This last weekend, we had a party for my boyfriend's birthday. We bought lots of food for the festivities, and while the guests ate a good deal of it, there's more than three pounds of cheese in the fridge leftover from the assortment we put out on Saturday night. So I've got cheese on the brain, imagining all the delicious ways to use up this surfeit. So it makes perfect sense that this picture of a bowl of Buttermilk Bleu Cheese and Cauliflower Soup leaped out at me and asked to be featured (have I mentioned my deep and abiding love for cauliflower? Oh, and I have 1/2 a quart of buttermilk languishing in my fridge from a very tasty biscuit experiment).

The picture is actually a couple of years old (although that doesn't make it any less delicious-looking) and comes to us from the cheezemaster. You can find the recipe for the soup in the archives over at What We're Eating.

And as always, don't forget to come and join us over at the Slashfood Flickr Pool. All people and food pictures are welcome.

I've met a lot of people who love bananas but hate banana bread. I guess I can understand that. I love peas but hate pea soup, and I hate anchovies but I like Caesar Salad. Different forms, different flavors.

So I doubt that banana bread haters would want to try this recipe. It's for the A-Number-1 Banana Cake, and you can check it out over at the new and improved AOL Food. Recipe after the jump.

I know that we had eggnog popovers yesterday morning, but I couldn't resist just one more eggnog-based recipe. Actually, it was the fact that the popovers were so tasty and reminded me so much of pancakes that I decided to try these.

Eggnog, especially prepared eggnog, is usually relatively thick, so it substitutes in equal volumes for buttermilk in a recipe. It does not have the same properties as buttermilk, however. Buttermilk is slightly acidic and recipes that use it often also use baking soda, which reacts with that acid to produce lift. Since eggnog is not acidic, I used baking powder and also added a beaten egg white to give the pancakes some lift. Overall, the pancakes were tender and tasted lightly of eggnog. You can add a little bit of rum extract, if you have it on hand, to jazz them up a bit, too.

I was looking for something to spice up my pancakes this morning and I couldn't stop thinking about the Cranberry, Orange & Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies I made earlier this week. Chocolate chips are for "special occasion" pancakes and I'm not a fan of dried fruit in them, but I thought that orange would be a very welcome flavor in my breakfast. I ended up adding in the zest of one orange and a splash of cinnamon. The resulting pancakes, when topped with maple syrup as well, virtually screamed fall. The tender pancakes were addictive and there was just enough flavor from the orange and cinnamon to make them interesting, without becoming overwhelming. What a great way to start of a Sunday!

Cranberries are the perfect fall fruit, at least as far as baked goods go. It is true that pumpkin and apple pies are wonderful, but the vibrant color of cranberries makes them look incredibly festive, not to mention that they add a lot of flavor to desserts, as well. Camille, the French food blogger from Cakes in the City, baked these perfect-looking cranberry upside down cakes. Getting a shot like this is quite a feat because, as most food blogger/photographers will tell you, red foods are usually the most difficult to photograph. To get back to the cake, the reason that this is called an upside down cake is that the berries are placed at the bottom of the pan and topped with the cake batter. Once it has baked, the cake is turned upside down to showcase the gorgeous cranberry layer. Camille added some gingerbread spices to the berries, as well as sugar and butter. The cake base is a light and tender buttermilk cake, which adds a mellow flavor that highlights and tempers the tartness of the berries.

If you can't read her recipe in French, you can try a slightly different variation found here or here.

One of the appealing things about cupcakes is that the individual serving sizes are incredibly convenient when you are serving them to company. There is no "I'll just have a sliver" or "I want a piece twice that size!" Each person gets one. But you don't always want to make cupcakes because, in part, no matter how trendy they are, they're still not exactly the most elegant way to serve cake. The Buttermilk Mini Cakes with Lemon Frosting, from Jenjen at i love milk and cookies, demonstrate a great way to take advantage of pre-portioned cake servings without opting for cupcakes. The cake is baked in an ordinary rectangular pan, then cooled and sliced before frosting. Jenjen used some beautiful sugar crystals to top hers off, and for a closer look, take a look at this photo.

I always wonder how restaurant pancakes turn out so much lovelier than my home-cooked efforts. No doubt a large griddle surface and an industrial-sized spatula is the key to making such massive pancakes, and my home cook-surface is more limited. Ah well, I can always drive fifteen minutes down the road and have a fresh stack of these lovelies from my favorite breakfast hangout, the Monument Cafe. They're thick buttermilk pancakes filled with a smattering of sliced strawberries and whole blueberries. Quite delightful!

As I mentioned earlier, you really need to have cake to make some occasions - birthday parties, etc. - work, although you never need an excuse to make the cake in the first place. These are tasty, basic cupcakes that will be welcomed both at birthday parties and as an afternoon snack with a cup of coffee, so they're a good choice whether you need or just want a cupcake fix. The cake is light, tender and has a lovely buttery flavor from the buttermilk. The frosting is a quick and easy type of buttercream that is a great topping for just about any flavor of cake, although I think that the contrast of vanilla cake with chocolate frosting is a classic one.

The recipe is after the jump.

