Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
This cake is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. And, more importantly, Bryan agrees. Since the man has a compulsive need to disagree with me over everything (snort), the fact that he agreed means this cake is truly something special.
I made the cake the day [...]

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
I pride myself on my caramel skills. Every year around Christmas, I start making caramels. Chocolate caramels, cinnamon caramels, coffee caramels, mocha caramels, orange caramels, and on and on. Depending on how generous I’m feeling (and how many I can hide from Bryan), some of those caramels [...]

In Utah, where I grew up, asparagus grows wild alongside most country roads. It was a weekly ritual for our family to take a walk and collect asparagus, so I ate it pretty much all spring and early summer. When I started cooking with Bryan, one of the first things he told me he didn’t [...]

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
“Oh my.”
That was pretty much all I could think of when I bit into a square of these deep, dark chocolatey brownies. The texture was some where between cakey and fudgey, moist but not dense and crunchy from cacoa nibs. They were so good that Bryan and [...]

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
I generally find the idea of candied citrus peel more appealing than the actual product. Usually, the peel is too bitter for me, even when it is coated in sugar and/or chocolate. But, after making the pink grapefruit granita, I had a mound of grapefruit peel staring me [...]

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
Not long after Pure Dessert was published, this cookie recipe started popping up on the internet. Pretty much everybody who tried them really liked them, and I have to agree. These cookies are addictive. The buckwheat flour gives the cookies a slightly grassy, sweet flavor that goes [...]

Currently cooking out of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich.
The next cookbook comes from Alice Medrich, one of my favorite cookbook authors. Back in the 70s, Medrich decided to open a dessert shop in Berkeley that sold truffles, among other things. Unlike today, truffles weren’t a common confection to most Americans in the 70s. Especially not truffles made [...]

Currently cooking out of Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way by Lorna Sass.
Somehow, I managed to buy half of the ingredients for this recipe and half the ingredients for another recipe and didn’t realize it until I started cooking. I ended up with a Frankenstein recipe: the head of this recipe with the body of [...]

My new favorite bean soup that isn’t from the grains cookbook . . .
I love bean soups, especially when the beans don’t come from a can. But I usually don’t have enough patience to soak my own beans, so I don’t cook bean soup very often. This recipe has me whistling a different tune, though.
The [...]

Currently cooking out of Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way by Lorna Sass.
Remember this post a couple of weeks ago? Well, ever since then, I’ve been beating my head against a wall called Lemon-Poppyseed Muffins. And the wall has been winning.
From the first time I made these muffins, I thought they had promise, but also [...]