It’s been decades since I made this pie. And it’s SO easy to prepare (well, IF you have frozen pie crusts standing by). You can buy Bosc pears year ‘round now, so anytime could be pear pie season.

A few weeks ago I made an astounding pear cobbler I wrote up about just a few days ago. I don’t exactly post my recipes in order as I make them, but that pear cobbler made me think about a recipe I hadn’t made for decades, my Mom’s pear pie. I had to go hunting for the recipe – it was in my little orange binder that I used when I first began to have enough recipes to save. Some of the recipes in there are in my mother’s handwriting, though this one was not – my mom must have kind of dictated it to me. It’s hardly a recipe, so I had to write it a bit better for posting here.

The pear cobbler is long gone – I served it to a group and it all disappeared except for one serving that’s in my freezer. But it certainly did resonate in my palate, telling me to eat more pears. Then, in the interim I either read or heard from somewhere that when you’re baking pears, the best ones to use are Bosc. Well, it was too late; I’d already bought 4 Bartlett pears with the thought that I’d make this pear pie. I also bought a package of 2 Marie Callender’s pie crust shells (frozen). I know they’re good; good enough for this pie, for sure. I don’t bake pies very often – always because making the crust is just such a nuisance. That will forever be changed now that Marie’s pie shells are available. Whoopee! I have a number of pies I’d like to make, some that date back to the 60s that I’ve never bothered to include here on my blog. I’d also like to update two pies that are old favorites.

So, this pie. I don’t know the history of it, other than I know it was my mother’s mother’s recipe. My grandmother’s name was Isis, and she was a very good baker. She and my grandfather lived all their lives on a farm in the central valley here in California – in Stanislaus (pronounced STAN-is-law) County, near Modesto. My grandmother cooked 3 meals a day for the entirety of their marriage, I imagine. There were years when there was almost no money (my mother went to junior college, then worked and HAD to send money home to her parents because they might have lost the farm altogether). She had 2 older brothers and 2 sisters, and I expect they may have sent money home too if they had extra during those skim depression years. I have a number of recipes from my grandmother Isis. I recently bought some apricots, thinking I’d make an old time recipe for an apricot cobbler. That recipe might have belonged to my great aunt. Not sure.

Anyway, this pear pie is just so easy to make. I had 4 Bartlett pears (use Bosc if you have them) and after peeling them I just sliced them directly into the frozen pie crust. See photo above. They were quite juicy – maybe too juicy. Then I mixed up the “filling,” which was merely sugar, a little bit of flour, an egg and a jot of vanilla. That was stirred up and drizzled all over the top of the pears. See photo at right. I used a spatula to kind of help the topping/filling to cover most of the pears. Then I dotted the top with butter and into a hot oven it went for about 10 minutes. Then the temp was turned down to 325° and baked for another 35-45 minutes, until the filling was golden brown and set.

Letting it cool was essential, and it held onto the heat for quite a while. My mother almost always served this with whipped cream, but you could also use vanilla ice cream. I intended to sprinkle the top of the pears with cardamom, but forgot in my rush to get the topping on the pears. I did use almond flavoring rather than vanilla, however.

Photo here shows the pie with butter dotting the top, ready to go into the oven. I thought this might have been a Betty Crocker recipe, but no. I just searched for it and this is nothing like any of Betty’s pear pies. I’d guess it’s a depression-era recipe because it calls for no other ingredients like sour cream or even any spices. The sugar mixes with the egg and the presumption is that any of the juices from the pears will firm up with the flour added into the filling/topping. The eggy mixture does slip down between the layers of pears and surrounds the pears.

I enjoyed 2 slices, then gave the rest of it to my neighbors, who have 2 little girls with hungry appetites. Both girls do swimming and water polo – the mom is a full time “bus” driver for the girls.

What’s GOOD: if you’re looking for straight-forward pear taste, this is it. Nothing else, really, to distract your taste buds – pears, sugar, a little flour, an egg, flavoring and butter dotting the top. That’s all there is to it. It’s very juicy – if you use Bosc they may not be quite so much so. I actually liked it plain with no topping at all.

