For some reason I’ve neglected to add this cake to my blog. Good heavens! I used to make it often when our kids were living at home. It’s made with a cake mix and doesn’t have all that much Kahlua in it, but it’s divinely delicious and decadent. It comes together in a flash.

When I was visiting with my daughter Sara, she decided to whip together this cake and said, “this is your cake; remember, we used to make it all the time.” Sure enough, we did. I think this cake was my old business partner Audre’s recipe. Probably she made it for one of our potluck lunches we had at the office once in awhile. Remember when cake mix bundt cakes were just “the thing?” Everybody was making them, with rum or bourbon, or other types of alcohol additions.

This one is made with a regular cake mix – remember back then, BEFORE the cake mix producers started adding the pudding mix into the cake. I suppose you could use that type in this, then just eliminate the instant pudding. But I like this one the way it is, so we chose not to use that type. It makes a very tender cake, and VERY chocolaty. Sara made this in a jiffy – in her stand mixer she added the box mix, instant pudding, eggs, oil, the Kahlua. Then you stir in the chocolate chips, and into the bundt cake pan it went. Once baked and cooled, I made a very thin drizzle to go on it as it looked a little bare on the pretty platter with nothing. Guess you could use powdered sugar too – easier.

Sara ended up using the new Hershey brand dark chocolate pudding INSTANT mix. It worked just fine, and I’ll tell you, the chocolate flavor was intense. I think when I made it years ago I used a devil’s food cake or a German chocolate mix (one of those has a reddish tinge to the finished and baked cake) and regular Jell-O brand instant pudding. I never buy the regular Jell-O pudding anymore because I’m in love with the Hershey’s dark chocolate one.

If you look at that photo at left, you can hardly SEE the cake it’s so dark. I Photoshop’d it, to lighten it, so you could perhaps see some of the cake texture in the photograph.

What’s GOOD: everything about it. If you like chocolate, and Kahlua, well, you’ll love it all. Very intense chocolate flavor, especially if you use a dark chocolate cake mix and the Hershey’s dark chocolate instant pudding mix.

What’s NOT: nothing whatsoever. If you’re willing to eat boxed cake mixes, this one’s a winner; has been for generations of home cooks! This recipe probably exists in a thousand places on the internet already!

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I don’t know where I’d been, until 2-3 years ago when I first heard or read about tres leches (three milks) cake. I became a fan instantly. Shall I say I must have been on a turnip truck? I was served it somewhere and knew eventually I’d make it myself. But I needed a reason to make a big 9×13 pan full of it. There is a boxed mix for this cake, but as with most such mixes, it is a 4th cousin twice removed, to the real thing, this one, made from scratch.

Making this is NOT all that hard – I bake all the time – so don’t know why I’d put off trying it. But if I’d made it for myself – for some small gathering and only used 3-4 pieces of it, then I’d have had a huge pan of it. This isn’t something you’d want to eat every day for a week. Plan on the scales giving you bad news. As it was, my granddaughter Sabrina, the one who just graduated from HS in early June, wanted tres leches cake for the party her mom and dad threw for her a few days after the graduation. I took all the stuff to Sara’s house (my daughter, Sabrina’s mom) and made it the day before. Most recipes say it’s best if allowed to soak in the three milks for 8-24 hours. I’ve found some recipes that say it only needs an hour or so to soak up most of the milk, but I didn’t want to chance it, so I did do it the day before. It does need to be refrigerated throughout the process.

The recipe I used made a pretty large bowl of the milk-combo, and suggested you not add it all to the cake, but to reserve some to spoon onto the plate when it’s served. Well, with this being a buffet kind of thing, we didn’t do that part, but the cake itself was plenty oozy with milk without the addition. Sara has a cup or more of the milk mixture in her refrigerator. Don’t really know what you’d do with it once the cake is gone! Guess you could make a custard? Or a pudding. In the recipe I used it suggested adding rum, which I did, but truthfully, none of us could taste it. Not at all. We also used a few pinches of cinnamon in the whipped cream, and I couldn’t taste that, either. I guess the milk flavor predominated!

