I made this cheesecake several months ago (yes, I’m terribly behind on posting) to mark the retirement of a colleague. When I asked her what her favourite kind of cake was, she promptly answered either chocolate cake or cheesecake. I love it when people have a ready answer to that question, and also, how can you go wrong with either option?
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A few years ago I bought a humble little sandwich cookie at the cafe in the building where I used to
work, and its almondy-raspberry-crumbly-shortbreadiness has been in my head ever since. I meant to finally re-create this cookie and post it in time for Valentine’s Day (hence the hearts), but, well, it’s the end of March now, so you can see how that went. But these are definitely better late than never, and like most good cookies, are much more than the seemingly simple sum of their parts: two almond shortbread cookies perfumed with lemon zest, sandwiched with tart yet sweet raspberry jam, drizzled with creamy white chocolate.
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Blackberry season almost completely passed me by this year. Normally I’m out scouring the neighbourhood ditches and roadsides for blackberries the minute I notice they are ripe, but somehow I missed the signs and nearly forgot. Luckily, once I remembered, the blackberry item I had in mind only required a small handful of berries, which is how I ended up foraging for blackberries in the rain at the very tail end of the season and came up with just enough for this pretty little tart.
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Confession: these white chocolate cranberry almond biscotti were in fact part of my Christmas baking. I make them every year for holiday gift-giving, and they are by far the crowd favourite. I personally only bake them at Christmas, but there’s no reason they can’t be made at any other time of the year. For example, Valentine’s Day. Because homemade biscotti is a sure-fire way to say “I love you”.
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Nate and I usually host our families for Thanksgiving dinner, but with my bum elbow making it a little difficult to stuff a turkey – let alone maneuver it in and out of the oven – my parents took on the hosting duties this year, and I brought dessert. Pumpkin pie is traditional of course, but I don’t actually like it all that much. The slightly wet, heavy filling manages to make even the flakiest pastry soggy and just doesn’t get me excited about eating it. However I was very excited about eating this pumpkin roulade the minute I saw the recipe.
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Along with the perfect Christmas dessert and the best Christmas cookies, every year I’m on the look out for a delicious holiday breakfast or brunch pastry – and this year, I think I may have stumbled on it kind of by accident. I had half a batch of challah dough in my freezer, a container of cranberry sauce leftover from Thanksgiving, and I’d just seen a photo of the beautiful poppy seed tea “braid” from Luisa Weiss‘ Classic German Baking – and it all came together in a swirly braid filled with cranberry sauce, white chocolate chunks, and lemon zest, glazed with a lemony icing. It was a huge loaf, so I gave some to friends and planned to take the rest to work to share with my colleagues… but plans changed when Nate and I discovered how good it was, and we ate it all ourselves! (Sorry, colleagues!)
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In July, I made a wedding cake for my friend Clare and her now-husband Tony. I’ve known Clare for most of my life – we first met in grade 1, and we shared the unique experience of having parents who were teachers and/or principals in a small town, thereby ensuring that most of our friends had been either taught social studies, ukulele, French and/or given detention by our mum or dad. We were in French immersion together from grade 7 onward, and I have a vivid memory of dressing as the Spice Girls with a group of friends for one of her epic birthday parties (I, slightly unconvincingly, was Scary Spice). We sort of lost touch after high school when we both moved away to university and started Adult Life, but I was totally thrilled when Clare told me she was getting married and asked if I would make her cake. Obviously, I said yes!
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This is not technically a Valentine’s Day post – February 14th just so happens to be the day I’m pressing “post” on something I’ve been working on veeeeeeeery slowly for the past 2 week. The only thing vaguely Valentine’s-y about it is that the inside is a little bit pink, but the point of today’s post is this: If you’re looking for a cake to put underneath your white chocolate peony, look no further. Without the peony, this cake looks plain on the outside but it is actually anything but – starting with the fact that it is flavoured with grapefruit. Lemon, orange and lime usually get all the citrus attention in baking, but replacing the lemon in lemon poppy seed cake with grapefruit and pairing it with white chocolate mousse frosting is pretty brilliant.
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This month marks a new direction for the Daring Bakers, who have now joined forces with the Daring Cooks in a single monthly Daring Kitchen Challenge. Shillpa of Cakeline the Journey kicked off this new format by setting us all the challenge of cake design – specifically the use of “edible clays” such as fondant, gum paste, and/or modeling chocolate to create fully edible cake decorations. I hardly need an excuse to bake a cake, so I was right into this challenge.
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I have become recently obsessed with The Great British Bake Off. As in, I spent most of Sunday watching episodes on the internet and searching through my cookbooks for the recipes that I would make if I was on the show. I know, get a hobby, right? (Wait, this is my hobby…) In the words of one Season 3 contestant whenever things got heated, oh my giddy aunt! I just love it – great baking combined with the typical British stiff upper lip and self-deprecating attitude, which is such a refreshing difference from the ridiculously ego-driven and sob-story-laden world of North American “reality” TV.
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