Browsing Tag:

dessert

on
November 11, 2023

Caramel Apple Cake

This cake began with me flipping through my well-loved copy of Tartine’s first cookbook and finding myself suddenly intrigued by their recipe for caramel apples. Up until then, I had never had a caramel apple. I had never wanted a caramel apple. I had never understood why anyone would want an apple dunked in sweet, sticky goo. But for whatever reason, because my brain is the way it is, I suddenly very much wanted a caramel apple. And not just any caramel apple, but Tartine’s caramel apples.

So… why not make an entire cake to go with it? Let’s break it down:

  • Cake: Lightly spiced cake studded with fresh apple chunks
  • Filling: Italian buttercream whipped with tangy sour cream and honey
  • Outer: Italian buttercream
  • Topping: Tart and buttery apple cider caramel

All together, you get a cake that just bursts with proper apple goodness.

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on
March 30, 2020

chocolate chip cookies

If I go to a bakery and there is a chocolate chip cookie available, I must try it. It is my duty, and I will not fail. As such, I have eaten many chocolate chip cookies, and friends, they come in so many textures, densities, flavor profiles, shapes, and sizes that it’s strange they are all supposedly the same kind of cookie. I have tasted cakey versions, crispy versions, versions that are more chocolate than cookie, kinds with huge flecks of salt on top and ones made with half white and half whole wheat flour.

Through this very meticulous, science-based cookie eating research, I have come to a conclusion as to what is the best kind of chocolate chip cookie. According to me, a professional, a chewy chocolate chip cookie is best. The edges should be crispy, but give way easily to a center that is just set. The cookie itself should taste of toffee and golden butter, with generous pockets of melty bittersweet chocolate.

 

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on
March 19, 2018

no-churn ice cream: fruity pebbles, mint cookies & cream

I have made ice cream approximately… *counts on fingers*one time in my life, and that was in elementary school. We filled a bag with the ice cream mix, then put that bag inside another bag, then put that bag inside yet another bag full of ice and rock salt, and tossed it around to each other until it solidified through a combination of physics and magic. This blew Grade School Amy’s mind, but a later attempt to recreate the process at home ended in a burst-bag-salty-ice-water-all-over-the-kitchen-floor tragedy.

A mere two decades later, I finally have redemption.


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on
April 14, 2017

“One Chocolate Cake to Rule Them All” Cake

Birthday cake, round two: weekend edition. To drag my birthday week out and end it on a high note, my friends and I had a great meal at Oddfellows on Saturday night. I highly recommend that place for any gathering — the service was great and the food and drinks were delicious!


Hello, party people!

I used to go there just for casual lunches and snacks when I still lived in that neighborhood, and it doesn’t hurt that Oddfellows is next to my favorite bookstore in the city, either. Work up an appetite browsing and purchasing new lovely things to read, then pop over next door for a meal — that’s the ideal weekend activity, if you ask me.

But I’m still of the mindset that anything calling itself a birthday celebration is incomplete without cake, so I made something I’ve been meaning to make for a long time: an intensely chocolate cake.


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on
April 5, 2017

Mimosa Cake (Champagne & Grapefruit)

My birthday is today and true to form, I’ve made my own birthday cake. Or rather, I made one to “celebrate all the April birthdays in my office” but who are we kidding, I made this cake for me.

My birthday cake for the last few years has been varying iterations of a fruit and custard cake because it is the best kind of cake in existence and if you disagree you are wrong, but that’s a post for another time. This post is about a different kind of cake, because this is a different kind of birthday. This year, I’m turning 30.


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on
January 29, 2017

“You Are the Morning, I Am the Night” Cake (Chocolate & Vanilla)

Annnnd we’re back to cakes. Did you really think I’d stay away for very long? Of course you didn’t, because you know how I am by now.

A friend was celebrating her birthday, and all celebrations of surviving another year /slash/ shaking your fist at mortality should involve a cake of some sort. So I set out to make one for her, and remembered that a few months ago, she had told me in passing that she loved chocolate cake with vanilla icing.

…or was it vanilla cake with chocolate icing?

Goddamnit.


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on
January 16, 2017

Frootfetti Cake (or Früt/”Fruit”-fetti Cake)

Wait, what’s all this then?? Didn’t I just say one post ago that one of my resolutions was to be healthier? And now there is a goddamn cake recipe here?!

You caught me. I did say that. But then I also decided that healthier doesn’t have to necessarily mean “devoid of cake” because quite simply, a good cake makes me happy. And what’s the point of being “healthy” if I’m just bummed out all the time from the distinct lack of cake in my life? I don’t want to get hit by a bus and have my dying thought be “goddamnit I should’ve eaten that cake, why did I endure six weeks of endless grain bowls.”

So to kick off a year of being healthier and happier, here is a cake. It is not a healthy cake because there is no such thing. A good cake will contain butter and sugar and flour (or some kind of flour alternative at the very least), so might as well just let it be what it is. But if you’re going to treat yourself, why not go big, like with a fun cake studded with Fruity Pebbles “funfetti.” This thing can be part of your very unbalanced complete breakfast once in a while.

An old coworker gave me Tessa Huff’s beautiful book Layered for Christmas, and so this is a riff on the strawberry confetti cake inside. Something I didn’t do for this particular cake (but that I included in my recipe below) is steeping some Fruity Pebbles in the milk before baking with it. I imagine that’d only bump up the cereal flavor by a delicious percent (whatever percentage that might be).


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on
September 6, 2016

Homemade Kit Kats

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Halloween is coming!

Okay, it’s still a month away, but it’ll sneak up on you. Like Christmas always does, but way spookier and with much tackier decorations. Speaking of, have you ever really thought about what you’re buying when you buy Halloween decorations? You’re spending money on things to make your house look like actual garbage: cobwebs in a bag, bloody rags, maybe some rubber severed limbs. It’s pretty bizarre, all things considered, to have a holiday where you actively try to make your yard look like you’re some kind of mass murderer with a poor sense of body disposal.

That said, I do love Halloween. What better excuse to put together an amazing costume that represents who you truly are inside? Perhaps Batman, or Beetlejuice, or a sexy Spongebob Squarepants.

But even as an adult, the thing I love most about Halloween is the candy. Or rather, all the candy that goes on massive clearance the day after Halloween, muahahahahahaaha. And the king of all candy? KIT KATS.

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on
September 4, 2016

Brown Butter Froot Loop Treats

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I don’t remember much about my college dining hall, except that there was a salad station where I often got chunks of cheddar cheese… and little to no actual salad things, come to think of it. Hmmm.

Also, there were always stacks and stacks of Rice Krispie treats, but more importantly, stacks and stacks of marshmallow treats made out of many other kinds of cereals. Golden Grahams, Cocoa Krispies, Captain Crunch, and my personal favorite, Froot Loops. Genius.

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I mean, look at how cheery these are. How can you not smile when you see them?
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on
July 11, 2016

Blueberry Galette

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BLUEBERRIES BLUEBERRIES BLUEBERRIES. The best berries (second only to the blackberry) and whenever they’re in season, I stock up with pints and pints of it. The best way to enjoy blueberries is to shovel them into your mouth, without shame or decorum. But another excellent vehicle for blueberry delivery, if you need to eat in a manner that is more socially acceptable, is the blueberry galette.

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Golden, crispy crust and sweet, warm blueberries oozing out here and there — what’s not to like? Better yet, if you’ve got as much of a delicate hand as a herd of cattle, fret not because galettes are supposed to look messy and wild. It’s rustic.

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