I've Redecorated

I've changed the desktop and I hope you like it (and get the rather obscure reference to Doctor Who).

While doing my readings for my political communications class this week, I found out that Blogger was the first blog site. Today in class my professor mentioned that fact and said that he was sure all us young, tech-savvy students would no doubt be using wordpress or the like. Nope, I still use blogger. And I don't plan on changing. It's simple, it's easy to use, and a blog is a blog is a blog, so why would I go through the hassle of switching platforms... (Anyway I'm definitely above the average age of the students in that classroom and, while I pretend to be, I'm not all that tech-savvy.)

Fresh Currant Scones, take 2

After my success with my fresh currant scone recipe I decided to try a new scone recipe that calls for fresh fruit. It is one of the few recipes from the FCI's pastry cookbook that we didn't learn in class, so I've been wanting to try it out. I used fresh currants in them although the recipe doesn't specifically call for them.

My Favorite Holiday

I love Halloween! It's my favorite holiday. You get to dress up in silly costumes and eat sweets without feeling stupid or guilty (respectively). Because Halloween fell mid-week, I got to celebrate it twice! Once with my friend Katy and her flatmates--it was a Halloween party crossed with a birthday party for Katy's flatmate Lucy. The invitation said come in fancy dress (that's British for come in costume) or come dressed as Lucy. So I decided to try out a costume I've been wanted to do for a few years: Lucille Ball. I found a close to perfect Lucy dress at a charity shop near me. The pearls and pumps were mine already. The real effort was getting my wavy red hair curly and pinned up (I think I used over 30 bobby pins!) The party was good fun even if I don't think any of the Brits there knew "I Love Lucy."

Baked Brownies

I know I've made these before, and I'm sure I've posted about them (or variations thereof). But they never fail to be pretty much perfect in every way. In fact, these are probably my favorite basic brownie--I know I've said at before about other brownies and I may well say it about another recipe some day, but I think these are the best. They are fudgy and richly chocolatey. They are really easy to bake and the recipe makes a 9x13 inch pan---rather than a 9x9 pan---and more brownies is always better! I made these with a friend for our mothers and they were a hit! I actually spaced, we were chatting while baking, and added the eggs before the sugars. I was a bit worried it'd make the brownies cakier, but it didn't...just one more reason to like the recipe; it's resilient!

Plated Dessert for the Jewish Holidays

I made this dessert (honey milk chocolate semifreddo on apple almond cake with caramel apple sauce, milk chocolate almond bark, marzipan and nougatine) for the Yom Kippur break-fast meal this year. Yom Kippur was in mid-September, but I guess with all the excitement of starting school, I forgot to post this.

The beautiful thing about this dessert is it could be for almost any Jewish holiday! I had been away from home for Rosh Hashanna so I decided to use the traditional flavors from that holiday--apple and honey--as inspiration for my dessert. Since some of my cousins can't eat gluten- the whole dessert is gluten free and is therefore suitable for Passover (obviously if you keep Kosher there are other considerations besides leavened goods and flour, but in my household that's pretty much the extent of Passover.)

Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Well I've officially started grad school classes. As a congratulatory gesture, my mom bought me a cookbook I've been wanting for a while: Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery Cookbook. It's a gorgeous cookbook! It's big an glossy and has tons of photos (of both the finished products and the process). The blurbs before the recipes seem to be both interesting and informative, and are all well written. The one problem is, most of the recipes are labor intensive or at least time consuming--it is a cookbook for a patisserie after all. Not that that is a problem in and of itself, but as I mentioned, I'm a grad student now; I don't have a ton of free time. So I couldn't make a sourdough loaf or lime and coconut eclairs. (I can't wait to try both another time).

Chocolate Cake with Pumpkin Spice Latte Filling

I start grad school this week. Yikes! I'm excited, don't get me wrong. But it's been a while since I've been a student and even longer since I've been in college. I know it's going to be a good experience and I'm going to learn a ton, but right now I just feel incredibly stressed.

Happily my friend Katy (who's getting a very science-y PhD) and her family invited me and my mom to their lovely house in St. Albans for lunch today. Her father is an excellent cook and a delicious meal with friends is the best distraction from the imminent doom--I mean exciting opportunity--of starting classes tomorrow.

White Chocolate, Pumpkin, Sage, and Brown Butter Mini Muffins

The pumpkin, sage, brown butter loaf cake recipe was supposed to make 8 mini loaves. Unfortunately my mini loaf pan only makes 6 loaves. What's a girl to do with left over loaf cake batter? Make mini muffins of course!

Since I had 6 mini loaves I figured I'd have a little fun with the mini muffins and add some chocolate. Pumpkin is delicious with dark chocolate but because this batter bordered on savory (with the brown butter and sage) I thought dark chocolate--even semi-sweet--might be a bit too bitter. So I tossed in a generous helping of good quality, white chocolate chips.

Pumpkin, Sage, Brown Butter Loaf Cakes

As I mentioned, I have a new eCookbook. Since the orange yogurt cake and fig olive oil cake both came out so well I decided to try another recipe. Pumpkin, sage, brown butter loaf cakes seemed sufficiently autumnal for the end of September and I love any recipe that has "butter" right in the name.

There is something very dignified about these cakes that I can't put my finger on. Perhaps it's the sophisticated flavor profile or maybe it's how perfectly these miniature loaves came out. It could possibly be the lack of glaze. I'm not sure. But whatever it was it made me feel as though these cakes (possibly sliced nicely) would be fit for a proper, English afternoon tea at a fancy hotel--you know, like the ones in the US that do traditional afternoon tea but with a distinctively American take on sweets.

