Treats for appetites of every size
This week, I joined the ranks of employed, productive members of society for the first time in a long time, and, even though I had lots of time this weekend, I decided to post a recipe from my visit down to see Cate in DC! These biscotti are her recipe, and she really took the lead on this/told me what to do. Very anise heavy, nice and crisp, and perfect dunked in a cup of coffee, these are exactly the biscotti you need this fall.
If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you know that I have a sourdough starter that I like to bake with fairly often. Anytime I have a bread-type thing I want to make, I look to see if there’s a sourdough version. This is partly because every time I open my fridge it stares at me, wanting to be fed or used, and I feel bad letting it sit in there too long without doing something useful. (Even yeast cultures deserve to have a purpose in their lives.) But it is also because I despise using dry yeast for …
This weekend, I’ve reached the end of my funemployment traveling and am spending some much-needed time with my college roommate, Cate, her partner, Jonathan, and their corgi puppy, Giles. Cate was a baker before I ever thought to start this blog, and last time I was visiting her I gave her the cookbook Sweet by Ottolenghi, which we baked out of together. At that point in time, we were hosting a brunch and wanted to make a Rum Raisin Cake. I asked Cate if she had everything we needed to make it, and she assured me that she did.
Last week, I mentioned that I had made some pumpkin bread. Now that I’m back on the East Coast, where people are as obsessed with pumpkin as I am (I currently have a pumpkin spice candle lit next to my computer), it felt like a good time to post it! Pretty early in the SMiLes by Meg catalog I made a chocolate chip pumpkin bread, but I realized I hadn’t posted any just plain, high quality, pumpkin bread. I wanted a recipe that made its own spice mix, actually looked orange, and had some kind of crunchy topping. More importantly, …
I had such a baking-ful week! In addition to making these cookies, I also made pumpkin bread (which I’ll post next week), sourdough bread (which I’ll post at some point), and Trout Farm Apple Pie! Having this blog, I don’t often get to make a recipe more than once, since I always need something new for the weekend and a girl can only make so many recipes in a week. But when some friends invited us over for dinner, and I’d already made plenty of new stuff, I realized I had a chance to make one of my favorite recipes …
I’ve been craving Pop Tarts since taking the ferry up to Alaska. They had them on the boat, but I couldn’t justify buying them, since we had plenty of snack food already. But it put the idea in my head, and every time I walk by them in the store I think about getting a box, before I remember I already have oatmeal at home. Finally, I decided the best way to be able to justify having Pop Tarts around would be to make them myself.
I have a confession to make: my sourdough starter experiment failed. For three days, it looked perfect – everything was bubbling away just like it should. And then I had to fiddle. The book I bought here, Alaska Sourdough, didn’t really give much guidance when it came to sourdough starter upkeep. I like having directions to follow, and don’t do well with “just let it be for 2 weeks.” I’m the kind of person that has to constantly push around anything I’m cooking on a stovetop. So I felt the need to at least give it a stir once a …
When I first started this blog, I think I envisioned myself making a lot more brownies than I actually do. In creating categories for my recipes, I apparently didn’t think “Bar Cookies” was specific enough, and made a whole separate category for “Brownies.” But now I have 23 recipes under Bars and only 11 under Brownies. Let this recipe be a first attempt at remedying this situation.
So I know I said I would be making sourdough starter, and I will, but it would be really mean of me not to pass along this recipe to you all first. On Friday night, which was our last night staying with Barb and Randy, Erik and I cooked dinner. Or, more accurately, Erik cooked dinner (Bucatini all’Amatriciana) and I put together an easy, but impressive looking, dessert. Because we were going to be serving a pasta dish, I wanted a lighter, but still Italian, dessert. And, surprisingly, I had never made just a regular tiramisu for the blog.
Explaining what exactly Clafoutis is is a difficult thing. I’ve compromised and categorized it as both a pie and a cake, but the dessert itself is somewhere between a souffle, crepe, custard, and pancake. A little light, a little eggy, a little cakey, kind of creamy – you won’t really know what I mean until you try it for yourself. Fortunately, if you started right this second, you could have a piece in an hour.