The Leavening Agent

Chocolate Ice Cream

2011-07-06T21:13:00.004-05:00

Since I've made the household endure multiple batches of ice cream with not-their-first-choice flavors, I agreed to make a batch of regular, plain old chocolate ice cream. I used a recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. The base for this ice cream came out silky smooth, and it churned beautifully. It's ripening in the freezer now, and it was not a hardship to scrape out the canister of the ice cream maker to test the final product for quality control.

Banana Butter Pecan Ice Cream

2011-07-06T21:00:00.004-05:00

Summertime, and the living is easy, unless you are a banana, in which case you are bound to be overripe in about 3.5 hours. A happy coincidence of overripe bananas and a link to this recipe (thanks to my Aunt Joan--yes, I do follow the recipe links!) gave me an excuse for another batch of ice cream.

First note: This recipe makes a lot of ice-cream base. I had to churn it in two batches.

Second note: I didn't follow the recipe as printed. I sauteed the chopped pecans in the butter and salt. Also, I heated the cream and brown sugar, then pureed the bananas in the blender with some of the warm liquid. I then rewarmed the cream, tempered the egg yolks, and proceeded with the rest of the recipe. After churning both batches of the base, I folded in the toasted butter pecans. It all turned out just fine and is a great twist on traditional butter pecan ice cream.

Ganache Cookie

2011-07-06T20:51:00.004-05:00

As a public service, I would like to call attention to one of the finest sandwich cookies I've ever had. It's a Ganache Cookie and is available at the Bakery Normand in Northampton, Mass. The sandwich consists of three thin sugar cookies layered with an orange-spiked ganache. The top cookie has a streusel-like topping, and the exterior of the sandwich is rolled in chocolate. If you find yourself in or near Noho, it's worthwhile to stop at the Bakery Normand for a Ganache Cookie.

Peanut Butter-Banana-Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

2011-06-30T16:03:00.004-05:00

So I had some overripe bananas and decided to make a banana ice cream. I found this recipe in Scoop by Ellen Brown and decided to give it a try. The original recipe didn't call for the chocolate chips, but I decided to add them since PB, bananas, and chocolate are a holy trinity of sweets. While the ice cream ended up tasting OK, I was a little disappointed with the base, which was incredibly thick--essentially too thick to churn in the canister of my ice-cream freezer. I am going to chalk it up partly to not enough volume from the bananas.

Wedding Cupcakes

2011-06-27T14:27:00.005-05:00

One of my colleagues was approaching his wedding day, so we had a little party at work to celebrate. I made these cupcakes from Dede Wilson's Wedding Cakes You Can Make. They're white cupcakes with coconut and a lemon-curd filling. For the frosting, I made a white-chocolate buttercream. Nice recipe, and it allowed me to use some of the egg whites I've been accumulating after using egg yolks in ice cream.

Chocolate Mint Ice Cream

2011-06-27T13:18:00.007-05:00

So I have been getting back into making ice cream. Maybe it's just a jag as a result of the onset of hot and humid weather. As part of my getting back into it, I made chocolate mint ice cream, using a recipe from Fine Cooking , which published a terrific David Lebovitz ice cream article a couple of years ago and now has a design-your-own-flavor feature on its website.

This version of chocolate mint ice cream is subtle. Fresh mint is steeped in warm cream, and the flavor is much less in your face than the usual take on this flavor. For a flavor and texture bonus, I mixed in a sleeve of Thin Mints that, sadly, had somehow gotten a little crushed.

Strawberries and Cream Ice Cream

2011-06-23T21:51:00.004-05:00

It's not always flour and butter here. After unearthing my ice cream maker last weekend, I was motivated to make a batch or two. Since I had some fresh local strawberries, I started with this batch; the recipe is from The Ice Cream Bible by Marilyn Linton and Tanya Linton. Because of the high moisture content of the strawberry puree, this ice cream turned out more like a hybrid of ice cream and sorbet. Not at all unpleasant to consume as it had a lot of great fresh berry flavor but also makes me think that something creamier might also be nice.

Blueberry Lemon Cupcakes

2011-06-20T08:19:00.002-05:00

I happened upon this recipe last week but didn't get a chance to try it until yesterday. I tweaked a couple of things: I didn't have three lemons to zest for the cupcake batter, but I did have one lemon and one lime. Also, I made a regular buttercream frosting and flavored it with lemon. In honor of the blog the recipe came from ("Chocolate and Chaturangas"), I will bring one of these cupcakes for the instructor when I go to yoga tonight.

Banana-Chocolate Upside-Down Cake

2009-10-15T20:44:00.004-05:00

Lauren Chattman has a great new book, Cake Keeper Cakes. When I picked up the book and paged through it, I kept thinking, "I would make that. I would make that. Oh yeah, I would make that." First up: this banana-chocolate upside-down cake. It's one of several upside-down cake recipes in this book. There are plenty more recipes to make from this book, too. I can't wait to keep exploring.

Birthday Cake

2009-10-13T05:57:00.003-05:00

For Claire's birthday this year, I knew it had to be chocolate cake, so I went with a tried-and-true favorite (Best Birthday Cake) from Lora Brody's Chocolate American Style.

Apple Cider Cake

2009-10-08T20:13:00.004-05:00

(Cue Joan Jett.)

Oh Anne Byrn. I hate myself for loving you. You make me buy cake mix! It's insane. I was thrilled to learn that you had a new baking book coming out, The Cake Mix Doctor Returns. It is a swell book, and I've really enjoyed looking it over.

I had a meeting to attend tonight, so last night, I gave the new book a test-drive by making the Apple Cider Cake. Terrific cake, and it was really easy to put together. I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from the new book.

Banana Rescue

2009-09-24T12:42:00.003-05:00

This year for Reach the Beach, we atypically undershopped for food to have in the van during the race. Nevertheless, there were some bananas left over. I think they were left over pretty much because they somehow became packed in between bottles of water and everybody's luggage. They ended up being great for banana-chocolate chip bread, though. I tried a new recipe from 250 Treasured Country Desserts: Mouthwatering, Time-honored, Handed-down, Soul-satisfying Sweet Comforts by Andrea Chesman and Fran Raboff.

RTB Cookies

2009-09-17T06:46:00.002-05:00

This year for the annual trek to New Hampshire for the Reach the Beach relay race, I made three kinds of cookies: oatmeal-dried cherry, chocolate chunk, and chocolate peanut butter cookies. All were recipes from Mom's Big Book of Cookies by Lauren Chattman. I know that the cookies were enjoyed by at least 1.5 teams at RTB this year, so that is good.

A Cake for Blaise

2009-09-13T20:24:00.004-05:00

Last June, our friend Blaise died about nine months after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. We learned of his diagnosis through an email with the subject line "annoying news" -- typically understated and dismissive, as if the cancer were a pesky mosquito that he was trying to brush away.

I've actually been struggling with what to write in this blog entry. In the end, all I can say is that Blaise was a terrific guy: funny, big-hearted, an athlete (but not a jock). I wish we'd had more time to hang out and laugh with him.

Anyway, after his memorial service a couple of weeks ago, there was a potluck. I brought along a Milky Way Cake. I like to think he would have found a cake made with four melted Milky Way bars to be both amusing and absurd.

Board Meeting

2009-09-12T12:47:00.003-05:00

For today's skating-club board meeting, I made a couple of things. First, I made Crumb-Topped Coffee Cake from Abby Johnson Dodge's The Weekend Baker. It is brilliant, especially on those pieces where the crumb:cake ratio works in favor of the crumbs.

The scones are from Elinor Klivan's Fearless Baking. I'm not sure if it was the recipe or the weather (it has been pretty damp here), the scones had a relatively cakey texture, not very sconelike at all. However, everybody seemed to like them, so what do I know?

Cupcakes

2009-09-08T20:55:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow afternoon, the girls from the skating team are getting together to take a look at a memory DVD that one of the parents has put together. I'm looking forward to seeing it because I'm sure it's going to be as entertaining as the one that was done for the season that concluded a year ago. Since I know the girls (and, um, the parents) like cupcakes, I made a batch for everyone to enjoy during the screening. The vanilla buttermilk cupcakes are from Cupcakes Year-Round by Sara Neumeier; the chocolate buttercream is from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey.

New Haven

2009-09-06T21:35:00.004-05:00

Ready for the New Haven 20K tomorrow. I'm participating in this year's event instead of just spectating. (I am not sure why. Oh well.) I'll be bringing along a couple of things: Ina Garten's Outrageous Brownies and, in honor of the late Sheila Lukins, Applesauce Raisin Cake from The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Instead of using the 3 cups of walnuts the brownie recipe called for, I used 1.5 cups and then 1.5 cups of a dried-fruit mix (cranberries, cherries, blueberries). I love the Chunky bar quality that the dried fruit gives the brownie. My gripe about the recipe is the 3 tablespoons of instant coffee powder it calls for. I think that rather than working with the chocolate, the coffee starts to override.

The cake is very good. I don't like the glaze so much, and will probably not make it again. However, I can see revisiting this cake as the fall weather sets in. I think it would be awesome with dried cranberries instead of raisins, too.

Chocolate-Cinnamon Bundt Cake

2009-09-03T04:17:00.004-05:00

After spending much of the summer away from the oven (largely due to summer weather and/or travel), I am happy both for cooler fall weather and for being at home on a regular basis.

This cake is a little overdue, but it's for a colleague's birthday, which was last week. While browsing through the new issue of Bon Appetit, I was inspired by the recipe for Chocolate-Cinnamon Bundt Cake with Mocha Icing. I was a little concerned that the recipe called for a large Bundt pan but seemed to have too little potential volume, but the cake ended up having a satisfying height. Still, I think that if I make this again, I might try it in a slightly smaller pan.

Otherwise, while the taste testing remains, the cake seems like a winner. The aroma is amazing (predominantly cinnamon but with hints of coffee).

