (as cake goes) nearly healthy!

Two Perfect Snack Foods

Popcorn and nuts. And these aren't just popcorn and nuts, these are incredible popcorn and nuts! The popcorn is air popped and then tossed with a buttery, cinnamon-sugar-ancho chili mixture. It's almost sweet but with a zing from the ancho--delicious! The nuts--based on Union Square Cafe's bar nuts--also had a slight zing from chili powder but were milder than the popcorn. The mixture of toasted almonds, cashews, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, and Brazil nuts (the last two of which are apparently seeds, not nuts) was tossed with fresh rosemary, salt, and the aforementioned chili powder. I bet you won't be able to eat just one handful!

Strawberry Pancakes~with recipe!

I had a pint of strawberries that got really smashed up on the walk home (oops). I salvaged about half the pint and macerated them with balsamic vinegar and sugar and served them on a toasted spelt croissant spread with some vanilla mascarpone. Yum! The other half the pint was good for nothing but purée. I am currently without an ice cream maker, so there was no point in saving it for sorbet. Berry sauce would have been nice, but no fun. So I figured something with the berry purée in the batter (kind of like the way you can use apple sauce instead of oil with boxed cake mixes). What to do? Pancakes!

They were perfect! They were fluffy and light. They tasted very much like normal pancakes with pieces of strawberry added in, but better, because every bite had strawberry in it and there were no pockets of uncooked batter (as there can be under chunks of fruit.) Best of all they are pale pink! Okay, that's probably not the best thing, but they really are pretty.

I'm so happy with how they came out I'm going to share my recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups AP flour
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• Pinch salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Scant 1/2 pint strawberries, puréed (it will make about 1/2 cup purée)

Directions:

• In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients
• In a second bowl, beat the eggs, milk, vanilla, and strawberry purée together.
• Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until it forms a thick batter.
• Let the batter sit for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, heat and butter a frying pan or griddle.
• Ladle out about a 1/4 cup of batter onto the pan, making 1 or 2 pancakes at a time.
• Cook for about 2 minutes, until the underside is golden brown and the bubbles break the surface of the pancakes.
• If you want to add more fruit or chocolate chips (I recommend chocolate chips!) drop them on the surface of the pancakes now, before you flip them.
• Flip and cook the flip side for about a minute, until golden.
• If you aren't serving right away, put the finished pancakes on a foil lined pan in a warm oven.
• Repeat, buttering the pan as needed.
• Serve with real maple syrup.
• Makes about 20 fluffy, pinkish, perfect pancakes!

Birthday Bunny Cake

Every year for as long as I can remember, my mom has made me a bunny cake for my bridal. Some years this was my official cake for my party, but more often than not it was just for us with a separate party cake. This year was no different, although my party isn't for another few weeks so there wasn't much of a choice in the matter. Regardless of how many cakes I have, I love my birthday bunny cake.

This year it was a coconut cake with vanilla buttercream and shredded coconut "fur". How cute? And it was certainly delicious. The cake was moist and light with just the right amount of sweetness and only a hint of coconut. The buttercream was creamy and the coconut, while a bit on the thick side (the shredded coconut pieces are much thicker than sweetened coconut but it looks furrier and unsweetened, which was good with the sweet cake and buttercream), complemented the coconut in the cake nicely. Yum! (Stay tuned for my party cake...it's going to be chocolate!)

Quasi Birthday Cake

Well technically this isn't a birthday cake--it isn't even a cake. I decided to practice some cake decorating in advance of my birthday because I couldn't decide what to make for my birthday cake. It hasn't actually helped me make up my mind but it was fun!

This is a cake dummy covered with white fondant and decorated with fondant cutouts and silver dragées. It was really very easy to make. The decorations are just 3 sizes of flowers cut from two colors of fondant. I didn't use and shaping tool or anything fancy, just stuck them right on the cake (with a bit of water). Then just a drop of water to stick the dragées onto the flowers and voilà! I think it's pretty and quite fun!

Marble Loaf Cake

This marble loaf cake from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook is just delicious. The chocolate is richly, deeply, almost bitterly chocolaty. The vanilla is warmly sweet. The cake generally is moist and dense but not too heavy. The glaze is rich with white chocolate and sets very nicely. Plus it's remarkably simple to make and I think swirling the cake batter is a ton of fun (I like the method that Martha suggest of spooning in the batter in 2 layers both with a sort of checker board pattern, it helps distribute the chocolate and vanilla without risking over swirling the batters and blending them.)

The cake before swirling and after I took it out of the oven

Almond Cake (and a quick discussion of gluten free food)

This delicious, gluten free, almond cake is technically a Passover cake  (and that's why I made it this time) however I make it all year round. It's absurdly moist and delicious. It's easy enough to make and there's no need to decorate it with anything more than a dusting of powdered sugar. Finally, it's gluten free by design (rather than by substituting gluten free flours for wheat flour) which makes it perfect for people with coeliac disease (like my cousin).

The thing about gluten free baking is that baked goods that are gluten free by design (typically recipes designed for Passover because of the restrictions on grains/leavening/etc., as well as many cream and fruit based desserts) are almost always better than ones that are forced into being gluten free. Think about it:

• flourless chocolate cake
• coconut macaroons
• French macarons
• meringues and dacquoise
• mousses
• ice cream/sorbet/frozen yogurt/granita/semifreddos/mendiants/parfaits/etc (as long as they don't have additives like cookie pieces or any glutenous cake bases, which some of mine did, but you get the point)
• many candies (such as caramels) and chocolates (such as bonbons), 
• soufflés
• fruit and sabayon gratins
• panna cotta/creme caramel/creme brûlée/pots de creme/etc
• fruit salads and soups

All of these are naturally gluten free and delicious!