This is another of the recipes that worked its way up to the top of the pile, as I was sorting and filing clippings the other day. And since I had some bananas that were way beyond eating out of hand, they seemed perfect for this recipe. I did find the recipe on myrecipes.com, (myrecipes is a compendium of the recipes offered in Southern Living, Cooking Light, Sunset, Coastal & Cottage Living) and it said that when it was published last year it was a repeat – this bread became a real favorite at Cooking Light and won for Best Quick Bread in their 2007 issue all about their best tried and true recipes. It originally appeared on the cover of the September 2003 issue and remains one of their best banana breads. With that kind of praise, how could I not try it?

I’m not always thrilled with Cooking Light’s recipes – better for me, I know, but sometimes there’s too light on flavor. But their baked goods, whether it be breads, or cakes particularly, they’ve worked on extensively, have usually been adapted so they’re pretty darned good. This one was no exception. And, since this is a better-for-you recipe, I’d be inclined to try it again.

Cook’s Notes: The batter went together easily, and the dark rum called for certainly added a depth of flavor that was barely discernible in the finished bread if I really thought about it. I used lemon instead of lime in the glaze. And you’ll note below, I used half sugar and half Splenda in the batter.
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When I tell you you absolutely MUST make this, I’m not kidding. It’s simple. Really simple. And oh-so-very delicious. It probably looks like a pile of gooey something with whipped cream. Well, it is, sort of. I’ve enjoyed pudding cakes for years, and was surprised at the cooking class that was held at my house yesterday, that lots of people don’t know about pudding cake. They’d never heard of it. Never seen it. I’ve made both chocolate and lemon pudding cake, but never gingerbread.

Pudding Cakes are different. Obviously, they’re not quite a true cake, or a true pudding either. They kind of defy explanation. Online I didn’t even find a very good definition about pudding cake. I went to my usual source, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, a fascinating tome about the chemistry of cooking. This is the first time I’ve struck out, not finding an explanation in his book. And, as I said, nothing online either. Nor in my cooking encyclopedia, nor Martha’s Baking Handbook. Not even Dorie Greenspan. So, you’ll just have to settle for my homespun explanation.

A pudding cake starts off with a cake batter. It’s placed in a high sided ovenproof dish, then you pour boiling water (sometimes with butter added in this case) over the top. In the baking process, the cake part becomes a layer that kind of floats on top, and the hot water mingles with some of the batter and makes a pourable pudding underneath. You serve it warm to hot. Once it cools, the pudding part that made a nice puddle on the plate when you served it (as in the picture at top), becomes a thicker pudding. Which is why you want to serve it warm. The whole thing is some kind of chemical magic.

Probably the most common pudding cake is lemon. Southerners here in the U.S. think they own lemon pudding cake, I think. It’s a regular staple in the Southern diet. When I searched online I found several recipes with Southern roots. The one I’ve always made came from a friend in England. So maybe its origins are English. I simply don’t know. Maybe somebody who reads my blog will know! Or will have some kind of cooking encyclopedia with an explanation.

Anyway, the teacher, Tarla Fallgatter, used my home for the cooking class for this month. The hostess gets to choose the theme, and I opted for soups and chowders. And she always makes a dessert too. Tarla had mentioned that she’d made this dessert at several classes recently and it was met with lots of raves. Mine are now added to it.
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Can you just leap through your screen and take a bite of this tart? Double dare you to ever find anything more heavenly than your mouth full of this creamy, buttery, chocolatey and raspberry concoction. Sinfully delicious.

