My friend Dianne made this scrumptious pie – so good while strawberries are at the top of their form! And this one is super-easy.

A post from Carolyn. Think refreshing. Think summer. And strawberries. Last summer I remember thinking the strawberries I’d purchased were just the best I’d ever had. And this year isn’t much different. Just such good strawberries on the market. My friend Dianne made this the night she had my granddaughter Taylor and me to dinner. Taylor has just fallen in love with my friends. How life-affirming is that when your young millennial grandchild thinks your friends – who are nearly all about my age – are the bee’s knees? She even ASKS me when she’s going to get to see so-and-so. Love having this grandchild of mine living with me, but it won’t be long now and she graduates from nursing school and will be moving back home to Northern California to begin the next chapter of her life – hopefully as a labor & delivery nurse. She’ll have to take the nursing exam, then she can begin applying to hospitals in the east Sacramento area where she hopes to find a job. She’ll live at home with her mom (my daughter) until she’s saved up enough money to buy a house, she hopes. Her plan is that’ll happen within a year. And maybe so as nurses are so very well paid these days.

Back to this pie – – it requires a graham cracker crust, then you chop up the strawberries, make the cream mixture (sweetened condensed milk and whipped cream, sugar, a little bit of lemon juice and vanilla), add the berries and pour it into the shell. Freeze for 6 hours or so and it’s done. Save a few berries for the garnish. And let the pie sit out at room temp for 5-10 minutes before trying to slice it. Make this before all the strawberries are gone. The recipe came from Joanna Gaines/Magnolia Network.

What’s GOOD: how good strawberries are this year – and making them into this pie is super easy.

What’s NOT: only if you can’t get good strawberries – save the recipe for another day if the strawberries are not at their peak.

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If you were to be able to leap into that photo and grab just a bite of this cake you’d have something ethereal. So very tender. So very lemony, and almond-y at the same time. Almost melts in your mouth.

At post from Carolyn. I needed something for two group things I was attending. Needed a dessert to take to one of my book groups, then needed another one for a morning book group too that met at my home at 9:30 am the following day. Totally different people, so it was okay that I served this cake both times. So I doubled the recipe and made this. The recipe comes from Flo Braker. I don’t own her cookbook, but must have found this one online somewhere. I stuck to the recipe except for one tiny thing – I used almond extract instead of vanilla; otherwise, this is Flo’s recipe.

When you make this, just know from the get-go that you won’t have a cake in hand (so to speak) for several hours, as it needs cooling time and resting or firming-up time. It’s an extremely tender cake. So tender that it’s quite a feat to get it off of the cooling racks (use double spatulas). But it’s so very worth it. You can make this a day or two ahead, even. I’m going to add that note in my recipe below – it keeps beautifully.

The making of this batter is DIFFERENT. Once you read the instructions, you’ll understand why. First, and foremost, you need a tube of almond paste. I don’t know about you, but I’ve purchased it on occasion, and then forgot about it on my pantry shelf, and it turned hard as a rock. It’s unusable in that condition. So make sure you have fresh almond paste, that’s still soft to the touch.

The first instructions that are different is how you manipulate the almond paste. My experience didn’t quite match Flo’s instructions, but it all worked out eventually. You mix the almond paste (I broke it up into pieces and added it to the bowl of my stand mixer), and you’re supposed to mix it until it’s turned into little pea-sizes. Well, no, mine didn’t do that, it congealed into one big piece and climbed it’s way up the blade of the mixer. Twice I tried to make it malleable – it was soft, but it would not break up no matter what I did. So finally I added in a little bit of sugar. That seemed to get it more on the right track. So gradually I added the sugar until it did break up well enough. It’s important you do this right as once you begin adding other ingredients you do not want any little globs (tiny as they might be) of almond paste. So take your time in that portion of making this.

