Sunday, December 17, 2006

Lemon Sables


I made the traditional french sable recipe from Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking From My Home to Yours, but at lemon zest. They are a yummy, buttery, shortbread cookie. I like them because they aren't too sweet, the sugar on the outside edge add enough sweet but do not over power the richness of the cookie. They were easy to make and I will definately do it again. They remind me of those danish butter cookies you get in tins around Christmas, the ones with pretzel shaped cookies dipped in clear decorater's sugar, yum yum.

Truffles galore!



These are some of the 100+truffles I made for Christmas gifts this year. I got the recipe from Carole Bloom, cookbook author, teacher, and more, during a cooking class I took. The same class as the peanut brittle. She made the Chinese five spice truffles for us in class and gave us the recipe for it. I took that recipe split it in half and made three different flavors using the same basic idea as the original recipe. I made 5 spice, orange, and mint truffles. My favorite is the orange, I used the fresh zest of an orange that I steeped with the cream and a couple teaspoons of grand marnier over the chocolate. I also really like the 5 spice which are different but addictive. I used 70 percent Schrafen Berger chocolate which is my go to chocolate. The recipe says it makes 60 truffles but each half recipe of mine made 35-45 truffles. I guess I made mine on the small side but I kinda like it that way because they are that rich.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

peanut brittle



I made peanut brittle last night. It was the first time I have tried and after I burnt the first batch of sugar, which made the whole house smell like toasted marshmellows, I succeeded. The recipe was from cookbook author Carole Bloom. I took a class with her at the cooking school in town and she made them. Hers was the best brittle I ever had so I had to try and make it for Christmas. She dipped hers in chocolate, which I might do, but I liked it plain. It was an easy recipe to follow and except for my burning sugar, it came out perfectly. I liked the fact that I didn't need to use a candy themometer. I should have some more of her recipes up in a few days. Yum yum.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Me write good


Here is a long over do photo of the cake I made for my sister-in-law's birthday in September. It is the same cake I made and wrote about last spring, a recipe from Alice Medrich. It tasted and looked just as wonderful the second time around. I really am posting this so that my brother can see that I do have decent penmanship when I use frosting.