This is another delectable item on the menu at the luncheon I attended the other day. The hostess, Robin, outdid herself with this spectacular dessert. The buttery short almond pastry, almost like a light cookie crust filled with chocolate, some currant jelly, topped with fresh raspberries, chocolate shavings, powdered sugar and draped with some real whipped cream. Oh my. So very good. Robin retrieved her recipe from a 1993 Bon Appetit issue to show us. I wrote down the title, and was fortunate to find it on the internet. This isn’t a quick little number that you can whip out in an hour. There are a number of steps, chilling, baking, watching, more chilling, etc. But, it was definitely worth it. We gobbled up the tart – which said it served 12 – but with several of us taking tiny slivers of seconds, it left just one piece. So, I’d say this probably serves 9-10 rather than 12. If I made this, I’d probably offer a bit more whipped cream. But, however you count the slices, you need to have some of this. Now.
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Surely I’m not alone in having an occasional baking failure. I rarely have an actual cooking “failure.” But, this was a close call! One of my greatest cooking failings is that I don’t read the directions completely before plunging into the preparation. This time was no exception. But, hey, it’s a cookie, and what’s a little extra sugar, right?

Last time I made these, probably two years ago, after they were finished I even went into my recipe software and re-arranged the recipe, separating the ingredients for the bar part, the syrup part and the glaze part. So that I wouldn’t do exactly what I repeated – again – today. But did I print out the recipe and toss the old one? You can guess, can’t you? No. I didn’t. Dummy. Idiot that I am. So this morning, as usual, always with 101 things on my mind (gotta finish this quickly, need to pay some bills, make the bed, finish my makeup) before I leave for a luncheon. I did READ the ingredients. But I glossed over the directions about separating the sugar portion (some of the sugar goes in the syrup).

This recipe is a favorite (when I make it) of my friend, Cherrie. She’s an excellent cook, but she isn’t a baker, so she relies on her friends who are bakers (uh, that’s me and others, I assume) to give her some goodies now and then. And sometimes I give her a little bag of cookies which she parcels out in her DH Bud’s lunch bag. I gave her one of my Bishop’s Breads I made before Christmas. (I don’t mean to be going on and on about my Bishop’s Bread – it’s just that Cherrie has learned to love this like I do.) Just a slice with her afternoon tea. So when one of her friends called to tell me she was having a birthday luncheon for Cherrie today, I thought – oh, I’ll make a batch of those Brandied Apricot Bars for her. That will make Cherrie very, very happy. She adores these things. More than I do, actually. I mean, they’re really good, but she would happily cross a glacier to get ahold of these, and she doesn’t “do” cold. Of all the things I bake, these cookies may be her very favorite. It could be the little rolling warmth that emanates from your gullet after chewing one – after all, it does have brandy in it. Not cooked much, either. Supposedly the alcohol is cooked off when you heat alcohol to a boil, but since this is apricot brandy you use, it’s potent stuff and I’m sure there is still alcohol remaining, because I sure do get warmth in my mouth, throat and tummy when I eat these. Back when I made these the first time, Cherrie was actually staying with us for awhile. She and I were both having sleeping issues, often waking up in the middle of the night, not able to sleep (my reason was that I was taking Claritin-D; once I stopped taking that, I began sleeping better). But back then, if she heard me up, we’d meet in the kitchen, whispering so we wouldn’t wake up my DH, and tiptoe with a tea tray into our living room, light the fire and have some Earl Gray and one of these bars. Or maybe two. At 6:30 am, or so, my DH would wander out, sleep in his eyes and say what in the world are you two doing? He learned eventually – if I wasn’t in the bed with him when he awoke, I’d be in the living room with tea and a fire, or in my office playing some mindless solitaire.

So, back to today and too much sugar. What to do, what to do? I was already fully into the batter when I re-read the directions. That’s when I discovered my mistake. Oops. I had put a scant cup of white sugar into the batter. So, I cut down some on the brown sugar (about half) and used less sugar in the brandy mixture. The lemon juice topping requires a certain amount of sugar – otherwise it would turn out too sour, so I really couldn’t reduce the powdered sugar there. I also made these in a 9×13 Pyrex pan, so baked them slightly longer, and it made 32 bars, not 36. But even with all my bad reading and chemistry juggling, they turned out just fine. Amazing. And Cherrie was really tickled (see big smile below) with my plate of cookies. All for her, with a little bite for everybody else at the luncheon.