First you make a sponge cake (you know, egg yolks and whites whipped up separately so the egg whites folded in give the cake height and tenderness). Once the cake is baked and cooled, you pour the milks on top – evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and some other combination of half and half, regular whole milk or heavy cream. The milks absorb from the bottom. At that stage the cake is covered and refrigerated. If you happen to have a 9×13 pan that has a lid, I recommend it! I made this in a disposable foil pan just because it was easier for storage (they come with lids too).

I recommend you use an instant read thermometer for the cake – we  used a toothpick and it came out clean after 18 minutes of baking, but it definitely was not done as the center sunk once out of the oven. We were able to use all the cake around the outer edges and had plenty. Sara doesn’t have an instant read thermometer. Cakes should cook to about 205°. This cake had pulled away from the sides, so we thought it was done, but it wasn’t. I’ve included notes in the recipe about this aspect of the cake baking.

The next day you make whipped cream (with sugar and vanilla) and since we were serving a crowd, I cut the cake into small servings (there were other desserts served) and dolloped the top of each with the cream. The cake did sit out at room temp for several hours then, and the few pieces left over went back into the pan. If you were serving this as the only dessert, I guess you could get at least 15 servings out of the pan, maybe more. The cake is rich, so you don’t really want to serve a lot of it, delicious as it is!

Certainly the cake will keep for a few days, but not much longer than that. Eventually the milk mixture will spoil, especially if it’s allowed to sit out, so do plan to eat it up within 3-4 days at the most. As time goes by, the bottom of each cake piece becomes rather unstable because it’s milk-logged. The top half or third doesn’t absorb any of the milk, so when I tried to move the left over pieces back into the baking pan for storage, they kind of fell apart. I learned to only move one piece at a time, then it stayed mostly together.

What’s GOOD: I love this cake. Period. I like dairy, though, so it would be likely I’d enjoy this. I love the texture of the cake (the sponge part) and it’s altogether lovely. Wish I had a piece right this very minute.

What’s NOT: You do need to plan ahead and then be sure to eat it up within a few days. This cake isn’t a long-term keeper as the milk could spoil.

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This recipe got lost in my files where I keep recipes I’ve prepared, the ones I’m going to post about. It’s a good one and worth making. It’s healthy and filling.

Do you ever crave beans? I crave lentils now and then, and I do love-me-a-bowl-of-beans or chili about once a year or so, but like bread, mashed potatoes and rice, I try to give them a pass. I was craving beans the day I made this, and in looking at my to-try file, this recipe seemed to be the one to make. I had some escarole; yes, I had a can of cannellini beans; and I always have those lovely salmon fillets in the freezer. As I recall, since I made this a couple of months ago, that plate was all I ate for dinner. I thought it was a rounded-out menu since the escarole (vegetable) was in the ragu.

If you’re good at multi-tasking, by all means do both things at once (the bean ragu and the salmon). Neither part takes all that long. If you’re substituting spinach or arugula for the escarole, then don’t add that into the beans until you’re nearly ready to eat as it’s best when it’s just barely cooked. Depending on the thickness of the salmon, you may need to cook it longer – it’s broiled first, to get it brown (see photo), then if it’s not quite done, turn oven to 400° and bake for 3-4 minutes. That’s what I had to do as the salmon was thicker than some.

As you make the ragu, do taste it periodically, and at the end add more salt, pepper and lemon juice if it needs it. I think the beans need acid to give it some perk, so I did add more lemon juice at the end. Next time I’ll add more lemon zest to sprinkle on top of the beans. If you’re making this for guests, I would make the bean mixture an hour ahead, just so you can get it done. It would be fine at room temp for that long. Prep the salmon, the pan for it, then when you’re ready to eat, just cook the salmon and reheat the beans and add the greens. Done.

What’s GOOD: for me, I liked the textural contrast between the salmon and the just slightly chew to the beans. Loved the flavor in the beans – it has a whole bunch of stuff in it to make it taste good. I like salmon, so it was a cinch that I’d like the whole dish. It’s a one-plate meal, though you do use 2 pans to cook everything.

What’s NOT: really nothing that I can think of. It was a tasty dish.