What’s NOT: really nothing – it’s easy to make if you have already made pie  shells, or will buy frozen ones. It took about 10-15 minutes to put it all together and stick it in the oven.

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Cobblers don’t always look sensational, but don’t let the appearance fool you. This is one fabulous, must-make-this kind of homey, comforting dessert. Get ye to the store for some pears and do it!

So, even though I promised myself I wouldn’t buy any more cookbooks, last year I succumbed to a fruit dessert one called Rustic Fruit Desserts: Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies, and More by Cory Schreiber. I think cobblers are just about my favorite dessert, so to have a cookbook that’s all about such desserts, well, I just couldn’t NOT buy it. I’ve posted two other recipes from this book already, a Peach, Blackberry & Almond Crisp, and a Stone Fruit Tea Cake made with peaches. The crisp was my favorite of the two, but now with this one, I’m not so sure.

My mother used to make a pear pie, a creamy filling (sour cream, I think) with fresh pears. I loved that pie. I should make it – I just don’t make many pies. Any day I’d prefer a cobbler or a crisp. I’m a sucker for ordering one at restaurants if they have it on a menu. But to tell you the truth, I think I’ve been disappointed with every one I’ve ever ordered out. They never use enough fruit. And, without fail, they make them too sweet for me. Anybody else noticed that? Some had good-enough toppings, but restaurants are in the business of making money, so they may cut corners (using a pre-made streusel, for instance, or just plopping a piece of flaky dough on top). But when you make it yourself, you know what goes into it and it’s made with love! Of course.

I’d purchased a bag of 12 pears at Costco. What was I thinking? Oh my goodness. And yet, I needed to make a dessert for a gathering at my house, and it called for 10 large pears. Bingo! They’d ripened on my kitchen counter for a few days (and I lost one that had gotten bruised, I think). The day I needed this dessert the pears were to perfect ripeness. Yippee. That’s one of the problems with cooking/baking with pears – you can’t predict when they’ll be at their peak, because they’re almost never ripe in the bins at the grocery store. I used 11 pears – but I don’t think you’d want to use any less than 10 – pears wilt/sink/flatten when baked since they’re filled with some water/juice.

So, first you cut up the pears and combine them quickly in a bowl with brown sugar, cornstarch and spices. Don’t go off to talk on the phone – you don’t want the pears to turn brown . . . then they were turned into a large greased baking dish (9×13). Do use ceramic or glass, not metal. Then you mix up the biscuits.

What can I tell you – oh gosh, these biscuits are divine. First you whiz up some toasted and skinned hazelnuts (along with sugar, flour, baking powder and salt) in the food processor until it’s a fairly fine meal. I used the processor to add the butter (the recipe says to use your fingertips or a pastry blender) but I took the lazy way out. Just don’t over-process it once you add the butter. The dough was crumbly and even though the recipe indicates such, I added another tablespoon of cream so it would barely come together. It’s really a very dry looking biscuit. Then you roll it out to a rectangle, cut it into 10 square shapes. Those are slightly overlapped (that’s what the “shingled” means in the recipe title) in the baking dish. The biscuits do completely fill the baking dish with only a tiny bit of fruit peeking out around the edges. See photo.

So there, at left is the photo of the cobbler before it was baked. The biscuits are brushed on the tops with a tablespoon of heavy cream. You could add a sprinkling of crystallized sugar on top if you’d like that look. It’s baked (partly with foil on top) and is done in about 55 minutes at which time the biscuits are gloriously golden brown and the filling is bubbling around all the edges. You remove the baking dish to cool, but serving this warm is just about heaven-sent.

The book’s author says this is best eaten the day it’s made – but if you absolutely must have some left overs, have it for breakfast, she says. Okay, I did that. It’s not overly sweet, so with a bit of half and half poured over it, oh gosh, it was delicious for my breakfast. If you do have any of it left over, leave it out at room temp (in other words, do NOT refrigerate it) and just cover it with a tea towel. You can also bake this some hours ahead, reheat it in a 300°F oven for about 15-20 minutes. There at right is a photo of the baked cobbler, all golden brown. My mouth is watering since I made this a couple of weeks ago and it was completely gone the next day – I gave some to friends and kept ONE serving which is now in my freezer. Although you have biscuits for 10, when I put it out for people to serve themselves, nobody took a whole biscuit – so you could make the biscuits smaller, or just know that it will likely serve more than 10 people.

