"foodblog" news and stories

Gratins and scallops are usually made with potatoes, the difference between the two being the fact that gratins are made with cheese, while scallops tend to be made with cream, or a cream sauce, alone, although both are baked until the potatoes are tender and the top of the dish is crisp. Bored with the standard potato-only dish, you can include onions, artichokes or other root vegetables, but if you want to move further away from tradition, anything that will hold up to baking will work. Alanna, from A Veggie Venture made her most recent scallop-type dish with apples, as well as potatoes. Her Scalloped Apples and Potatoes only takes a few minutes to prepare and comes out of the oven as a creamy, crowd-pleasing side dish - especially if that crowd doesn't mind a hint of sweetness in with their savory dishes.

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Cold (and wet, depending on where you live) winter weather tends to make us crave hot, hearty foods, but that doesn't do anything to diminish the appeal of something light for dessert after a heavy meal. In fact, a bright cirtus dessert can serve as a reminder that spring is still on the way - and the Lemon Cream Tartlets from Helene at Tartelette are very spring-like, indeed. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan's newest book, Baking: From My Home to Yours, and it is rumored to be one of the best lemon tartlet recipes out there, with an intense lemon flavor and silky smooth texture. The texture is due to the fact that an entire cup of butter is used to make the filling for only a handful of tarts, making it anything but light in fat and calories. One bite should make you be enough to forget the nutritional stats and just let you enjoy the heavenly flavor of the tart.

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One of the side effects of blogging about food is that you start to want to play around with platings and presentation a lot more than you would if you were not photographing your meals. Joe, from Culinary in the Country, for example, augmented his already attractive Chocolate Crème Caramel with some extra caramel rounds along the outside of the plate and a little freeform sugar sculpture on top. The overall effect is great and really brings the look of the dessert up to restaurant-quality - and probably an expensive restaurant, at that.

The crème caramel itself is actually quite easy to make. The most difficult part for someone attempting their first one is to not burn the caramel before you pour it into the empty ramekins, as it can be sensitive. The "crème" part of this dessert is made with soy milk and bittersweet chocolate, held together with eggs, just like the traditional versions are. The chocolate will cover the soy taste, for anyone sensitive to it, but using soy milk will make the dessert a lot lighter than if it were made with cream.

And if you have somehow managed to overdose on chocolate from Valentine's Day, you might want to check out Elise's recipe for Rose Petal Flan instead!

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This cake is fit for The King - and we're not talking about the Burger King. We're talking about Elvis, who was known for his love of fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Since it was a Southern boy, we can safely assume that he wouldn't have turned down a decadent chocolate cake with lots of whipped cream, either. This Elvis Devil's Food Cake was baked by Alice Q. Foodie.

The devil's food cake layers are very easy to make and provide a base that could be used for many different cakes. The two layers can be made in advance, but the rest of this cake must be finished right before serving. For assembly, heavy cream is whipped to peaks and sweetened, then spread on top of the base layer. The whipped cream is then topped with a layer of sliced banana and little dollops of peanut butter, before the top layer is laid into place and finished with more whipped cream. AQF decorated the finished product with more banana slices and peanut butter, making sure each slice of the 9-inch cake would have one.

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Pim, of Chez Pim, is not exaggerating when she says that Pad Thai is one of the most popular and well-know Thai dishes out there. But despite its popularity, the noodle dish is often simply eaten in restaurants, picked up from takeout places or even cooked from a mix instead of being cooked from scratch at home. Pim has generously provided her readers with a complete and detailed how-to guide for making Pad Thai at home. She guarantees that it is just about foolproof if you follow her specific directions, and since she has a photo to go along with every step in the recipe, doing so should not be difficult in the least.

Pim also mentions several common Pad Thai mistakes that you should avoid, just to ensure you get perfect results, and reassures readers that the sauce can be made in advance, which provides a shortcut for later preparations of the dish.

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