Baking to Sell

2009-05-24T15:14:00.014-05:00

My friend and work colleague Andy has a nice little baking side business going, and has been successful selling scones, muffins, and cookies at several local shops. Last weekend, as part of a big local event, the church where Andy bakes was making plans to do their traditional fresh-doughnut stand, and they invited Andy to sell his baked goods during the event. Andy then asked me if I'd be interested in participating. We've actually talked about doing something like this for a while, but my schedule is often hyperbooked. Last weekend, I knew I would have the time, and I was definitely up for it. We talked and agreed that I would do some brownies and help Andy out with some cupcakes.

Side note: This was actually the second time we'd baked together. The first time, two of the three things I made -- recipes I've made any number of times -- were complete disasters because I cluelessly used pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour. I was concerned about making sure that everything worked out this time, so I brought a 25-lb. bag of all-purpose flour with me.

Ready with my most-reliable brownie recipe, I headed to the church kitchen after work the Wednesday prior to the event and made four batches of straight-up plain brownies, thinking of them as a blank canvas for future embellishment. The following Friday, I spent the day baking with Andy. I made a double batch of chocolate butter cream (a more traditional formula that used powdered sugar, which we thought would be more stable in case it was warm on Saturday) and a double batch of vanilla butter cream. The frostings were intended to be used on the cupcakes Andy was making (lemon-ginger, chocolate, and carrot).

I also made four more batches of brownies, including two with walnuts. The two batches with walnuts ended up as Rocky Road Brownies; the nutty base was topped with a heap of marshmallows, toffee bits, chocolate chips, and chopped walnuts. After they were cool, I drizzled them with a bit of chocolate glaze. Two pans became Peanut Butter Brownies, coated with a peanut-butter butter cream and garnished with half of a peanut-butter cup, then a splash of glaze. Two pans got the mint treatment: a mint-flavored frosting with a puddle of chocolate glaze in the center of the brownie; I stuck an Andes mint into each puddle of glaze. Finally, I had two pans left, one of which had been sliced and tested for quality-control purposes (ha). For the sliced batch, I piped a dollop of leftover mint icing, stuck in an Andes mint, then drizzled some glaze. For the second batch, I covered the brownie with chocolate butter cream, then sprinkled on some chopped pecans. Everything turned out well except for one batch of the Rocky Road Brownies; for some reason, they didn't set up completely in the center. (I suspect that I put too much batter in the pan, although I thought I had portioned the batter equally between the two pans.)

While I like to think that I am efficient in the kitchen, I am pokey compared to Andy. Even though he had a bit of trouble with one cupcake recipe, he managed to produce more stuff than I did. Of course, I also fussed a bit more knowing that this was going to be my chance to see if I could make something that people would not only want to eat but also would have to buy to be able to eat. I give Andy a lot of credit for getting me to think more about presentation.

In the end, it paid off. I ended up selling 57 of the 95 brownies I had made, and I know Andy did well with his array of stuff. Getting to see people's responses to the brownie display was incredibly gratifying; watching them enjoy the brownies was even better. I was surprised by the number of kids who went for the mint brownies; I had guessed kids would go for peanut butter first. Go figure.

Thanks, Andy, for letting me sit in on this one, and thanks to all the people who stopped by and had nice things to say.

Test Session

2009-05-24T14:16:00.008-05:00

I'm doing a bit of catching up here because last week was busy.

Last Monday, the skating club held a test session, so I got to do my hospitality thing and prepared food for the judges who came in to assess the skaters' skills. The menu included cheese and crackers, cheddar-bacon-chive scones (a double batch, with plenty left for the board members of the skating club to enjoy after the event), black-bean soup with smoked turkey, and a fruit salad (strawberries, kiwi, and mango with mint dressing). Of course, there also were desserts.

First, I had a few pieces of Mississippi mud cake to serve. Also, I made the Classic Banana Bundt Cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours; I glazed the cake with some ganache I had in the fridge. Then, although I'd been thinking about making something else, I ended up having a batch of leftover brownies, so I dressed them up with a glaze of bourbon caramel, a drizzle of ganache, and a toasted pecan. Voila! Turtle Brownies.

How does one end up with a batch of leftover brownies? At 10:15 p.m. last Saturday, Claire informed me that she needed something for the next morning for her final Sunday-school class ever because they were having an end-of-year party. After the initial shock wore off, I made a quick batch of brownies. The next morning, I sliced and wrapped them. I went to swim and run, then got home around 10:15 a.m., when the party would have been starting. Imagine my surprise when my family returned home at 10:20. They discovered that the party had been canceled because the Sunday-school teacher decided not to have a party after all, then didn't bother to call or email to inform anyone in the class about this decision. (I hope this came up in confession!) Anyway, in this instance, that's how I ended up with a batch of leftover brownies. In the end, I guess it worked out because it did save me a little trouble on Sunday night, and the judges all liked the impromptu Turtle Brownies.

Mississippi Mud Cake

2009-05-14T12:56:00.005-05:00

I got two birds with one stone this week for both Lost Lunch Thursday and PLTI by making two Mississippi Mud Cakes, from Nancie McDermott's Southern Cakes. I figured that I really needed to try a recipe from this book other than the Sweet Potato Pound Cake, and the mud cake did not disappoint. While I tend to find marshmallows generally a little weird, they take on a pretty interesting texture when they are coated hot with a warm chocolate glaze. The dense, nutty cake is pretty good, too. Definitely a recipe to revisit, and another reason to endorse this cookbook.

Banana Bars

2009-05-03T19:18:00.003-05:00

I wonder how many times I've started a blog post with this comment: I had a few ripe bananas to get rid of, so ...

This time, I had enough bananas to make two things. First, I made Chocolate Chip-Banana Snack Cake from Nicole Rees's Baking Unplugged. Although this recipe is designed to be made, well, unplugged, I confess that I used a mixer. (I'm lazy. What can I say?) I had a little vanilla frosting left over from the Cookies & Cream Cupcakes I made last week, so I put that on the cake. It's a nice little cake: not fussy, and it came together pretty quickly. Definitely one to add to the ripe-banana repertoire.

The other bars are Banana Caramel Brownies from Elinor Klivans's 125 Cookies to Bake, Nibble, and Savor. They are a cakey banana bar cookie with a bit of caramel sauce in them. Then after the batter is in the pan, more caramel sauce is drizzled over and lightly swirled in, and chopped pecans are sprinkled onto the exposed caramel. I'd made these bars once before, seven years ago, in fact. I made a note in the book and dated it: "3/20/02 Extraordinary. Butter + flour pan." (I recall that I brought some to share with my pals Brooke and Bill, and remember that Brooke loved them.) I think I won't let seven years pass before I make these bars again.

Banana Bundt

2009-05-03T19:17:00.007-05:00

For last week's PLTI class, I made this Quick Banana Bundt cake from the book Bundt Cake Bliss by Susanna Short and Dottie Dalquist. It's quick because it starts with a yellow cake mix (I was a little pressed for time last Wednesday). No feedback on it, either, but maybe I'll get some word when I drop off next week's treat.

Another Peanut-Butter Pie

2009-05-03T19:15:00.005-05:00

My colleague Tim is moving on to new adventures, so we had a little going-away party for him last week. It was brought to my attention that Tim liked the peanut-butter pie I'd made for a previous going-away celebration, so I made that recipe one more time. I couldn't stick around long enough to be sure that anyone was eating it, but when I saw the empty Tupperware on my desk on Friday morning, I knew that it must have been enjoyed. One of these days, I am going to make one of these pies without another purpose in mind. I'd really like to try a slice of it!

Incidentally, Tim and his wife, Ruth, have an excellent blog, Eat Well, Eat Cheap. Check it out.

Cookies & Cream Cupcakes

2009-04-29T10:11:00.005-05:00

On Monday, Claire's Girl Scout troop hosted an event, and she brought home half of a Costco-size package of Oreos that were left over from the snack table. I know most people would think "Oreos! What a great snack!" I looked at them and thought, "Oreos! What a great ingredient!" Since I had promised Claire's skating pal Elise that I would make something for her upcoming birthday, I sought out a recipe that would allow me to use Oreos as an ingredient. I ended up making these Cookies & Cream Cupcakes.

Despite the fact that this recipe calls for a full tablespoon of baking powder, the cupcakes didn't rise a whole lot. They are incredibly tender, however, especially for a cake made with all-purpose flour. I think that's largely due to the preparation technique. The liquids and softened butter are all combined simultaneously with the dry ingredients; then egg whites are added (to provide structure, I think).

The recipe suggested a fluffy white frosting, but I went with a more traditional buttercream, which I thought would be easier to pipe onto the cupcakes. Then I garnished each cupcake with some sprinkles and a miniature Oreo.

Neil's Donuts

2009-04-19T10:36:00.012-05:00

Yesterday, we took Claire to a skating clinic in Hamden, a town near New Haven. Afterward, we decided to head to Boston for the day. While heading north on the Merritt Parkway, we passed a sign indicating that the exit for Yalesville was coming up. In the dark, bakery-cluttered recesses of my mind, I remembered reading some commentary at Roadfood.com about a good doughnut place in Yalesville. Since I was driving, we took the exit. A little bit up the road, and voila! Neil's Donuts!

In addition to doughnuts, Neil's has a nice assortment of baked goods. We kind of went for a sampler with a bit of everything.

Doughnuts are best fresh, and I very much enjoyed the pillowy soft freshness of the chocolate-glazed, chocolate-jimmied raised doughnut I had for breakfast. Karen had the chocolate-glazed cake doughnut and declared it good. Claire opted for the Boston-cream doughnut (lower left) that was so oozing with filling that we ended up having to stop so that she could wash her hands.

I'd been meaning to get to Neil's for years, but before yesterday, it was never conveniently on the way anywhere. Now all I can say is that I hope that Claire will be attending another skating clinic in Hamden in the near future. I know exactly how to fill my time while she is on the ice.

Unfortunately, we didn't make it to any bakeries after we arrived in Boston, although I did see someone carrying a bag from Finale.

These final two photos are not bakery-related, but I figured I'd tack them on here: me at the Boston Marathon finish line and Claire in the Public Garden at the Make Way for Ducklings statues.