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Do you like artichokes? They’re not available everywhere, I know, and some folks just can’t seem to wrap their arms (or their mouths) around scraping the essence of the stem-end of each artichoke leaf through their teeth to gain this little tiny half a teaspoon of artichoke essence.

Growing up, my mother prepared artichokes frequently. They’re available many months of the year at the grocery stores here in California. They’re grown in abundance in the Salinas Valley, in the north end of the central part of California. And they grow well in other NoCal climes. My mother always put out a little bowl of mayo and we dipped each end into the mayo and scraped away. As I recall, my mom made ONE artichoke and the 3 of us shared it. It was never enough in my book.

When I married my DH, Dave, I soon discovered that he was an artichoke and BUTTER guy. He wanted a little bowl of melted butter to dip his artichoke. But after awhile he stopped using the butter and used nothing. He definitely didn’t like the mayo dip at all. My DH adored the artichoke heart, so I usually let him have my half too. He used to tell the story about his wonderful dog, Woof (a collie) who was a very bright dog. She died long before I met Dave. Dave taught her to scrape the artichoke. He’d hold the leaf and she’d ever so gently pull off the little bit of it. She LOVED them.

Recently I craved an artichoke, and saw some really pretty ones at the store. I pressure-cooked it for about 15 minutes. Just now I went on the ‘net and found recipes suggesting everything from 6 minutes (Kalyn’s Kitchen) to 22 minutes on one other, with several others suggesting times in between. Me? I added about a cup of water to the pressure cooker, squeezed half of a lemon into the water, cut the artichoke in half, leaving the choke intact, put them on a rack and pressure cooked them for the 15 minutes. Once cooled some, I used a spoon to remove the choke and let the artichokes cool to room temp. If the artichoke you buy is really big, use a longer cooking time; shorter if they’re smaller, obviously. Half an artichoke is a good-sized serving. I ate it with my dinner, but it also makes a nice appetizer too.

Then I mixed up the dipping sauce: nothing more than mayo, harissa sauce (if you want to know more about harissa, read my 2012 blog post about using it on lamb kebabs), a little bit of bacon jam (some high end markets carry this, it’s a refrigerated little jar, costs the moon, but it lasts forever), plus a little squeeze of lemon juice.

What’s GOOD: well, now, I love artichokes, so there’s no question any mayo-based sauce would taste great in my book, but if you want to make it special, try the addition of harissa and bacon jam. Delicious.

What’s NOT: nothing really, except the harissa is spicy; probably not to children’s tastes.

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Why would I bake yet another cookie of the chocolate chip variety? I have nothing fewer, to date, than 20 similar recipes – on my index here on my blog, I have a category on the cookie page just for chocolate chip cookies.

Why would I do it? Well, it was the rhetoric that accompanied the recipe – that it had become the best chocolate chip cookie in her collection. Or something like – this is my go-to cc cookie. That kind of language perks my ears, piques my interest. It made me save the recipe, and ultimately, to make them. And I must admit, these cookies are downright fabulous. I prefer crispy chocolate chip cookies, and these definitely fit my mold, satisfying my craving for a crispy cookie. My first pans full I over baked them – the photo above. They were almost burned because I forgot to set the timer once I switched the pans around half way through. Suddenly I began to smell something hot – yep, these cookies. But oh gosh – they were so good! The next batches I was more careful and removed them after 14 minutes. They were perfectly golden on the outside but still slightly soft in the middle. Below is a photo of the cookies done at exactly 14 minutes. To adhere to the recipe instructions, these are still over-baked as she recommends taking them out when the edges are just golden. So if you make them you can decide for yourself.

This recipe is much like most cc cookie recipes – I looked at this one side-by-side with my other favorite, the ones from Silver Moon bakery, and the ingredient list is nearly identical, with this one containing slightly less butter and a little less flour. About the same on everything else. These taste sweeter. Don’t know why. The batter is very sticky – the difference being the amount of flour as mentioned, I suppose. Hence the chilling time is necessary to make the dough manageable (to roll balls in your hands).

