Greek Orange Cake

Every so often, I flip through one of my recipe books - in this case, the Complete Book of Greek Cooking, above  - and come across something that I am astounded I haven't already tried. This was one of those times. I was asked to bring a dessert to a Hanukkah party and I knew this would fit the bill as being simple to make, yet full of flavor and decadent enough (2 sticks of butter! 2 cups of sugar! 5 eggs!) to qualify as a great holiday dessert. I absolutely LOVE desserts and cakes with orange flavoring, especially around Christmastime, and this cake is full of orange flavor. After the cake is baked, you pour an orange-y sugar syrup all over the top and it gets completely soaked into the cake. So this is a very rich, dense, moist, and DELICIOUS buttery orange cake. So good. And lucky for my there were leftovers and I ate the remainder of the cake for breakfast for the rest of the week. I will be craving this, and definitely will make it again.


   

Deb's granola bars

Again, no photo. I made these granola bars (which I have made in the past, and which are endlessly adaptable to what you have in your pantry). These were addictive. In my notes I used:

1 cup kasha
1/2 cup choc chips
1/2 cup currants
1/2 cup crushed pretzels

For a really satisfying balance of salty and sweet. Winner.

Martha's Apple Oatmeal Muffins

I love a fruit-based muffin, especially using orchard apples that I picked myself. I used Martha's recipe here, but added 1/4 cup of currants and one tablespoon of vanilla syrup (yes syrup, not extract) for added flavor. Alas, no photo.

Gooseberry pecan crumble

In my notes it looks like I made this breakfast crumble using CSA gooseberries, apples, and pecans instead of apricots and almonds. I have a memory of it being delicious (this is definitely a motivator for me to update this as I cook things, instead of months afterward). Lesson learned!

Bad photo:

3rd birthday Puppy Cake

Alice is an animal lover in general, and a dog lover specifically. She turned 3 in June and requested a Puppy Party so of course I had to make her a puppy cake to serve to her and her little friends. I used this birthday cake recipe and this easy frosting recipe and decorated it to look like a puppy. The kids loved it. Classic vanilla-y birthday cake flavors :) 


                                

Cannoli pound cake

So, I am months behind on updating my recipes here. I made this absolutely perfect Cannoli Pound Cake back in the summer which includes some of my favorite ingredients for a dessert: pistachios, chocolate chips, citrus zest, and ricotta cheese. Will need to make this one again.

Two pancake recipes

I am not really into pancakes. But I recently came across two excellent recipes that have started to sway my opinion.


1: Julia Turshen's Sour Cream pancakes from her Small Victories cookbook, which I like because it has no added sugar, but are the fluffiest and most satisfying pancakes I think I've ever eaten.

3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup soour cream
Unsalted butter for cooking

Combine all ingredients. Melt butter in pan. Pour batter in 1/4 cup increments into pan (my pan holds 3 pancakes at a time).

I prefer to serve these with fruit topping instead of maple syrup (though of course the syrup is great too). For the fruit I simmer either strawberries or blueberries on the stove with lemon juice and fresh ginger -- the ginger is a wonderful addition to the fruit sauce, if you have it -- and spoon over the warm pancakes.



2: Perfect Buttermilk Pancakes from the New York Times. I ended up making these because I needed to use up a pint of buttermilk I bought. I also used buckwheat flour instead of all-purpose because I wanted to use my stash up (unexpected healthy element here). We had run out of syrup but I sprinkled some chocolate chips in the batter as the pancakes cooked and they were a nice sweet compliment to the nutty buckwheat flour.

I followed the NYT recipe almost exactly. Except I used a mix of  1 1/2 cups buckwheat flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour; and then I used 2 cups of buttermilk instead of  the called for 2 1/2 cups. Results: excellent. Chocolate chips were a nice addition because I had no syrup and no appropriate fruit to make a sauce with!