Bourbon-Pecan Turtle Brownies

2009-04-16T13:54:00.009-05:00

This brownie is a creation that is evolving.

A few weeks ago, I was baking with my friend Andy, and I made a batch of Bourbon-Pecan Brownies, a recipe from Quick Chocolate Fixes by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright. Andy suggested dressing up the brownies a little. To be honest, while they taste really good, they are somewhat plain-looking, almost homely. So I glazed them with a bittersweet-chocolate ganache and sprinkled some chopped toasted pecans on top. Although that helped the appearance, Andy suggested a drizzle of caramel over the nuts and ganache. Since I didn't feel like making caramel, I left the brownies as they were, but I kept the caramel idea in the back of my mind.

For this week's Lost Lunch Thursday, I decided to work a little more with the caramel idea. I searched for a bourbon caramel recipe, thinking that it would be nice to have the bourbon flavor repeated in the final product. The first recipe I tried was too bourbony for my taste. Fortunately, the recipe made only a small amount. I then went back to a terrific caramel-sauce recipe from Fine Cooking. I've made this caramel sauce many times. For this version, I added 1/2 cup of bourbon to the warm caramel, then stirred in about 1 cup of chopped toasted pecans to 1-1/2 cups of the warm caramel. I poured this topping over the brownies, then glazed them with bittersweet chocolate ganache.

While I really like the flavors, I think I need a thicker caramel. I would like for the caramel to maintain a bit more shape after the brownies are sliced. I'm hesitant to dial back on the bourbon, though, because the 1/2-cup measurement (at least to the quantity of caramel sauce that this recipe makes) is just right for a hint of flavor. Still a little work to do ...

The Great Blondie

2009-04-09T08:16:00.003-05:00

For PLTI this week, I went with a tried-and-true blondie recipe from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook by Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan. These blondies are as dense as a good, fudgy brownie, largely because they don't have any leavening. I guess it depends on your palate, but I like their thick chewiness.

Brownie-Blondie Double Deckers, or the 10x10 Pan

2009-04-09T08:15:00.004-05:00

For this week's Lost Lunch Thursday, I was a little fixated with making a batch of bar cookies that combined a blondie with a brownie. I've made a couple of different versions before, but this week, I decided to use a recipe from Abby Johnson Dodge's The Weekend Baker.

After I read over the recipe, I looked at the photo of the bar cookie in the book. Much to my dismay, the bars displayed in the photo -- as baked in a 9x13 pan -- were thinner than what I'd been hoping to make. I then decided that I needed to assemble and bake the cookie dough in a smaller pan to get a thicker cookie. An 8x8 pan would be too small. Even a 9x9 pan seemed as if it would be too small (81 sq. in. vs. 117 sq. in. for the 9x13 pan). Then I remembered the 10x10 pan.

In a couple of her books, Lisa Yockelson has recipes developed to be baked in a 10x10 pan. When I first saw the reference to that pan size, all I could think was "Who the heck owns a 10x10 pan? Where on earth can you buy a 10x10 pan?" Even though I managed to track one down at Amazon.com, I didn't buy it.

Then one day a few years ago, I was in a Sur La Table store in SoHo in Manhattan. The 10x10 randomly crossed my mind, and lo and behold, there it was! And I bought it! I took it home! I washed and dried it! Then I put it away until yesterday! (I think the lesson here as I'm brilliantly rationalizing it is that eventually, I will some how, some way, use the pans and gadgets that I've purchased even though they might spend some portion of their lives gathering dust.)

In the end, I think the 10x10 pan gave me the kind of bar cookie I was looking for. It's thick enough, and it required only 12 minutes or so of extra baking time. Plus, the bars are good. I did my own riff on the recipe and added a cup of white-chocolate chips to the brownie part to contrast with the semisweet chips in the blondie part. They ended up looking and tasting great.

Cupcakes for Allie

2009-04-09T08:07:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was a birthday for one of Claire's skating friends, so I volunteered to bring some cupcakes to the rink for the celebration. I made a batch of Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes from Sara Neumeier's Cupcakes Year-Round, and frosted them with a favorite chocolate buttercream from one of the Magnolia Bakery cookbooks. I even managed to light the candle at the rink without causing any fire alarms to go off.

Thanks, Kevin

2009-04-02T12:26:00.015-05:00

For nearly 15 years, I've had the privilege of working for the best boss I could have imagined. Kevin has been supportive, patient, and good-humored. He's smart enough to know that he doesn't know everything, confident enough not to be arrogant, and intuitive enough to have guided an eclectic group to make a great magazine. I think that he was party to one of my favorite post-marathon cheers, too. (When I was back to work the day after I ran my first Boston Marathon, sitting in my chair was our office's super-size Bob the Builder plush toy wearing a Laurel wreath -- a headband decorated with photos of Stan Laurel.)

His largesse is not limited to the office. Kevin helps colleagues with their home-building projects. (He helped me put a screen door on my house -- and by help, I mean that I chatted while he did most of the work.) Kevin even once sat through a skate show to see Claire perform. Really, you need to have had only one bad supervisor (give or take) to revel in having a good one. A boss who is more likely to laugh than to yell is truly a great thing.

After 23 years at the magazine, Kevin has decided it's time to step back and channel his creative energies in pursuits of his own design. While I know we are left in more than capable hands, I will certainly miss seeing Kevin in the office. I will miss hearing his nontraditional shout of "Shut up!" after someone sneezes. I'll miss sharing new-music finds (including, over the years, Justin Townes Earle and Teddy Thompson) and discussions of longtime favorites (Dwight Yoakam and Rosanne Cash). Perhaps more than anything, I'll miss the annual birthday challenge of finding a new concoction (cake, cupcake, pie, ice cream) involving chocolate and peanut butter.

To commemorate his last day in the office, I've gone back to revisit a couple of chocolate/peanut-butter favorites.

First, there's the Chocolate Festival Cake, a Maida Heatter recipe. The cake has peanut butter, chocolate, and bananas, and the frosting is peanut butter and chocolate. For some reason, this time I ended up with what seemed like an overage of frosting, so I used some to garnish the chocolate-peanut butter pie (photo below), then used the rest to make some decorative squiggles on the cake. (In hindsight, I probably should have forgone the squiggles; they look a little amateurish.)

This chocolate-peanut butter pie is from Quick Chocolate Fixes, a tiny book full of great recipes.

Finally, I tried one new recipe, a chocolate-peanut butter tart, an Abigail Johnson Dodge recipe that appeared in Fine Cooking in December 2005. I think this one turned out pretty well, although I fumbled a little with the graham-cracker crust.

Thanks, Kevin. Whenever you need a chocolate-peanut butter concoction, let me know.

Coffee Toffee Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2009-04-02T12:25:00.002-05:00

For Lost Lunch Thursday this week, I made a batch of coffee toffee chocolate chunk cookies. (Scroll down for the recipe.) They are the best.

Zesty Lemon Pound Cake

2009-04-02T12:24:00.005-05:00

For the PLTI class this week, I made a lemon pound cake. The recipe I used was from a Nestle cookbook I'd picked up at the grocery store, but I also tracked down the recipe at the Nestle Web site. No word on how the cake turned out, although a number of people were impressed with the star shape of the cake. One change I made from the recipe was using 6 oz. of melted chopped white chocolate rather than 6 oz. of melted white-chocolate chips.

Here's the recipe, from the Nestle Web site:

Zesty Lemon Pound Cake
Estimated Times:
Preparation - 20 min | Cooking - 55 min | Yields - 12 to 16 servings

Ingredients:

1 cup (6 oz.) * NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Premier White Morsels
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3 to 4 tablespoons grated lemon peel, (about 3 medium lemons)
1 1/3 cups buttermilk
1 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Directions:
PREHEAT oven to 350° F. Grease and flour 10-cup Bundt pan.

MELT morsels in medium, uncovered, microwave-safe bowl on MEDIUM-HIGH (70%) power for 1 minute; STIR. Morsels may retain some of their original shape. If necessary, microwave at additional 10 to 15-second intervals, stirring just until morsels are melted. Cool slightly.

COMBINE flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in lemon peel and melted morsels. Gradually beat in flour mixture alternately with buttermilk. Pour into prepared Bundt pan.

BAKE for 50 to 55 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in cake comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Combine powdered sugar and lemon juice in small bowl. Make holes in cake with wooden pick; pour half of lemon glaze over cake. Let stand for 5 minutes. Invert onto plate. Make holes in top of cake; pour remaining glaze over cake. Cool completely before serving.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

2009-03-26T08:21:00.004-05:00

This year, I was not called upon to make 300-plus cupcakes for the Girl Scout troop's Princess Tea Party. I found a couple of boxes of cake mix left over from last year's extravaganza and decided to use one of them to make a treat for this week's PLTI class. These cupcakes are made from a devil's food cake mix, a can of cherry pie filling, some almond extract, a couple of eggs, and some chocolate chips.

Cherry pie filling is pretty nasty, acrid stuff, although the nastiness is mitigated somewhat if you happen to find a couple of cans of it for 99 cents each on the grocery-store closeout rack. For the frosting, I followed the Anne Byrn's recommendation for the Martha's Chocolate Icing. It's a cooked frosting (sugar, butter, and milk heated until the sugar melts, then combined with chocolate chips). I made a double batch of it and used some to glaze the Chocolate Syrup Swirl Cake for Lost Lunch Thursday.

Chocolate Syrup Swirl Cake

2009-03-26T08:14:00.006-05:00

A couple of months ago, we stopped for dinner at Cracker Barrel. We seem to find it impossible to get out of Cracker Barrel without buying something in the gift shop, whether it's Moon Pies, candy, or some other crazy thing. This trip, I started flipping through a spiral-bound Hershey recipe collection that seems to be a combination of three grocery-store impulse-buy point-of-purchase cookbooks. Enough recipes seemed appealing that I ended up buying the cookbook.