Next time I make these I’ll use a little less sugar and see if I like them even better. I got the recipe from CakeSpy (a blog). When she made these, she got the recipe from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking (cookbook) by Matt Lewis. CakeSpy changed the recipe only slightly to add walnuts and reduce the amount of chocolate chips by that amount. I always like cc cookies with both chips and walnuts, so I chose to use her variation on the cookbook recipe. I sent some home with granddaughter Taylor and her friends as they headed back to NoCal.

What’s GOOD: has this moved into #1 position in my ranking? Hmmm. Not sure. They’re awfully good, but I still think Silver Moon ones are my favorites. I’ll have to make a decision, I guess, in a few days about the ranking! I freeze my cc cookies, and I eat them frozen, so that will be my final test, eating the hard, frozen cookie. I must say, however, that his cookie was oh-so good, still slightly warm with a cold glass of milk. Yum.

What’s NOT: only that the batter has to chill for several hours. Not sure why, but it’s in the recipe. Maybe it helps them keep their shape better since they start out cold on the baking sheet. Fabulous cookies – can’t complain about anything!

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Probably I’m old-school. No, not just probably, I’m sure I am. I don’t always get on the bandwagon with acronyms. But I do know what BFF means; it’s just that I wouldn’t have used it to name a recipe. But oh well, somebody else did.

To call these “chicken fingers” would probably make it sound like it’s just for kids, right? And these are definitely better than that! I made these for my granddaughter Taylor and her 2 friends who were visiting from NoCal. I was delighted to have them here – they’re all very nice girls – very helpful too. They cleared dishes and washed them every time I prepared a meal for them. They had a grand time shopping, beaching and walking around Disneyland until their feet were aching.

So, this dish. First I pounded 3 big chicken breasts until they were an even thickness of about 1/4-1/3 inch, then cut them into narrow little planks. Next, I set up 3 dunking or dipping stations – first it was seasoned flour, then eggs, then into a panko and Parmesan pan. They’re very briefly fried (really, like about 2 minutes total, maybe 3) in vegetable oil, then served on a bed of salad dressing-dressed greens. I made a watermelon salad with Feta cheese and fresh mint from my garden, and that was dinner. Vanilla ice cream rounded out the dinner with their choice of toppings.

Since I had some salad dressing (home made) in the refrigerator, I opted to not make the dressing you’ll see below in the recipe. However, because the recipe recommends you use leftovers in a sandwich the next day, and to garnish or spread the bread with the lemony Parmesan dressing, I have left that part of the recipe intact. Lots of people who made this, from Food52 land, used the dressing to DIP the chicken into as they ate it.

We all enjoyed this – the chicken was hot and crispy right out of the pan. Each bite was eaten with a bit of the dressed salad. I did have leftovers, and I had them for dinner the next night and wished I’d had some of the dipping sauce. But I think the leftovers would have been great in a sandwich – and the creamy dressing would have been a wonderful treat with the chicken. All by itself, the chicken is good – I wouldn’t call it sensational – but it was very good. With the salad it was elevated to a much higher status in my book. Some readers of Food52 thought they’d try baking these to avoid the calories from frying.

What’s GOOD: a very simple dinner entrée. Especially for warm, summer dining as it was the night I served this sitting out on my patio. Although I didn’t make the dressing, next time I definitely will do so – it had great raves over at Food52. I enjoyed the piquant taste of the chicken served on the salad (I used arugula and baby spinach). Be sure to give the chicken sufficient salt – although Parmesan is salty, there isn’t all that much in it, so do season the flour mixture with both salt and pepper.

What’s NOT: some folks don’t like to dirty-up the kitchen range or countertop with fat spatters, and it definitely did need a bit of a clean-up. But no complaints at all about the taste of this dish.

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Gosh, I can’t encourage you enough to make this dessert. It’s off the charts wonderful! Fresh blueberries stirred into a batter, baked with a brown sugar streusel baked on top, then drizzled with a bit of heavy cream.

Some weeks ago I was contacted by Finlandia, the company that produces cheese and butter products in Finland, but it’s imported here in the U.S. to a variety of mostly upscale grocery stores, but also to some Costco stores (not where I live, unfortunately). It’s carried at some Safeway stores and Gelson’s. Anyway, I guess they thought I might like to try some of their products, providing I’d write up something about it on my blog. I said sure, as long as I really liked the product (which I did).

