Cocktails or Cake – Why Not Both? Limoncello Birthday Cake with Campari Frosting

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Remember when I made that adorable ha-cake for my friend's half birthday?  Well, luckily for me, despite generally preferring savory to sweet, K does love a good celebration cake, so when her full birthday rolled around this year she requested a cake that incorporated one of her favorite things: booze.  Specifically, Campari, which she fell in love with during a trip to Italy a couple years ago and which has been so well-loved as to have spawned its own hashtag.

Even better than suggesting (I won't go so far as to say demanding) a specific cake for her birthday, K suggested we bake it together, at my parents' house in the Napa Valley.  K is a food blogger too, although she focuses more on savory dishes and wine pairings, and while we've cooked together (we lived together for a while and we made some delicious dinners) we've never baked.  Plus, since she moved to Napa last year we get far too little bonding time, and this sounded like an excellent way to get some 'us' time (plus our assistant, but he's good at respecting our girl time).

So without further ado, to the cake-baking!  Of course, we started with booze: Negronis (a classic Campari drink), natch, mixed by our handsome assistant (to whom also goes credit for all the photos herein and on Flickr).

Monkeying Around with Birthday Cakes

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When my sister told me that her daughter, who turned three last week, had requested three cakes for her birthday party, I immediately volunteered to bake one of them.  I adore my niece and nephew and have had a blast getting to know them better since moving back from London, but I still see them rarely enough that any opportunity to impress them is worth jumping on.  It only got better when my sister told me the only other request my niece had made: that the party be 'a monkey party'.

I remembered a cake I'd seen on Smitten Kitchen, years back, a monkey face that looked surprisingly easy to put together.  A quick google confirmed my suspicions that this was something I could definitely handle, and I spent the rest of the day at work printing recipes, doubling and tripling ingredient lists, and blocking off the day before the party in my phone calendar.  I was going to go all out this time.

Ruminations on Perfectionism and Lemon Cream Pie

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One of my favorite things anyone has ever said to me about writing was a Voltaire quote one of my wonderful teachers passed on to us in the early months of my MA: "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".  After years of angsting about writing rather than doing it, my bookshelf littered with beautiful, empty journals too pretty to write mediocre things in, that sentiment resonated hard in my heart.  I determined to give myself credit simply for doing, even just for trying, or simply for remembering an idea – anything to encourage myself to build up momentum instead of stopping in despair.  And it worked, most of the time.  Okay, the beautiful journals still sit empty on the shelf, but now I buy myself unimpressive, blandly designed journals and write in them without concern for perfection.  And when I was in Italy, my amazing friend and writing coach Magda held me to a deadline of 5,000 words a week, and I gave myself the space to write about anything I felt inspired to write – of course, what this means is that I now have somewhere around 40,000 words to sift through and fill holes in, and the majority of what I have is off-plot-line or too heavily biased toward subject matter that was less excruciating to write about, but it's a start.  And that was good enough, at least for the moment.  

My attitude toward baking is similar: as long as people can eat it and enjoy it, I'm happy.  My baked goods rarely come out looking beautiful or professional, and they're almost never consistent in size/texture/bake, which is the main reason I never even considered doing GBBO.  Still, my laid back attitude sometimes leads to legitimate failure in the kitchen (two weeks ago I made some very dense 'muffins', 70% of which I threw out).  And it doesn't always hold up in the face of potential let-downs.  I have definitely had my baking meltdowns, as well as plenty of cases of simple 'that wasn't good enough' melancholy.  For example, the lemon cream pie I made last weekend hit a few too many snags and had me feeling pretty crappy for a while, and now that I want to post about it and I'm looking at these photos in the light of day, after spending all evening editing them with f.lux on, then turning it off and trying to undo the damage, all I can say is 'I'm sorry'.  I'd like to re-do all of it – the pies, the photo editing, even my hair in the photos – but I'd rather get this post up and keep the small amount of momentum I'm beginning to rebuild here in this, my little bakery corner of the internet.

So in the spirit of doing rather than perfecting, let's get cracking on this post about lemon cream pie!  (Sorry I'm not sorry about that pun.)

Let's Just Hope My Language Skills Are a Little More Authentic... Americanized Tiramisu and an Announcement!