What’s GOOD: everything about this cobbler is good. Absolutely everything – the pears, the bubbling sauce, the hazelnuts in the biscuits, the texture of the biscuits. Oh my. It’s a keeper. Do save this recipe, my friends, and make it soon. If you use Bartlett pears, you don’t have to peel them, by the way.

What’s NOT: only that she says it’s not good to keep it past the day it’s made. I thought it was pretty darned good the next day, but that’s what’s in the recipe. Just so you know. Make a half a recipe in an 8×8 pan if you don’t want enough to serve 10-12.

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Oh goodness, this is so good. So comfort food, and really quite easy.

My last post I shared with you a delicious Salade Nicoise my friend Joanne had made for me when I was invited to her house a few weeks ago. This post is about the dessert – this lusciously moist apple cake. The recipe comes from Dorie Greenspan, from her cookbook Around My French Table: More than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours. Marie-Helene is a good Parisian friend of Dorie’s, and she’s an editor of a French guide book (and restaurant critic too). But Dorie explains in the copious head notes to this recipe, her friend doesn’t cook from a recipe – everything is in her head and she makes lots of adjustments, so Dorie found it impossible to write down an actual recipe. So, she went home to her own Paris kitchen and tried. And tried. And finally succeeded in making a cake that is as nearly identical to her friend Marie-Helene’s as she could devise. And what a great recipe it is.

One of the lovely things about this cake is that it will keep, out on your kitchen counter, for a few days. Dorie’s husband claims that the cake is even better on day two or three. I can’t imagine it lasting that long. The cake is not overly sweet, and one of the imperatives Dorie explains is that you must use different kinds of apples, so you’ll have some pieces of fruit that are sweet and tart, firm and soft, all mixed up together.

Joanne’s husband Larry served up the dessert for us so I snapped a photo.

The cake can be served plain, adorned only with some powdered sugar. Or with a little bit of heavy cream to pour on it. Or, a tiny scoop of ice cream, or crème fraiche. Dorie explained that her friend Marie-Helene serves it with cinnamon ice cream, which she thinks is a magical combination. I might have to try it that way. If you don’t want to make cinnamon ice cream, use vanilla, allow it to soften just a bit and mix in a bit of cinnamon. Mix thoroughly then refreeze it to allow the flavors to meld a little bit. Ideally, making it from scratch, I would think you would infuse the cream and milk with the cinnamon so it would permeate everything. Optionally, sprinkle the top of the cake with cinnamon. That might work too.

In any case, this recipe is a keeper. Thanks, Joanne!

What’s GOOD: the chunks of apple shine through, which is exactly what you want in this cake. Joanne used Fuji apples, I think she said, and they hold their shape well as you can see the chunks peeking through the top of the cake. There are lots of apples in it and just enough cake to hold it all together. A divine combination. If possible, try it with the a diverse mix of apples. The cake keeps for several days with no adverse effect – just press some plastic wrap against the cut cake sides. A keeper.

What’s NOT: nary a single thing. It’s a great recipe.

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If you’re a chocoholic, well, this cake is right up your alley. Light sponge cake with only 2 T. of flour in the whole thing. A little bit of pecans ground up to give it some substance (but not much – the cake is as light as a feather), folded with whipped egg whites and loaded with good chocolate and dried cranberries soaked in bourbon.

When I write up these posts, usually I have some reason I’m baking a dessert. Someone’s coming to dinner; or I’m making something to take to a friend; or most often, I’m serving dessert to my bible study group. This time, there was no reason whatsoever. Do I need a chocolate cake to serve 10? Absolutely not! Did I need chocolate cake at all? Nope. But for whatever reason, my head said I should bake something. My bible study group is coming here in a few days, so maybe tomorrow I’ll freeze it and defrost it then. There’s plenty!

