Treats for appetites of every size
Explaining what exactly Clafoutis is is a difficult thing. I’ve compromised and categorized it as both a pie and a cake, but the dessert itself is somewhere between a souffle, crepe, custard, and pancake. A little light, a little eggy, a little cakey, kind of creamy – you won’t really know what I mean until you try it for yourself. Fortunately, if you started right this second, you could have a piece in an hour.
Another rainy weekend, another baking adventure. Since I’m still thoroughly enjoying funemployment, I spent the weekend in Duxbury with my parents. I love being able to hop on a train and be with my family in about an hour, and nothing beats running to the beach and back, even if its pouring rain while you do it. Plus, I’m very into the series of books I’m reading right now (The Wheel of Time – no spoilers, please!), and my favorite place to read is the wood paneled room in their home, snuggled up on the recliner with a big fluffy …
There really isn’t a whole lot better than baking a pie with fresh ingredients from a farmer’s market. You’re supporting local businesses. Everything is super ripe and perfect. You get to buy the ingredients outdoors. Even someone who doesn’t like pies or fruit-based desserts (that would be me) can appreciate how good it feels to do this. So when we were walking through the farmer’s market at Harvard and a vendor had both strawberries and rhubarb, I couldn’t just not buy them. And, as luck would have it, strawberry rhubarb is Erik’s favorite pie!
The last of the Christmas cookies: candy cane whoopie pies. If you read my blog often, you know that for family events with my mom’s siblings, I try to make something gluten free. Usually, this means flourless cake or haystacks or something of that sort, which on their own don’t have flour, but this year I decided to try to use an ingredient I see pop up a lot in gluten free recipes: xantham gum. This stuff is supposed to help mimic a recipe that would otherwise call for flour, so if you want to make something recognizable as a …
Sometimes, when you’ve got an 8 hour final coming up, you just need to spend the day before doing fun things. Like baking. And climbing. And Christmas shopping. And just trust that you really weren’t going to learn any more copyright law today anyways.
This is Part 1 of 2 Thanksgiving pie posts coming at you in the next couple of weeks. Good news: they can just as easily be Christmas pies (if you don’t make the one true Christmas dessert: Chocolate Trifle), so keep these on hand as the holiday parties start piling up. Also, I’ve done a little bit of test kitchen work on these, trying out different pie crust recipes and combining some filling recipes to figure our what works well together. The results were pretty good, and have made for some tasty breakfasts in the Thanksgiving aftermath.
I just got back from a camping trip and am due at a birthday dinner in under an hour, so I’ll be keeping this post short and sweet (pun intended). Last week I mentioned that I had so many baking events coming up – this is one of the recipes I made, with the help of Laura, Neha, and Alisa (their hands feature prominently in these pictures). Almost a month into the new school year, and the four of us had yet to be in the same room as one another, so we resorted to the best kind of girls …
It was cold outside this morning. I was out for a walk with my mom, and definitely could have used a sweater. With September only five days away, it felt like Fall was trying to make itself known. And with the first years starting school this week, I’m definitely leaning towards a Fall frame of mind. However, it is still August, and I did spend a good amount of my afternoon napping in the sun. So I also wanted to carry on my summer recipes for at least a few more weeks.
Things you probably wanted before Thursday: a solid traditional dessert recipe for your Thanksgiving meal. Things I didn’t make this year: a solid traditional dessert recipe for my Thanksgiving meal.
As promised last week, this week I’m diving into the apple recipes. Since last weekend, I have made two new apple things, and still have plans of turning the incredible amount of apples I have left into apple chips, a rare recipe that I repeat frequently. That means next week I’ll tell you all how to make Apple Bread.