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.

Quinoa with Cranberries and Pecans

I like quinoa. It's delicious, with its slightly nutty flavor. The texture is good. And it happens to be a berry (or something of that nature) and therefore fits almost any dietary requirements. Also, I can never get non boil in a bag rice to come out properly, but I've never had a problem with quinoa. Finally, I find it more versatile than other grains. It works nicely with basil, a bit of lemon zest, and pine nuts; or black olives with a bit of crumbled feta; or as a base for grilled vegetables and falafel. But it can also be more on the sweet side, as with this recipe. In this case, all I did was toss in dried cranberries and toasted, chopped pecan after the quinoa was cooked. It makes a great side for a protein like turkey--perhaps a healthy addition to Thanksgiving dinner?--or, cold, a hearty addition to a baby spinach salad.

I feel as though I rambled through this a bit, apologies--I'm tired but determined to get this posted!

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Pistachio Scones

These were delicious. I used a basic scone recipe and snazzed it up with white chocolate and pistachios. But I decided that, as much as I like the combination of pistachios and white chocolate, it wasn't quite flavorful enough. I happened to have some delicious dried strawberries, so I chopped them up and tossed them in. The tangyness of the dried berries complemented the sweet white chocolate and the nutty goodness of the pistachios perfectly.

Brownies with Citrus Salad

I tried the brownie recipe from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. It's not the simplest brownie recipe, but it's well worth the extra effort. They were perfect. Richly chocolaty, tender, fudgy but still extraordinarily light. Oh gosh.

Individual Apple Bread Puddings

After the success of the waffle and chocolate-hazelnut ice cream, I decided to have fun and make another plated dessert at home. I had slightly stale sourdough bread and some lovely but somewhat bruised apples so I made bread pudding! I made each mini pudding in a well buttered ramekin so I could turn them out onto plates a bit like a baked Charlotte.

I topped the warm bread puddings with vanilla-yogurt cream, apple caramel sauce, and some crushed oat and walnut "nougatine". I put quotes around nougatine because typically it's made of slivered almonds coated in caramel; this is a granola-y version. This breakfast-y but still very dessert-y plated dessert was delicious and, perhaps, a bit whimsical (beiWng breakfast inspired and all that)!

Caramelized Waffles and Chocolate-Hazelnut Ice Cream

I bought myself a small Breville waffle maker for the holidays. It's a great waffle maker! So great that I have made far too many waffles. So I froze some. To heat them up I coated them with cinnamon sugar and fried them. They got all nice and caramelized and toasty warm. I served them with homemade ice cream.

The ice cream was amazing. It's a creamy chocolate and sour cream ice cream base (from the New York Times food section) with some toasted hazelnuts and a dash of Frangelico added in for good measure. I didn't add much liqueur because it can interfere with the freezing point of the ice cream, but with Frangelico on top of the hazelnuts, a little went a long way. This was, hands down, the best batch of ice cream I've ever made, and I've made some good ones. I think it was the sour cream. You couldn't taste it at all (which was good, sour cream would have been all wrong with the hazelnuts) but it made the texture unbeatable.

Plated all together, the warm, crisp waffles and the cold, creamy ice cream were just perfect! (Happy New Year, by the way.)

Thanksgiving Desserts (Number Three)

Alright, this is really just dessert number one--the apple crumble pie--again. But this time I decided it really needed ice cream. And not just any ice cream: homemade bourbon pecan ice cream!

French Toast with Maple Hazelnut Butter

Who doesn't like breakfast for dinner? Especially brioche french toast with sautéed pink lady apples and maple hazelnut butter. I'm not sure any more needs to be said. (Although I should note that I was lazy and used all natural jarred hazelnut butter and stirred in good quality maple syrup--rather than making the nut butter from scratch.)

Christmas Candy

Remember I mentioned that I made chocolates for Christmas in 2013? Probably not since it's been ages. But I finally remembered that I promised to tell you about the chocolates I made and miserably failed to uphold said promise, posting about only two of the half dozen candies I made. Sorry. To make up for it, I will finally tell you about the other four. All in this one post. From my least favorite (don't get me wrong I liked them all) to my favorite:

Passover Dessert

After such a lovely dinner it's hard to know how we had room for dessert. But we did. Unlike the dinner, the desserts were all gluten-free, not just unleavened. So everyone could eat everything. And everyone did.

Two Pies for Pi Day

I'm sure I've mentioned that Pi Day is one of my favorite holidays. If you haven't heard of it, Pi Day is so called because March 14th or 3.14 is, of course, the begining of pi. This year (since it is pi month--March 2014--and we get those so rarely) I made two pies, one savory and one sweet.

Homemade Granola

Alices Tea Cup makes incredible homemade granola and the recipe is in their cookbook. I think there's something funky with the recipe as scaled down to home cook sizes, so I've tweaked it here and there and changed the baking method a bit. Overall though, it captures the spirit of their delicious, honey sweetened, oatty and nutty granola.

Hamantaschen for Purim

There are many different explanations for why we eat hamantaschen on Purim and why it's triangular. I'll always go with the story I heard: the pastries are triangular to symbolize Haman's hat (which had three corners, three corners had his hat--we used to sing that at the Purim carnival at synagogue.) I'm not sure why we would be eating the villian's hat, but I like hamantaschen, so I don't argue.

Wedding Cake Tasting

I am making a wedding cake for a wedding this spring. I know the bride and she asked me to make the cake. As this is a proper business request (even though it was a friend) not a favor I felt I should give her and the groom a proper cake tasting--plus the groom had never tasted my food. They were pretty sure they wanted white cake, but they really didn't have much of an idea other than that. So I made 2 types of cake and 6 flavors of buttercream for them to try.

Salted Almond, Chocolate Chip Cookies

There's nothing more relaxing than making (and subsequently eating) chocolate chip cookies. I've made all sorts of chocolate chip cookies but I've never tried salted ones. I decided it was time. I based these off of Tate's bakery's "chubby Tate's” chewy chocolate chip cookies. Their recipe uses corn syrup to make the cookies nice and chewy. I then added chopped, blanched almonds and sea salt in addition to the dark chocolate chips.

Chocolate Bark

As I mentioned, I made chocolates for Christmas. One of my favorite yuletide chocolates is the mendiant--a chocolate disk it the dried fruit and nuts. But these are time consuming. And chocolate bark is basically the same thing, but easier to make. So tempered some high quality dark chocolate and white chocolate and got to work.

The Best of 2013

It's that time. The time to look back over the previous twelve months and see where you've been and what's happened in your life, both good and bad. For me 2013 is the year I started grad school. It's also the year I made a wedding (okay, anniversary) cake for a real couple, crafted a TARDIS out of chocolate cake, made hundreds of chocolates for the holidays, and so much more. So here's to 2013.

New Year's Eve "Party"

I was invited to New Year's parties, but I don't do New Year's parties. Ever. My family has a rule that you must wear stretch waist pants on New Year's Eve. We eat snacks and party food and go to bed at 12:01 (which is earlier than we normally go to bed, but that's not the point...) The point is, this year my mom, my friend Adriana, and myself stayed in and ate our way into the new year.

Christmas Day

I love Christmas in London! The city is beautiful, everyone seems to celebrate (even Jews like me!), and I have a delicious lunch with my family in Clapham. Jeff is an excellent cook and he made turkey, veg, roasted potatoes, bread sauce, and chestnut stuffing. Yum!