Pandemic Cooking with Pantry Items
Social media is awash in titles like the above. They’re decidedly grim, but no sense messing around, is there? Unrelated pretty picture. I’m sorry if you’re sick of these kinds of posts. Who could blame you? By now you’re probably sick of just about everything. You long to go outside….
Little Lemon Cakes
Too many lemons is a first world problem, but there you are. We have a lemon tree in our yard, but so do lots of other Bay Area inhabitants. Free lemons aren’t always met with appreciation. Searching for a productive way to use up my lemon glut, I turned to…
Espresso Chocolate Truffles
Elizabeth David, writing her magisterially grumpy Elizabeth David’s Christmas, tackles edible gifting with her usual verve, writing: Those bottles of indeterminate sherry and port, Christmas puddings and tins of tea and fancy biscuits are survivals from the days when such things were distributed by Ladies Bountiful to old retainers, retired nannies…
Plum Galette
From Dictionary.com Goat Rodeo: a slang term for something going totally, unbelievably, disastrously wrong, and there’s nothing left to do but to sit back and watch the trainwreck. — Plum galette came about the way most of my recipes do: by accident. I had a glut of pluots…
Halvah Brownies
Every night after dinner I ask John what he wants for dessert. And every night, he asks if we have any brownies. By brownies he means: do we have any home-baked brownies? Specifically, David Lebovitz’s recipe for Dave And Kate’s Remarkable Brownies? Fortunately, the recipe requires little by way of skill…
Lemon Cake with Almond Flour
As I write, California is experiencing terrible fires. Here are some ways to help: The United Way is helping people affected by the Camp Fire. The American Red Cross is also accepting donations. The North Valley Community Foundation is accepting donations. To help animals impacted by the fires, the Conscious Cat…
Cherry Chocolate Brownies
Apologies for the delays between posts. Until last month, I managed a long-term case of patellar bursitis with regular cortisone injections. My doctor warned these shots would eventually become refactory. Eventually has arrived. It means delays between posts. — Let’s talk about cherries. They are in season, and of course,…
Apple Marzipan Cake
Apple marzipan cake came about because as everyone else began cooing over farmers market fraises de boise and posting nauseating recipes for rhubarb bowls (go ahead, tell me you haven’t seen some gross stuff out there), I faced a fridge brimming with apples. In the hunt for something interesting to…
The Wacky Cake: Not My Grandmother’s Bundt
Bill LeBlond, editorial director of Chronicle Books, once told a crowd at a cookbook proposal seminar that if he had to read one more book proposal from people who learned about cooking at their grandmothers’ knee, he would throw up. Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food I spent a lot…
Miniature Chocolate Cakes
Years ago, while writing an article on holiday cookies, I consulted The Martha Stewart Living Christmas Cookbook. Stewart assume a readership whose kitchens are stocked like a Sur Le Table outlet: cake pans in every possible size and shape, pizza stones, candy thermometers, pastry bags, sugar combs, a willing staff ready to…