Desserts

Molasses Spice Cookies (Gluten Free)

December 14, 2010
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I haven’t always had the best luck with gluten free baking. I bought all the right flours and starches, but my experience when trying to bake gluten free bread was less than positive; it was edible but not something I’d eat by choice. While I don’t need to eat gluten free I have friends and family who do and when it came time to bake some holiday cookies, I realized that everything I wanted to give had gluten in it. That didn’t really seem fair to me. Who wants to get a box of something beautiful they can’t eat?

I set out to find a decent gluten free cookie recipe, and was hoping to find something not just “good enough for gluten free” but simply “good enough to eat.” I’m happy to say I think I’ve found it and no surprise, it was on the well known Gluten Free Girl blog. The cooled cookie should …

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Apple and Cranberry Crisp

November 24, 2010
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This post will be short and sweet because I know we all (at least here in the US) are getting ready for the biggest foodie holiday of the year, Thanksgiving. I simply wanted to illustrate that substitution can be the backbone of any good cook’s repertoire. When you find a good basic recipe, you can switch out ingredients and easily create something new to fit the season.

Case in point; this Apple and Cranberry Crisp. All you need is to do is take my Strawberry and Nectarine Crisp recipe and replace the nectarines with 4 pounds of apples (I used Granny Smiths and Fujis), peeled and sliced. Then replace the strawberries with 3/4 of a cup of dried cranberries and follow the rest of the recipe. That’s it! You could use fresh cranberries if you want, but you may want to add a bit more sugar if you do so.

This crisp is an simple seasonal dessert, and was perfect at our last “…

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Pig Candy (Bacon Peanut Brittle) and the Good Meat Book

November 15, 2010
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It seems like everywhere you look in the last couple of years bacon is a key ingredient in everything from savory to sweet, from casseroles to cupcakes, so I guess putting it in candy makes sense in some weird way.  I’m not late to the party here, I’ve simply been trying to avoid the bacon frenzy and not buy into the hype. Bacon is trendy, and like all trends it will be replaced by something else soon enough and then we can all go back to having it with our eggs in the morning. I was happy to ignore the trend until I saw the recipe for “Pig Candy” in the book Good Meat: The Complete Guide to Sourcing and Cooking Sustainable Meat and suddenly, my mind was changed.

Good Meat, is a weighty hardcover book filled with over 200 recipes and absolutely stunning photos of both raw primal cuts of meat and some of the finished recipes. This book is meant …

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Persimmon Cranberry Bread

November 9, 2010
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Sometimes chefs (and former chefs) make mistakes. Sometimes we don’t bother to read the recipe, so confident we are in our kitchen skills. And sometimes that confidence comes back and bites us in the ass.

I’ve made this Persimmon bread for what feels like forever. As long as I’ve lived in my house, I’ve had a tree which bears these strange special fruits once a year and I’ve made this bread. I even gave the recipe to my grandfather and before he passed away, it was his favorite thing to make with the persimmons from his tree. My point is that it’s good, and I’ve been making it for so long I should be able to do it in my sleep, right?

Yeah, right.

I must have been sleeping when I made it for the first time this year because not only did I leave out the baking soda, but the baking powder as well. I have no …

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Strawberry and Nectarine Crisp

September 15, 2010
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Here in Southern California we are in that “sweet spot” of perfect weather between the scorching summer and our typically mild Fall; it’s a beautiful and sunny 78 degrees and should be for most of the week here. Even though people not originally from Southern California lament the “lack of seasons” here, as one raised here, I can tell you we have our seasons and Summer is coming to an end. I can tell the seasons are changing because the traffic gets worse when kids go back to school. Seriously though, my garden is gasping its last breath and I’m already looking forward to Fall soups and stews and more baking.

Last week my husband, an avid golfer, made a pilgrimage of sorts to play a nice course up in Ventura, CA. On the way home, he stopped at one of the many farm stands which dot the highway and bought …

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Coffee Ice Cream

August 2, 2010
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I know, another ice cream recipe, so soon after the Strawberry Ice Cream? Yes, but it’s summer and there will be plenty of time for cakes, pies and cookies come fall and winter. In summer, all I want is cold and creamy ice cream. Coffee ice cream is one of my favorite flavors, and echos how I drink the hot stuff, light and sweet. I tend to like my ice cream plain (it’s a textural thing), but if you like mix-ins, chopped dark chocolate, toffee pieces, fleur de sel praline, or chocolate covered coffee beans would be a natural fit.

Coffee Ice Cream Recipe
Printable Recipe in PDF

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk (or 1/3 cup half and half, 2/3 cup lowfat milk)
3/4 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp instant espresso* (I use Medaglia d’Oro)
1 tsp ground fresh coffee (for …

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