OMG: Olive Oil Cake with Clementine Marmalade

This week there were two desserts on Serious Eats I bookmarked to try -- first, this maple cake with brown butter apples and this olive oil cake with tangerine marmalade. I took it as a sign from the universe that just because it's only half way into January, there's no reason I shouldn't have dessert. And the olive oil cake is practically heart-healthy, on account of the olive oil and all. It's literally a single layer olive oil cake soaked with tangerine marmalade. And if you saw the Clementine-Ginger marmalade I made last weekend, well, it was kismet, or serendipity, or maybe just plain timely.

ByMichelleJanuary 14, 20121Comment

Baking Recipes

Pretty As a Peach and Nectarine Cobbler

When I went to the farmers market on Saturday, I already had peach cobbler on the brain, so I picked up some beautiful Sweet Scarlet peaches from Tiny's Organic. They cost almost twice as much as the going rate at other stands, but it was worth it. Sweet Scarlet is a yellow-fleshed peach, and it's lower in acid, so you get the pretty color of a yellow peach with the sweetness of a white one. I swear the sign said they were freestones (the Internet appears to differ on that point), but when I got them home...they just weren't. Those little guys were clinging to their pits as if holding on for dear life. And then I uttered what may be one of the saddest sentences spoken on a summer Sunday afternoon, second only to, "The grill is out of propane."

ByMichelleAugust 9, 20110Comments

Baking Recipes

Tacofino’s Chocolate Diablo Cookies

I love chocolate, but sometimes it feels a little bit like a default. If I look at a dessert menu, I will almost never choose a molten chocolate cake or a chocolate mousse. It feels a little too...common. Like it can be on the menu every night of the year without fail. But somehow, when…

ByMichelleJuly 17, 20111Comment

Book Reviews Recipes

A16 Chocolate Budino with Sea Salt

I have a love/hate relationship with restaurant cookbooks. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that one of my favorite restaurants is sharing its recipes, but on the other, the dishes don't always seem to measure up to the versions I've had when dining out. We loved A16 in San Francisco under Nate Appleman (who's since moved on to consult for Chipotle) and had a number of wonderful dishes there -- from the burrata to the housemade salsiccia pizza w/ spicy chile oil to the chocolate budino. The A16: Food and Wine cookbook delivers on those dishes and more. It was the A16 cookbook that introduced me to "00" flour and the overnight rise for pizza dough. The ricotta gnocchi is good, and even better in brodo with spicy pork meatballs, and the chocolate budino...well, what can you say about that other than "Mmmmm."

ByMichelleJune 26, 20115Comments

Baking

Red, White & Blues-berry

Finally, finally blueberries are coming in at the Farmers Market. The ones we picked up last weekend were so plump and sweet that by the time I saw this recipe for a blueberry cheesecake tart in the July issue of Everyday Food, the pint was half gone. And then as luck would have it --…

ByMichelleJune 17, 20070Comments

Recipes

Haiku for a Sunday Dessert

As everyone knows, pudding comes in a box with a 5-letter logo starting w/ the letter 'J'. Except when you go to your cupboard and there's no box. Wha- what? No box? Oh man, I'm *not* going to the store, just for pudding. And not just cause gas is $3.50 a gallon. Wait, wasn't there a…

ByMichelleApril 2, 20070Comments