Finlandia shouldn’t be confused with Finlandia vodka or with the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’ musical opus by the same name (it’s beautiful – if you’d like to hear it, check out this YouTube 9-minute segment of it. Or with the annual ski marathon called Finlandia. I think if you live in Finland, the word is used in lots of ways!

They were kind enough to send me 2 packages of salted butter (7-ounces each), 1 of unsalted butter (also 7-ounces) and a package of deli-sliced Swiss cheese. They asked me to bake something with the butter, but I decided that before I did that I should have my visiting family sample the butter and we’d do a taste test.

So this was the first step – a taste test of both Finlandia types and my regular go-to unsalted butter from Trader Joe’s. I think this may not have been a very fair test because TJ’s doesn’t profess to be a premium butter. It’s good enough for my regular use, but it’s not anything extraordinary. Finlandia butter IS a premium butter for sure. I had a lovely loaf of crunchy baguette which was a kind of neutral slate on which to taste the butter. I probably shouldn’t have labeled them so they could see what they were eating. My visiting family hands-down liked the Finlandia salted type. They liked it so much the entire 7 ounces was gone in about 20 minutes. I often prefer unsalted butter and I always use it for baking (except the day I made this cake when all I had left was the Finlandia salted type).

The next morning we did another taste test, though. My S-I-L Todd frequents Starbucks, and he said they have some premium butter, called Gold, he thought. He brought home a few little Kerry Gold foil-wrapped squares and we taste-tested the Finlandia salted butter with the Kerry Gold salted. It was a mixed result – about half of us liked the Finlandia; the other half preferred the Kerry Gold. In past years I bought only Plugra, another premium butter made here in the U.S., but all of them are expensive.

My visiting family made sandwiches and used some of the Swiss cheese – they liked it just fine, they said. I’m not a fan, particularly of Swiss cheese (unless it’s Gruyere from Switzerland), so I haven’t had but a tiny bite of it. I’d guess if you’re a Swiss cheese fan you’d like it a lot.

With the remaining block of Finlandia salted butter I made this absolutely fabulous blueberry buckle. Oh my gosh it is so good. You simply have to make this!!! What I cannot tell you is if this blueberry buckle would be equally good with any old butter – it was off the charts, though, so I’m happy to say that the Finlandia butter might have had something to do with it. The recipe came from that same book I’ve been touting in recent months, Rustic Fruit Desserts: Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies, and More, by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson. If you don’t have this book, and you’re any fan of cobblers and crisps, etc. you really need to buy it! I’ve made about 4-5 of the fruit desserts from the book so far and have been astounded with the results each and every time.

What makes a dessert a buckle, you ask? Here – Buckle or Crumble – Is a type of cake made in a single layer with berries added to the batter. It is usually made with blueberries. The topping is similar to a streusel, which gives it a buckled or crumpled appearance. This info came from What’s Cooking America.

First I buttered my unusual Kaiser square springform pan (you can use any old 9×9 square pan) but I have this neat pan and thought it might look pretty if I could remove it from the pan to serve it. The batter is not all that different than many – it does contain buttermilk (makes it very tender) and cinnamon and at the last minute you very carefully stir in the fresh blueberries. You don’t want to overdo the stirring or you’ll get a purple cake with oozing juice. The recipe says you can use frozen berries, but leave them frozen when you stir them in or you’ll have the same problem with oozing blueberries and purple cake. Frozen, defrosted blueberries are very liquidy!  My advice? Use fresh blueberries.

Then you sprinkle on the brown sugar – butter – flour – cinnamon mixture all over the top and into the oven it goes for nearly an hour. I left it in the pan for awhile to cool – then I actually transported in the pan when I stayed with family at a beautiful home in Big Bear (near the lake by the same name) and we enjoyed it after dinner one night, and again for breakfast the next morning. It worked equally well for both meals.