Olive Oil Fig Cake

I love olive oil cakes. Besides the fact that I can fool myself into thinking they are healthy because olive oil, rather than butter, is the main fat in the cake, I also really enjoy the taste. I've been considering making one of the olive oil cakes from school for a while, but just hadn't gotten around to it. Then I saw this recipe in my new Martha Stewart Cakes cookbook and I just had to make it.

Orange Yogurt Cake

I'm trying something new here; I'm going to try to make this blog ever so slightly more like a normal blog where I discuss more than just food. Not that it won't remain food focused. Every post will still start and end with whatever I've baked and many will, I'm sure, never vier from my tied and true formula of discussing the recipe I've used or developed. But in at least a smattering of posts I will talk about me and what happens to be going on in my life.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches

I made these for Sophie and her family. The cookies are the chocolate cream cheese snacking cookies from Baked's latest cookbook. I've made them before and had wonderful feed back. The main thing about these cookies is that people who say they don't like sweets or really chocolatey things like them and people (like me) who would live on chocolate if they could like them. I figured that'd be good since Sophie's parents aren't as into sweets but her sister is and Sophie herself falls somewhere in between.

Almost Healthy Pantry Apple Crumble ~ With Recipe

The last weekend I was with my friend Sophie we went to her place upstate. It was lovely and we picked up some beautiful peaches and apples at a local farm stand. I picked up some oatmeal at the store and planned to make a peach crumble, but it turns out all the peaches had been eaten...oops! So I decided on apple crumble instead.

Blueberry Muffins with White Chocolate Chunks

Remember the plum muffins I made a while ago? All the fruity muffins I've made since haven't managed to live up to those. They were pretty much the perfect muffin. But I love plums (and strawberries, a variation I made) and I don't like blueberries. Sophie loves blueberries and had some left from a batch that were so gorgeous I enjoyed them when they were baked in pancakes, so I figured I'd use them up before they went bad. Of course buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup are good enough to make up for blueberries--would the muffins be enough? My answer is an emphatic yes!

Fresh Red Currant Scones (with recipe)

Sophie loves red currants. Apparently when she was young there was a giant currant bush near her house and she used to nosh on them until her tongue went numb from the tartness. So when her mom found gorgeous fresh currants at a famers market she got them for Sophie. Unfortunately, Sophie's tolerance for tart isn't what it was and she couldn't eat them raw.

What to do with fresh berries? Muffins or scones. She had some blueberries that were going to turn and I wanted to make them into muffins, so I figured currant scones. I based my recipe off the strawberry and chocolate scone recipe from Alice's Tea Cup, but with the fresh currants instead of strawberries (obviously) and no chocolate. They were excellent! The sweet(ish) scone dough contrasted nicely with the tart currants (which were not overly tart since they were slightly over ripe and slightly baked from the oven).

White Chocolate, Blackberry and Lime Eton Mess

As I understand it, Eton mess was first served at Eton and was a messy dessert of strawberries (or bananas) and cream (or possibly ice cream). Later they started adding meringue to the dessert and thus the dessert we know today--meringue, strawberries, and lightly whipped cream--was born.

I love traditional Eton mess with strawberries, but I decided that after our dinner of onion tart and filet mignon I couldn't just serve plain old strawberries and cream. I decided to substitute blackberries for the strawberries. That's not really much of a change so I figured I'd add some white chocolate (it's so good with blackberries) to the whipped cream. But white chocolate crème d'or, no matter how delicious, mixed with blackberries is no longer Eton mess. So I whipped up some cream with a bit of lime juice and zest (both pretty and delicious) and folded the meringue pieces into that.

Savory Onion Tart, the remake

Remember this? I first made this in culinary school and loved it so much I made it at home a couple times. One of those times happened to be for Sophie. That may have been a mistake. Ever since, she's been asking (nagging...begging...) me to make it again. If you don't remember it, basically it's a flakey, tender, buttery tart crust topped with sauteed onions, heirloom tomatoes, walnuts, and stilton.

Sophie's Mushroom Ragu

I have never used The Joy of Cooking and I don't think I've ever eaten anything someone else has made out of it. Until yesterday. And now I realize I've been missing out on something. This mushroom ragu--ragu or ragout refers to a main course stew, in case you were curious--was delicious! I'm not sure exactly what the recipe called for; Sophie--the same Sophie who recently made me that delicious lemon pasta with caviar--said she's changed it a bit over the years, but I assume she's captured the spirit of it since she did have the cookbook open to the very stained page with the recipe on it.

Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Buttercream~with recipe

My friend Sophie's birthday was a few days before I went to visit her so I had to make her a (belated) birthday cake. I knew I wanted to make chocolate cake (because who doesn't love chocolate birthday cake?) but I was torn between coconut buttercream (since it was such a hit with the coconut macaroons) and peanut butter buttercream. I thought the coconut and chocolate would be nice, sort of mounds bar like. But of course chocolate and peanut butter is a classic combination. I was leaning towards coconut, but I figured I'd let the birthday girl decide. I'm glad I did and I'm glad she chose peanut butter. It was delicious! The peanut butter buttercream was perfect. The taste was sweet and rich and perfectly peanutty--it reminded me of the peanut butter nougat I made in class and for my final exam. The texture was surprisingly fluffy for something made primarily of butter and peanut butter.

The buttercream recipe is:

Sophie's Famous Lemon Pasta with Caviar

Alright, maybe it's not famous. But it should be. Whenever I have dinner a my friend Sophie's house, I request this dish. Happily for me, I'm staying with her for the next three weeks, so I bet I can convince her to make it again before I leave.

This dish is actually quite simple and perhaps I should start making it for myself, but I think half the fun of it is that it's something I only get on special occasions with Sophie (of course the other half is that it's caviar on pasta!)