The Jewish holiday of Shavuot begins tonight at sundown. The two-day celebration commemorates God's gift of the Torah to the Jewish people. Like most Jewish holidays, Shavuot comes with a food tie-in, and this one is dairy desserts, such as the shapely cheese blintz pictured above.
Why dairy desserts? While a dairy farmer may ask "why not?", the answer lies, yet again, in the Torah: its pages contain the Kosher dietary laws, which forbid the mixing of milk and meat. So when the Jews got the Torah, they also got the news that they could no longer cook meat in their pots. Which is, when you think about it, a great excuse to make cheesecake (even if, as one rabbi likes to remind his congregants, "Shavuot is not just about cheesecake!").
Or panna cotta. Or crème brulée. Or ice cream. Or -- well, you get the picture.
'Baking: From My Home to Yours' Recipes by Dorie Greenspan Photographs by Alan Richardson Houghton Mifflin - 2006 Buy it on Amazon
Dorie Greenspan is something of a goddess to home bakers: not only are her recipes unfailingly delicious, but the directions that accompany them are both reassuring and authoritative.
Greenspan possesses an ease and charm as generous and homespun as her desserts: she's not afraid to admit past mistakes (as she does in a humorous remembrance of a cake that got her fired from a restaurant), and you can imagine that she'd be tolerant of yours, too. Given her mastery of traditional French pastry and love of more down-home delights, the book offers something for everyone, whether you're craving a Parisian apple tartlet or poppy seed muffins.
Takeaway Tips: Greenspan organizes her chapters by baked good genus: chapter titles like "A Cache of Cookies" and "Breakfast Sweets" hint at the wonders contained within. All of the recipes include helpful serving and storage tips, and many have a "Playing Around" sidebar that provides ideas for recipe variations.
See what we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
As one of New York City's most well-appointed concert venues, the Highline Ballroom gets its share of long lines. But the 180 people milling outside its entrance yesterday afternoon hadn't come for the music. They'd come for the soy.
Soy doesn't exactly scream "ruthless fight to the finish," or summon images of a marauding vegetarians. Yet the stakes at the first-ever Tofu Takedown were high enough to inspire even committed bacon lovers to attend the spirited competition, which was organized by Matt Timms, the hungry genius behind the chili, salsa, fondue, cookie and bacon takedowns.
Seventeen amateur cooks gathered in the ballroom to battle it out for tofu supremacy with entries that ranged from so-called "Ethiopian empanadas" to salted caramel tofu gelato. Somewhat surprisingly, sweet far outnumbered savory, demonstrating just how far tofu has come in its role as an ingredient for dessert.
Ok, we know it's a little early to talk about apricots, but it's starting to warm up out there and with peak season just around the corner (from May to September depending on where you live) we just can't help ourselves.
The plump, golden-orange fruit is one our favorite farmer's market finds. A fine snack in its dried incarnation, it also makes for stellar tarts and preserves.
Keep it simple with fresh apricots. Drizzle them with honey and pair with ricotta or goat cheese or toss them on the grill. This season we have an eye on Food & Wine's simple recipe for broiled apricots caramelized with honey, an ideal foil for sweet vanilla ice cream. Below are eight tempting recipes to choose from:
Still searching for a Halloween-themed dessert for your friend's party on Friday night? Or maybe your son/daughter just told you that they volunteered you to bring something sweet to their class party after the all-school costume parade (do they still do that?). Whatever the reason, those of you in need of a good, homemade Halloween treat should look no further than the Vampire Bat Cake that Lisa at My Own Sweet Thyme posted today.
She made her version (inspired by a cake in the 1988 Wilton Cake Decorating Yearbook) for a Boy Scout auction, but it would work just as well for a potluck or party. It consists primarily of a single layer of chocolate cake, cut in half, a cupcake (for the bat's face) and some careful frosting. Lisa has posted step-by-step instructions and pictures of how she assembled the cake, so make sure to head over there and check it out.
Kind little rituals seem to go a long way toward making marriage work, so almost every weekend, I make my husband some sweet tea. He's a Southern boy by birth (Brooklynian by marriage), and having a big ol' pitcher easily grabbable in the fridge seems to right any Mason Dixon imbalance he might be suffering at the time. I've got it down to a science, proportion-wise, but this past weekend, his itch for a sugar fix kicked in while I was at the grocery store. What he made tasted divine, but there was just too much for one pitcher, and not enough refrigerator room for a second.
If nothing else, the nuns at St. Scorpacciata instilled in me the mortal fear of wasting food, and seeing how I'd been at the store to buy milk (which neither of us usually drink) for a Bolognese, I decided sherbet would be what saved our souls from eternal damnation. I suppose we won't know for a while if that worked, but it did taste pretty damned delicious.
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that E from Foodaphilia had teamed up with Nick the Peanut Butter Boy and Kristina from The Chocolate Peanut Butter Gallery to create the first ever Peanut Butter Exhibition. They asked their readers to put on their thinking caps and send in recipes and pictures of the best of their peanut butter baked goods. They had 16 entries and while all the recipes sound delicious, they managed to determine winners for the first, second and third places. However, there are no losers, as how can you lose when you have a pile of peanut butter confections at the end of the day?
For a Super Bowl party, or any party where people will be milling around, standing, sitting, and perhaps even jumping around and screaming at the TV, it's probably a good idea to serve desserts that don't require plates and utensils. Cupcakes are a natural choice, and these Football Field Cupcakes from Family Fun are perfect for the Super Bowl.
The recipe isn't for cupcakes, as it assumes you already have a cooled cupcake. The recipe is more for the decorated cupcake. You cut fruit leather into the shape of a pennant, attach it to a pretzel stick as a flagpole, and make footballs out of almonds dipped in chocolate. Of course, you can make chocolate-only footballs like me, but they require a little more sculpting work.
