"desserts" news and stories

With chewy, uncooked dough, raw pie is, at first sight, no one's dream dessert. But if you radically rethink how it's made (no flour, no eggs, no butter), as raw-food guru Ani Phyo did in her Raw Food Desserts, it can be delicious. So says photographer Christaface, who submitted the image of her very own apple pie, above, and Phyo's recipe on her Flickr page (where the bonus is a recipe for raw ice cream).

So what's in that crust? Dates, ground almonds, sea salt. And the filling? Apples, cinnamon, raisins, date purée and an orange. The secret to giving it a softer, less than crunchy texture is to let it sit overnight.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot of having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

At some point in the last year, America's love affair with cupcakes started to cool off. We as a nation weren't thinking about cupcakes all the time. We didn't return the cupcake's calls as quickly as we used to. We just weren't that into cupcakes anymore.

It might have had something to do with cupcakes putting on airs. We could still recall a time when cupcakes were what your mom made for a kid's birthday party -- and not even her favorite kid. They were what you made when you couldn't be bothered to make a proper cake. How on earth could someone charge five dollars for one?

So we moved on. Sure, we still saw cupcakes sometimes, shared some jokes, maybe even a few nibbles. But when we went home and wiped that cream off our lips, we didn't feel that old frisson anymore.

Now we were making whoopie.

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.