So, the recipe below, for these tummy-warming bars, is the corrected one. Note to self: print out the gosh-darned corrected recipe and put it in your file! (done!)
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To tell you the truth, cheesecake isn’t something I order except on very rare occasions. Nor do I make it very often. Usually it’s just too rich for me. Especially if I’ve eaten a big dinner. My daughter, Sara, makes a really good cheesecake, and I enjoy it every time she makes it. She’s quite legendary in some parts of her family for her cheesecake. Her husband and his family often request it for family gatherings.

Here's the batter, thick and silky smooth (the cream cheese, sour cream, etc.)

But, THIS cheesecake I’m sharing with you today, is something altogether different. I must say that this has all the trappings of regular cheesecake. So how come it’s different? Well, you whip up the six egg whites until stiff and fold them into the cheesecake filling. It lightens up the texture considerably. I like this lighter, almost a souffle-like, style. You slice your fork into a bite and it meets little resistance and melts in your mouth. There’s a hint of lemon in it. Maybe next time I ought to add a bit of lemon zest to the filling too. I’ve never seen another cheesecake recipe that uses whipped egg whites. I’ve searched on the internet to try to find the origin of this recipe, but have found nothing.

Fine print: whatever you do, don’t go reading the nutrition content of this recipe, or you’ll never make this cheesecake. You’ll get depressed even thinking about it.

Springform pans: I own two. An 8 1/2 inch and a 10 inch. This recipe calls for a 9 inch. What to do? This time I used the smaller one and had enough to make another entire small bowl of cheesecake. Next time I guess I should use the 10 inch form. Definitely I’d need to make more crumbs, however. I already do that as it is, using about 3 cups of graham cracker crumbs in the mixture. And more butter. No additional sugar.

Folding the egg whites in is a bit of a chore, but lightens up the batter a lot.

This cheesecake is baked for an hour, then left in the oven for an additional hour (heat turned off) to firm up. Then you remove it to cool further. Having made this several times, I will tell you that it’s absolutely the best, cut and served when it’s still warm. Not hot. Just warm. If you have the time to plan it, serve it that way.

You can also make it several hours ahead, then put it back in a low oven for about 15 minutes. You don’t want to dry it out, whatever you do.

We invited our Southern California children and the grandchildren to come for dinner last night. To open our gifts and celebrate Christmas with them. I served a ricotta lasagna with marinara sauce, a big green salad with my favorite salad dressing, the VIP dressing, and this cheesecake for dessert.

It’s poured in the graham cracker crumb crust and topped with toasted almonds. I over-toasted the almonds (sheepish grin).

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Nobody seems to make custard anymore. What happened to custard? Is it perceived as too bland? Pale? Wrong color altogether? It’s a sad state of affairs. Custard is the ubiquitous dessert. Wonderful for a homey dinner. Nice enough for a company dinner, especially if accompanied by some fruit, or a cookie. I must admit that it’s been a long while since I’ve made any custard. And yet, I like it very much.

So, when I was scouring through some recipes a week or so ago I ran across a custard recipe I haven’t made in years and years. Pairing custard with almond may seem unusual. But it’s a lovely match, especially since you add the apple juice concentrate as a perk at the end. What’s unusual about this recipe is that there is no refined sugar in it. The custard is made with just eggs, flavorings (vanilla and almond) and the two milk types. Once baked and cooled, you put on the thickened apple juice topping, which is naturally sweet, and that provides the only sweet thing in the custard. Then you sprinkle almonds on top.This may not be a WOW kind of recipe, but it looks pretty enough, and represents good old American home cookin’. And note, this is gluten-free also, in case you’re searching for those kinds of recipes.