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Things have been reeeeaaaaally quiet over here on the baking blog – lest you think I hadn't noticed my neglect, rest assured that it's been bugging me for weeks.  I started working full time in April and since then my free time has been less plentiful and often takes place outside the hours of good natural light so essential to food photography.  I also lived in an apartment with a shared kitchen stocked with other people's things, so I never knew what supplies I had to make a recipe.

None of this is an excuse, though.  I should have prioritized this blog more.  Baking makes me happy, as does blogging about it, but for some reason I haven't done either for the past few months.  It's been a rough year, but I'm finally starting to feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, which should mean more energy and time and love to put into baked goods.  The only catch is that I'm moving again, this time to Italy – I'll be living off savings and spending my days writing and yoga-ing and writing and hiking and writing.  Hopefully a new book will form in those months of having nothing on my plate but writing and pasta.  In which case, you may not see me here for a little bit longer.  That said, should I find myself in need of a break from the computer screen, which is pretty likely, and hiking isn't doing the trick, you can bet I'll share whatever concoction I whip up over there on this blog here – fair warning, though, I'm not bringing my nice camera, so it'll be all-iPhone pics, all the time.

I knew I wanted to share this big change in my life with all of you (especially those of you who have been SO patient while I post so erratically!), so when a recipe for tiramisu landed in my inbox, it seemed like serendipity; I decided (despite this disturbing typo in the recipe) that I wanted to make it to celebrate my upcoming move and announce it here on the blog that has seen me through so many changes in location and circumstance.  There were, as is customary in my life, a few things that went differently from the plan, but I got there in the end and the result was delicious – I can only hope my non-food-related life winds up so successful!

Last Minute and Low Supply: Vanilla Bean (Apricot) Shortbread Cookies

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(This will be a shorty because I've been asked for the recipe enough times in the last 24 hours to get me to write the post the day after these cookies were baked and consumed.  I know – bonkers fast for me!)

I went to a friend's Summer Solstice barbecue yesterday, and when I woke up late, a bit hungover after a night out, I suddenly realized that while I had offered to bake cookies for the party I had a seriously limited stock in my cabinets.  I knew I had butter (in fact, despite being tipsy the night before when I got home, I had even remembered to take a stick out of the freezer and let it soften on the counter), and I knew I had flour and sugar, but I was eggless, and my roommate who moved out recently took her raising agents with her, so I was pretty much at a loss for ideas on what to make.  BUT THEN!  Inspiration struck.  Shortbread doesn't have eggs or raising agents!

A Long Time Coming: Apple Slab Pie Worth Making Thrice

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I made SK's apple slab pie last fall to great acclaim – in fact, the reception was so positive that I wound up making it three times in the space of a week, and there was nary a slice left over that wasn't immediately gobbled up by my parents' neighbors and their nine year old twins.  So why haven't I written it up until now, you ask?  Or, more accurately, you demand, with a stamp of the foot and the missed opportunity of apple slab pie on your palate?

I have no excuse.  There is no amount of busy-ness or family drama or house-/job hunting that can explain why I didn't stay up all night editing photos and writing up the recipe.  I just...didn't.  And I'm truly sorry, because you've all been missing out.  But I plan to make amends now; better late than never!

But not for you, when it comes to making this pie.  Get on it.  Seriously, you guys, this thing is TASTY.  Not too sweet, with a flaky, buttery handmade double crust just bursting with appley goodness.  And yes, you read that right: I made the crust from scratch.  I almost never do that, especially here in the US, where frozen pie crust is so easy to come by and decently tasty, but this time I figured I might as well make use of my mom's Cuisinart and spare myself the math of trying to make a long rectangle out of two pre-made circles.

A Dream Deferred: Italian Almond Cookies

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When my guy and I were in Rome a couple of years ago with my brother and his girlfriend for Christmas, the apartment we stayed in was just down the street from a tiny bakery that had the reputation of selling some of the best cookies and panettone in the whole city – a lucky accident of which we took full advantage!  Every few days we would wander in and make use of my ever-more-limited Italian to buy a bag of treats: chocolate-dipped Christmas trees, jam studded thumbprints, mini pistachio biscotti, and our absolute favorites, chewy, dense, heavy-sweet almond cookies.  Those ones were always the first to go, and we kept finding ourselves having to negotiate over who got the last one.  If only I didn't require so much time stalling while I tried to remember the word for almond (mandorla – of course now I can remember it!), we might have just gotten bagfuls of those each time and called it a day!

