From the category archives:

Desserts

Citrusy Olive Oil Cake with Limoncello Drizzle

This cake was such a surprise! It’s not a fluffy commercial texture, nor is it a brick – which was my first thought when I heard we’d be making an Olive Oil Cake with Limoncello Drizzle at our “Date Night Romantic Mediterranean” cooking class with Chef Diane Brown. If you haven’t noticed, we’re a little [...]

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Triple Citrus Cupcakes with Lime Glaze

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  Culinary throw-down: prepare a dessert elegant enough to complement friends’ upscale picnic contributions, portable, and cannot compete in flavor with the other two desserts: Larry’s Famous Brownies As Seen In Bon Appétit, plus a batch of caramel corn. The venue? A cemetery, but not to visit dearly departed. We were there to picnic and [...]

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Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake

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Gourmet Club dinner: GREEK. Four couples, each once yearly hosts a “theme” meal at their home. Marlene and John will be cruising the Greek Isles next month and, happily, this theme choice produced one of our absolute best group collaborations. Laura snagged the coveted DESSERT course. Laura makes perfect flan, and so a “water bath” [...]

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Strawberry Sour Cream Pie

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This pie was scrumdiddlyumptious. So much, in fact, that after Larry and I had our slices, I pawned the rest off on two neighbors’ households. It was TOO good and my fear was we’d eat it all. Larry wasn’t thrilled with this, scored one more slice, tucked it into the fridge and I bolted up [...]

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Easy Meyer Lemon Curd

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This is a sneaky trick. In my recipe binder there is a stunning magazine lemon custard recipe, which is baked in a water bath. I hadn’t made it yet, but had every intention. That is, until my friend Sandy told me her mother (native Californian, Meyer lemon tree owner) would make the lemon meringue recipe [...]

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Australian Impossible Pie

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The internet is a magic carpet ride for me when I go recipe surfing. And I’m drawn to Australian food blogs, like Gourmet Jack. His slogan: Foodie Nirvana, Australian Style. There he presented Impossible Pie — is it really impossible? Coconut, crustless, custardy… crikey – sounds great!

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Crockpot Caramel Sauce Cooked in a Can

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My goal was to make dulce de leche, a South American sweet spread. Traditional recipes boil milk, sugar, vanilla bean for some time, then strain, lots of sticky work. People also boil or bake sealed cans of sweetened condensed milk immersed in water, bringing to mind the thought of potential explosions. Then I discovered blogger [...]

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Tangerine Tart with Cookie Crust

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For more than a decade, I’ve held onto this Sunset Magazine page. You see, the prolific tangerine tree that came with this house disappeared the day our yard was demo’d for landscaping. Waaaaa. Not sure why I never just bought fruit to make the tart; maybe I was insecure.

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Chocolate Almond Biscotti

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Biscotti. Good dunking cookie, but not so fond of anise flavor. By consulting several basic recipes in my “collection” (read: stuffed binder), I devised a Chocolate Almond Biscotti. No anise, yes almond extract. And a chocolate coating because, uh let’s think here… CHOCOLATE. Larry gave the basic cookie a thumbs-up even before the second baking, [...]

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Marcella’s Fudge

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This is a big plus to attending Thanksgiving on my side of the family: Marcella’s Fudge may be eaten before dinner. It is right there with the appetizers. Most of us thought Marcella was a relative from the Old Country (Wisconsin). My sister, Janie and I only just asked this year… turns out Marcella was [...]

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Double-Ginger Chocolate Chunk Cookies from More Magazine

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More Magazine is me me me. Besides being written for Women Of A Certain Age, the magazine publishes decent recipes. Such as “Cookies for Grown-ups.” I’m a grown-up and so is Larry. We like grown-up flavors and this particular recipe in the November 2009 More Magazine was definitely US: Double Ginger. AND Chocolate. AND Chunk. [...]

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Pumpkin Pie Rice Pudding

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Making fresh pumpkin puree the other day yielded 9 cups of potential. Larry and I like pumpkin pie, but we also like rice pudding, so I googled around for recipes and ended up combining a few to produce this one. I suppose I could have tried to crockpot it. But even with constant stirring, this [...]

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Orange Ribbon Cheesecake

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Larry gets full credit for this beauty.  I’ve been out of town for several days conducting our fun women’s weekend, Camp GetAway.  One activity at our event is the traditional Magazine Swap (bring ‘em, take ‘em), which results in a gigantic pile of happiness at camp. Sunday AM, before my 75 gals awoke, I was [...]

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Zinfandel Soaked Cherry Clafoutis

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There was Larry, the winning bidder of a Food Lover’s Basket at a recent fundraising event for Project Angel Food.  I was eyeing something a little more WOW, like the beauty basket which included botox services; I was outbid. The experience turned out OK, the basket had a pile of autographed cookbooks, biscotti, and a [...]

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Light Pumpkin Custard

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Is it really, truly, finally Autumn? Gimme Pumpkin! Here is what’s so great about Light Pumpkin Custard… you can eat piles of it with little concern. The calorie intake is fairly low, your Vitamin A intake is sky high and you are enjoying one of the best holiday flavors ever (which then contributes to one’s [...]

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‘09 LA County Fair Blue Ribbon Cheesecake Winner

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  Last evening, I “covered” the Cheesecake Competition at the LA County Fair (another post upcoming on that fun blogging adventure) and witnessed first-hand as the very capable home cook and happy contestant, Ann Turley scored the First Place Blue Ribbon for her Apricot Cheesecake recipe.  Haven’t had a chance to make this myself, but [...]

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Truvy’s Cuppa Cuppa Cuppa from Steel Magnolias

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Is Steel Magnolias one of your favorite chick flicks?  I watch whenever it airs, maybe because food has such an active role.  The Easter eggs getting smashed in Truvy’s car trunk starts it off.  Truvy (Dolly Parton) and Annelle (Darryl Hannah) scooping corn and potatoes at the fair while updating Shelby (Julia Roberts) on Annelle’s [...]

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How to Make Pots de Crème The Lazy Way

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This is positively YUMM-O.  I say yumm-o because Rachael Ray made this on Oprah.  I used to watch Oprah religiously (now, she may have jumped the shark… we’ll discuss that another time).  Rachael was talking my language:  Chocolate.  Easy.  Decadent.  Mom’s Recipe (any TV cook who features a recipe of their mom’s means that dish [...]

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Mocha Marshmallow Krispie Treats

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Having produced a spectacular batch of Homemade Mocha Marshmallows, it dawned on me that Larry and I would never just sit and eat marshmallows. I get enough s’mores on Camp GetAway weekends. I asked Larry, “Krispie Treats?”  He almost said “duh,” but wisely caught himself. Not so duh, try finding the right rice crispy cereal [...]

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Wisconsin Schaum Tortes

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Happy birthday to my mom, Gloria.  She used to make us Schaum Tortes. Googling around, I had a laugh reading, “Unless you’re from Wisconsin, you won’t know what a Schaum Torte is.”  I’m a native Californian who ate a lot of ‘em but that makes sense… both my folks are from Wisconsin.  Mom, a Kewaunee [...]

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