A former employee, Kathleen Heckathorn., brought this to one of our potluck lunches at Ad Masters (the ad agency I’ve talked about before that I co-owned), and everybody just scooped it right up. I’ve made it a few times over the years, although not for awhile. I hadn’t input it into my recipe program, so that’s why I’d lost track of it. But it was in my catch-all alphabetized recipe files – the clippings, photocopies, some of them ancient, that live in a file cabinet. I use more of the apple juice concentrate that Kathleen did – to make sure there is enough sauce to go around, and Kathleen began the thickening with cornstarch, which wasn’t part of the original recipe. The concentrate is just a bit too thin, as is out of the can, for a topping, so the cornstarch helps it along well. If you find the custard odd tasting (no sugar) you could add a little bit to it. Just not very much.

After making this, I phoned Kathleen to thank her for this recipe. Hadn’t talked to her in years. It was great fun catching up about our families, etc. So, thanks Kathleen for this great recipe.

I have another custard recipe that I’ll be sharing with you after the first of the year. It’s truly low calorie. But you’d never know it. Absolutely wouldn’t ever figure it out. It is a pumpkin custard. Since I haven’t had my fill of pumpkin yet this year (I only got to eat two slices of pie over Thanksgiving), it will be something nice to make in the New Year. When DH and I have agreed we’re going to work on reducing the calories around here. Blog writing isn’t exactly the best thing for the waistline, I’ll admit. I keep wanting to share more and more of my old tried and true recipes.
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Now then. This is about chocolate. A chocolate dessert suitable for Christmas Dinner. A dessert not too difficult. A do-ahead one, at that. And it’s gluten-free, actually, low in sugar (yes, really), and serves a whopping 12 people if you’re judicious in slicing it.To explain the background on this recipe, I should back up and reiterate about how I detest fruitcake. Never have liked it. One Fall, back about 1964 or so, my former father-in-law took a trip to England and brought back a suet fruitcake from Fortnum & Mason (a bastion of fine food, coffees and teas) – a suet pudding I believe it was – and was so proud of bringing it to our house for Christmas. I’m sure I smiled brightly and thought, oh dear, what do I do now? Serve it with a smile and give myself just one bite, smother it in sauce and pretend it’s wonderful. I didn’t like the suet pudding. It even came with a can of hard sauce too. But, when my teeth hit those bits of tiny fig seeds, I cringed. Even raisins can get those little bits of dry seedy things.

The following year I determined to give myself at least a steamed pudding that I liked. This recipe just popped up, very timely, and I’ve made it umpteen times since. It came out of Gourmet Magazine, back in the years when they wrote every single recipe in sentence form, so you had to hunt through for the ingredients. They weren’t even highlighted in different type. Many a time I missed some items because I skimmed the sentences. This one was in the letters page, because I have the original clipping – a woman from England, Mrs. M.E. Pout, of Worplesdon, submitted it, thanking the magazine for its interesting and inspiring articles. Having never heard of chocolate steamed pudding, I thought I was onto a winner. Way back in the 1960’s it was difficult even finding a steamed pudding mold. Where I bought this thing, I don’t recall, but I DO remember that it was expensive. But I splurged. It’s seen a lot of wear. Because it sits in water once a year, it has developed a kind of mineral dusty exterior because of our hard water, and I see a few signs of rust. But it’s served me well, all these 40+ years. Now, if you decide you want to make this, and you don’t have a pudding mold, don’t despair. Just use a medium-sized ceramic bowl (higher sides preferred) and a lip that you can somehow secure foil to. Cover it with a piece of cloth (a thin towel, or a dishtowel, cut just to cover it and over the edges). What you don’t want is for the steam to get INSIDE the bowl (the steam turns into water and drips onto the top of the pudding), so that’s why you want to tie the foil down as securely as you can. If the bowl sides are too slanted, you’ll never get it to stay, so straighter sides are better.

The ingredients in this pudding are simple: butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate and almonds. That’s it. The butter and sugar get whipped up, you add egg yolks and grated chocolate, then the ground almonds. It’s a thick batter, as you can see above. Lastly you fold in the whipped egg whites. I happened to have added an additional 3 egg whites to this (because I had some languishing in the refrigerator), to I actually used 7 egg whites. But 4 are sufficient. If you want a lighter pud, add a couple more. Pour it into a mold, cover, simmer it in water and that’s it.

