Tarragon and Chives

We loved this dense chocolate-y not too sweet cake made with my favorite unsalted Irish butter, unsweetened cocoa powder and Guinness extra stout.  This simple dark chocolate cake is then iced with a luscious cream cheese frosting that transforms the cake into a lookalike frothy pint.  I'm thinking this will be my go to chocolate cake for a gathering, serves 12 generously.  Wonderful for a Saint Patrick celebration with family and friends. This recipe comes from Nigella Lawson (NYT food section) I have made a few adjustments to the following recipe for my taste.  For the Cake 1 cup Guinness extra stout 10 tablespoons unsalted Kerrygold Irish ☘️  butter, cut into pieces 3/4 Cup unsweetened European style cocoa powder 2 cups extra fine sugar 3/4 cup sour cream 2 large eggs 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 2 & 1/2 teaspoons baking soda For the Frosting 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature  1 & 1/2 cups confectioners sugar 1/3...

  Crimson red and golden slices of ripe plums adorn the hidden top of a slightly crunchy cornmeal cake in this recipe, all you have to do is wait until the cake cools before removing it from the pan and flipping it over to reveal the colorful display.  My husband loved this cake after dinner and for breakfast, that's all I needed to know before sharing this recipe with you.  The medium small purple plums came from our local farmers market, they ripened in a bowl on my counter just in time to top this not overly sweet wonderful crunchy cake. Ingredients and Recipe for Plum Upside-Down Cornmeal Cake Serves 8 Preheat the oven to 350F Spray an 8" Springform cake pan 8 medium small purple plums Cinnamon sugar *for sprinkling (about 1-2 tablespoons) divided * cinnamon sugar made with granulated sugar sprinkled with cinnamon to taste Prepare the Fruit Wash and slice the plums, removing the pits. Sprinkle the sprayed pan with cinnamon sugar and arrange the plum slices in the pan....

 Good grief, Easter is in the rear view mirror and we are deep into this new year.  And once again it's tea time at my house.  This chamomile tea cake is a beautiful sweet addition to any tea ritual, especially my favorite, chamomile tea, which I rediscovered in my hotel room in Carmel earlier this fast moving year.  I highly recommend a slice of chamomile tea cake with strawberry 🍓 icing with a cup of chamomile tea to just take a moment and slow this year down.  Baking with tea is both creative and fun.  Earlier this year I made Earl Gray sugar cookies which are made using the same method of infusing the butter with loose tea.  For my tea cake I also rubbed the lemon zest into the sugar -another way to lend a pop of citrus to your baking. The strawberry icing is made using freeze dried strawberries, I pulverize them in my spice mill and then they are pressed through a fine sieve into the confectioner's sugar.  In addition to using lemon zest rub...

  Attention readers: Today's post is a lemon buttermilk pound cake with lemon curd made using my Meyers.  One dozen medium small size Meyer lemons make a cup of fresh lemon juice, enough for about three cups of lemon curd.  I'm happy about that as I have a drawer in my fridge filled to the top with citrus, mostly lemons that need to be juiced and zested.  Making lemon curd is an annual event, making pound cake is more like semi-annual.  Looking for new lemon pound cake recipes is a casual hobby.  I find cake baking and curd making to be a nice distraction these days, I hope you enjoy my photo and the following recipes.  The lemon curd recipe for the pound cake makes extra (3 cups total) for your toast or as a dessert sauce.  Lemon curd sealed in a sterile canning jar will last several weeks in the fridge.  The Meyer lemon pound cake which is baked in a bundt pan isn't overly sweet while packing lots of lemon flavor, very nice for an afternoon...

We had our house inspected by the fire department so we could make it safer during wild fire season, which is now several months of the year in California.  One of the suggestions was to remove several large ornamental grasses from the front yard because embers from a wild fire could start a fire inside the grasses and they were all too close to the house.  The large grasses actually die completely back in the winter and were just starting to leaf out again when we ripped them all out, good-bye 👋   The good news is I don't miss the decorative grasses at all but the other news is the front of our house now looks like my Meyer lemon 🍋  olive oil cake photo, very simple, less is more.  Preparing our surroundings for fire season or even just thinking about fire season sucks but lemon cake will help with that.  This cake is simple and definitely delicious with the lemony glaze, make it before the red flag 🚩 warnings start. Ingredients and Recipe for Meyer Lem...