I had planned to make the lemon syrup (even though David Lebovitz who made this too, suggested that the lemon syrup took away from the fruit flavor, but as it turned out I answered the doorbell when I was making it, and the syrup burned up, burned my pan (and it may not recover – down the drain with a good Caphalon pan!), and smoked up my house! I wasn’t about to attempt it again. I loved it just the way it was.

I ended up not moving it off the springform pan as it was really moist, and tender, and I was afraid it would fall apart in the process. So I just left it on the springform base and cut squares to serve it with some cream.

What’s GOOD: every single thing about this was delicious. The tender crumb (from the buttermilk), hopefully the nice high-end Finlandia butter, the fresh blueberries, the balance of fruit and sugar was perfect. The topping isn’t too sweet, either. Altogether a class act dessert! I’ll be making it again and again. It’s going onto my Favorites list, it’s that good. I think I’d make this without the lemon syrup again – it was just great the way it was.

What’s NOT: nary a thing. It’s easy to make and I just know you’ll hear purrs from everyone. And just as an aside, my only “beef” with Finlandia is that they package their butter in 7-ounce packages. Most U.S. recipe increments relatr to half pound or quarter pound, or call for cubes, half cubes, quarter cubes, from a 4-ounce cube, which makes measuring Finlandia a bit difficult at a 7-ounce cube. I wouldn’t want to have to cut the 7-ounce cube into 7 slices. You’d have to cut and weigh the Finlandia. Not ideal in my kitchen anyway. Using a scale would be best.

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Are all banana breads the same, with not much difference? Not so! This one’s very different – not only does it have chai spices in it, but it also uses coconut palm sugar (a dark brown sugar from the coconut tree).

A few weeks ago I followed a link and ended up at a blog called Indian Simmer (that I now subscribe to through my RSS reader). I suspect the blog is aimed mostly at people from India, wherever they might be living. Sometimes I don’t even recognize the names of things they talk about, but the blog is written in English and comes from the voices of five different women. Right away I got interested in this recipe for banana bread, just because it contained chai spices. I had some aging bananas on my countertop, and I only had to go to the grocery store to buy coconut palm sugar. An item I’d never heard of – you could substitute dark brown sugar if you don’t have it, and I might do that next time. The sugar is quite dark brown in color, but also a very golden color (more like the color of gingerbread), definitely not light brown – it’s more of a caramel color, as you can see from the color of this banana bread.

Since I was expecting my granddaughter Taylor (the one who just finished her freshman year at Sonoma State) and 2 of her friends to arrive from Northern California that day, I thought this would be something I could have on hand that they could snack on if they wanted to. They have reported that they like this bread very much – they took several slices wrapped in a plastic bag when they headed for the day at Disneyland. If you’re expecting regular banana bread, this isn’t it. It’s sweet. It’s spicy. It warms your mouth for sure. I thought it was better the 2nd day, actually – I was able to taste the bananas in it better on day two.

First, though, you have to make the CHAI MASALA (pictured) – not a lot of difficulty to do, providing you have all the ingredients (black peppercorns, cinnamon sticks, ginger, whole nutmeg, whole cloves, whole green cardamom pods). All those things get whizzed up in a spice grinder until they’re a fine, fine powder, then you mix them together. I didn’t make a whole lot because I didn’t know what else I might use it for, although it should last 6-8 months. I made two loaves of this bread and I used about 2/3 of the mixture you see on the plate. Whatever you do, just make sure you grind the stuff to a fine powder – that’s a real requirement as you don’t want to bite into a cracked peppercorn. The only problematical ingredient here is the pepper – it’s surprising that the recipe calls for as much as it does – you might think the bread would be hot-hot, but it’s not. You do feel a warmth; that’s all and since it couldn’t come from anything else (well, maybe the ginger, but I doubt it) it must be the pepper.

I suspect that amongst Indian cooks, everyone has her own combination of chai spices that she likes – maybe you like more ginger and less cloves, or more nutmeg and less pepper. That kind of thing. This combo tasted fine to me, so I’ll go with it!

