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Dessert Recipes

Zoku Popsicle Maker: Fudgesicles with a Cayenne Kicker

Inspiration comes at the oddest moments. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do, still laying in bed, is a scroll-through of email, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to see what happened over night. Sunrise is at 5 something now, alarm goes off at 6, and there is zero chance I'm getting out of bed before that. On one of those scroll-throughs, Chronicle Books was doing a Twitter contest to win a signed copy of the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Bookand a bag of bacon peanut brittle. All you had to do to enter was come up with a dream Humphry Slocombe flavor. My idea: Chocolate y Churros -- a cayenne-kicked Mexican chocolate ice cream with churro chunks (I didn't win)...but it led to these cayenne-kicked fudgesicles for the Zoku.
May 30, 20120Comments

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Baking Fruit

Baked Strawberry Shortcake Doughnuts/Donuts

You've heard of the Donut Man in Glendora, California right? If not, let me introduce you, because what they do there, you need to know about it. The Donut Man is famous for their fresh strawberry donuts -- that's right, they take a glazed donut, slice it in half and sandwich in an enormous portion of fresh strawberries (or peaches, later in the summer) in goo. It's ridiculously deliciously goo-d. Today, I was thinking about those doughnuts and meant to stop by Top Pot on the way home for a couple of glazed and then I promptly forgot. Instead, I came up with these baked strawberry shortcake doughnuts (or in this case: short, cake doughnuts). Doesn't it look like one of those spongy dessert cups they sell right next to the strawberries in the produce department?
February 20, 20121Comment

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Photo One-offs

Photo One-Off: Goodbye Summer

This year I only had one hanging cherry tomato plant -- yep, just one. I almost killed it twice this summer, with um, inadvertent dry farming experiments (aka vacations). I did find out that poking holes in the bottom of a water bottle and jamming it into the pot does work, I probably just needed one bottle for every day we were gone since that little Tumbler tomato was sucking down the water. Even still, it gave one big push in mid-July and then ramped up for a second push in September, and then the weather cooled off just after Labor Day.
October 17, 20110Comments

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corn fritters
Main Course Recipes

Hatch Chile Corn Fritters

corn fritters Yesterday, while doing early morning yardwork, Wolf and I were talking about breakfast. "You want me to go get doughnuts?" (An offer that's hard to refuse.) "Mmm, doughnuts. I'm surprised you want doughnuts." "I thought you might want doughnuts." After this many years of marriage, yep, we still have these conversations. I'm not usually one to be lukewarm on doughnuts, especially Top Pot, but after a relatively light dinner last night, I thought, we need some real breakfast.
August 29, 20117Comments

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Photo One-offs

It’s Hatch Chile Time

The heat rises off the desert floor in visible waves, a tumbleweed blows across the landscape and a cherry red 1959 Cadillac convertible comes screaming down the highway, its driver's leathery face obscured by sunglasses and a cowboy hat. The perfume of roasting chiles hangs heavily in the air. It's Hatch chile time.
August 24, 20110Comments

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Travel

MountainView Blueberry Farm – Snohomish

It was a perfect morning for picking blueberries, mid 50's with a light fog blanketing the fields. Just as I rounded the corner to go down the row to pick my first berries of the season at MountainView Blueberry Farm yesterday, a little boy yelled, "Jackpot!" I knew it was going to be a good day. One of the highlights of a Seattle summer is u-pick blueberries. And picking Bluecrops, well, once you get going, picking these berries is addictive. They're big and sweet and the plunk, plunk, plunk as they hit the bottom of the bucket just sounds like summer. I filled two buckets, for about 12 lbs of berries, in an hour and a half. And even still, walking up to the check out, I thought, is this going to be enough? Should I go back out? They're that good.
August 14, 20112Comments

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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."
August 9, 20110Comments

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