One of the recipes that caught my eye was Chocolate Syrup Swirl Cake. After the batter is prepared, half of it goes in a Bundt or tube pan. The other half (2 cups) is combined with a cup of chocolate syrup and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. There's also an option to add a cup of shredded sweetened coconut, which I did. Also, I discovered that I had only about 1/2 cup of chocolate syrup left, so I balanced out the total volume with some coffee-flavored syrup. (Mocha!)

As the cake bakes, the batters swirl together.

All in all, this cake was pretty good. It's extremely moist. My only gripe was that the chocolate/coconut center was hard to slice neatly. Maybe it would be a cleaner cut without the coconut.

A Cake for Frank

2009-03-26T08:07:00.005-05:00

Frank, one of Karen's colleagues, decided to retire after working at their place of employment for 30-plus years. Yesterday, a bunch of folks took him to lunch to celebrate, and I got to make his going-away cake. Since I've kind of been in the stout groove, I made another one of the Chocolate Stout Cakes. It's such a good cake: moist, rich, good chocolate flavor. It's also a reliable recipe. (Also, I still had four bottles of stout to use up. Now down to three!) I think I let the glaze cool too much before I poured it on the cake, though. It looks a little gloppy.

By all accounts, the cake was greatly enjoyed. Happy retirement, Frank!

More Red Velvet Cupcakes

2009-03-22T12:50:00.010-05:00

I had to make another batch of those red-velvet cupcakes because they were so good. The recipe makes so many that I had plenty for both Lost Lunch Thursday and for PLTI. Sweet!

A Disappointing Coffee Cake

2009-03-22T12:50:00.009-05:00

I usually like Carole Walter's recipes a lot, and I was thrilled when Fine Cooking ran one of her coffee cake recipes in their holiday issue last year. I didn't make it then, but had it in the back of my mind. When I needed to make something for a skating-club board meeting last weekend, I decided to give this coffee cake a try. The recipe has three variations, so I went with the chocolate version.

Although I ended up liking aspects of the cake, I can't say that I loved it overall. Preparing this cake requires a major kitchen throwdown, calling into use the following gear:

• a saucepan for preparing struesel
• a bowl for combining struesel ingredients
• a bowl for combining filling ingredients
• a food processor for preparing the filling
• the KitchenAid, of course
• many measuring cups and spoons
• other pieces of measuring equipment
• the oven (natch)

After the cake batter is prepared, there's a fairly elaborate cake-assembly process involving layers of batter alternated with layers of filling, all topped off with struesel and a final application of filling — reminiscent of a babka, almost, I guess. I think it took me longer to get the cake ready to go in the oven than it took to bake it. I also didn't have the amount of batter I'd believed I would have to be able to assemble the cake according to the instructions.

After all that work, the final result was disappointing. The middle two layers of the cake were gummy — reminiscent of a bread pudding, I guess. (And that is not to disparage bread pudding, but I wanted a coffee cake.) I would like to say that I will try this one again, but I'm not so sure. Maybe. The top part was excellent, especially the struesel. In all, though, I felt underwhelmed.

Another Chocolate Stout Cake

2009-03-17T18:24:00.006-05:00

When I hear the word stout, I don't usually think of beer. First, I think of the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menominee, Wis. (I went to college in nearby Eau Claire.) Next, I think that stout describes the shape I have taken on since the beginning of the year. Eventually, I get around to stout as in the dark beer.

A couple of weeks ago, the King Arthur Flour email newsletter included a link to a blog post and recipe for a chocolate stout cake. I was intrigued because the cake looked pretty awesome; besides, I'd already bought a six-pack of Guinness for a chocolate stout Bundt cake. I decided to make the King Arthur cake for St. Patrick's Day.

The process mostly went well; I had only a couple of gripes. First, the cake layers baked with a bit of doming, which meant that I had to level two of them before assembling the cake. (I am thinking that is because I used my thinner cake pans instead of the heavier-duty ones.) Also, if you choose the three-layer option as I did, I think you don't get quite enough ganache to frost the cake. (My instinct tells me that even if you made the cake as two layers, you might want to split and fill them; otherwise, that is going to be two extremely thick layers of cake. In that case, of course, you would definitely need more ganache.)

That said, the cake is great: rich and very moist. (You might expect that, of course, when you get to the second ingredient in the recipe: 1 lb. of butter.) I think that this cake might be good enough to become a St. Patrick's Day tradition.

Test Session

2009-03-17T18:23:00.005-05:00

Several times a year, the skating club holds test sessions, which allow skaters to demonstrate their proficiency with skills that they learn in lessons. I think some of the skaters test because they want to compete (and level of testing determines what category you can compete in), and some test because they like the challenge of preparation, of learning new things.

Anyway, when we hold a test session, four or five judges attend to do the assessments. Because the judges do this service for free, it's tradition to provide them with a nice lunch. Since I am currently hospitality chairperson for the skating club, I get to do the food.

Last weekend, we held a test session. For lunch, I made split-pea soup with tarragon and lemon, and a fruit salad (honeydew, grapes, and kiwi with mint). Of course, I also baked: bacon-cheddar-chive scones, orange poppyseed pound cake, red-velvet cupcakes, and the aforementioned chocolate stout Bundt cake. (The orange poppyseed pound cake is a Nicole Rees recipe from Fine Cooking and was featured in the same article as the stout cake.)

OK, it was dessert-heavy, but it was nice to have extra to share with the skaters. The judges seemed pretty happy with the food, especially the scones. I neglected to take a photo of them before the test session, and by the time the session was over, they were gone! Instead of making eight large scones, as the recipe directs, I divided the dough in half and make 16 small scones.

I don't know what prompted me to make the cupcakes. I've been reluctant to make red-velvet cakes because -- cripes! -- a bottle of red food coloring? I've got to say, though, that this cupcake recipe is amazing. I am planning to tinker with it to see how they turn out with a bit of additional liquid in place of the red food coloring. I think they'd make an excellent vanilla cupcake.

Our next test session is in May. I think it goes without saying that I will have to make another batch of the scones. While that will not be a problem, I will be sure to stash one away for myself for after the test session.

Chocolate Stout Cake

2009-03-13T09:20:00.006-05:00

This Nicole Rees recipe first appeared in one of the Holiday Baking issues that Fine Cooking published several years ago. Since it contains stout and since we are nearing St. Patrick's Day, I figured it was time to revisit this cake. It's a great cake, moist and chocolatey. It calls for 1-1/4 cups of stout; unfortunately, the bottle of Guinness stout that I bought measured 1-1/2 cups of liquid. Thus, 1/4 cup was ladled out and discarded. (Although I enjoy beer, I am not a stout fan.)

Now that I've got five bottles of stout left to use, I guess I'll be making another stout cake (this one recently featured on the King Arthur Flour Web-site blog).

Tropical Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-03-11T20:22:00.004-05:00

There is a conventional wisdom that if you change three things about a recipe, it becomes your own creation. Inspired by the chocolate chip cookies I made last week, I started thinking about flavor combinations that might work well in a cookie. A couple of days later, I made the dough for these Tropical Chocolate Chip Cookies. I am going to chalk this up as my first recipe (although I confess that it borrows heavily from the traditional Toll House cookie recipe, a cookie formula of classic and elegant proportion).

These cookies contain white chocolate chips, lemon zest, lemon juice, toasted macadamia nuts, chopped dried pineapple, and shredded coconut. I think they taste great. Ideally, they will be going to tomorrow night's PLTI class -- as long as I don't eat them all first.

(Recipe to come, as soon as I track down the notes I made.)

Donut Dip

2009-03-10T14:34:00.012-05:00

Whenever we travel to or through Springfield, Mass., I always look forward to the opportunity to visit Donut Dip, a small, local purveyor of old-fashioned cake and yeast-raised caloric goodness. Even though I knew we would get to stop at the King Arthur Flour Bakers' Store last weekend, I was looking forward more to Donut Dip. (Bonus: We got to stop there twice, on the way to Burlington, Vermont, and on the way home.)

Donut Dip advertises 49 varieties, but I don't think that includes their muffins or their fruit-filled bar cookies, which seem to be a New England bakery specialty. Donut Dip just sells good doughnuts. It's always difficult to choose a rational sampler at Donut Dip, but among other things, we tried both cake and raised doughnuts, filled and unfilled, glazed and sugared. It was all good.

Based on prior visits, I had hoped to get a meltaway, Donut Dip's version of a treat we first discovered at Bonatt's, a fantastic bakery and breakfast place in Harwichport on Cape Cod. Last weekend, they had no meltaways. However, they did have their version of the "dirt bomb," a treat we first discovered at the Cottage Street Bakery in Orleans on Cape Cod. The dirt bomb is a muffin with a cake-doughnut-like texture. After baking, it's rolled in melted butter, then in cinnamon sugar. (Yes, it's as good as it sounds.)

I also couldn't resist the allure of my very own Donut Dip T-shirt (photo above). If I'm going to be a walking advertisement for anything, it might as well be something I wholeheartedly endorse. If you're traveling through Springfield, make a stop at Donut Dip. You'll be glad you did.

Donut Dip is on Riverdale Road in West Springfield, Mass.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-03-10T14:34:00.009-05:00

Last weekend, we were obliged to attend a skating competition in Burlington, Vermont. The theater-on-ice team debuted this season's long program, based on the story of the Rainbow Fish, and they looked pretty good, especially in their awesome costumes. (Did I leave the camera in the hotel room when we went to the rink for the performance? Why, yes I did. Fortunately, they have a few upcoming performances.)

Anyway, to celebrate the successful performance, I brought along a batch of chocolate chip cookies with orange zest and pistachios. The recipe is from Lora Brody's Chocolate American Style, but it's pretty much a straightforward Toll House cookie recipe with a few tweaks (pistachios, milk chocolate chips, orange zest, almond extract). I made the dough several days before I actually baked it, hoping to capitalize on the resting time to get a thicker, chewier cookie. Worked like a charm.