Here’s the finished pudding, just out of the oven, resting, cooling.

About the chocolate: It must be finely grated. In some years past I’ve chopped it finely, and I suppose that would suffice, but grated is far better. It takes awhile to grate chocolate – this 4 ounces probably took me 10-15 minutes. I tried a coarser microplane, but settled on the thin one, the one I use mostly for grating citrus zest. It made a heavy dust of chocolate. I used Scharffen Berger’s unsweetened chocolate that comes in a 9+ ounce bar.

About the almonds: in years past I’ve always whizzed the almonds up in the food processor. And if you don’t have a Trader Joe’s in your town, that method will work, although it does leave some little bits of almond, so you actually chew a bit of almonds now and then. It’s what I did for years, so am sure it would continue to work. But Trader Joe’s carries a package of “Just Almond Meal,” which makes it so very easy. It’s a finer grind – almost like flour, actually. Maybe you can find almond meal in other stores as well.

Once you finish preparing the batter, you pour it into the mold, cover, and put into a pot large enough to hold the mold, plus some, as you fill the pot about 2/3 of the way up the sides of the mold. I weighted mine with something heavy to keep the mold from floating. It takes 90 minutes to steam the pud, then you carefully remove it, unveil it, let it cool a bit, then remove from the mold. It’s best served warm, but I’ve always made it ahead of time, so just cool, chill, then warm it in the oven (wrapped in foil) for about 15-20 minutes at 200. So, if you’re looking for something a bit different this year, this may be your ticket. It makes a nice traditional dessert for Christmas Dinner, but it’s not all that traditional in taste.
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Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Hope you’re having a great day – or had a great day, if you’re reading this after Turkey day. Its only 10 am and I’ve been cooking since 7:30. Let us not forget to be thankful for our dinner bounty, and to happy to share it with family.

For today’s dinner, I made as much as I could yesterday, but there’s still a lot to be done the day of. My daughter is helping a lot, thank goodness. Helpers are so nice to have around! This post, though, was one I wrote up a day or so ago – we’re having pumpkin pie today. My very favorite pie in the world. Because we have so many pumpkin pie lovers in our family, we’re having 3 pumpkin and one apple, and likely they’ll all be gone by the end of the day, or at the latest tomorrow morning.

Probably I’ve mentioned before that I’m an inveterate recipe collector. Clippings from all the magazines I subscribe to (at the moment those are: Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Cooks Illustrated, Sunset and Southern Living), notes from a restaurant meal, emailed from friends, found on the internet, and now, with food blogs, I have a whole new source of recipes. If I cooked 3 meals a day, with 4-5 recipes per meal, I still wouldn’t run out of new recipes for the rest of my life, just of the ones I have in my to-try collection. I’m really trying to be more circumspect about what I clip and print out. But, it’s very hard because so many things sound so wonderful.

Because I subscribe to a lot of food blogs through google reader (if you’ve looked at the list at the bottom of my blog home page you’ll understand what I’m saying), I have a lot of reading to do. Not only do I like to support the other food bloggers out there by reading what they have to say, but you just never know what you’re going to find. After I’ve been away for a few short days, my google reader box is full. You can imagine that when I finally got around to looking yesterday, after 3 1/2 weeks, it says I had 997 blogs to read. Oh my. That’s almost overwhelming. And yet, what if I miss some fantastic recipe? So, I’m trying to read it gradually, maybe 15-20 minutes at a time. I’ve already printed out 4 recipes and I’m only down to the C’s (google gives them to me in alpha order). So, the task ahead of me is huge. Daunting. But I’ll keep slogging through it.