Next you add in butter (very softened). As you watch it, it incorporates the butter – you add it one tablespoon at a time, and it’s important you do that so it aerates. That part should take 3-4 minutes. I guess the batter could “break” if you don’t do it right. Toward the end I was concerned, but it held. Next were eggs, and those were to be added a tablespoon at a time too. Very time consuming, but you don’t want to make a mistake this far into the process. The last part was adding in the dry ingredients (a very little amount of cake flour, baking powder and salt). I did that by hand. In the photo you can see the batter – I tasted it (yes, I know, raw eggs and all) because I wanted to make sure there weren’t any little bits of almond paste (there weren’t).

Into a bread pan it goes, using an offset spatula to level the batter. Bakes for about 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove, cool completely and serve. Now my loaf (two, I made, remember) had a little sink in the middle. I’m not sure why that happened, but it made no difference in the long run as you turn the loaf over (upside down). On the pieces in the center of the cake, I cut those in half so it wasn’t at all noticeable.

What’s GOOD: the very soft, tender crumb and the over-the-top lemon and almond flavor. A keeper.

What’s NOT: only that you need almond paste on hand (or make your own).

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So easy to make with puff pastry dough, fresh fruit and some frangipane.

A post from Carolyn. I’ve been on a tear lately with frangipane. I made some recently for a rhubarb galette (don’t think I’ve posted that recipe yet), then decided to make it again using a different recipe for my book review group meeting at my home. I was expecting about 12-13 people, but at the last minute only 6 of us showed up (not sure if was the book, or just other circumstances). I sent everyone home with one of these plus some of the lemon almond tea cake (haven’t posted that one yet, either).

It was years ago when I was attending a cooking class near me and the hostesses served something similar to these as we all arrived for the class. They were quite easy to make, so I input the recipe in my files, but never had gotten around to making them. With fresh summer fruit in season, I decided to try these. But I decided to use some apricot halves (canned) and some fresh blackberries instead. And in lieu of the cream cheese filling (from the original recipe) that was going to be underneath the fruit, I made the frangipane.

If you’re not familiar with frangipane, it’s pronounced fran-jeh-payn.  Wikipedia says frangipane:

. . .is a sweet almond-flavored custard used in a variety of ways including cakes and such pastries as the Bakewell tart, conversation tart, Jésuite and pithivier. A French spelling from a 1674 cookbook is franchipane with the earliest modern spelling coming from a 1732 confectioners’ dictionary. Originally designated as a custard tart flavored by almonds or pistachios it came later to designate a filling that could be used in a variety of confections and baked goods.

You might know it from the center filling of a bear claw. Certainly that was my earliest knowledge of an almond filling. I remember stopping at a bakery in Europe (France, I think) one morning and we bought a little slice of a tart – sure enough, frangipane. Yummy is all I can say.

So these little numbers require puff pastry. Pepperidge Farms brand is probably the most widely available. My grocery carries a store-label also, but I opted for the Pepperidge Farms. There’s also one called Dufour, I think it is. Also very good, probably better than the Pepperidge. The unopened packages defrosted in the refrigerator for more than a day. If you decide to try these, be sure to look at the expiration date on the puff pastry box. Do not used any that are “old.” And be sure to give them the full 24+ hours to defrost fully.

The pastry sheets are lightly floured, but you need a bit more flour on your work surface to keep them from sticking as  you roll it out further, to about a 11″ or 12″ square. Then cut that square into quarters, so about 5 1/2″ squares. One box will make eight pastries.

Meanwhile you’ll have made the frangipane – some butter and sugar, some almond meal (flour), an egg and a little bit of regular flour, PLUS a jot of almond extract. Perhaps if you used freshly ground almonds the frangipane would have a significant almond flavor, but I wanted it stronger, so I used almond extract instead of vanilla.

Then you scoop a bit of the frangipane pastry cream in the center, position the fruit on top (they kind of look like sunny-side up eggs, huh?), then roll in the pastry edges and crimp them (similar to the edge of a pie crust). Onto a baking sheet they go. They got a brush of an egg wash and some sprinkled Turbinado sugar on top. They take about 30 minutes to bake, to get that lovely golden brown.

What’s GOOD: everything about these was good. Delicious. Loved the frangipane filling, loved the flaky pastry, ate one. Gave the rest away. Why did I give them away, you ask? Because I’d eat them all! And I had about 10 of them left.

