Category Archives: Fruit

It’s Not Too Soon For Pumpkin Spice, Is It? Plus Wine Time

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Perfect with coffee or tea, Donsuemor Pumpkin Spice madeleines. (photo by Carolyn Jung)

Perfect with coffee or tea, Donsuemor Pumpkin Spice madeleines. (photo by Carolyn Jung)

Pumpkin Spice Madeleines

Tender, cake-like and full of autumnal spices, Donsuemor’s Pumpkin Spice Madeleines are a sweet treat hard to resist.

Yes, you might not be ready for pumpkin spice season yet. But it is upon us in full force already. So you might as well embrace it wholeheartedly. Especially when it means indulging in cookies like these.

Donsuemor has been baking French madeleines in the East Bay since 1976.

A package of six pumpkin spice ones are about $4. Find them at Raley’s, Mollie Stone’s and other retailers.

You Know You Want A Pumpkin Spice Latte

It is indeed that time already at Starbucks. The frenzy over pumpkin spice lattes has begun.

But why slog over to Starbucks, wait in line, and fork over bucks when you can get your fix by making your own pumpkin spice latte at home for a lot less money.

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Two Treats In One: Blackberry Torta Della Nonna

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Perfect little mounds grace this intriguing tart.

Perfect little mounds grace this intriguing tart.

 

How magical and intriguing is this tart?

What could possibly create all those perfect little mounds that give this Italian dessert its distinctive look?

When James Beard Award-winning Chef Alon Shaya first laid eyes on this treat in Italy while working at a salumeria-restaurant, he thought it surely must be extremely difficult to make, a laborious affair that demanded the highest precision.

He soon learned how wrong he was.

Eddy, a matronly and motherly cook who took him under her wings, learned how to make this from her mother, who learned it from her mother before her. And she gladly taught it to Shaya.

The secret to its perfect little mounds?

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Superiority Burger’s Blackberry Sorbet

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As smooth as it gets -- home-made blackberry sorbet.

As smooth as it gets — home-made blackberry sorbet.

 

She made a blackberry sorbet.

The kind you find in a great ice cream store.

Blackberry sorbet.

And it was so good, she couldn’t brag much more.

Blackberry sorbet.

I think I love her.

With apologies to the late-great Prince, I couldn’t help but have that refrain pop into my head even though blackberry — rather than raspberry — was on my mind recently.

Dig a spoon in, and you’ll be singing the praises of this super easy “Blackberry Sorbet” recipe, too.

It’s from the new “Superiority Burger Cookbook” (W.W. Norton & Co.), of which I received a review copy. The book is by Brooks Headley, a punk rock drummer and James Beard Award-winning chef.

In 2015, he left the lauded Del Posto restaurant in New York, where he was executive pastry chef, to open a 300-square-foot basement-level vegetarian burger bar in the East Village, Superiority Burger.

SuperiorityCookbook

He hasn’t looked back since. Unlike some of the more newfangled veggie burgers try their hardest to mimic ground meat, Superiority doesn’t take that tack. It’s clearly a vegetable-based burger in texture, but wow, does it ever pack an umami punch. It’s so assertively savory tasting that you don’t miss the meat. Even my husband, aka Meat Boy, didn’t, if you can believe it, when we tried it last year.

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RIND It Up

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RIND Orchard Blend (front) with big pieces of persimmon with their rinds, of course.

RIND Orchard Blend (front) with big pieces of persimmon with their rinds, of course.

 

Did you know that rinds are gold — containing more fiber and a higher concentration of nutrients than the flesh of the fruits themselves?

Matt Weiss knows, as did his great-grandmother who had her own health food store in Michigan back in the 1920s that sold bulk natural foods. Following in her footsteps, Weiss has come up with RIND, dried fruit with skins intact.

The fruit snack is just that — simply fruit, with no added sugar, sulfites or additives.

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