So of course the minute we got back to the UK I looked up a recipe.  And then I bookmarked that recipe, bought ground almonds, and... promptly put off making the cookies.  I think I avoided it for so long at first because almond paste (one of the main ingredients) is super expensive, but after a while I just kept forgetting about them.

'Paris Is Always a Good Idea' – Dark Chocolate Sables and Some News

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As usual, I've been wanting to spread the news about these amazing sables (or, as my French co-worker corrected me, sablés) since I first baked them, but as usual life has gotten in the way.  In face, I have an unusually good excuse: this post is especially apropos because the BF took me on a surprise trip to Paris the weekend after I made these French cookies – and he proposed!  Of course I said yes (if you've been following this blog for a while you know that he and I are already practically married), and have been consumed by wedding planning insanity (on top of work and book promotion) ever since.

Nonetheless, even with a head full of even more things than before (sigh), I still can't stop thinking about these little beauties – ooh, maybe I'll make a batch for the wedding!  Ahem, sorry.  I get distracted a lot these days.  Where were we?  Right!  I can't stop thinking about these sables, so it's high time I passed them on to you all so you can obsess over them too.  Trust me: they're worth the lost sleep.

Converting the Skeptics: Sticky Toffee Pudding

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I made sticky toffee pudding for the first time back in November – I'd been invited to a British-themed dinner party and I had no idea what to bring for dessert (having of course claimed that course before my phone had even registered the invitation email).  Normally I count on my large roster of American sweets to wow the Brits among me with little effort, but I didn't think it would be fair to break from the theme just because it was outside my comfort zone.  Still, what exactly constituted a British dessert (or, as the Brits say, 'pudding' – actual pudding is 'angel delight'...don't ask me why)?  Most of the really successful dishes have American and European counterparts: lemon drizzle cake, shortbread cookies, fruit crisps...  I didn't want to make super-classic Eton mess or a Bakewell tart (I actually hadn't thought of that one, but it would have been too much effort for the day anyway), so I was at a loss.  Until I remembered that old pub classic, and one particular skeptic to whom I still have something to prove.

I have a personal bone to pick about sticky toffee pudding: I need to prove to my older brother that a dessert made mostly of dates can be indulgent and delicious and completely unfruity.  I tried to explain sticky toffee pudding to him last summer and he wouldn't listen to my description of the dish itself, just kept making that irritating 'blegh' face that only brothers can keep mastering to such an infuriating degree well into seeming adulthood.  I swore up and down that I would make it for him someday and he would eat his words (and facial expression), along with half the pan.  So when I was trying to think of a British dessert to bring to girls' night I decided this was a good opportunity to practice, ensuring that when I do eventually make sticky toffee pudding for my family in SF, their socks will be duly knocked off.

How to Tart up a Dinner Party: Easy Apple Tart

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I have a fantastic friend here in London who used to be my tutor and is now the source of most of my shocked belly laughs – he's crude and shameless and hilarious and I love being around him.  So when he invited the BF and me to dinner at his house, of course we rearranged our schedules to make it work.  I offered to make dessert, and my request for preferences was met with the line 'A tart sounds appropriate.'

Well, what could that be besides a challenge?  (Okay, yes, it could be an insult, but it was written in a cheeky tone, not a mean one.)  I immediately started going through my recipe bookmarks in search of the perfect tart – I wanted to make this super-easy showstopper, but of course we couldn't find raspberries anywhere in London in the dead of winter, so it had to be apple or pear.  The tricky bit: as I had plans that day to go to the Taste of Christmas event, it had to be something I could make either very quickly or in advance.  As it turned out, the recipe I used was a little bit of both.

Beauty Comes from Within: Sexy-Ugly Hedgehog Cookies

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One of the BF's favorite kind of cookies is oatmeal chocolate chip, for which he'll hardly get a raised eyebrow from me: the toothsomeness of an oatmeal cookies with the sweetness of chocolate?  Obviously.  I myself am a fan of the good old oatmeal raisin as well, but the more people I poll, the more I feel like this cookie has unfairly fallen out of favor.  Alas, poor oatmeal raisin... well, more for me!