What’s NOT: only that you’ve got to buy the puff pastry a couple of days ahead so it has time to completely defrost in the refrigerator. There are instructions for defrosting in the microwave, but I wouldn’t do it.

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Have you learned to trust Ina Garten’s recipes?

A post from Carolyn. If you haven’t, you should trust Ina’s recipes. I’ve not ever thought of making a grand statement about Ina’s recipes, but here goes: I’ve never made an Ina Garten recipe that hasn’t been spot-on. She’s a genius in the kitchen. And almost never are her recipes difficult or laborious. Some are expensive since she uses nothing but the best ingredients like pounds of fresh crab right off the boat, or beef tenderloin, or imported cheeses. But many of her recipes are simple. Easy. And many use ordinary ingredients.

So speaking of lemon bars here . . . have you ever eaten some that were not quite up to snuff? I sure have. And I’ve made them too, and not been happy with the results. I mean – they were okay, but not exceptional. These – this recipe – goes into the exceptional category. Just the right amount of sweet to tart, and just the right amount of lemon filling to the sugary topping. And the right amount of crust too.

One time, years ago, I was making a recipe for an appetizer. Don’t even remember what it was, but it was a loosey-goosey kind of recipe – a little this and a little of that. Oh, I remember, it’s on my blog already, they’re called Ginger Picks. It required a little square of ham, a fresh piece of pear and a little nub of crystallized ginger. In making them, I needed to taste it to see if the flavors worked. They did, but I figured out that you needed a piece of ham in a just-so size, a piece of pear in a just-so size, and a piece of crystallized ginger in a just-right size. In order to be perfect, each needed to be a very particular size, otherwise it didn’t work. Hence the same with these lemon bars. They need to have each part – crust – filling – topping be just right.

What’s GOOD: that they’re perfect. Just the right amount of tart to sweet, filling to crust, all in one bite. Make these.

What’s NOT: really, nothing at all. Ina Garten is a wizard.

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A post from Sara: I’ve always been a huge fan of chocolate and peanut butter. And when you use chewy brownies and melted peanut butter? Well, simply fantastic. I made these little jewels to ship to my kids in school in the South. It packages and ships well enough. I do put each in its own cupcake paper so they don’t stick. Then I boxed them up in aluminum 8×8 throw away containers with lids before packaging in a shipping box.

I used my go-to recipe for chewy, dense brownies. They’ve been posted here on the blog before. After pouring the batter into 9×13 pan, melt 1/2 cup peanut butter. I use a glass measuring cup and heat it gently in the microwave so it’s easy to pour onto the brownie batter. Then use a knife and swirl peanut butter into brownie batter for a marble effect. (See photo at left)

Bake according to directions. Once cooled, frost with a basic peanut butter frosting recipe.

I use a Betty Crocker recipe, and once frosted you need to place the pan in the freezer for a few hours. Then I cut out the shape I wanted using a cookie cutter. Since it was Easter, I chose egg shapes. You freeze again for at least 30 mins. Then use a chocolate glaze made with dark chocolate chips and a smidge of margarine. Using your hands, each one is dipped into the chocolate and set on a rack to dry, then sprinkled with decoration before the chocolate sets.

What’s GOOD: I was really surprised at how easy and professional they looked. They were a huge hit as every bit of leftovers pieces (photo above right) were consumed at Easter. I guess everyone loves peanut butter and brownies as much as I do! The number of servings is based on cookie cutter size. In this case the batch made about 32. Would make a great gift in an Easter Basket.

What’s NOT: it takes a bit of time to make the various layers, but altogether they’re very easy to make. Allow for freezing time in between.

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Are you a fan of Tres Leches Cake? Oh my. This version will rock your boat. It sure rocked mine.