The recipe came from Tarla Fallgatter, a caterer and cooking instructor here in the county where I live in California. My friend Cherrie and I have taken innumerable classes from her, but she’s only teaching private group classes these days. Maybe we’ll wangle an invitation to one of them. Occasionally, Tarla posts a recipe on her website and that’s where I got this one.

The cake was really easy to make, although you do have to grease and parchment-line a 10-inch springform pan (or a fluted tart pan with a removable bottom). Eggs must be separated and yolks added to brown sugar. Chocolate and butter must be melted and cooled slightly, then mixed in with the eggs. The whites are beaten to firm, with sugar, and gently folded into the chocolate batter, along with the flour/ground pecan mixture. And the dried cranberries. It bakes for 25 minutes, rests briefly, then is removed from the pan and cooled a bit more on a serving platter. I ate a slice warm with sweetened whipped cream on top (see photo). Oh gosh – did it ever satisfy my chocolate cravings. I will tell you, however, it dirties up a whole lot of bowls, pans, measuring cups and spoons. I’ve set them to soak in my sink and will wash them tomorrow . . .

What’s GOOD: the ultimate in chocolate (use good chocolate) and the sponge-factor. I prefer light, spongy cakes anyway (lighter) so this certainly satisfied my cravings. And I almost never turn down chocolate. If you’re going to serve 10, you’ll be serving fairly small servings – just so you know. Loved the texture and the flavor. Altogether delicious. It is a fairly thin cake – just enough, really, as you can see from the photo.

What’s NOT: the only thing I can say is that it uses a lot of dishes, bowls and pans. Maybe I’ll pile them into the dishwasher and be done with it! But, there’s nothing to dislike about the taste of this cake. A keeper.

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Lovely little cups of pudding made with ricotta cheese, eggs, sugar and cream. Then garnished with a strawberry sauce (fresh strawberries, please) that has some strained sauce and some strawberry pieces.

A dear friend is just recovering from dreadful surgery, chemo and radiation of a tumor on his tongue, but deep down in the throat. He’s only just begun to be able to swallow again. For weeks he couldn’t even do normal swallowing at all, and when I made this a couple of weeks ago he was just beginning to be able to eat puddings and soft, loose things like oatmeal and smooth soup. So I promised him, and his wife, that I’d bring them a pudding of some sort. I kept out two little cups (the above photo) so I could taste it myself. Since he’s lost a lot of weight through this, I thought it would be good to give some kind of protein substance to the pudding I’d make, so I found this old recipe for a ricotta pudding, but lightened up with a soufflé-like preparation.

This definitely is not a custard – you know what I mean – the kind that is almost silky in the mouth – this pudding has much more mouth-feel than that, but it’s not chewy. It’s light (because of the egg whites mixed to a peak, then folded into the pudding) yet the pudding does have substance to it. Hard to explain.

The strawberry part can be made really easily if you bought frozen berries, defrosted them, then just pushed them through a sieve (or whizzed them up in the blender, then drained them through a sieve). My friend has difficulty with acidic things (they still sting his healing, but tender throat tissues) so I made the sauce two ways – part of it whizzed up completely with pulp and all (the liquid part you see in the photos) and then some added small pieces of berries added in. I cautioned them to add some more sugar to the sauce as I thought it was way too tart – and especially for him with his tender throat. I suppose the sauce depends on how sweet the berries are. We should be mid-season with strawberries now, but in this case, the ones I had, although sweet enough for me, didn’t taste so sweet in the sauce. So you can use your own judgment with the addition of more sugar.