  I would say that the frosting makes this cake but the peanut butter cake is pretty delicious too.  This is an old fashioned favorite icing that has to be immediately spread on the cake, no messing around.  My grandson JD loved this creation, so I will be making the cake and frosting again; my goal next time is to be a faster froster so the icing is prettier.  Something to look forward to in this time of quarantine, so over it, I know. Also, don't leave off the flaky salt on top of the frosting, that would be a mistake.  Peanut butter cake is a natural with salty caramel frosting, you'll see.  I used Jif Natural Creamy Peanut 🥜 Butter, no need to stir and makes a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Ingredients and Recipe for Peanut Butter Cake with a Salty Caramel Frosting serves 8-10 Peanut Butter Cake 3/4 cup brown sugar 2 large eggs 1/2 cup creamy or smooth peanut butter 1/2 cup buttermilk 1/2 cup canola oil 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1/2 teaspoon ...

Gently ripe Bartlett pears 🍐 are what you want for this cake.  They should be peeled, cored and cut in small bite size pieces.  The small chunks of pear look beautiful next to the bursts of chopped cranberries throughout this gingery cake that I baked in a standard loaf pan.  I would not forget a generous drizzle of the buttery whiskey glaze to adorn the cake's top, especially if serving for a special dessert.  However, we also enjoyed thick slices for breakfast without the glaze, also very good with coffee. I'm going to have my eyes checked this afternoon and am wondering if I should wear a mask, spacesuit and a diaper to go to the doctor's 🥼 office.  We have been staying home, mostly-except for a few approved activities, like going to to the grocery store, woo hoo.  But, now we need to do things, like get our eyes 👀 checked, this pandemic is really getting old, so over it.  I digress, here is the recipe for this lovely cake that is perfe...

 Quarantine baking continues.  I know it's dangerous to bake and have all this deliciousness in my house but, oh well.  I did include fruit 🍐  in this simple baking project.  I have a small library of cookbooks including many from Food52 and that is where I found this brown sugar pound cake recipe, perfect for Fall baking.  This is my idea of a plated dessert that follows a special dinner.  The roasted pears are sweet and tender with their pan sauce served on top of the dense caramel flavored brown sugar pound cake.  I might just make it again for the holidays, is there a way to get eggnog in the whipped cream on top?  I'll find a way. Ingredients and Recipe for Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Roasted Pears and Crème Fraîche Whipped Cream Serves 8 for the brown sugar pound cake  1 & 3/4 cups all purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon sea salt 1 cup unsalted butter 1 cup packed light brown sugar 4 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla e...

  My Favorite Apple Cake Apple 🍎 🍏  cake for dinner?  That would be a yes and thank you very much from me, but I would love a slice anytime, definitely with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.  Especially when the skies are a somber gray and the air is full of ash.  Too unhealthy to walk or play outside but cool enough, no bright sunshine in my California day, to turn on my oven and bake a cake. WE need apple cake.  I recently had a good size harvest from my apple trees.  I gave away several bags of apples to friends and of course left myself a few healthy bowls of apples in the kitchen.  But, now it's time to get serious about a few annual baking projects that I enjoy.  Apple cake along with apple pie are both on top of my pre-fall to do list.  I've been making just the pie fillings bagged up for the freezer but the apple cake is to be sliced and enjoyed today, amen. I made a few changes to this original recipe from Dorie Greens...

Gracie, my 10 year old granddaughter  and I have been wanting to make a strawberry cake with whipped cream for such a long time, we made it happen this week.  I found what I think is a do-able recipe for a French style cake with strawberries and a cream filling to make at home with basic baking ingredients including fresh strawberries which are still in season.  We baked a butter cake for the base, then we cleaned, trimmed and sliced the strawberries together. We used a springform pan for the cake; the cake was trimmed and put back into the pan with a parchment collar to support the berries and cream topping.  Then we whipped up a cream cheese, sugar and heavy cream mixture that we piped around and into the strawberries that we layered around the sides and into the center of the cake.  We put aside a few sliced strawberries to decorate the top before serving.  The cake has to be refrigerated over night for the cream filling to firm up so it can be sliced ...