A post from Carolyn. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you already know I’m a fan of tres leches cake. A big fan. There’s something about the luscious almost drippy cake with the gobs of whipped cream on top that sends me into reverie. One might think that’s bacon adorning the cake – no, just overly-toasted coconut. Daughter Sara and I laughed  – we thought we were going to have to start over, but Sara tasted the mighty-toasted coconut and pronounced it delicious. So we went with it. Even the totally blackened coconut tasted just fine!

This cake was our finale for Easter dinner. Taylor and I drove to Sara’s house and 12 of us enjoyed a delicious Mexican feast (birria tacos, beans, rice, salad, fruit, appetizers too, some Champagne of various types) then this cake was brought out. I think I can safely say we got raves from the recipe. It’s the coconut and the rum that made it so good. Not only is there coconut extract in it (you might have to hunt for that), but also coconut cream, plus rum in the cake, the tres leches and a little jot in the whipped cream too.

The cake was baked the day before in a 9×13 pan, and the three milks mixture was poured over the top of the cake (that’s the tres leches part). The whipped cream topping was made at the last minute. Some of the well drained canned pineapple was added to the cream, but most of it was spread over the top of the wet cake itself. And the overly toasted coconut sprinkled all over at the end. This recipe is an absolute winner. I’d started off with a recipe from The Pioneer Woman (hers was called a Pina Colada tres leches cake), but I changed it quite a bit, so I’ll call it mine at this point. Whatever its provenance, do make this.

What’s GOOD: every single little morsel of this extravagant cake was fabulous. I’ll be making it again soon. As soon as I have a good reason for baking a cake for 12 people!

What’s NOT: only that you need to start the day before (to bake the cake). It’s not difficult to make unless you consider having to separate the eggs and whip the whites and yolks separately. Yes, it did make a few dirty dishes too.

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What I’ll say is that this dessert received many, many raves.

This post from Carolyn. Aren’t those glasses the cutest? I bought them about 20 years ago, tall shot glasses, and I’ve never used them for shots. But then, I don’t drink shots. Hence, they’ve been used for little servings of soup (usually cold, since holding the glass of hot soup might be difficult) and for little servings of dessert. This time for a mini-serving of chocolate. My cousin Gary, who was visiting over Thanksgiving, can’t eat wheat, so I always make a GF dessert for him to enjoy. I gave him a choice of a GF flourless chocolate cake or torte, or rich chocolate pudding. He enthusiastically said the pudding.

So, on Thanksgiving morning he and I made this pudding. I started with a recipe from Circle B Kitchen, but changed it a little bit because I wanted more chocolate-truffle-like pudding that was decadent. This certainly filled that bill! My cousin is an engineer (retired) and I assigned him the task of figuring out how we were going to get the pudding into the narrow little glasses without getting pudding all around the top edges. Finally, a traditional funnel was found to be the best resource, although once the pudding began to thicken (as it cooled) it became more and more difficult to do.

There are a few steps to making this: combining the dry ingredients, cooking the milk/half and half mixture, then tempering the egg yolks, then pouring it all over the other ingredients .  Then the pudding is cooked – watched very carefully so it doesn’t plop all over – just below a simmer for two minutes. Then the bar chocolate (I used semisweet) is added, and because the pudding is very hot, it melts quite easily.

Then you add the Kahlua. And stir it in well. Gary and I worked feverishly to get the pudding into the glasses immediately. Once cooled, they went into the refrigerator. I have a tall square refrigerator container, so they went into that with the lid on top, so I didn’t have to attach plastic wrap to each shot glass. You don’t want the pudding to develop a skin.

Using the whipped-cream-in-a-can was the best way to get whipped cream on top – though you can certainly do your own whipped cream for this – just be careful as you add the dollop on top (if you’re using a similar tall, thin glass).

What’s GOOD: very rich. Quite decadent. Strong Kahlua flavor. If you’re not a fan of Kahlua, of course, leave it out. Substitute vanilla, if needed. There is no question this is a chocolate Kahlua dessert.

What’s NOT: this isn’t a simple whip-it-up-quick kind of pudding. Several steps. Needs to chill a few hours as well.

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Pure bliss. Chocolate and nuts make my day. These are wonderful any time of year, but particularly so around the holidays.