Anyway, when I went to visit the BF in Boston a few weekends ago, I planned on bringing him some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but for some reason (I guess because, really, I wanted to eat them), I went with my gram's chocolate chip shortbread cookies instead.  He was never any the wiser, and those cookies are the bomb, so I didn't feel too guilty.  I did, however, find myself craving them the following week (I suppose the idea had planted and refused to let go!), and as I was going to have some girlfriends over for dinner – and needed to make some cookies to mail to a friend for his birthday – I had an excuse to make them.

Falling into Nostalgia Again: Apple Spice Cookies

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One of the times I miss the US most is the first week of fall, when that first bite hits the air in the mornings and people start pulling out scarves and boots from the backs of their closets and the leaves haven't quite turned yet but you can tell they will be soon.  This time of year always brings the nostalgia pretty hard, and usually I cope with it by taking long walks in the park with the BF, stopping for coffee and a snuggle, and, of course, baking.

This year, the BF just happens to be abroad – back in the States, actually – for a sort of med-student study-abroad program.  I've been handling the separation pretty well, due mostly to being run off my feet with work, book stuff, and general back-from-vacation admin, but when the leaves started turning I did start to pine a bit (no pun intended).  Still, I was determined not to mope (or eat my feelings any more than I'm already wont to do); I may not be able to take long, chilly walks with my guy, but I can still bake, dang it!

I Made A Real, Frosted, Layered Birthday Cake (and It Only Took Two Attempts and About a Million Eggs...)!

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Last Friday my company had a 'wine and cakes' party in our department, celebrating the first birthday of the imprint I work for.  Now, as someone who often brings homemade baked goods in to the office, I expected to be asked to make something, which I was happy to do.  What I didn't expect was being volunteered to bake a birthday cake, which to most people might just mean a cake but which translated in my head to many-layered cake of wonder with homemade icing and decoration, which is something I'd yet to attempt.  Still, I figured it would be a good opportunity to try something new (namely, making a fancy icing). 
 
But then two things happened to make the plans much more stressful.  The first was that my friend Tess, who works in the marketing department, asked me to use a recipe from one of our books, which wouldn't in itself be a problem but I had been hoping to use a tried-and-tested American recipe, or at least one with tons of online reviews – of course I agreed, though.  And the second thing was that my very well-meaning friends 'bigged up' my baking in a company-wide email.  And of course, as we all know, there's nothing like a little outside pressure to make a cake fall flat.

A Tart and Tasty Birthday Treat: Lemon Cream Cupcakes

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It was my mom's birthday a couple of weeks ago, and since I was in town for it for once (had you guessed that the past 6 weeks of radio silence had something to do with me reveling in the delights of the Great Bay Area?), I wanted to make her a little treat.  Of course, my mom being the healthy lady that she is, I knew nothing rich or heavy would be up her alley, which made for a slightly tricky situation when, without thinking, I suggested that my nephew and I should make and decorate cupcakes together...  My mom is so not into buttercream, or cake, really – she prefers fruit tarts and crisps and maybe the odd cookie (just one).

Still, I figured there was one way I could still have bonding time with my nephew (who's nearly 7, and a boy, and not so into grown-up baking like tarts) and serve my mom a dessert for her birthday that she'd actually enjoy: when in doubt, make it citrus.  My mom, like me, loves anything lemon.  And when I found a recipe, it came with an accompanying recipe for a whipped-cream-based frosting, which I figured would be much lighter than a buttercream, not to mention easier.

Easy Friendships and Easier Dessert: Pistachio and Blueberry Biscotti

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I have a great girlfriend in London who is that wonderful combination of nice (without being too nice), hilarious (without being too catty), and understanding (without letting me get away with too much moaning), and best of all, she gets along famously with the BF.  Instead of glazing over the way I do when he talks about medicine too much or tells a story for a little too long, she is always rapt and encouraging – is it any wonder he loves her almost as much as I do?