The pudding itself was simple enough to make – I used full-fat ricotta which has quite a bit more flavor. As an aside here, I just watched a program on TV today, as I’m writing this, about diets and “low fat” or “lower fat” and the nutritionist on the program said don’t bother buying low fat milk, or low fat ice cream, or low fat cottage cheese, because the amount removed is so minor and it drastically changes (lowers) the flavor. I’ve been buying full fat for quite awhile because I’d read this a year or so ago. Anyway, so you mix up egg yolks, ricotta, sugar (only 1/4 cup for the entire batch), heavy cream, salt and vanilla. How easy is that? Then you fold in beaten egg whites and pour the mixture into ramekins or a baking dish and bake for about 45 minutes in a water bath. Do fill up the dish or ramekins all the way to the top – it doesn’t expand; in fact, once removed from the oven, the pudding deflates a bit – it was quite noticeable in the ramekins – so much so that I only had one worthy of photographing. You can see the 2 ramekins in my photo – and one of those deflated so much it only had about 2 bites of pudding in it. Perhaps it was mostly egg white.

The sauce is comprised of fresh strawberries, sugar and lemon juice. Be cautious about using too much lemon juice – that will also make the berries too tart. That may have been my problem too, since I didn’t measure – I just guessed as I squeezed. If your eggs are large – like really large – the resulting pudding could be pretty sturdy – in which case you might want to have a little pitcher of pouring cream (half and half) at the table.

What’s GOOD: this is a bit of a different pudding – it has a different texture for sure with the ricotta cheese in it – and it’s very mild in flavor. Makes a pretty presentation. It’s comfort food, for sure, and the nicer the strawberries, the better the overall pudding will taste.

What’s NOT: nothing really – it’s pretty easy to make and tastes quite nice. No negatives.

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This kind of baked dessert isn’t new to me, and hopefully not to you, either. A batter is poured into ramekins, it’s baked in a water bath and when you dip your spoon into it there’s a nice pudding layer on the bottom and a sponge cake layer on the top.

Sometimes the chemistry of baking baffles me – I should go into my food chemistry books to read exactly how or why a pudding cake actually does the separation during baking. Because when you pour it in, it’s all one batter. I’m just thankful that it DOES work. I served this a few weeks ago, on Easter Sunday and I sent my family home with the leftovers. I’d watched a recent episode of America’s Test Kitchen, and they’d made this recipe. What’s different about their preparation is the effort to bring out, bring in more lemon flavor. How that’s done is by warming the milk and cream with lemon zest, allowing it to steep a little bit, then the zest is strained out. Otherwise, the recipe is nearly identical to any other pudding cakes I’ve ever made. I usually make it in a baking dish (and this one can also) but I decided to do the ramekins this time.

The baking process is also slightly different here – usually when using a water bath, you pour hot-hot water into the pan. With this, you pour COLD water into the pan around the ramekins. I think they said it provided a more gentle baking process.

With plenty of lemons in my yard, I’m always looking for new ways to use lemons. Do use an instant read thermometer when you make this, as you don’t want to over bake it – then it gets dry and too brown on top (mine was slightly over done). The recipe said to not let it bake higher than 172-175°F.  I “fixed” that by serving it with a sauce of melted vanilla ice cream. If you’ve never done that before, gosh, it’s SO easy – just scoop out some into a bowl and allow it to melt and pour it into a nice pitcher. No one will be the wiser and they’ll think you slaved over making a vanilla sauce. It’s a lovely, thick creamy vanilla sauce. Very pourable and was a perfect accompaniment to the pudding cakes.

What’s DIFFERENT: soaking the lemon zest in warm milk, and then using cold water in the water bath.

What’s GOOD: the lovely lemony flavor. I’m a sucker for lemon anything, so I loved it. Was it better than any I’ve ever made before? Not really sure – I guess I’d have to taste them side by side. I have another lemon pudding cake (lemon sponge pudding) here on my blog and my recollection is that it was marvelous. It’s very similar, but also contains butter, which gives that one a bit more richness and it’s got plenty of pucker power. But this one was really good too. Try them both and see what you think?

What’s NOT: really nothing other than the more elaborate preparation with whipping up the egg whites. Not a difficult dessert at all, though.

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Guinness – a beer from Ireland –  is a stout with a wheaty kind of flavor and is notorious for providing a big head of foam. Hence the frosting is supposed to look like the foamy head. I don’t drink beer – I don’t like beer, though I’ve tasted it numerous times over the years . Maybe not to my taste for drinking, but it makes a mean addition to a cake.