This is a post from Carolyn, but actually Taylor made these. I merely helped a little and took photos. It’s such a joy to have this granddaughter of mine living with me. She wanted to make some cookies, asked me for some ideas and this one popped to the forefront. It’s a recipe from Food & Wine. Since she made them a month ago, I’ve made them as well and served them at a luncheon, topped with sweetened whipped cream. As I write this there are still 8-10 squares (I served larger squares as a dessert rather than a triangle or bar) in the frig. I wish they weren’t so darned delicious because I know that box beckons me nearly every day.

These aren’t hard to make at all, although they do have two steps – the shortbread crust, then the chocolate topping. You can combine the shortbread ingredients in a stand mixer or a food processor, which makes a dough. I’d separate the dough into about 6 pieces, then place them strategically on the sheet pan – which makes it easier to push the shortbread into the corners. There is just barely enough dough to fill a sheet pan.

You can see all the fingerprints in the dough (at left). It might have been nicer if we had used a flat glass to flatten it out, but it truly makes no difference in the finished product.

That gets baked (watch it so it doesn’t burn). Then you make the filling which is butter, dark brown sugar, a little bit of corn syrup, bittersweet chocolate, and cream. Once it cools slightly you add in the beaten eggs, and pour it out over the shortbread crust. That is baked awhile, then cooled slightly before you add the sea salt flakes on top. Cool completely, and they’re done. Oh so good.

At right you can see the baked bars, with all the pecans pebbling the surface. Once cooled you can cut them, or you can wait until they’re chilled. Be careful as you cut so the knife or sharp spatula doesn’t crack the shortbread. I cut them when they were room temp. After cutting, I put them into a refrigerator storage box with waxed paper separating the layers. Don’t put the cookies right on top of one another or it’ll ruin the chocolate top.

What’s GOOD: oh my goodness, so much chocolate and nut goodness. Loved these bars as a cookie or as a square piece as a dessert with the whipped cream on top. Altogether fabulous recipe. The chocolate part is a bit sticky, so when you handle them, do have them refrigerated first. And store them in the refrigerator. They make a bunch – they’re an easy dessert or cookie/bar to make. Great for the holidays.

What’s NOT: nothing really.

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This post comes from Taylor, Carolyn’s granddaughter. 

This part from Taylor. This is such a special cheesecake recipe! One of my dear coworkers, Candy, was famous for bringing this to birthday celebrations at work. Our department went all out for birthdays and Candy was known for her baking! Everyone had requests for what their special birthday treat would be. This was always mine. After my sweet friend Candy retired, she passed the famous cheesecake recipe on to me to continue making it for celebrations. It was an honor to take this on and while it may not ever taste the same as hers did, it sure is a good cheesecake! There are some special additions I’ve included that make it that much more delicious.

This additional info from Carolyn.  At right is a photo of Taylor – at her nursing school’s “white coat ceremony” recently. I was privileged to be the family member who helped her put on her coat. Taylor is living with me while she attends nursing school through Concordia University near where I live. Taylor is my daughter Dana’s daughter. Home for her is near Placerville (east of Sacramento). A few years ago, after she graduated from Sacramento State (with a BS in Health Care Administration) she began applying to nursing schools, which took awhile. She worked in a clerical job in the ER at her local community hospital while she applied to nursing schools. That’s where she met Candy. Anyway, now Taylor is in Concordia’s accelerated nursing program (13 months long, rather than the more traditional 2 years) and when she graduates next August, she’ll have a 2nd bachelor’s degree (this one a BSN). After that she’ll probably go back home to Placerville, study for and take the nursing exam, then try to find a job in the Sacramento area.

Taylor isn’t a cook – she’d be the first one to tell you that – but she does like to bake. As I write this, Taylor made some wonderful cookie bars recently that will be posted eventually. I’m just loving having this granddaughter of mine living with me. She’s a great companion, helps me out when I need things done around home, and we have a lot of fun together. Although she doesn’t have a whole lot of extra time – she’s in classes, working a day a week at a local hospital (part of her nursing program) or studying like crazy on her days off.

