Plums are ripe and abundant on neighborhood trees. While 2020 has been a tumultuous year, it’s been fabulous for plums. Something about the weather here in California has graced the plum trees with amazing fecundity. A friend has a bumper crop of Santa Rosa plums and gifted me with a crate of ripe fruit. This…
Strawberry Buttercream Cupcakes
These delightful gems are sweet, buttery, fluffy, and filled with strawberry flavor. Vanilla hot milk sponge cake topped with a dollop of strawberry jam, then cloaked in a swirl of strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream. The key to the cupcake’s lovely strawberry flavor is powdered freeze dried strawberries. The hot milk sponge cupcakes are easy to…
Lemon Poppy Seed Snack Cake
My daughter left her apartment in NYC and came back to California due to the Covid-19 shut down — I’m grateful that she is safe and with me for the moment! One of the things she misses from her life on the east coast is a lemon poppy seed muffin made by a cafe next…
Yogurt Cheese
What’s a flavor cross between yogurt, chèvre and cream cheese — equally happy with savory or sweet flavors layered on top? Yogurt Cheese, of course! I recently created this simple cheese and was delighted with the results. What inspired this was a quart of amazingly lovely local Jersey yogurt left over from a big brunch….
Gravenstein Apple Slab Pie
There is a local apple variety that is hitting the markets right now — the Gravenstein Apple. It’s juicy and fresh, with a delightfully balanced flavor. This early ripening apple is an old fashioned variety that does well in northern CA, with Sonoma County it’s epicenter of production. I attended the Gravenstein Apple Fair last…
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Summer sweet corn is a treat, and this simple ice cream makes the most of sweet corn’s rich, gentle flavors. I love sweet corn sautéed in butter — the heat and fat coax depth of flavor as the natural sugars caramelize in the pan and the starches gel in the kernels. I use this simple…
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