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Posts from the ‘Desserts’ Category

Sep 5

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Birthday banana cream pie with (slightly) salted caramel and ganache

Today is my birthday, so I’m not going to say much. I have firm plans to do not much of anything for the rest of the afternoon, and I don’t want to be late.

Banana_cream_pie

But I do want to share with you, finally, the recipe for the banana cream pie I’ve been fixated on for the last half-dozen years or so. It’s deeply inspired by the one at Tartine in San Francisco – flaky pie crust, layers of caramel and dark chocolate, filled with pastry cream and fresh bananas, and topped with billowy whipped cream and chocolate shavings. But I’ve been adding my own touches here and there over the past years, finding the perfect recipes for each of the various elements, and it’s finally ready for sharing. Read more

Aug 9

Watermelon sorbet with rose, mint, and gin

Watermelon_sorbet

I realized recently that this move to Madison is really only the second time in my life that I’ve had a significant move. The first was moving to California for college. I’ve moved up and down to Oregon a few times, but always for a defined period of time, and even the first few times it was with someone who already knew the lay of the land. College was a pretty easy transition, complete with a summer camp-like few weeks of orientation and activities, but this is an entirely different beast. We have little idea of where even the simplest things are in town, and the list of administrative tasks to take care of (e.g. new driver’s licenses) is about a mile long. We sold or otherwise disposed of most of our household items when we left California last summer, meaning we’re starting almost from scratch in a lot of ways, and after five days of driving across the country we were left with mountains of boxes to unpack and an ever-changing collection of shopping lists and errands to run.

It’s been a little exhausting.

More than a little. Read more

Jul 10

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Polenta layer cake with fruit and créme fraîche whipped cream

Cake_duo

Oh doesn’t that look like an amazing cake to make for 4th of July?

I’m so helpful.

I did make this cake for 4th of July, but that means I can’t write about it until after 4th of July, which makes it a little late for all of you. But wait! You can actually make this cake any time of the year. Woo hoo! Now you’re set and I’m not late at all.  Read more

Nov 24

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Whole wheat trail mix cookies for hitting the road (or the skies)

Food is always a big part of our travel plans. Both in the way of food tourism – whenever we talk about travel or places we want to go, one of the first questions is what will we eat there? – and in that food is always a big part of planning the logistics for our trips. I really can’t go more than a couple of hours without eating something, which makes traveling a little difficult sometimes unless we do some advance planning. I’m definitely a little hypoglycemic, and that leads to migraines, and everything just goes downhill from there. One minute I’ll be fine, and five minutes later it can feel like if I don’t find food soon I might have some sort of breakdown (this sounds dramatic, but … well … you can ask Brett).

But I’m a pretty good planner, and if you’ve spent much time with me you know that it’s rare for me to be without food on my person in some form or another. I’m the one you can count on to have a granola bar in my purse, or a baggie full of cookies, or a bit of fruit salad in a tupperware container (I love these, since they’re recycled plastic and it’s virtually impossible for them to leak or come undone in my bag). I can’t remember the last time I got on a plane without at least one meal packed into my carryon.

flour Read more

Nov 16

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Brown sugar applesauce with bourbon and vanilla

applesauce1

Every once in a while I realize that something is easy. Unfortunately, I am particularly good at making things difficult – both in and out of the kitchen – but sometimes before I even begin to figure out how something actually works I just imagine it to be so difficult that I move no further.

Case in point: applesauce. What could be so difficult about applesauce? Answer: nothing, it turns out. I don’t know what I was so afraid of. Well, I suppose there is some peeling and chopping of apples, which can be kind of a pain, but not when there’s some good music on, or a good TV show playing in the background, or maybe a podcast, or just some good conversation. Let’s all hang out in our kitchens and drink whiskey with friends and make applesauce!

And if some of that whiskey manages to end up in the applesauce, then, OH WELL let’s go with it. Read more

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