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Such heavenly flavor from the almond paste in the cake. Beautiful to look at, too.

A post from Carolyn.  I’ve been a long-time follower of Luisa Weiss, from The Wednesday Chef blog. Some years ago she moved to Germany (Berlin, I think) and now has a venerable cookbook to her name, Classic German Baking. She’s a baker of the first order – my opinion from having made a few of her things over the years. Although I don’t own her cookbook. But occasionally one of her cookbook recipes pops up, this one on David Lebovitz‘s blog. I quick-like made sure to save it. So glad I did.

First off, though, you need to know that I’m a big fan of almond paste. It’s an intense almond flavor, and since it’s finely ground almonds and sugar, you can’t just add it to another recipe unless it’s called for. And as many of you have discovered, almond paste doesn’t keep on your kitchen pantry shelf for all that long. A few months at the most. After that it gets dried up and turns into the texture of a rock! I’ve learned that from experience. As I type this I have a 2nd tube of it on my shelf that needs to be used sometime soon before it’s over the hill.

When the 1st of September rolls around, my cooking brain begins to think about apples. I begin to long for cooler nights (hasn’t happened yet, as I write this), and cooler days as well (that won’t happen until mid-October here in SoCal). One year – decades ago – my DH and I took a driving trip in the New England states during September, and I was awed by the side-of-the-road fruit stands with baskets and barrels, displayed within inches of the paved road, just overflowing with apples I’d rarely heard of before, like Northern Spy, Empire, Macoun. Well, perhaps I’d read about them, but never tasted any. Is it because they don’t ship well? Probably they don’t do well with long-term storage? I’d never seen any of them in California. We ate some in the car, we bought some apple juice, and also used some of the apples in baking when we returned to Philadelphia to stay on with our friends Judy and Jerry. I have no recollection what I baked, but something. We all bought apples, and when we left to fly home, THEY still had apples overflowing in their 2nd refrigerator. I probably could have put a few in my suitcase that wouldn’t have been discovered (you aren’t supposed to bring raw fruit into California). What I did do, after I got home, was go online to one of the farms we’d stopped at, and ordered a 25-pound box of mixed apples to be shipped. What a treasure those were. Haven’t done that since, but it was fun.

So, back to this cake. This cake is a real winner . . . I’m just sayin’. Lovely moist cake (with some cubed-up apples in the batter) baked in a springform, with sliced apples angle-shingled on top, then baked to perfect tenderness, and then some apricot jam is brushed on top to let it glisten. This cake lasted for several days. I served it at that lunch I mentioned before, with some of my old employees from 25+ years ago. I sent slices home with several of them, and Taylor and I ate the rest.

There, at right, is an image of the about-to-be-baked cake. You nestle the apple slices into the batter – pressing in just a little. I used Granny Smith apples, and they held their shape well. In fact, some of those slices on the top were still bite-able. Not crisp, but certainly plenty of apple texture.

Thanks to Monica from Playing with Flour, for the photo

One of the interesting techniques mentioned in this recipe (one you need to remember) is to GRATE the almond paste using a box grater. Even the freshest of almond paste can sometimes be a bit firm, and I’ve always wondered how to best disperse it in a cake batter. A-ha moment with the grater.

Forgetting to take a photo of this genius technique, I found an image on the web, from PlayingwithFlour. Monica used a fine-grind. My tube of almond paste was perhaps a month old, and I couldn’t grate it finely, but did it using slightly larger holes on another side of my box grater. And it seemed to disperse easily in the cake batter. Hooray!

Luisa didn’t say to serve the cake with anything, but I had a tub of crème fraiche, so each piece got a dollop of that when I plated it.

What’s GOOD: everything about this cake was marvelous. Can’t say enough good things about it. Love-loved the intense almond flavor (from the almond paste) and the tender cake itself. Loved how beautiful it was. I served it at the table on a cake stand. So pretty! My recollection is that everyone loved the cake. Cake was easy to make. I’ll definitely make this again.

What’s NOT: only that you need a fresh tube of almond paste.
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