Lime Bars

2009-03-05T13:36:00.006-05:00

Last week, I picked up a big bag of limes from the dented-and-dinged rack at the store. I had used a few of them, but I could tell it was getting to be time to get rid of them somehow. Although I'd had something else in mind for Lost Lunch Thursday, I ended up making a batch of Lime Bars, using the Lemon Bar recipe from Emily Luchetti's Stars Desserts. The last time I made these bars, they were something of a disaster as the filling somehow seeped under the crust. This batch, however, turned out perfectly. I was actually a little skittish about using this recipe again after the previous batch, but I'm glad that they turned out well. I can now (re)elevate this Lemon (or Lime) Bar recipe back to my all-time favorite for this treat.

Lemon Anise Bread

2009-03-05T13:35:00.010-05:00

The subtitle of this post could be "When things go wrong."

This recipe follows the banana bread recipe in Lora Brody's Baking Basics, and basically follows the same formula and technique. I knew I'd never made this bread before and was kind of surprised I hadn't. The flavor combination seemed really intriguing. In addition to the lemon and the anise, the bread contains a cup of chopped toasted slivered almonds.

As with the banana bread, the batter assembled well. When I took it out of the oven, though, the center of the bread had collapsed. The loaf also had the same coarse top texture that the banana bread had. Remembering something I read in Shirley Corriher's BakeWise, I have come to think that this bread is overleavened. It contains 2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, which is maybe too much for 1-1/2 cups of flour and a cup of chopped nuts. The flavor is pretty awesome, though, so I think I'll try it again, but will dial back on the baking powder. Even if it baked out to a more pound-cake-like texture, it would still be pretty good.

Two Banana Breads

2009-03-05T13:35:00.008-05:00

It was a race to the wire, but I finally managed to use up an entire bag of dented-and-dinged bananas. This coup was completed with these two banana breads. For the first one, I used a recipe from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor. This Banana-Cranberry Tea Bread has dried cranberries in a sour-cream enriched batter. I zested an orange into the batter, figuring that it would go pretty well with the cranberry flavor.

The second loaf is from Lora Brody's Basic Baking. For this loaf, I added the zest of a couple of limes and 1/4 cup of lime juice instead of the lemon zest and juice the original recipe called for, plus some toasted coconut. While I was relatively happy with how the recipe came together, but I was a little disappointed with the coarse texture of the top of the loaf. Also, although the recipe called for an 8x4 loaf pan, the batter was plenty enough for a 9x5 loaf pan. I'm glad I went with my gut instinct on that one, or I'd have been scraping up burned batter from the oven floor.

Both of these breads have been sliced and will go to this week's PLTI class.

Michele's Pies

2009-03-05T13:33:00.021-05:00

Last Saturday, I was on my way home from Brooklyn via Stamford. I'd been busy all day in Brooklyn and didn't have the opportunity to make any bakery visits. As Claire and I were heading for home, driving north on Route 7 in Norwalk, I caught a glimpse of a man picking up a sandwich-board type sign on the side of the road. I said to Claire, "Was it just me, or did that sign say something about free pie samples?" She concurred, and I replied, "There must be a pie bakery in that plaza." I checked the clock on the dashboard; it read 7:55. I looked for the next available left-hand turn and prayed that the shop would be open til 8 p.m.

Much to our good luck, Michele's Pies in Norwalk was indeed open until 8, and I think we snuck in as the last customers of the day. I definitely wanted something but didn't want to commit to an entire pie. Lucky for me, Michele's carries small pies (probably two servings per pie, unless you're incredibly hungry). I ordered one pineapple crumb and one chocolate peanut-butter dream. In addition to pies, Michele's carries quick breads, savory pies, and cookies, among other items. Claire went for a couple of peanut blossoms, and I also got a couple of pumpkin cookies with cream cheese frosting.

The verdict? Very nice pies. The crust was incredibly flaky. Of the two I ordered, I liked the chocolate peanut-butter pie best. I really liked that the pineapple crumb was made with tidbits of fresh pineapple, but I kind of wished that maybe there had been something binding the pineapple bits together. It's a small gripe, though. Pineapple is a pretty unusual pie ingredient, and I loved having the chance to sample it in that use.

You can find Michele's Pies in the Town Line Center in Norwalk, Conn.

Banana Crunch Cake

2009-03-05T13:33:00.019-05:00

Whenever I succumb to the dented-and-dinged banana challenge, I end up racking my brain to remember good banana recipes. One favorite I hadn't made for a while is Banana Crunch Cake from Elinor Klivans's Bake and Freeze Desserts. It's a pretty straightforward banana coffee cake; the crunch comes from a streusel sprinkled in the middle of the cake (applied after half the batter is in the pan) and then on top of the cake. The streusel contains butter, brown sugar, toasted pecans, and crushed dried-banana chips.

While the cake is good as it is, I like to add 3/4 cup of miniature chocolate chips because, really, you usually can't go wrong adding a bit of chocolate to a banana cake.

Lime Buttermilk Pound Cake

2009-03-05T13:33:00.017-05:00

For this week's PLTI class (inspired by a bag of limes from the dented-and-dinged rack at Stew's), I went with Lime Buttermilk Pound Cake, a Maida Heatter recipe that appears in Baking From the Heart. The cake contains lime zest. Then, while it's still warm from the oven, the cake is brushed with a lime-sugar glaze. I lucked out and got to try a piece of the cake (there was a little left over); it's definitely worth making again.

This recipe also reminded me how much I enjoy Maida Heatter's recipes. Her manner of writing process is so comforting and welcoming. I need to unearth some of her books and rediscover them.

Banana Muffins

2009-02-21T14:43:00.003-05:00

This morning, Claire needed something to bring to share with her skating friends for an early practice, so I made them a batch of Banana Muffins from More Muffins (Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright). They were supposed to be muffins with a streusel topping, but I opted to sprinkle some mini chocolate chips on top instead. By the time I got there to pick up Claire, the muffins were gone. I understand they were good. (Should have saved one for myself!)

Banana Cupcakes

2009-02-20T08:35:00.005-05:00

Despite getting home on the late side last night, I decided to throw together a quick batch of Banana Cupcakes (from Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcakes) for a meeting I need to attend this afternoon. In one of my should-have-known-better moments, I overfilled the cupcake liners a bit, and a few of the cupcakes overflowed, leaving the edges to bake on top of the pan. Subsequently, there was some untoward damage to a few of them during the depanning stage of the process. (When writing about this type of thing, I strive to use passive voice during the "I messed up" portion of the endeavor.)

At the moment, the cupcakes are unfrosted, but I think I can whip up a quick batch of buttercream before the meeting. (I ended up flavoring the buttercream with a little nutmeg, which goes really well with the banana and chocolate.)

Brownies and Banana Cake

2009-02-18T21:06:00.012-05:00

Yesterday, I had to get a couple of things ready for Lost Lunch Thursday and the PLTI class session. For Lost Lunch, I decided to try a brownie recipe that recently appeared at the King Arthur Flour blog. I'm pretty sure it's the same brownie recipe from their cookie cookbook, too. I'd always shied away from that recipe because it uses cocoa powder instead of unsweetened chocolate, and to me, that means a cakey brownie instead of a fudgy one. (Seriously, if I want chocolate cake, I'll make a cake, not a brownie.) I like some of the funkiness of the preparation technique for this recipe, namely melting the butter, then adding the sugar and heating up the combination to promote a thin crust on top of the brownie. I let the batter cool down for 20 minutes before I added the chocolate chips because I wanted them to retain their shape and not melt into the batter. When I spread the batter in the pan, I was encouraged by how thick it was, giving me hope for a fudgy brownie.

In the end, the whole thin-crust thing ended up not mattering for two reasons: 1. I sprinkled some of the chocolate chips for the dough on top of the brownie batter before I baked it; and 2. I made a chocolate glaze with chopped peanuts for the top of the brownie.

When all was said and done, I was surprised by how fudgy and, thus, acceptable these brownies are. They also got a big thumbs up from Claire, who enjoyed a couple of them. I guess she has gotten past the "I don't like nuts" phase.

The PLTI cake this week is Banana Toffee Crunch Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze from Quick Chocolate Fixes by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright. The recipe calls for 5 1.4-oz. Heath bars, chopped, but I used an 8-oz. bag of chopped Heath bits, and that seemed to work fine. (Yes, I am still making my way through the bag of dented-and-dinged bananas. Only a few left!)

Another Banana Cake

2009-02-16T22:42:00.004-05:00

Once again, I was unable to resist the allure of a huge bag of bananas on the dented-and-dinged rack at Stew's. These bananas were very green at the time of purchase a week ago and only now are ripe enough for use in baking. Today, I tried a Banana Cake recipe from the new Dede Wilson birthday-cake book. The cake has some chopped toasted pecans and mini-chocolate chips in it. For filling between the layers, I used some leftover truffle base (dark rum and toasted coconut), and I frosted the cake with a mango-flavored ganache. I really like the voluptuous swirls in the frosting. I think I'll take this to work tomorrow for a belated Lost Lunch Thursday.

I'm not exactly sure what I'll do with the rest of the bananas, but I know I've got several things to bake for before the week is over. No doubt some (most? all?) of it will involve bananas.

Flour

2009-02-16T17:02:00.005-05:00

Last weekend, we spent a couple of days in the Boston area. Among our various stops, we paid a visit to Flour, a terrific bakery -- one of my absolute favorites. Since the last time we were there, Flour has opened a new location on Farnsworth Street, so we stopped in there. Part of the haul is shown below (counterclockwise from top left): a Scharffenberger double chocolate cookie, an oatmeal maple scone, a piece of apple snacking spice cake, a lime cornmeal cookie, and a small loaf of cherry-chocolate bread. We also brought home a small triple chocolate mousse cake; however, it didn't manage the travel home well. On the other hand, it tasted really good even after its structural integrity was compromised.

I'm really psyched because Joanne Chang, owner of Flour, is writing a cookbook. I'm pretty sure she was in an office at the Farnsworth Street location late Saturday afternoon. I wanted to shout out my enthusiasm and eagerness for the impending cookbook, but I figured that blogging about it was going to be geeky enough. (That said, Joanne, if you happen to Google yourself or Flour and you find this, rest assured that you have one cookbook buyer looking forward to the new book.)

