banana cake

From Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible.
I managed to remember both the sour cream and the lemon zest this time.

rosemary lemon shortbread

There are a zillion recipes for this on the web. I would recommend chopping fresh rosemary as small as possible. Also my recipe involved powdered sugar creamed into the butter-- I suspect that I didn't cream the sugar in as much as I should have because there was a little bit of chewiness that I think resulted from high concentrations of the powdered sugar glomming onto itself.

Happy Canada Day!!

In honour of Canada Day, I made butter tarts for the first time. I used the double pie crust recipe out of Bittman's How to Cook Everything, fit rounds into muffin tins, and filled with:
1/2c softened butter
1/2c packed brown sugar
1/2 c light corn syrup
pinch of salt
2 eggs
sploosh of vanilla
400 degrees for 18 min, resulted in a soft center but not too runny. Also, no raisins because I don't believe in raisins. Overfilling the shells results in filling leakage which caramelizes (technically a booboo, but +/- depending on how you feel about the addition of chewy caramel to your tart).

The Canadian expats and the American butter tart virgins at work have expressed approval. Hug your local Canadians today.

In other news, I am getting a new stove! My old one won't hold temperature so hopefully a new one will be installed by tomorrow. Hurrahs.

biscotti, or, I don't even drink coffee unless I have class

No seriously, caffeine keeps me up at night and I don't want to get addicted like you.
Biscotti are pretty easy to make-- you can scale this recipe to half etc. Jana and Margaret's idea + execution.
Anise Almond Biscotti from Bon Appetit 1999

banana cake

Cordon Rose Banana Cake from Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Cake Bible. In the iterations that I've done, I have occasionally left out the sour cream and the lemon zest if I didn't happen to have it around. Also if you don't need the cake to be flat for layering or frosting, I wouldn't bother with the cake strip to keep it flat because I think the texture is better when it's a little domy.

chocolate cake w/ whipped cream ganache

Cake recipe = master chocolate cake from the four in Cook's Illustrated's Best Recipe. Ganache from the same book. I think I have to stop with the ganaches bc they get a little too pasty to really frost with plus I am killing my coworkers slowly w/ the cholesterol content.

lemon cherry scones

Everyone was hoping the cherries were chocolate.

buttermilk gingerbread w/ chocolate chips

technically, Molasses-and-buttermilk Gingerbread Squares from Epicurious from Bon Appetit November 2000. I used a cake strip around the outside of the cake pan and it came out nice and flat--- but it isn't really necessary for this kind of cake.

Happy Groundhog's Day

It is Groundhog's Day in North America, a day of weather prognostication and cranky sleepy rodents.

Apparently everyone saw their shadow.

It is also the day of the anniversary of the birth of my brother, 4 of my other friends (seriously), and my über boss.

So I made some celebratory cupcakes. (Cupcakes = 1 batch of Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe chocolate cake (first version in the book), 1 batch of Smitten Kitchen's Double Chocolate Layer Cake adapted from Gourmet March 1999 frosted w/ chocolate ganache.)