One of the perks of having a bible study group that meets at my house with some regularity, is that I have the opportunity, and a reason – to bake something. I do love to bake, though cookies and cakes are probably my favorites. This time I was baking for a potluck luncheon and I chose dessert since nearly everything else was taken by the time the list got to me. I needed about 12 servings of something, so it meant choosing something that made a pretty big cake. The funny thing is – I had purchased the can of Guinness just a few days before my DH had his stroke in 2014, as I was going to make it that week. The can has been sitting on my pantry shelf ever since, and I wasn’t even sure it would still be any good. When I opened the can, it spouted some foam and plenty of whiiisssh, so I knew it was okay. Good enough for baking a cake, anyway.

The recipe has been languishing in my to-try file for a long time – it’s a Nigella Lawson recipe, and if you google the title, you’ll find ample other bloggers who have shared this or a variation of it. Nigella’s original recipe was made, as I did it, in a 9-inch springform pan, but many others have prepared it as a double layer cake, or maybe a triple layer cake. One commenter on Nigella’s website said she’d made it for her wedding cake and was astounded there wasn’t a single crumb left. She made it multi-stories high, apparently.

The only unusual thing about making this is you melt the butter, Guinness and unsweetened chocolate together, and it’s then added to the other wet mixture of sour cream and eggs, then you add dry ingredients. All done by hand – no mixer required. It was simple enough to mix up and into a buttered springform pan it went and baked for about 45 minutes, until it reached 200°F in the center. It cooled awhile, then I took it off the springform base and it went onto a pedestal cake stand.

One of the blogs I read about this cake mentioned that the cake sinks a bit in the middle, and she recommended taking a slice off the top. And yes, I was at first dismayed when I saw this happen as the cake cooled. But once you slice off the top, it was fine. The cake is firm enough for you to do that. I nibbled on the lopped-off top and gave the rest of it to a friend whose daughter loves any of my left over baking stuff.

I recommend that you not frost the cake until you’re within an hour or so of serving it – keep it covered in plastic wrap until then. You generally don’t refrigerate cakes (they stale very rapidly when refrigerated), but with dairy in the frosting (cream cheese and heavy cream) you can’t leave it out at room temp indefinitely, either. So, just plan ahead, that’s all.

The cake was a big hit. It served many more than 12, since I cut quite small slices – it’s rich, especially with the cream cheese frosting – and I still have some left over – unfortunately I had to keep it in the refrigerator, though. If you end up having to refrigerate yours, just bring it out for an hour before serving the leftovers, so the cake is more to room temp.

What’s GOOD: wonderful chocolaty flavor. I used Trader Joe’s (new) box of unsweetened chocolate and it’s very dark-chocolaty, for sure. You know there is something different in this cake (the Guinness) but you won’t know what it is. It’s a somewhat dense cake, but yet it has a light texture too. A contradiction, I know, but it’s true. The frosting is perfect on this cake – it definitely needs something, and the thick frosting does give the appearance of the foamy head from the Guinness. Would be wonderful for St. Patrick’s Day – alas, I didn’t make this until about then – should have written it up and posted it immediately! Sorry.

What’s NOT: just make sure you buy the Guinness – that’s not on anyone’s every day shopping list unless you regularly drink the stuff. Everything else was very straightforward. Not hard to make. Nothing at all bad about it! As I said, it was a big hit at the luncheon, and several asked me for the recipe.

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A winner of a recipe. Should be, since it’s the culmination of kitchen magic by the chefs at America’s Test Kitchen. I’ve made almond cake before (there are two on my blog archives already) but no almond cake I’ve ever tasted has been so tender, and so full of almond flavor as this one. Does that get you interested?

Saying I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen is certainly a true statement. I don’t think there has ever been a recipe I’ve tried from their books or the TV show that hasn’t been wonderful.  It had been a week before that I watched the program for this cake and knew I’d be making it. I needed a dessert to serve to one of my bible study groups that was meeting here at my house. We happen to be studying Romans, Paul’s letter to the people of Rome, cautioning them about their behavior. Maybe if they’d had some of this cake, they might have listened better!

