S’mores Cake

I’ve been itching to bake lately, and once again Smitten Kitchen has provided the proper inspiration. I put a few tweaks on this recipe and made it a smaller size (well, smaller pans – but it was tall), but generally this is her recipe.

I basically made 2/3 of her recipe – upping the graham crumbs a bit and reducing the all purpose flour a bit. I kept the chocolate amount the same, and I added some marshmallows… because while a toasted meringue is good, it’s not the same as marshmallows. Next time I think I’ll do a 1/2 a recipe, with her proportions exactly, and see if it would be a bit saner of a size. Of course, a cupcake version may be more realistic…

If you want the original recipe, go buy the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook – every recipe we’ve tried so far has been a winner.

Lemon Pudding Cake

We were looking for a good weeknight dessert. Something not too decadent, but still tasty. A nice end to a weeknight dinner. We pulled out our Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites cookbook (which has sat on the shelf far too long), and found this gem, which exceeded our expectations! Oh man is it full of flavour. It’s got a great lemon punch, and the textures are awesome – pudding on the bottom, sponge-y cake on top. The recipe says you can serve it warm or cold, but we found fresh out of the oven warm to be the best bet (of course), but warming up leftovers is highly recommended… didn’t work quite as well cold for us.

The beautifully puffed-up top did deflate a bit after it sat, but it still was a great treat a few days after baking. It’s fancy looking enough that it would for guests as well, but simple enough for a weeknight as well.

The recipe:

The Birthday Cake(s)

Our little girl turned one! It’s hard to believe – this year has all of the clichés of new parenthood: It flew by (they grow up so fast!), it dragged (OMG so tired needmoresleep), and we can’t quite remember what life was like before Violet.

In fact – she turned one nearly 3 months ago. And in the trend of my latest blog posts, this one is only now being written. Hopefully we can get caught up and post some of the awesome things we’ve been cooking and baking lately. But for now… the birthday cake(s)!

Blackberry Lime Pie

I should’ve just titled this “prettiest pie ever” or better yet “best meringue ever” because that’s what I’m going to come back to this post for. I mean, just look at that pie. Is that not amazing? By far the prettiest pie I’ve ever made, and that meringue was to die for.

Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie

The photo kind of says it all.

A graham cracker crust with an extraordinarily rich peanut butter filling, topped with homemade honeycomb and a chocolate drizzle. Likely the best pie I’ve ever made.

Did I mention the peanut butter filling was rich? Yeah, it has eight egg yolks. EIGHT. This is not a pie for the faint of heart. It is, however, a pie worth savouring.

Another thing this pie is NOT is quick and easy. It’s a bit of a process, but it’s worth it for a special occasion. I recommend making the honeycomb the day before so you don’t have to do everything in one day.

The full recipe is here.

One note: With my first attempt at the honeycomb, I didn’t let it get very brown for fear of it burning, but then it didn’t turn out at all. I let the second batch get pretty dark and ended up with a slightly “toasted” flavour, but it was still good.

New & Improved: Vanilla Peach Custard Pie

Two years ago around this time, I posted a recipe for Peach Custard Pie. It was quite good. In the time since then I’ve tinkered with this recipe a few times and have improved it enough that I think it’s worth a new post. It’s now a Vanilla Peach Custard Pie, and it’s damn tasty.

First of all – ignore any pie crust recipe you see on this blog (or elsewhere, really), and just make this one. Always. I screwed it up in my most recent attempt and it still turned out awesome. Trust me – just listen to Deb at Smitten Kitchen, make that pie crust, and (perhaps with a little practice), you’ll be hailed as the best pie crust maker ever.

For this recipe you need half of the dough – so either make half, or make two pies!

Now, for the rest of the pie:

Vanilla Peach Custard Pie With Struesel Topping

Crust

• See above

Filling

• 4 medium size peaches (or more – extra filling is always good!)
• 1 cup vanilla yogurt
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 cup vanilla sugar*
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon vanilla paste (use extract if you have to -but paste makes it all that much better)

Streusel Topping

• 4 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup vanilla sugar*
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (Recipe says optional, but I disagree. Not optional.)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425°F.

1. Make crust, and line pan.

2. Make Filling:

• Peel and slice peaches 1/4 inch thick and place in pie shell.
• Whisk together yogurt, egg yokes, sugar, flour and vanilla until just blended and pour over top of the peaches. Bake for 30 minutes until custard is mostly set.

3. Streusel Topping:.

• Combine butter, flour, sugar and cinnamon with your fingers until crumbly.
• Sprinkle evenly over top of pie and bake for an additional 15 minutes until custard is set.

Let pie cool and serve cold or warm. Enjoy!

*Regular sugar works fine too – but if you haven’t already, make some vanilla sugar! Just throw a few vanilla beans into a jar of sugar and let it sit. Soon enough you’ll have fragrant vanilla sugar!

Amazingly Fudgy Brownies

For Violet’s 2 week birthday, Adam and I were feeling ready to get back into the kitchen. The February issue of Bon Appétit had arrived just in time, and included a number of recipes to get us inspired.

Adam wanted to make chili for the Superbowl, and decided on the veggie version – a Black Bean Chili with Butternut Squash. Unfortunately that didn’t fare so well… it ended up extremely spicy – and not all that interesting. So if you also get Bon Appétit, I’d give that recipe a miss.

These brownies, however… make them. Make them NOW. They weren’t kidding about them being the best ever – they are so fudgy and decadent. A great way to get back into baking. MmmMm.

Full recipe:

They Call It Flan

I’ll admit, the first time someone mentioned flan to me, a supermarket-produced fruit flan popped into my head and I thought “Ooh, I like fruit flan.”  Little did I realize that flan (pronounced “flahn”) in the Mexican sense bears a striking resemblance in look and flavour to crème caramel.

This all started with the same process that led to Cari and I to make the indulgent End Of The Week Sundae some weeks ago.  We were going to spend our Friday night at home, eating fajitas and catching up on the week’s TV shows that had accumulated on our PVR.  Unfortunately we did glaze over the part of this recipe that read “chill until cold, at least four hours…”  Oops.

Anyway, we still went ahead and made the flan a few days later and it turned out really well.  It’s a recipe we’re happy to try again.  Not only is it super-easy, it only requires a handful of ingredients, all of which are always in stock at our house: sugar, water, milk, salt, eggs, vanilla.  That’s it!  We probably overcooked the caramel a bit, but it still tasted great.

Again, no adaptations on our part, so here’s Epicurious.com’s Classic Flan Recipe.  Enjoy!

Shana Tova!

Rosh Hashanah is here, and for those of you who also celebrate the Jewish New Year, I thought I’d share a few recipes I’ve been eyeing to mark the occasion. There’s only so many I’ll have time for this year, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try them! And even if you aren’t Jewish, if you’re a fan of apple, honey – or (even better) apple and honey together – this post is for you.

Here are a few sweet ways to get your year off to a good start:

End of the Week Sundae

Last week Adam and I were home on Friday night. It’s a fairly rare thing these days, so we decided we wanted to make it somewhat nice. Our dinner was a weeknight meal we’d had planned but had put off, and while it’s a meal we really enjoy – it wasn’t quite “special.” The perfect remedy for this? An awesome dessert. Oh yes.