A Sweet Trade

2009-02-12T11:52:00.005-05:00

Last week before I decided that we should donate Karen's birthday cake to PLTI, I made a separate chocolate sour cream pound cake (from Quick Chocolate Fixes by Leslie Weiner and Barbara Albright) for the PLTI class. That left a balance of one unclaimed cake. To say thanks to our friend Patti for stopping in to keep an eye on the cat while we were away, I left the cake for her. In exchange, she left us some of her homemade biscotti (photo below). I like how this deal worked out!

Birthday Cake

2009-02-12T11:50:00.003-05:00

For Karen's birthday, I knew I had to make a cake that somehow involved chocolate. I decided to try something from Dede Wilson's latest book, The Birthday Cake Book. After perusing some chocolate-cake-with-chocolate-frosting combinations, I decided to make a yellow cake (with miniature chocolate chips in it) covered with chocolate frosting. Everything about the cake and the frosting came together really well, and it sure looked great when it was assembled.

Then we got home kind of late, plus had gotten dessert when we were at dinner. Believe it or not, the cake was never tasted. Knowing that we had plans that would leave us unable to dig in to the cake for a few days, we decided to donate it to the PLTI class this week -- with the promise that I'll make another one next week.

Strawberry Cupcakes

2009-02-11T22:27:00.003-05:00

Today I brought some (early) Valentine's Day cupcakes to share with Claire's skating teammates. I used the strawberry cupcake recipe from Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. I've made that one before, and this time boosted the flavor with a bit of strawberry extract. With some chocolate frosting and sprinkles on top, they were good to go, and seemed to be pretty well enjoyed by everybody.

Peanut-Butter Cookies

2009-02-08T15:38:00.003-05:00

Last Wednesday's New York Times had a recipe for peanut-butter cookies, and I've been a bit fixated on making them since then. I decided to do part of the dough as straight-ahead peanut-butter cookies and half (or so) as peanut blossoms (mostly to use up a bag of chocolate stars). I think that both versions turned out pretty well.

Pistachio Cupcakes

2009-02-04T23:39:00.004-05:00

This week for Lost Lunch Thursday, we'll be having Pistachio Cupcakes, from a recipe in Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. They're frosted with a plain buttercream icing from the same book. I usually don't do this sort of thing, but I tinted the icing a light green to emphasize the pistachio theme. The cupcakes call for 1/2 cup of ground pistachios. To prevent them from turning into nut butter in the food processor, I ground them with a heaping 1/4 cup of the flour from the recipe. I'm already looking forward to lunch tomorrow.

Chocolate Pound Cake

2009-02-04T23:36:00.004-05:00

This week's PLTI treat is Darn Good Chocolate Cake from Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn. I've made this cake before, and it's not too bad. Instead of plain chocolate chips, I used some raspberry chips; the glaze is a lemon ganache. (That ganache had been intended to be truffles, but it never quite set up firmly enough to roll properly.)

I always feel a little sheepish about cake-mix things. However, on days like today, when there was more stuff to do than time to do it, a mix can come in handy.

Groundhog Day 2009

2009-02-02T23:00:00.003-05:00

This year, our friends had their annual Groundhog Day party. Good fun as always, and as always, lots of good food, including some fantastic homemade vegetable soup. Somehow over the weekend, I completely lost track of the fact that today was Groundhog Day. It wasn't until fairly late last evening that I remembered I'd volunteered to bring a dessert. Focused on the need to make something quick, I turned to No Bake Cookies by Camilla Saulsbury. We'd tried a surprisingly good peanut-butter bar cookie from this book over the holidays, so I was up for trying a new recipe. I chose a cookies-and-cream bar cookie that largely consisted of a lot of ground-up Oreos, some making the base, some mixed into a creamy topping (vanilla pudding mix, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, coarsely crumbled Oreos). I was alarmed when I tried a bit of the topping; it tasted overly sweet to me. Consequently, I chose to cut the bars into small squares. I think that might have been the absolutely right thing to do, too, because in the end, the bars weren't that bad. (What a ringing endorsement!) I got some positive feedback from guests at the party, so I guess that's good enough.

In keeping with the theme of the day, another guest brought some nifty cupcakes. Claire snagged one on her way out the door. (It might not look exactly like a groundhog, but it's the thought that counts!)

Plain Old Brownies

2009-01-29T21:49:00.004-05:00

For this week's PLTI class, I made a batch of regular old brownies. For the zillions of brownie recipes I probably have access to, both in cookbooks at home and from Web sites, I have got to admit that my favorite fallback recipe is the one on the box of Baker's Unsweetened Chocolate. It's a straight-ahead, fudgy brownie that does well with a cup of something added. (Their recipe calls for a cup of chopped pecans, but in this version, I used a cup of white-chocolate chips.) The big tweak that I make is that I add salt; just a small amount of salt (I've settled on 3/8 teaspoon) really enlivens the chocolate flavor.

If you don't want to click through to the Kraft Web site, here's the recipe:

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter or margarine
2 cups sugar
3 eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
3/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans, toasted and cooled to room temperature (or substitute 1 cup of some other mix-in: chocolate chips, peanuts, chopped-up peanut-butter cups)

Heat the oven to 350°F. Line 13x9 baking pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides of pan. Grease foil.

Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwaveable bowl on high 2 min. or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar. Blend in eggs and vanilla. Add flour and pecans; mix well. Spread into prepared pan.

Bake 25 to 30 min. or until wooden toothpick inserted in center comes out with fudgy crumbs. (Do not overbake.) Cool in pan on wire rack. Remove brownies from pan, using foil handles. Cut into squares. Store in tightly covered container at room temperature.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

2009-01-26T18:10:00.005-05:00

I was prompted to try the recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies from Marcel Desaulniers' Death by Chocolate after a friend had a disappointing experience with the recipe, finding that the dough and cookies were too crumbly. I hadn't even looked in that cookbook for a while, so it was kind of like getting a visit from an old friend.

My experience with this recipe? I thought the cookies turned out OK. The dough is crumbly, maybe a bit more fussy to work with than a regular cookie dough. But I think that peanut-butter cookie doughs can be like that. Also, this dough has a pretty big amount of peanuts (1/2 cup) and chocolate chips (2 cups) incorporated into the dough; that made the dough a bit fussier to work with.

Since the dough was crumbly, I scooped it out, then compacted it into a ball before I flattened it slightly on the baking sheet. A couple of my cookies crumbled a bit in the oven, but otherwise no problems. If I ever make these cookies again, I think I will be tempted to chop the peanuts a bit before adding them to the dough, and also maybe try the recipe with mini chocolate chips to see if that makes the dough slightly easier to handle.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

2009-01-26T17:56:00.002-05:00

For a Girl Scout dinner, Claire volunteered "us" to bring a batch of Nana Cookies for dessert. Nana Cookies are chocolate crinkle cookies, so named because a family recipe for them came from Karen's mom. I like that recipe, but have wondered about other recipes for this type of cookie, mostly because the traditional Nana Cookie dough is very sticky and can be difficult to work with. When my assignment came up, I decided to try a recipe from Shirley Corriher's new book, BakeWise . For her recipe, one intriguing aspect is rolling the balls of chocolate cookie dough first in granulated sugar, then in powdered sugar. Corriher suggests that this helps more powdered sugar to adhere to the cookies.

I can't argue that more powdered sugar stayed on the cookies, giving them a higher contrast between chocolate and sugared sections. This dough was very easy to work with, too. However, the cookies are alarmingly sweet -- almost painfully sweet. I think that the use of semisweet chocolate in the dough combined with the amount of sugar in the dough (2.5 cups) is too much. I am now interested in making this recipe again, but substituting unsweetened chocolate for part of the semisweet.

Bon Voyage, Brittany!

2009-01-26T17:42:00.005-05:00

Last week, Brittany, one of my wife's colleagues, moved on to new adventures, and I got to make a going-away cake for her. (It is the least I could do for a fellow parade-balloon wrangler.) Although I knew only that chocolate was the prime directive, I wasn't sure what cake to make. Then I was browsing through the recipes section of the Williams-Sonoma Web site, and I found this Sour Cream Chocolate Bundt Cake. I ended up being so curious about how it was going to taste that I made another one the next night and brought it in for the first Lost Lunch Thursday of the new season. The cake is remarkably moist (I guess that 1.5 cups of sour cream will help with that). For the glaze on both cakes, I used a mango ganache that I had planned to make into truffles (but that really lacked enough mango flavor to work as a truffle base).

Lemon-Poppyseed Cake

2009-01-26T17:33:00.003-05:00

Now that we're at the start of a new year, that means the start of a new PLTI class. This week (well, technically last week), I sent along a Lemon-Poppyseed Cake, with a lemon glaze. This cake came from a recipe in a book called Bundt Cake Bliss by Susanna Short. By all accounts, it was a success. Plus, I got to use the new cake dome I got at Target (it was marked down to something like $3.89).

Prolonged Hiatus

2009-01-17T14:04:00.003-05:00

If you've checked in and seen no activity for a while, I apologize. With the crash of too much to do and not enough time to do it, I allowed The Leavening Agent to languish. It did not helped that my camera broke a couple of months ago and I have yet to replace it. I've continued baking, but it has seemed unworthwhile to post without photos. If all plans work out, I should have a new camera in the next few days, and will have a bit more time for blogging and baking since I'm not going to be running much (make that at all) for another couple of months or so.

Banana Bundt Cake

2008-11-03T16:11:00.011-05:00

One of the problems with being a blog slacker is that I tend to upload photos when I take them and always have the best intentions of posting entries right away so that I don't do things like forget where I got a recipe from. Like this banana Bundt cake. I am positive that the glaze came from Fearless Baking by Elinor Klivans. Chalk up one more for hopelessness!