The bread mixes up much like any other – except that this bread contains yogurt, and olive oil plus milk and honey. All different tastes of things in this one. Into a greased loaf pan (unless you’re using one of the really nice, new pans that don’t require greasing) it goes. I have the ones from King Arthur Flour – they don’t require greasing or powdering, or lining. See photo at right with the batter just poured in. The recipe indicated the bread would be ready in 40 minutes. Uh . . . no. Definitely not cooked through. I used my instant read thermometer, and it took a full 60 minutes at 350° and it reached 198°F in the middle of the loaf.

It was all I could do when I upended them to cool, not to slice into it right then and there, but I knew it needed some more resting time. I waited an hour or so, the girls had arrived and they’d not had lunch, so I sliced a few pieces and we all snacked on it before I took them out to dinner.

As I’m writing this I’ve got things ready to make a chicken dish for dinner tonight, kind of like chicken fingers. A new recipe. If it’s worth its salt, then I’ll be writing it up in the next few days. Watermelons have been in a bin outside the entrance to Trader Joe’s for the last couple of months. I’ve not bought any until the other day, so I’m making one of my favorites, the Minted Watermelon Feta Salad to go along with the chicken. I made 2 of these banana bread loaves and the one in the freezer will be served to my Bible study group when they come to my house next (soon). I’ll take a photo of it then – served with the orange zested whipped cream to go along with it.

What’s GOOD: this might be an acquired taste if you’re looking for regular old-fashioned banana bread. This bears little resemblance to the traditional – but, the flavor is wonderful, warmed with the spices. The texture is super-tender, but it has plenty of structure so you needn’t fear slicing into it. The yogurt likely gives it the tenderness. I loved it – almost better on the 2nd day.

What’s NOT: maybe a little extra effort since you have to grind up a variety of spices to make the chai masala. Otherwise, it’s much like other banana breads as far as work is concerned. I liked it, so no complaint here.

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Simple, but just plain delicious. Old-fashioned apricot cobbler.

I’ve been on a nostalgia kick lately. To make the pear pie the other day I had to go into my old-old recipe notebook to find it, and while there I saw mom’s recipe for apricot cobbler. Since I’d bought a small box of apricots the other day it seemed a done deal I’d be making this.

Without a doubt, this recipe was born of the depression era. And it’s a very simple concoction, much like the pear pie, except this one is a cobbler. It’s so simple it hardly needs a recipe, but yet it does, because you do have to make the batter with exact measurements. It’s merely a layer of apricots (I made a slightly smaller batch than shown below because I had a pound of apricots – plenty for me) and then a liquidy cake batter is poured over the top. I’m sure my mom made it in an 8×8 or a 9×9 Pyrex dish – I used one slightly smaller.

The apricots were perfectly ripe – they’d been sitting out on my kitchen island for about 3 days. One had spoiled, but the rest were still firm enough to slice without going to mush. No need to peel them, thank goodness. Apricot season is so short lived, which is sad.

I know my mother used to make this with canned apricots; so on a hunch, I went online to look up Betty Crocker recipes, and with only a couple of little changes, this recipe is very similar to a very old-time recipe. My mother’s family were from the Midwest. They didn’t use much seasoning on things and even desserts were simple affairs. I am certain my grandparents had an apricot tree in the farmhouse front yard. My grandma used to do a lot of canning and am sure also that I had this dessert many times over the years. It says the recipe came from Aunt Nora, who was my grandpa’s sister-in-law, widowed early in life and spent 30-40 years as a widow. She was a very sweet lady and I can picture her in her house in Turlock, wearing a frumpy thin, cotton plaid housedress, almost always with an apron on. She was a very good cook, as I recall. At right, the dish with the batter poured into it, ready to go in the oven.

Betty Crocker’s recipe calls for canned apricots, and it also calls for butter. Since my grandparents suffered a lot during the depression years, I suspect the butter got substituted with vegetable oil, which is what was in my mother’s recipe. My mom wrote (her handwriting) underneath my hand-written recipe for this – “May add a little nutmeg or cinnamon, or both . . . Mom.” Gosh I miss my mom. It’s been nearly 19 years since she died. She’d lived a long life (she was 89) but I sure wasn’t ready for her to go.