So, when I saw the title of this blog posting, I was hooked, since I love all-things-pumpkin. The blogger Sassy Radish, was guest hosting at the Accidental Hedonist, and wrote up a nice list of her favorite Thanksgiving menu items, among them, this dessert. Read her original posting about this recipe here. Its origin is Charles Phan of the Slanted Door in San Francisco, a hugely popular restaurant in the Ferry Building, a place I’d love to visit. You can also find the recipe on Epicurious with the title of Pumpkin Souffle/Bread Pudding.

This isn’t pumpkin pie. Naturally, with the main ingredient of bread, it’s a different texture. The challah is a soft bread, just slightly sweet. And not something I’d ever purchased before, but figuring it was an important item, I sought it out. Finally found it at Trader Joe’s, thank goodness.

Very little sugar is added, surprisingly, to the bread pudding. The pumpkin custard mixed with whipped-up egg whites provides a subtle pumpkin flavor. It’s lighter, though, than most bread puddings because of the addition of whipped egg whites. I like that part. With a big dollop of whipped cream on top, yum. If and when I make this again, I think I’ll add more spices (just because I can, and I like more of those pumpkin pie type spices anyway) and I’ll add more pumpkin. Hopefully the custard will hold with 4 egg yolks. I made a double batch, and because I don’t have enough custard cups, I made it in a 9 x 13 pan, which is what Sassy Radish did also. I baked the dish 10 minutes longer because of that. And having made this several days ago, I’ll tell you that I think this tastes better after it sits overnight – so this might make a great do-ahead dessert.
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At our brunch on Saturday, my friend Joan L. brought the most delicious, flavorful, lemony cake imaginable. Come to find out it’s Ina Garten’s recipe. From her cookbook, Barefoot Contessa Parties! (which I don’t have), but the internet, being the internet, I found dozens of copies of it on multiple websites. Lots of other food bloggers have done a write-up about this, but my copy came from Oprah, when she had Ina Garten on her show some while back.

It uses the zest from 6-8 lemons plus a LOT of fresh squeezed lemon juice. Not only in the cake, but in the syrup and the frosting. No wonder it’s lemony flavored. And it has the lightest texture. Most likely from the addition of buttermilk. These are made in loaf pans, then you dribble a lemony syrup all over the cakes that sinks in, and once completely cooled you drizzle it with a white icing.

No question, this is a great cake. If you’re blessed with a lemon tree, this is a must-bake for you. Our Meyer lemon tree doesn’t have ripe lemons yet. I have juice in the freezer, but not any zest. And have you seen the price of lemons, even here in Southern California? I think I paid 89 cents apiece for them. Joan, thank you for bringing this wonderful cake!
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One day on the river cruise, the pastry chef, Klaus Ungruh, gave a lecture about apple strudel. The draw, of course, was that we’d all get a slice when it was all said and done. About 60 of us gathered around a table to watch. Frank, the tour director and the chef had a very cute repartee going. As Frank listed the ingredients, the chef pulled them out of a shelf below the table. Into the very large and deep Hobart mixing bowl he placed a plastic bag of flour (sealed up), a full bottle (not pouring, just the bottle) of oil, a round box of salt and he poured in some water and literally threw in an egg – splat… We all laughed. He pretended to mix and knead it inside the bowl, then, as if by magic he reached down into the bottom of the bowl and voila, he pulled out a round disk of dough. Even more laughs. He whisked the rolling pin over the dough about 10 times, turned it over and rolled another 10 times, and the dough was done.

Then he used another bowl and to it were added: apples, raisins, cookie crumbs, cinnamon, rum, hazelnuts, sugar and lemon peel. In about 5 seconds he mounded the filling on the dough, and rolled it up. Done. Off it went to the kitchen, and they brought in an already baked one for us to sample. Delish. Whether I’d really make this or not, I don’t know. I did make strudel once upon a time (when I was very young, with a woman who was a live-in cook for a neighbor), but I thought it an awful lot of work. This version seemed infinitely easier. It was served with a vanilla sauce, warm.

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