Category Archives: Recipes (Sweet)

A Lovely Lemon Cake from the Girl & the Fig

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Cake so good that you'll make time to make it asap.

Meyer lemons. Rich olive oil. And heady rosemary.

All in one moist, flavorful cake that’s a California take on a Mediterranean classic.

One bite will have you transported to a white sandy beach by a crystalline blue sea.

That’s how good it is.

“Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Glaze” is from the news self-published  cookbook, “Plats du Jour” by Sondra Bernstein, proprietor of the popular Girl & the Fig restaurant in Sonoma, which serves up French country cooking with California sensibilities.

The book, of which I recently received a review copy, is full of recipes from the restaurant’s popular three-course “Plats du Jour” menu offered each Thursday evening, which incorporates the freshest seasonal ingredients. Cook a menu in its entirety or mix and match as you desire.

This simple cake couldn’t help but catch my eye, now that my backyard Meyer lemon tree is groaning with ripe fruit. You also can use Eureka lemons, too. But Meyers are less tart and more floral, making them especially wonderful to bake with.

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Merry Marzipan

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A basket of warm scones full of sweet marzipan nubbins.

Imagine waking up on Christmas morning to warm scones that hide little nubbins of sweet marzipan.

How’s that for a holiday gift to bring a smile bright and early?

“Marzipan Scones” is a recipe from the new book, “Baking Style” (Wiley) by noted baking authority Lisa Yockelson, of which I recently received a review copy. The book is full of  recipes for homespun cookies, breads, muffins and cakes  that just make you want to turn on your oven and spend an afternoon baking your heart out.

These scones are quite unusual. They look like bread and taste like cake.

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A Crust That’s Flaky In More Ways than One

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A perfect holiday dessert with the perfect -- and crazy -- crust.

We’ve all learned that to make the perfect, flaky crust, you need cold butter, cool hands and a resulting dough that must be chilled before it’s baked.

Now, take those techniques that you’ve labored to master all these years — and throw them out the window.

Because here’s a supremely flaky crust that breaks all those rules.

It’s made with boiling hot butter that’s mixed with flour to form a dough that you press — while still warm — into your pan before baking.

How crazy is that?

It’s almost embarrassingly easy and pretty fool-proof. And it produces a crust that would rival any at a fancy patisserie.

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A Gift of Sweet, Syrupy Clementines

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A sweet, delicious DIY gift.

I don’t know about you, but a gift at this time of year of something precious and sweet, all tied up with a bow in a glass jar is as wonderful as something in a familiar little blue box.

OK, almost as wonderful.

“Honey-Preserved Clementines” could not be easier, either, especially for a can-o-phobe like myself, who admittedly gets a little nervous around water-bath equipment.

But since these jars get stored in the refrigerator, you can skip that sort of, kind of scary step.

This recipe, published in the Dec. 2009/Jan. 2010 issue of Fine Cooking magazine, comes from my friends and prolific cookbook authors, Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough.

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Cabernet Wine — In Flour

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Cupcakes made with flour milled from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes skins.

You can find flour milled from most any grain these days.

Now, you also can find flour with red wine in it. Cabernet Sauvignon, to be exact.

Earlier this year, when I was strolling through the Tyler Florence Shop in Napa, I spied bags of Cabernet Wine Flour and Cabernet Cocoa Powder, both of which I just had to buy. After all, it’s pretty hard to resist their striking reddish-brown hues.

They’re made by Marche Noir Foods of Irvine, CA. The wine flour is made from the pomace (skins) of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes after they are crushed. The skins are dried, then milled into a powder, which apparently is high in iron, fiber and Resveratrol (a natural anti-oxidant). The Cabernet Cocoa Powder is just dark cocoa powder mixed with the Cabernet Wine Flour.

The beautiful color of the wine flour.

A 10-ounce bag of the Cabernet Wine Flour was $14.95 at the store; a 10-ounce bag of the Cabernet Cocoa Powder was $9.95.

I couldn’t wait to try baking with them. The Marche Noir Web site is a good place to start for recipes. I zeroed in on the one for “Cabernet Velvet Cupcakes with Ganache Glaze,” which incorporates both the wine flour and cocoa powder. The recipe also calls for red food coloring, but I left that out.

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