The only bit of advice I have about this recipe is to use a dish that’s wider than you might think you need – the batter oozes down into the apricots some, and they do soften, but you don’t want too much thickness – of the topping on top – so it’s good to spread the apricots out a bit. The dough is a tender cake mixture and you don’t want it to be too thick. Betty Crocker’s recipe adds sliced almonds on the top (which would have been nice if I’d noticed that before I slipped the dish into the oven – oh well) and uses almond extract in the batter. The batter completely covers the apricots – you can’t see any visible apricots at all – so you need to trust that the cake part is done. If you want to make sure, take the internal temp of it in the center of your baking dish – it should be about 190-200°F. At left, my hand-written recipe from the 1960’s with my mom’s added note below. Back in those days I used to do most of my writing as printing. There’s probably some psychology about that – I certainly don’t do that now and haven’t for decades. When I started college I started taking lecture notes by writing in caps. Who knows why.

What’s GOOD: if you like plain and simple, then this is right up your alley. I used almond extract, not lemon (I don’t have lemon extract – guess I could have used some lemon juice in lieu of some of the milk) and I liked the almond flavoring a lot. The cake is lovely – soft and tender. It was great with a little bit of vanilla ice cream on top. I think over the years I’ve had it with just a little half and half, or whipped cream too. The cobbler was super-easy to make. Satisfying too.

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of. This isn’t fancy, or different, or anything like that. Just plain, simple apricot cobbler.

printer-friendly PDF and MasterCook 15/16 file (click link to open recipe)

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You can always check on my most recent book reading on the left sidebar of my blog. I usually keep about the last 3-4, maybe 5 books I’ve read with a short blurb about it. Once they’re gone from that place, the list is gone – I don’t keep a running log of the books I read. I should have started that years ago, but I didn’t, and somehow, at my age, I’m not about to start now. I update the sidebar every month or so.

Having just read The Distant Marvels by Chantel Acevedo, I thought I’d actually write a post about it. One of my book clubs read the book, and we were meeting at one of our members’ homes. Peggy and her husband (along with their son) own a great little eclectic coffee store and small vegetarian restaurant (combined) in Orange, near where I leave. It’s called Mead’s Green Door. And within the same building is a cute, little fancy cake establishment, called Creative Cakes.

I think I heard that Peggy and Gary (her husband) bought Creative Cakes recently – as if they need more things to do. Oh my goodness. But what was fun, was that Peggy had an adorable cake at our book club meeting, all about this book. Peggy is a superb baker, so I’m not sure if she made the cake, of if she had the employees at Creative Cakes make it – it was SO delicious.

Isn’t it cute, though? Notice that the color scheme on the cake comes from the book’s cover. We hated to cut into that cake it was so adorable!

Anyway, the book . . . it’s about Cuba and weaves an intricate tale spanning a lifetime of the woman pictured. She lived during very tumultuous times in Cuba, including the Spanish revolution in the early 1900s. Her life was hard. Very hard. Certainly, this book is about relationships (what novel isn’t?). She has a loving, but troubled one, with her mother. She found love, but it was a somewhat taboo relationship – he was a rebel and he was black. Not common, most likely, in Cuba at that time. From Amazon, it says: “Maria Sirena tells stories. She does it for money—she was a favorite in the cigar factory where she worked as a lettora—and for love, spinning gossamer tales out of her own past for the benefit of friends, neighbors, and family.” A lettora was a “reader” or a storyteller, and although she began reading from books to the workers in the cigar factory, she eventually began telling the story of her life over the course of time. And in the book, decades later, living alone in one of Cuba’s coastal villages, a hurricane is headed toward them. Maria is old, and really doesn’t want to go to a safe house to weather the hurricane, but she’s swept there anyway by officials, despite her protests, to spend many days in an old, abandoned, but sturdy palace near her home. And it’s here that the myriad women housed there during the hurricane and its aftermath, begin telling stories of their lives. And Maria tells hers. And quite a story it is. Chapters go back in time as she re-lives the many escapades of her youth. And finally unburdens her own soul in the telling.

It was a wonderful book – you feel great compassion for Maria Sirena (from the older woman’s voice, you learn that she’s ill and likely dying, but that’s only a tiny backdrop), the struggles she had, the great love she experienced. Worth reading for sure.

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