An ever-growing number of restaurants are putting it on their menus and it is more frequently called for in recipes than it was even a year or two ago, but crème fraîche is still not an easy-to-find ingredient, nor is it one that everyone is familiar with. Crème fraîche is a thickened cream, with a slight tang and a texture that is somewhere between sour cream and whipped butter. In France, the cream is made with unpasteurized cream and is allowed to thicken naturally with bacteria already present in the milk. In the US, the cream must be pasteurized (heated to kill bacteria), so crème fraîche is made by adding a small amount of buttermilk or sour cream to get the thickening process started, then it is pasteurized again to kill the bacteria before sale.

Sour cream makes a good substitute for crème fraîche in most recipes, but unlike crème fraîche, sour cream can break or curdle when exposed to high heat. Fortunately, it is easy to make a version of crème fraîche at home. Simply add 2 tbsp buttermilk to 1 cup of heavy cream and let the mixture stand at room temperature for 8-24 hours, until thickened, before refrigerating.

What is a birthday party without a birthday cake? A disappointing celebration, that's what. Any dessert can be appropriate for a birthday if you stick a candle on top, but a lovely cake doesn't need candles to be appropriate - especially if the birthday boy/girl doesn't want to think about how many candles should be topping of that cake. This cake recipe is from Cooking Light and is a lovely, easy-to-make layer cake.

The cake itself is light and moist, and the frosting is fantastic. The brown sugar mix melts in your mouth and develops a slight crunch on the outside as it sets. I had to double the original recipe to make enough frosting to cover the cake and a tiny bit left over that was a great dip for some pretzel sticks. I would make the icing alone again and serve dipped pretzels as a salty-sweet snack food, but I wouldn't hesitate to make the whole cake again, either. I just need another occasion.

I debated over what to name this dessert. The recipe that inspired it was in a recent issue of Cooking Light and was called a sorbet, but I felt that the rich, smooth taste of the dessert did not really fit the sorbet name. To me, sorbet inspires an icier treat and not a creamy one, not to mention the fact that most sorbets contain no dairy products at all. Ice creams usually have cream in them, but I think that in this case we can make an exception because the dessert, Black Cherry Buttermilk Ice Cream, is delicious enough to satisfy any ice cream lover.

Who could resist seeing a couple of adorable bunny pancakes on their plate of Easter morning? Best of all, these little guys take no longer to prepare than ordinary pancakes - which is to say that they take about 5 minutes from start to plate. I used this recipe for buttermilk pancakes and, instead of dropping the batter into one large round, I used a smaller spoon to "pour" the batter into shape. Bunnies are a fairly simple shape, so there is no need for a mold to form them. I used chocolate chips to make eyes and noses, but fruit slices would work just as well. If you do want chocolate chips and three isn't enough for you, you could always try adding a few chocolate chips into the batter. And, of course, serve with maple syrup!

Cupcakes are the single most fun dessert to make. They are the perfect size for a treat or to follow a meal and, since they come in groups, allow for a tremendous diversity in the way they are decorated. For example, these cakes are meant to look like Easter eggs. To get this nifty shape, I used the Easter version of the Fun Shapes bakeware I mentioned around Valentine's Day. They are foil mini-pans that are shaped like eggs. They are actually slightly shallower than ordinary cupcake or muffin tins, so though they are larger, they take the same amount of time to bake. This means that recipes do not have to be adapted for use in these or in regular pans.

The cake has a nice lemon flavor that balances with the richness from the buttermilk. The cupcakes are moist, tender and really delicious. My recipe calls for lemon extract, since it is a common ingredient to have on hand, but if you would prefer to use fresh lemons, simply substitute 1-2 teaspoons of lemon zest for the lemon extract in the batter. A simple sugar icing, recipe given below, gives the cakes a smooth an glossy, egg-like appearance, but feel free to use any icing that you would prefer.

Bisquick is buttermilk baking mix, a blend of shortening, powdered buttermilk, flour and leaving agents, which has a long shelf-life when kept in a cool, dry place. It is popular for everything from pancakes to dumplings, but when you usually make homemade versions of those things, a box of Bisquick can last you a long time.

I searched through Allrecipes.com to find a way to use it up and came across a semi-homemade recipe that was ideal for springtime pantry cleaning: bisquick cookies. The recipe also calls for boxed pudding mix – mostly sugar and cornstarch – to be used. Fortunately, I had a box of pudding mix remaining after I disposed of the packages that looked as though they were bought in the 1980’s. The only thing you really need to make these cookies that can’t be found in your pantry is an egg. And if you keep your eggs there, I strongly recommend using some fresh ones.

My refrigerator is always full of buttermilk. You see, I'm a thrifty soul, and if I need buttermilk for a recipe I can't bear to buy the pint-sized cartons. Did you even see the price per fluid ounce? No, I must go for the economical two-quart-sized container. Thing is: there is no recipe on the whole earth that calls for a half gallon of buttermilk.* Instead, I measure out 1/2 cup or five tablespoons or some other amazingly tiny quantity. And then, every time I pick up a recipe, I think, how can I use buttermilk in this?

So when I was looking for a recipe for scones the other day, I was terrifically happy to find this one on Nicole's blog. I made it, with great success, and then started scheming. How could I use even more of the ingredients slowly turning from "non-perishable" to "perished" in my pantry shelves? I emailed Nicole, I rummaged to find white chocolate chips and dried blueberries and I made these fantastic drop scones. [click through for recipe]

*portions of this post may be highly exaggerated.