This cake was really very easy to make, although there are a few steps to it – it’s not a slap-dash kind of cake. You do have to toast the almonds and you make a couple of different bowls of things before it all comes together – but it all gets mixed in the food processor at the end, it’s poured into a greased (and parchment lined) round cake pan and it bakes. The topping (almonds, sugar and lemon zest) are added after pouring the batter into the pan and there’s nothing else to it. The cake has nearly 2 cups of almonds in it, so it’s not the cheapest cake to make these days, what with the cost of almonds rising by the day. The eggs (4 of them) certainly must help with the light texture – and you do whiz them up until they’re light before mixing up the rest of it.

Getting the cake out of the pan was a bit of a challenge – I had buttered the pan (which was nonstick, by the way) AND used parchment, but it took a bit of doing to kind of un-stick the bottom corners from the pan – where the parchment met the sides – but it all came out beautifully once I gently pried all around the interior edges with my plastic spreader. It stayed together as I up-ended it onto my outstretched palm and arm and onto the cake plate it went (this, all when it was cooled).

They didn’t suggest serving it with anything, but I thought a bit of whipped cream with some almond extract in it was appropriate, and it certainly added to the intense almond flavor, but the cake, all by itself, is intensely almond-y already.

What’s GOOD: this will be the last almond cake recipe I’ll ever need to try. It’s THAT good. I loved the tender cake (texture) since many almond cakes are a bit on the firm side. Not this one – truly tender. And since I’m a big almond lover anyway, the amount of almond flavor (from the almonds themselves and from a little bit of almond extract added) it was just perfect. I highly recommend it. I also loved the addition of the whipped cream flavored with almond extract. Yummy.

What’s NOT: nothing other than the cost of almonds these days. This recipe is a keeper.

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Every so often I tell you – MAKE THIS. Here’s one of those occasions. It may not look all that special, but if you’ve read my blog long enough to trust my advice, then this is a dessert you need to make.

A few weeks ago I had a luncheon at my house. It was a fund-raising event for my P.E.O. chapter. I do some kind of an event every year and ladies in my P.E.O. sisterhood sign up and pay money to come to my house for whatever it is I’ve organized. The money is donated to the chapter (and money sent to Cottey College, in Iowa, to help support that small, but growing women’s college). Another sister had suggested that I borrow a DVD from her from her collection of The Great Courses. Renowned lecturers and professors present 45+ minute videos about a variety of things, from history, to science, to literature. Alice had recommended I look at the history segments and choose one that the group (10 of us) would watch.

So, I planned the lunch. I chose a video about the far-reaching effects of the Opium Wars of the 1600s (which affected world trade and still does today). I’d intended to choose something about American history, but found the Opium War one a bit more interesting. Nevertheless, I planned a menu revolving around old-American recipes. Months before my co-hostess and I divided up the food to prepare and invitations sent out, etc. Then, bless her heart, Linda, got sick and ended up in the hospital, so I hosted the event alone and doing all the food. I was a bit pooped-out by the end of the day, I’ll tell you! My friend is doing okay, is home and now taking new heart medication.

After watching the video, I did a sherry tasting. Staying true to the old-America theme, I knew that gentile women, back in the 1800s would only have partaken of sherry in the “drawing room” or the “parlour.” So I dug out some small liqueur glasses (at one time, years ago, I had some sherry glasses, but I don’t know what happened to them). I bought a bottle of sherry for this, but then thought – oh, I should look in my liquor closet and see what I have. Hmmm. Nothing less than 7 bottles of varying types of sherry. Two duplicates too! I do use sherry in cooking, and sometimes the recipe will call for very dry, or medium, or amontillado, or fino, etc. One of my PEO sisters helped me with the pouring while I worked a bit in the kitchen. Anyway, we progressed from very dry, to Bristol Cream and everything in between. Most of them had never tasted the different types, so they learned something. And definitely it needed to be Spanish sherry. During early America days, sherry was brought across the sea in huge casks on ships.

