Photo: sassyradish, Flickr.

The technique of browning butter is a simple one, but adds tremendous complexity to the cooking staple, infusing it with a more flavorful, nutty taste. Beurre noisette ("hazelnut butter") -- achieved by cooking butter until the milk solids and salt particles darken and the water evaporates -- works equally well in salty and sweet dishes alike, adding additional depth to savory dishes and a subtle saltiness to cloying treats.

Writes blogger Sassy Radish, "If butter is a negligee, then brown butter is the merry widow." And in her poetic ode to the transformed beurre, she reinvents the tired pound cake, making it sophisticated and lush.

An extremely versatile addition, brown butter can be used as a rich, tasty alternative in any recipe with butter, from simple yet refined vegetable dishes (Brown-Butter Mashed Potatoes, Zucchini in Pecan Brown Butter, Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Hazelnut Brown Butter) to dessert indulgences, like Food and Wine's Granny Smith Apple and Brown Butter Custard Tart.

In what dishes do you like to use brown butter?

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Continuing in the trend I've established this week of featuring baked goods that are off-limits to me right now, I bring you a delicious-looking chocolate and vanilla pound cake (at least, I'm assuming that it's pound cake, based on the shape and tell-tale gleam of baked butter). Baked by Flickr user Eunnycjang, I would have a very hard time turning down a slice of this cake if it were sitting in front of me. Sadly, there's no blog post or recipe attached to this image on Flickr, so I can't tell you where to go make this beauty. However, if you've got a favorite recipe for a cake like this, shout it out in the comments.

There was a time, when I was between the ages of 9 and 12, when I ate an entire Sara Lee Butter Pound Cake every week. In one night, by the way, with either ice cold milk or ice cold Pepsi (yeah, I like the combo). So I can understand The King's love of pound cake.

Gourmet has the recipe for Elvis Presley's Favorite Pound Cake. They call it "the best pound cake we've ever tasted," and it does sound quite good. It's not the healthiest dessert/snack, but we're talking about Elvis Presley here, not Jack LaLanne.

The original pound cake got its name from the fact that it contained a pound of each of its basic ingredients: butter, sugar, flour and eggs. The average pound cake these days tends to be a bit more refined, using some sort of leavening agent in addition to eggs and often incorporating additional ingredients, such as vanilla, sour cream, heavy cream or even chocolate.

Pound cake, needless to say, is not a low fat food. It is dense, tender, buttery and something that is best eaten in small portions if you are watching what you eat. Of course, pound cake tastes so good that it can be hard to stop with just one slice. This recipe produces a lightened pound cake that is almost entirely fat free, so you don't have to stop with a mere sliver.

Meyer lemons are a slightly sweeter version of regular lemons and are becoming more and more popular with bakers as they become easier to find in stores. The distinguishing feature of the lemons, aside from their small size and thin skin, is that they have none of the bitterness that is found in regular lemons. This means that anything they are used in, from lemonade to lemon tarts, will have a very intense lemon flavor that is not cut by an overly tart aftertaste of any kind. Jen, the Barmy Baker, took advantage of their fantastic flavor and baked up these Meyer Lemon Loaves using a recipe from Pierre Hermes' Desserts and some lemons from her small Meyer lemon tree. The loaves are only a tiny bit lighter than a pound cake and are rich with butter and sour cream. They are also spiked with a little bit of rum, which makes them seem a little bit more festive for the holidays.

An ice cream sandwich is a great summer treat. Not only is it cool and tasty, but it has a little bit of nostalgia attached to it because you probably ate them as a kid, with the ice cream squishing out from between the cookies and making a mess of things. Somehow, that seemed to make it taste even better at the time.

Substituting pound cake for the cookies usually found on ice cream sandwiches is a great way to reinvent the classic dessert into something a little bit more elegant for summer entertaining. Just thinly slice up a store-bought (or homemade) pound cake and spread some softened ice cream between two slices. Wrap each serving up with plastic wrap and, when you're ready to serve, just place one on each plate and garnish with whipped cream and berries.

There is no reason that you have to use these sandwiches when entertaining, of course. You can simply stock them in your freezer and have them yourself when the mood strikes you.

You could be like Santos of Scent of Green Bananas, and well, go bananas.

Santos, who blogs regularly from Guam, is on a little holiday, and when she is in LA, she blogs from her LA-based blog, Meet Me at the Corner of Third and Fairfax. Apparently, Santos fell into a lemony thicket, and has crates and crates of lemons. The products of her first crate of lemons are a luscious lemon curd which would be a serious overdose if spread on the Basil-Lemon Peel Sugar-crusted French Lemon Pound Cake. Overdose of lemons? Who am I kidding. Bring it on!

Petit fours are classic party treats. True, they are seen more often on a plate of pastries at an elegant hotel then they are at an at-home party, but that shouldn't be the case. They are easy to make. You can see that I left one of mine only half covered in chocolate so that it would be easier to see the components.

Start with a store-bought pound cake or sponge cake. Cut it into one-inch cubes and then cut those in half lengthwise. Spread a thin layer of jam in between the cake slices and stack them back up. Melt down some white chocolate and dip the cake square into it. Place the dipped petit fours onto a sheet of wax or parchment paper to dry, topping them with sprinkles or other small decorations while they are still sticky. This is a great activity for kids because the chocolate can be melted in the microwave and they definitely won't mind getting their fingers sticky in the chocolate!

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Because I love to cook, it is easy to make any meal made at home romantic. All you need is a couple of candles on the table, well-cooked food, someone special and, to follow the meal, dessert. For the main course, I would choose something easy to make, something familiar. Dessert would be my focus, since I firmly believe that anything truly romantic should end with something sweet. These are my top four most romantic desserts:

Molten Chocolate Cake - Known sometimes as a chocolate lava cake, these individual serving sized cakes are menu must haves on Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, they are often poorly made, as people simply undercook a regular chocolate cake to "create" a molten center; all they are doing is allowing batter to run all over the plate. A real molten chocolate cake should have a ball of ganache placed in the center before baking, which will melt and deliver a delicious sauce that is more delicious than any cake batter could ever be. This recipe from Epicurious substitutes chocolate pieces for the truffle center, but the Chocolate Espresso Lava Cakes are excellent, nevertheless.

What is it exactly that happens to our taste buds between the ages of 11 and 20? Why do we eat certain foods when we are kids but abandon almost completely when we become adults? When you're an adult, and you move into different social circles and experience new foods and you're a little more adventurous, you can say that you do or don't eat certain foods because your palate has become more mature (or whatever the food-centric phrase is). Unless, of course, you're the type of nine-year-old who used to eat caviar, risotto, Caesar salad, or elaborate chicken dishes.

Below are the 8 foods I loved and always ate as a kid, but don't (or rarely) eat now. What's on your list?

1. Meatloaf: I don't eat much meat in general anymore (just chili during the fall and winter and maybe a random pepperoni pizza here and there), but my mom used to make meatloaf once a week and I loved it. It's probably because (in addition to the above don't-eat-much-meat factor) I don't want to take the time to make it, and if I do have hamburger, it won't be in loaf form.

2. Marshmallows: Used to toast them on the flame of my old stove in the house I lived in as a kid (once started a small fire, but that's a story for another day). Used to plop them in hot chocolate, and even ate them out of the bag as a snack. Now I never have them (nor do I have anything that has marshmallows in it).