Given how awesome this friend of mine is, of course she has a standing invitation to our flat for dinner, and when she moved a mere 20 minute walk down the road the invitation was reiterated with even more vehemence.  Now, unfortunately, she's a very busy gal, so we don't have her over as much as we'd like, but she does come round relatively often, and when she does I always make sure we finish the meal with something sweet and satisfying, and preferably something that packs well so I can send her home with a doggie bag.

Impressively Easy Entertaining: Raspberry Crumble Tart

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A few weeks ago, the BF had a bunch of his med school friends over for dinner. All together, we made 8, which was a larger party than we'd done before and a bit of a stretch for our dishes (we have all sets of 6), and I'd never met most of these people, so I was a bit nervous.  But we planned way in advance, ordering wines online and choosing side dishes from one of our favorite dinner party cookbooks (I have photos, and will try to post a couple of our fave recipes soon), and I spent days trying to decide what to bake for dessert. 

Should I make something dependable, like cookies, or something more impressive, like a pie?  Something American, to show my British guests what we have to offer, or something English, to prove my loyalty, or something neutral?  Pumpkin pie?  Snickerdoodle blondies?  Carrot cake?

 

Going Native: Lemon Drizzle Cake

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There are some very American things I will never give up, no matter how long I live in England – peanut butter, Trader Joe's chocolate, and Peet's coffee, among others – but recently I've been forced to admit that, despite my best efforts, some English traditions have gotten under my skin.  For example, the BF and I spent the Jubilee weekend in Devon with his family, and after a long, cold, rainy wander through one of the nearby towns (gotta love that British summer), I crouched through the door of the little thatched cottage where we were staying and headed straight for the kettle, mumbling incoherently about how badly I needed a cup of tea.  Then, this morning, the BF made coffee in our stovetop espresso pot and I had one cup, relishing the flavor of Bay Area-roasted beans, and then made another cup of tea.  Yup, I'm totally addicted to a good old English brew.

I also use words like 'bin', 'lift', and 'post', and never ask where the bathroom is in a restaurant anymore, preferring the colloquial 'loo' (less graphic somehow than asking for the toilet!).  But if there's one area of life in which I staunchly support America's superiority, it's the kitchen.  Not that I can't appreciate a good Sunday roast or a nice slice of banoffi pie, but given the choice I'd always rather stick with a US favorite, like lasagne or pumpkin pie or brownies or banana bread... the list goes on. 

Travel, Family, and Meyer Lemons – Does It Get Any Better?

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Look at that.  Just...look at that.

Now do you understand why I checked out for so long while I was gone?  I know, I know, there are bloggers far better than I, who schedule posts to go up while they're away – there are even some bloggers, like the Energizer Bunny Pioneer Woman, who write and post while on vacation!  Alas, I am not one of these bloggers.  I am weak, and as much as I may know I should write a post while I'm home in SF, I cannot resist the temptation of an offer to walk along Crissy Field instead.

However, I am not entirely useless – I also cannot resist an opportunity to bake, and the overflowing bowls and bags of Meyer lemons in my mother's house were just that.  Her trees in Napa were heavy with fruit, and she was running out of ideas for what to do with it.  So I bring home for you: Meyer Lemon Quickbread (and some bad phone pics, sorry).

Signs of Growing Up: My First Meringues

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I had a bunch of girlfriends over for dinner a couple weeks ago, and one of them (whom I nonetheless love very much) is a serial dieter.  Not in a fad-diet kind of way, more in a oh-no-I-shouldn't kind of way.  It makes me sad, since I show my love through sugar and butter, but I was determined not to either a) do without dessert at my dinner party or b) make her watch everyone else eat pound cake while she tried not to salivate.  I did a bit of research, skipped a lot of recipes that involved Splenda or other unnatural ingredients (no offense to people who use that stuff, but I always find I can taste the difference, and anyway my dieter-friend is a bit of a purist), and wound up back at Joy the Baker, where I reacquainted myself with a recipe I'd bookmarked weeks before, for vanilla bean and cocoa nib meringues.

Ain't Nothin' Wrong with a Classic: Chocolate Chip Cookies

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 Can it be?  Can it really be possible that I haven't ever posted a recipe on this blog for that most classic of classics, the chocolate chip cookie?  How can that be so?

Well, I guess it doesn't matter how the omission came to pass – the important thing is to rectify it.