Pumpkin Cupcakes

2008-11-03T16:11:00.010-05:00

Autumn means that it's time to bake with apples, cranberries, and pumpkin. I had some leftover chocolate frosting from my commission cake, and I thought it would go well with pumpkin. So it turned to Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes. Good combination.

Now I need to make something with cranberries.

Commission

2008-11-03T16:10:00.010-05:00

Every now and again, I get a commission to make a cake. I think that's pretty cool; being a good baker is a nice reputation to have, that's for sure. For this commission, the request came in the afternoon, and the cake was needed the next day. I went with the yellow cake from the Magnolia Bakery cookbooks, then used the frosting and toasted coconut-pecan "macaroon" blend from the Junior's yellow-cake recipe. By all reports, the cake was a hit, which leaves me hopeful for future commissions.

Double-Apple Bundt Cake

2008-11-03T16:10:00.009-05:00

This Double-Apple Bundt Cake comes from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. The batter calls for both a grated apple and some apple butter (hence the double-apple reference). While the cake turned out pretty well, my one second thought about it is that I could have baked it in a slightly smaller tube pan. The final cake seemed a little height-challenged.

Birthday Cake

2008-11-03T16:08:00.004-05:00

For her birthday this year, Claire requested a repeat of a cake I'd made previously but didn't like that much. Fortunately, I was inspired to make this chocolate cake, which appeared in an issue of Everyday Food. I was missing an ingredient for the ganache that was used to ice the cake, so I used to the lighter, fluffier chocolate frosting from the Magnolia Bakery cookbooks. The cake tasted great, but I guess I should have cleaned up the frosting smears on the cake-dome platter!

Applesauce Cake

2008-10-07T20:10:00.003-05:00

I made this applesauce cake with homemade apple-raspberry sauce (hence the pinkish tinge to the cake). For the topping, I made a traditional cream cheese frosting and added some toasted pecans.

The Best Muffins

2008-10-03T21:26:00.003-05:00

I'm not always necessarily fond of Cook's Illustrated's self-aggrandizing need to label their recipes "best." I think that there can be wiggle room for tweaking and customizing recipes here and there. Besides, what is best to one palate is maybe not someone else's cup of tea.

That said, I used a CI recipe to make a batch of Mocha Chip Muffins, and they are amazing. They taste great (not too sweet, nice coffee flavor), and look terrific (big domed top, firm moist crumb). The batter is stiffer than other muffin batters I've baked with lately. I was a little afraid that I was overfilling the muffin tin, but that stiff batter worked out: The muffins didn't overflow the pan, just baked up nice and tall.

I made the Mocha Chip Muffins (photo above) for a meeting I attended tonight, and I've got a batch of plain chocolate-chip muffins (photo below) in the oven to go to the skating rink tomorrow morning.

I will be using this recipe again. Probably frequently.

Muffins, Part 2

2008-09-26T21:53:00.005-05:00

For the past couple of weeks, Claire has been doing some skating on Saturday mornings. For weekend-skating mornings, she and her friends have a little tradition called the Sunshine Morning Breakfast Club. That means that she (meaning me) makes something to bring along to share with her friends.

This week, "we" again made two varieties (although they were made tonight rather than tomorrow morning in a mad frenzy, like last week). For tomorrow's breakfast club, it's a batch of Chocolate Chip Muffins, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, from Lauren Chattman's Mom's Big Book of Baking; and Double Chocolate Chunk Muffins, from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

In a gesture of unfathomable selflessness, Claire took one of the Chocolate Chip Muffins for a test drive tonight and very much enjoyed it, commenting on how much she liked the combination of the cinnamon-sugar and chocolate flavors. I hope that the rest of the skating crew enjoys them tomorrow morning, too.

Apple-Ginger Streusel Coffee Cake

2008-09-26T21:52:00.002-05:00

When I saw this recipe at the Fine Cooking Web site, I wondered how I could possibly have overlooked it when it was originally published. Then again, in November 1995, I was more concerned about month-old Claire than I was about any coffee cake that involved streusel and ginger. What can I say? I'm just glad that I noticed it now, nearly 13 years later.

All in all, it was mostly worth the wait. There is a lot of prep involved in this cake: streusel (including chopped walnuts) to be blended, an apple to be chopped, crystallized ginger to be minced. My only error with this cake was making it in the 12-cup Bundt pan, which I absent-mindedly grabbed instead of a 10-in. pan, as called for in the recipe. I would definitely have gotten more height from the cake in the smaller pan, and also might have gotten a bit more definition in the streusel weaving through the cake.

Every Peanut Butter Cupcake in the Book

2008-08-06T17:08:00.005-05:00

For a recent work birthday, I needed to make something that involved chocolate and peanut butter. I'd started to feel that over the years, I'd done all the varieties of things I could make (cakes, pies, ice creams), so this year, I opted for cupcakes. When I perused Julie Hasson's 125 Best Cupcake Recipes, I ended up deciding to make all four of the peanut butter-chocolate cupcake recipes. Each one made a dozen cupcakes, so I was sure to have leftovers. I made a double batch of her peanut butter frosting for half of the cupcakes; for the other half, I used a chocolate buttercream.

Savory Scones

2008-08-06T16:58:00.004-05:00

I don't often bake savory items, but when I saw the recipe for Bacon-Cheddar-Scallion Scones on the King Arthur Flour blog, I was intrigued. I could be completely vegetarian if it weren't for bacon. Put some bacon in a biscuit with cheddar cheese and scallions (I used chives in the scones I made)? Is it possible that this could be the perfect food? By all accounts, this scone might in fact be the perfect food.

Birthday at the Lake

2008-08-06T16:46:00.004-05:00

I'm behind on blogging, as usual, but a couple of weeks ago, we celebrated a birthday after a Sunday-morning run at the lake. After breakfast, I broke out this beauty. It's from the More From Magnolia cookbook by Allysa Torey: chocolate cake and chocolate frosting. I know I've made this cake before and liked it a lot because I have made notes about it in my copy of the book, the most important note indicating that it should be baked in three 9-in.-dia. pans instead of two.

Thanks for not ordering the pancake this year, John.

Orange Marble Pound Cake

2008-08-06T16:39:00.004-05:00

This cake is from a recipe in The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook by Jennifer Appel. I've kind of had an eye on this recipe for years because it uses club soda as an ingredient; it's a little off the wall. All in all, this cake was good, with a bright orange flavor. My only issue involved the chocolate swirl in the center. The recipe directs you to remove a portion of the batter, then mix in unsweetened cocoa powder. Although the cocoa blended into the batter just fine, the chocolate center was really dry after baking. If I try this one again, I'll add a little extra liquid to the cocoa batter before spooning it into the Bundt pan.

Banana Pound Cake

2008-07-23T16:08:00.005-05:00

The other day, I needed to make something for a parent-leadership alumni group meeting. Since I had some overripe bananas -- it doesn't take much for bananas to grow overripe in the hot, humid conditions we've been dealing with lately -- I decided it was time for a banana cake. A quick pass through Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours provided a great candidate: this banana pound cake. Although I knew the cake was good, I couldn't help but tweak it. I added about a cup of mini chocolate chips, then some toasted coconut and pecans (left over from a recent Junior's cake). I reserved some of the coconut and pecans, figuring I'd use it as a garnish sprinkled on some chocolate glaze.

Hospitality No. 1

2008-07-16T17:01:00.004-05:00

Last month, I was elected to the board of the local skating club. I'm now the hospitality chair. I can't imagine how my name became associated with the idea of hospitality (read: food); it's really something of a shocker.

Last Friday, I had to do my first big hospitality gig: providing food for a group of judges who were coming to work at a test session at the rink. Judges do these testing gigs on a volunteer basis, so it's a big deal to provide them with something good (and warm) to eat. For the menu, I took a cue from the previous hospitality chair: soup, sandwiches, fruit, dessert. For the sandwiches and fruit, I relied on prepared items. I made the soup, though: for this session, a batch of black bean soup that turned out really well. (I know it was good; there was some leftover.)

Then, of course, there was an opportunity to make dessert. My first dessert choice was the ever-reliable, ever-popular Blueberry-Lime Pound Cake from Fine Cooking, only this time I tried it with lemon. This is simply a recipe that can do no wrong. The cake was a big hit. (I'm extremely excited that Nicole Rees, who created this recipe, has a cookbook coming out later this year.)

Because no dessert tray is complete without a chocolate option, I made a batch of the chocolate cupcakes from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey, frosted with a chocolate buttercream from the same cookbook. Definitely a tried-and-true pair of recipes for me, and also a hit.

I think we have another test session coming up at the end of August. It's going to seem like a cliche, but I think I'll be making another pound cake featuring blueberries again.

Birthday Cake

2008-07-16T16:59:00.006-05:00

One of my colleagues needed a birthday cake for his spouse, and I was happy to oblige with this favorite. I like it when I pick up a for-hire gig from time to time. It's always so much fun to deliver a cake in a box. Makes me feel almost like a professional baker.

Milky Way Cake

2008-07-16T16:38:00.003-05:00

I've made this recipe before, and it's a good one. I'm still amused that somehow, someone thought it would be a nifty idea to melt some Milky Way candy bars and use them as the ingredient in a pound cake. I guess it was someone who simply didn't want to make their own batch of chocolate caramel. This time, I added some toasted pecan and coconut mixture left over from one of the Junior's cakes that I've made recently. The glaze is from Elinor Klivan's Fearless Baking.

Weekend Baking

2008-06-15T20:13:00.003-05:00

Once more, with pictures: the blueberry-lime pound cake from Fine Cooking. It is perfect the day after it's baked. After a few days, especially in hot, humid weather, the glaze starts to disintegrate and be absorbed into the cake. Also, after making this cake a couple of times, I can say that I think the glaze recipe as published is a little too thin. I've taken to adding a little more powdered sugar to get a glaze that pours nicely onto the cake.

Not really seasonally appropriate but tasty nonetheless, Apple Crumble Bars, from Elinor Klivans's Fearless Baking. They were quite good, although again, not totally compatible with hot, humid weather. I'll definitely try them again in the fall during apple season.

