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Chocolate Flan Cake (Chocoflan)
Our word for flan actually is derived from the Latin, “flado” (meaning flat cake), which became “flaon” in Old French. – History of Flan. You’ll make this cake and you will ask yourself, how did I go this long without chocoflan in my life? I have to thank my friend, artist Alessandro Tomassetti, for turning me on to it. Not only is this cake heaven on earth but it’s also magic! You put in your caramel, you put in your cake batter, and you put in your flan, but when it comes out…the cake and the flan are reversed! What?!
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Blueberry Cobbler
“Eat it warm or cold. Although it is not a fashionable pie for company, it is very excellent for family use…” – Mrs. Lettice Bryan on a ‘cobler’ in The Kentucky Housewife, 1839. Hello friends! Don’t you just love summer? All those strawberries. And peaches. And blueberries! As a kid I loved nothing more than staying up late during summer vacation, watching movies while snacking on fresh blueberries from the freezer.
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Orange Cardamom Madeleines
She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines’….I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. – Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, volume 1.
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Sunshine Blogger Award
What a delightful surprise to get a message from Denise, who writes the charming blog My Tips and Tea, telling me she was nominating Reality Bakes for the Sunshine Blogger Award. And just what, exactly, is the Sunshine Blogger Award? I’m so glad you asked! It’s peer recognition from the oh-so-generous community of bloggers for those blogs that are found to be “creative, positive, and inspiring, while spreading sunshine to the blogging community.” Lovely to be considered a part of such a group, and so nice to be recognized. Thank you, Denise.
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Chocolate Meringue Pie
“Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie.” – George Orwell. Chocolate meringue pie is one of those classic family pies I grew up with. Funnily enough, I’d never made one until I set out to develop this recipe. Since then I’ve tried lots of different combinations – more eggs, less cornstarch, more cocoa, less sugar – and this recipe is my favorite. It tastes like hifalutin chocolate pudding in a buttery crust with a fancy meringue topper.
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Easy Tart Crust
For the weekend before, we had had a blowout of tarts, a tart bender, tart madness – even, I dare say, a Tart-a-palooza…. – Julie Powell, Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Tarts are one of my favorite things to make and this is my go-to recipe for a tart crust – only a few ingredients and it comes together quickly. Just remember that keeping the dough cold and allowing it to rest and chill before rolling out is the key to a successful crust.
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Homemade Cherry Jam
In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them… – Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard. A batch of cherries that we couldn’t possibly finish before they went bad + no other bakes planned for the weekend = cherry jam. I hate throwing away food and had just enough cherries to make a pretty little jar of this pure deliciousness. (And not so many that I was cursing my lack of a cherry pitter.)
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Best Banana Bread
[Diana] “….in the last paragraph, where PERCEVAL clasps AVERIL in his arms and says, `Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfillment of our home of dreams,’ I added, `in which we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable.'” “Oh,” gasped poor Anne, as if some one had dashed cold water on her. – L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island. If you aren’t familiar with the above hilarious scene from Anne of the Island (the third of the Anne of Green Gables series, beloved childhood favorites of mine), Anne has been undone by good intentions. Her dear friend Diana, unbeknownst to Anne, has sent off one…
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Alfajores
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Louis Borges. Often associated with Argentina, alfajores are delectable sandwich cookies with silky dulce de leche in between sweet, buttery cookies reminiscent of shortbread. Very popular in South America – particularly Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru – alfajores originated in the Middle East and come to us by way of Spain, probably brought there with the invasion by the Moors. Indeed, Spanish words beginning with ‘al’ are believed to be of Arabic origin, and ‘alfajores’ might come from the Arabic al-hasú for “the filling” or “filled.”
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Dulce de Leche
What about when Tiny gave Dinorah a dulce de leche as payment for her favors, and she didn’t offer anyone a crumb? – Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies. Dulce de leche, or nectar of the gods as I prefer to think of it, is essentially caramelized milk. While as delicious as caramel, the two are actually distinct products. Dulce de leche is made from slowly heating milk at a low temperature. Caramel, on the other hand, requires heating sugar at very high heat until it caramelizes, with the optional addition of milk or cream if you are perhaps making a caramel sauce. (Interesting side note: If you…