Up until yesterday afternoon, my boyfriend and I didn't have much of a New Year's Eve plan. There were options, a couple of different friends were having parties, one of my favorite bars in the whole world was having a no coverage charge evening and some friends had invited us over for pizza (sadly, I didn't actually get the text message with that invite until after we ordered take out sushi), but no hard and fast plan.
While we were having lunch at Marathon Grill at around 3 pm, we stumbled upon what became an integral part of the plan: brownie sundaes. With that idea in place, we ran to the store for ingredients. However, when we got back to my place and I started looking at recipes, I discovered that I had forgotten to by any unsweetened chocolate and I was fresh out (I've been away for two weeks and my memory of my supply inventory has gotten foggy). However, I had a bunch of bittersweet chocolate, some semi-sweet chips and unsweetened cocoa powder and decided to improvise based on a recipe for Triple-Chocolate Fudge Brownies from The Gourmet Cookbook (the big yellow one).
The batter was amazing tasting and so I had high hopes for the brownies. And they were good, but not as amazing as I wanted them to be. However, with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream, they were definitely doable. However, they worked some alchemy last night and when I woke up this morning, they had become the brownies I had hoped for--dense, fudgy and transcendentally chocolate-y. They are worth making, especially if you are able to let them rest for 12-24 hours before digging in.
If you're heading out on the town for New Year's Eve, well go ahead, get dolled up and ignore this post. This one is for those of us who will be doing the razzling and dazzling at home (in the kitchen, of course).
All you need is a little 151-proof rum, a lighter, and no fear of burning off those gorgeously groomed eyebrows. For whatever dessert you plan to set ablaze, set it in the middle of a dish with a slight rim around the edge to hold the liquor. Set the dessert -- in the picture above, it's a brownie that has been cut with scalloped biscuit cutter and a small scoop of vanilla ice cream -- on the plate where you plan to ignite it. Don't even think about lighting it up in the kitchen and walking out to the dining room with an open fire.
Pour about a ½ ounce of the liquor around the dessert. Once you *breathe in, breathe out*, light a match, set it to the edge of the liquid, and watch the flames soar. It takes about 1 minute for the flames to die down and the plate is left with a warm dessert.
As Bob posted earlier, today is National Oatmeal Day. I've always been been a huge fan of oats, give me steel cut, quick cooking or even instant in a pinch, I love the stuff. During the days when I was eating wheat free and was living at home, I'd often use my mom's Vita-Mix to whip up a little oat flour to use in place of all-purpose.
One thing people don't often think about as a way to use oats is in pie, but if you've never had Oatmeal Pie, then you are really missing out. It brings together the best parts of an oatmeal cookie and lands in smack dab in the middle of a pie crust (and how could that be bad?). After the jump you'll find my favorite recipe for this particular dessert concoction, chosen particularly because it uses maple syrup instead of corn syrup, as after watching King Corn, I'm trying to get the high fructose stuff out of my life.
When I hear "tarte tatin," naturally I think of an apple dessert. However, in a recipe by Regina Schrambling that was originally published in 2003 and just re-printed in this past Wednesday's LA Times Food section, tarte tatin goes savory. Not only does it go savory, but the inverted tart uses pumpkin to create an appetizer (or meal, if you add some other dishes). If you're having a Halloween-themed dinner party and want to keep it more adult, i.e. staying away from orange food coloring and gelatin-molded brains, the Pumpkin Tarte Tatin is a great addition to the menu. Basically, you place wedges of sugar pumpkin in the bottom of a skillet, sprinkle with goat cheese, cover with pie crust (of puff pastry), bake, then invert onto a plate to serve.
When I saw these, all I could say (in my head, of course) was "Wow."
Though this may look like a very cute gang of B-boys, hip hoppy guys who breakdance, these are cupcakes. Su-yin, located in Australia, made these as birthday cupcakes in honor of a friend. The detail with the heads wrapped up in 'do-rags, caps, and even the Kangol hat is great, but I love the darling look of the faces. The faces are so adorable, I know for sure I wouldn't be able to take a bite (though she has pictures on her post of a half-eaten face).
In case some of you aren't aware, super mega store Target has its own line of grocery store products, Archer Farms. If you think about it, Archer Farms is just a fancy rooster sticker on the generic white store brand, but that is beside the point. The point is that though I knew about Archer Farms, and though I go to Target on a regular basis for "stuff," I never actually stopped to try any of their foods. The only thing I ever eat from Target is pizza from Pizza Hut because really now, I could never, in good conscience, eat Pizza Hut outside of a discount superstore.
This week, my Slashfoodie friends, it is "Sarah Tries a Lot of Foods From Target and Blogs About It!" Week because I somehow found myself with all kinds of "rare and wondrous foods" from Archer Farms ("rare and wondrous" are their words, not mine) in my pantry and my countertop.
First up, it's the Chocolate Chip Petite Cookies -- "rare and wondrous" indeed!
If you are looking for some Red, White, and Blue dessert ideas for the Fourth of July this year and haven't come up with anything yet, you may want to check out Better Homes and Gardens. They have a slideshow of 15 different choices for you to choose from including meringues (shown), parfaits, shortcakes, tarts, custards and even berry nachos. Granted, most of them include blueberries, strawberries and other assorted fruit, but that is not too surprising considering the season and the requisite colors of the holiday.
If you have created a red, white, and (or) blue dessert that you'd like to share, feel free to send us the link and we will spotlight them over the coming week.
'Baking: From My Home to Yours'
Kind little rituals seem to go a long way toward making marriage work, so almost every weekend, I make my husband some 
For a 
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