Junior's Cake, Part 2

2008-06-12T12:11:00.004-05:00

This cake was a variation on this cake, which I made a couple of weeks ago. While I liked the idea of the cake, I thought it would be better with a butter-type cake layer instead of a sponge-type cake layer. So I went back to a reliable yellow cake from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey.

I made the cake as three layers, then decorated it with the chocolate frosting and toasted coconut/pecan combo. I guess it's a matter of personal preference, but I liked this version better. The butter cake just seems like a more-sturdy base for the frosting and nuts.

Lemon Cream Pie

2008-06-10T13:14:00.003-05:00

It's only mid-June, and we are already in the midst of our first summer heat wave. Since Saturday, temperatures have been in the 90s, and the humidity is, as ever, unbearable. In conditions such as this, when even standing still is a perspiration-inducing activity, baking isn't necessarily something that even I want to do. Still, I needed to make something to take to a meeting tonight, so I thought about refrigerator pies.

Lauren Chattman's Icebox Pies is a great collection of recipes for desserts ideal for foul summer weather. In it, the recipe for Lemon Cream Pie caught my eye. To avoid turning on the oven, I relied on a purchased graham-cracker crust. The filling is a pretty simple lemon curd lightened with whipped cream. After I folded the whipped cream into the lemon curd, I was a little worried that the filling would be too soupy. However, after spending a night in the fridge, the pie set up nicely.

An Early Birthday

2008-06-08T21:16:00.003-05:00

My running buddy Brendan is getting married in a couple of weeks, and his birthday falls roughly the week after the wedding. In other words, he'll be away when we would otherwise celebrate his birthday after a Sunday-morning run and then breakfast. I decided that it would be OK for us to celebrate a few weeks early.

Knowing that we would be in for some too-early-in-the-season-for-it-to-be-this-disgusting weather, I looked around for a cake I thought would be sturdy enough to be in the car for a couple of early-morning hours while we ran. With a couple of extralarge eggs to be used up from a dozen I'd bought for the Lost lunch season finale cake, I centered my focus on a book whose recipes are formulated with extralarge eggs: Chocolate American Style by Lora Brody.

Perusing the cake listing in the index, I saw a chocolate pound cake. That would fit the definition of sturdy, so I went with it. Blessedly, the cake is formulated for a 9.5-in. Bundt pan, which meant I didn't have to use the big same-old Bundt pan; I used my star-shaped Bundt for this cake. I zested a couple of oranges into the batter for an extra bit of flavor, and I glazed it with a tried-and-true glaze from Elinor Klivans's Fearless Baking.

Because it was so hideous even today even at 8 in the morning, I brought the cake into our usual Sunday-breakfast site, and we ate it there after breakfast. There's nothing like chocolate cake before noon, much less a good celebratory reason for having it.

Going-Away Blondies

2008-06-06T17:24:00.004-05:00

One of my wife's colleagues is moving on to some post-graduate studies, so she put in a request for something to commemorate his last day in the office. Because it was a sort-of last-minute request, I fell back to a tried-and-true favorite, The Great Blondie from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook.

This time, I made them without any butterscotch chips. Instead, I used some dark-chocolate M&Ms in the batter, along with some leftover toasted pecan-and-coconut mixture from a cake I'd baked last week. On top, I used chopped walnuts, chocolate chunks, and chocolate chips. This edition of The Great Blondie is definitely one-of-a-kind.

Lost Cake

2008-06-05T12:04:00.015-05:00

Knowing that we had the Lost season finale coming up, I was scouting around for a lavish dessert befitting our annual cliffhanger dissection. When I saw Alex Witchel's article in The New York Times the Wednesday before the Lost finale, I knew had my dessert: a four-layer yellow cake slathered with chocolate frosting, encrusted with a blend of toasted coconut and pecans. The recipe is based on a cake I know all too well, available at Junior's.

The cake is very much of the sponge variety: 10 extra-large eggs in this cake, but only 3/4 cups butter and 1-2/3 cups of cake flour. I've made a version of the frosting before; it's featured in the first Junior's cookbook. I'd actually never forget this frosting recipe because it specifically calls for a stick of margarine (which I believe Julia Child referred to as "that other spread"). The margarine -- and the quarter-cup of dark corn syrup -- really keep the frosting soft and creamy.

Clearly, the cake photographed well. Every once in a while, I take my time with a cake and gussy it up, and this one was surely ready for its closeup. In the end, though, I have a feeling of disappointment with the cake. Somehow, I ended up feeling as if the sponge-type cake was far too delicate for the rich frosting and the nutty coating on the sides. Of course, that didn't stop me from eating the cake. Twice. The next time I'm passing through Grand Central Terminal, I'm going to buy a slice of their version of this cake. I can't help but think that their cake is a sturdier, traditional butter cake.

I have to give props to the toasted coconut-pecan combination for the side of the cake. I had some leftover of that, and a bit of frosting. They were great together, even without benefit of the cake.

The Cake

2008-06-05T12:04:00.012-05:00

No photo, but I once again made The Cake. This time, it was the basic version, with apples and chocolate chips. Now that cherries are starting to show up in stores, I think it might be time for a cherry version of The Cake again.

An Early Start to Blueberry Season

2008-06-05T12:04:00.011-05:00

The new issue of Fine Cooking contains a great Nicole Rees article about blueberries. The issue showed up a little before blueberry season, but it was enough to get me psyched. Then, by some divine intervention, early-season blueberries showed up. I tried a couple of the recipes from the article: the Blueberry Streusel Bars with Lemon-Cream Filling (photo above) and the Blueberry-Lime Pound Cake (no photo because it was devoured before it could be photographed).

No complaints at all with either recipe. I am not sure what it is, but blueberry works really well with citrus. Both of these things will be baked again, preferably with fresh, locally grown blueberries. (Here in Connecticut, the locally grown citrus, well, it isn't so great.)

Amish Friendship Bread

2008-05-12T07:54:00.005-05:00

So my daughter, Claire, came home from school with a zip-top bag of goo and a recipe for Amish Friendship Bread. I deduced that it was some sort of starter, and we followed the instructions as directed, feeding it as required and after 10 days, replenishing the starter, dividing it into five portions, and then giving away some and keeping one to bake with.

We actually kept two and baked off one of them. That was good because I messed up the first batch of bread that we made. We ended up being able to make the bread again, and the second time, the bread turned out better with the proper proportions of ingredients in it. (I'd put in too much sugar the first go-round.)

After the second set of loaves, I was left with a big question: What was the deal? I was kind of expecting something special, maybe a distinctive, tangy flavor. Instead, it was a moist quick bread. I was perplexed to the point that I posed my question at CooksTalk, the forum at FineCooking.com. In the end, the upshot seemed to be: Yes, it's a moist quick bread.

The charm of all of this rigamarole is in sharing the starter. It was a cute-enough endeavor, but on the other hand, we have now distributed all of the starter to other friends. I think we're totally OK with that, too.

For what it's worth, the best version we made was chocolate, flavored with chocolate pudding and mini-chocolate chips. The version in the photo was made with golden raisins.

Celebration Cakes

2008-05-12T07:52:00.004-05:00

Because of my surplus of overripe bananas to use up, I made a couple of banana cakes, then froze the cake layers until I had a reason to frost and serve them. The top cake is from a recipe in Alisa Huntsman's Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes. Although I ended up hating the slack cream-cheese frosting I used on the cake, I loved the cake itself. It contains a bit of Chinese five-spice powder, certainly not an ingredient I've used in baked goods prior to this cake, and I really liked the way its flavor played off the banana.

The second banana cake, frosting with chocolate icing, is from Nancie McDermott's Southern Cakes. This book and author can do no wrong.

Lemon-Cranberry-Chocolate Cake

2008-05-12T07:51:00.004-05:00

When I flipped through Warren Brown's new book, CakeLove, I was smitten, caught up in his combination of exotic flavors and not-always-traditional techniques. The first cake I made from this book was this lemon-cranberry-chocolate cake. It's a trio of flavors that I wouldn't necessarily have put together, but they work well as a team in this pound cake.

Banana Cupcakes

2008-04-23T17:36:00.004-05:00

I made these banana cupcakes from a recipe posted at a cupcake blog. I had bananas to use up, and was inspired by an idea to make the banana cupcakes with crystallized ginger as a flavoring. The cupcakes were great, but I wasn't quite as fond of the cream-cheese frosting recipe that accompanied them. A combination of cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar, the frosting was a bit bland. It definitely could have used a splash of vanilla to round out the flavors. Otherwise, a nice recipe.

Orange Bread

2008-04-23T17:33:00.002-05:00

I hadn't made any yeasted breads in a while. When I was looking through The Old Farmer's Almanac Best Home Baking Book, this orange-raisin bread caught my eye. It's supposed to have an orange glaze on it, but I passed on that step, figuring that the glaze wouldn't hold up well in the toaster. The preparation of the dough is more akin to a quick bread than a yeasted bread, and the texture isn't quite as developed as a traditional yeasted bread. Nevertheless, the tender texture and sweet orange flavor make for a great loaf of bread--especially when toasted.

Banana Breads

2008-04-23T17:29:00.003-05:00

More stuff from bananas on the dented-and-dinged rack. The top loaf is Banana-Peanut Bread from More From Magnolia. The recipe specifies chopped unsalted peanuts, but I'd made this bread once before with unsalted peanuts and decided that the bread had no peanut flavor. I tried it with salted peanuts and liked it much, much better.

The second loaf is a very rich, dense banana bread from Emily Luchetti's Stars Desserts. The recipe makes two loaves of banana bread, and that is a good thing. This loaf filled with toasted pecans is an excellent version of this standard.

Banana Cake

2008-04-23T17:24:00.003-05:00

After once again being suckered by a bag of dented-and-dinged bananas on the discount rack, I was scrounging up banana recipes. I found this banana-chocolate cake recipe in The Greyston Bakery Cookbook. The cake has a great fudgy, dense texture and is really moist. The chocolate kind of overwhelms the banana, though.