We sat down for the lunch, and I explained to everyone about the history of Country Captain, the main dish I had decided to make and one I posted about in 2010. It’s a chicken stew, of sorts, that originated in India, but came to the Americas via Savannah. It’s a mild curry dish loaded with bell peppers and onions, then topped with condiments (this time I used toasted coconut, toasted almonds and fresh bananas). It’s served over white rice.

Then I served this dessert. It originally appeared in a cookbook called Miss Leslie’s Complete Cookery (published in 1837) and Tori Avey, a food blogger, mostly of old time American recipe, knows from her copious research, that Mary Todd Lincoln bought the cookbook (some archive actually has the receipt of the purchase), and since it may have been her only cookbook (such books were few and far between back then) it’s assumed that either she (or the family cook) would have prepared this apple dish for the President for sure. I read Tori’s blog post to my group.

And everyone raved about it. Did I say several people asked if they could lick the plate? They did ask, but of course, no one did. I wanted to also. I’m so happy I still have a serving left which I’ll enjoy today sometime. WITH the little bit of nutmeg-almond-cream poured over it.

What’s GOOD: this dessert is just unctuous. I don’t use that word much, so you can take that to mean it’s something very special. It’s soft and warm and comforting and ever-so American like apple pie, but without all the fat from a pie crust. Do serve it with the nutmeg enhanced cream. It almost “made” the dish IMHO.

What’s NOT: it takes a bit of time to peel and slice 11 apples, but it’s SO worth the time in doing so. A real keeper of a recipe.

printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook 14/15 file (click on link to open recipe)

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Oh, what a lovely slice of deliciousness. Coconut flavor in the bread and on the top, and lemon caramel drizzled over the top. This one’s really, really good!

One of my book clubs came to my house awhile back, and not only did I review a book (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel by Rachel Joyce), but I also needed to prepare some mid-morning food for everyone who came. We had a really interesting discussion about this book. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last couple of years and I think this book “experience” was enhanced by a group discussion.

I made coffee, had fresh fruit, some Biscoff cookies, this bread, and also some chocolate/banana small cake bites too. I’ll write up the cake recipe too – soon. When everyone left, I packaged up everything and put it in a big ziploc bag in the freezer for my Scrabble group that came to my house a couple of weeks later. But I’ll tell you – I had a hard time staying out of that bag during the ensuing weeks because I wanted some of this bread.

The recipe – I read about it on Orangette, but it comes from a book titled Lemons by Alison Roman (not available at amazon). I’ll need to frequent some used book stores to see if I can find it. You can buy it from the publisher for $14, (which seems pricey for a 48 page cookbook), so I’d like to find a used copy if I can do so. I have a couple of lemon cookbooks, but if this recipe is any representation of what’s contained in that cookbook, then I need to own it!

The recipe is just slightly different than most tea bread recipes, in that it uses coconut oil (melted). And it does have a coconut topping that’s baked along with the bread. Then you make a lemon juice mixture to go on top. Here’s where my cooking went off the track (in a good way). I set the lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan on the stove, then walked 10 feet away and began working on something here at my computer. I lost track of time, and the aroma of lemon juice/sugar didn’t seem to alert me that I needed to get back to it. When I finally smelled it, I dashed over to the stove and discovered that the mixture had turned to a light brown caramel. I didn’t want to make another batch, so I just used it anyway – I used a spoon to drizzle the lemon-caramel over the top of the finished bread. It was a delightful change/mistake that I’ll probably do the next time I make it, so I’ve included it in my recipe below. It gave it a lovely crunch, in addition to the unsweetened coconut flakes that were also slightly crunchy.

What’s GOOD: the coconut and lemon flavors are prominent (which I liked). There isn’t much of anything made with lemon that I don’t like, but this tea cake is particularly good, and I want to bake it again, because I didn’t have enough of it the first time around.

What’s NOT: not a single thing. Worth making for sure.

printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook 14/15 file (click on link to open recipe)

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