Strawberry Rhubarb Buttermilk Quickbread

Now that I'm not living in a city, I can't alway get some of the odder ingredients I want, but good produce is easy to come by. Case in point: my nextdoor neighbor grows rhubarb and she very kindly told me that I could pick it anytime I want as she never comes close to using it all. I admit I've never actually baked with rhubarb before. I'm not sure why--probably a combination of it being hard to come by in NYC and London and the fact that, while I like rhubarb, it's not my favorite.

Kumquatini~with recipe!

This is a martini made with kumquat simple syrup (see? I told you that it'd be turning up everywhere), a dash of bitters, and a measure of grand marnier. I rimmed the glass with Demerara sugar and tossed in a candied kumquat for good measure. Delicious.

Just for fun, here's the recipe for two small(ish) kumquatinis:

Quinoa Flour Cake with Kumquats

I made this for Passover, but I will have to try it for my gluten free cousins, because it was really good! The quinoa flour made the cake much lighter with a smaller crumb than the average nut flour based Passover cake. Plus the it lent the cake a nice nutty flavor without being overpoweringly nutty.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Birthday Cake

My mom made me my birthday cake as she always does. This year it was chocolate cake--Thomas Keller's recipe. It was good. Very moist and chocolatey but not too heavy and dense. 

Cookies for Passover

The thing about baking for Passover is that it makes you think a bit more about what you are baking. But past thinking a bit harder when you choose your recipes, it doesn't really change things. Okay, yes, no flour unless it's matzo meal, but how hard is that? It's rather like keeping gluten-free (assuming you aren't using matzo meal). In fact the coconut macaroons and the chocolate walnut cookies are staples of my year round gluten-free repertoire. The third cookie, a nutty and floral macaron, will definitely be added to that repertoire--but more on it in a minute.

Candied Kumquats

I see more and more recipes pop up on places like pinterest that use kumquats. Kumquats, a diminutive citrus fruit with an edible peel, happened to appear at my grocery store recently. I had to get in on the kumquat craze, so I bought some. I didn't necessarily think through the fact that, with Passover starting, my recipe options would be somewhat limited. That's okay, I decided to candy them and figure things out later. After all I love candied citrus! 

Crumb cakes and quickbreads

I could have sworn I posted these two cakes, but apparently I didn't because the photos were still in my "to post" folder. So here goes:

The cake above, a raspberry sour cream crumb cake, is a really excellent and rather large crumb cake from the Williams Sonoma cookbook Muffins. It is dense, moist, great with coffee (or tea if you prefer), and has a crumb layer on top. What is really special about this cake are the fresh raspberries nestled between the cake batter and the crumble layer. The sour cream makes the cake moist, tender, and ever so slightly tangy. I'm all for substituting fat free yogurt for sour cream, but I'd hesitate to do it here--it does alter the texture and flavor slightly and I'm not sure it would be for the better in this case. On the same line, use full fat sour cream; the fat is what makes the cake tender and without oil or butter this cake is light enough already.