Ling

I haven't seen it in Vancouver either, and I didn't hear of it until I started reading internet food boards a few years ago. I'm interested in trying it, though, as I've never eaten it before. I have some grenadine syrup...could I sub it 1:1 for the red food coloring and lower the sugar in the recipe to compensate? Or would that affect the taste of the cake too much?

Oh no, not prolific nor experienced...I just like to bake. I thought the cupcakes were great out of the oven, but the edges dried out rather quickly. The one I ate about 2 hours out of the oven was noticeably drier than the one I had fresh out of the oven. The frosting is actually just a thick ganache...a couple oz of E. Guittard, some butter, bit of cream. The cake actually came out in 45 minutes, now that I think about the time. The chiffon cake recipe I usually use stays moist and soft for at least 2 days, as long as it's well wrapped. I don't like to serve it after 2 days though (or even the next day...I can be a bit picky), as that's when the moisture loss becomes more apparent (to me, anyway.) Still, I'll try to tinker with this chocolate chiffon cake and hopefully it'll stay moist longer.

How do you explain all the men who replied to this thread, then? I guess you're calling them all women?

Thanks for the recipe, Little Island. I baked your recipe today. Here are the cupcakes...they were done in about 25 minutes. The 9" cake was done in about 45-50 minutes.

Fattening him up, eh? Seriously, it's nice that eGullet can sometimes function as a matchmaker for amazing cooks like you two. I think that helps fulfill the Mission Statement, because you make great food together, and I'm sure you talk about food a lot in your quiet times together. Ain't that the truth? So, what's the next magical creation from you? ← Thanks...yes we talk about food a lot of the time. Henry thinks we should spend a day eating crappy fast food just so we can prove to ourselves that our relationship is not just built on a mutual appreciation of good food. We made a Sardinian dinner a few days ago, and some Yukon River salmon. The pictures are here if you missed them. We'll probably cook something on Friday night when I'm down in Seattle again, and (since this is the dessert thread), I might get him to help me make a dessert for a party on Saturday. Saturday is Canada Day, and I'll be the lone Canadian at the party. I was thinking of bringing something red and white...like a gussied-up raspberry cream tart or strawberry cheesecake. Any ideas? *** I made Little Island's chocolate chiffon cake today. I got one 9" cake out of the recipe, plus 6 cupcakes. I topped them with E. Guittard ganache.

How does it compare to the Korova cookie? Also, some chocolate and some vanilla ice cream? That's all? Ling, you can do better! ← Very different from the Korova cookie...those are sable cookies and the ones I made recently are like your standard soft, fudgy chocolate cookie. I did use quite a bit more cocoa than more recipes call for to get a deeper chocolatey taste, since I was using white chocolate chips, which I normally don't like. But they are good in this cookie, and semi-sweet chips would work as well, of course. Yeah just some chocolate and vanilla ice-cream...I am trying to drop a few pounds.

Oh right! I'm glad it turned out well for you. Yes it's try, Klary...Henry says he never ate sweets before he met me, but now he's gladly gobbling up my peanut butter cookies, chocolate cookies, and brownies. I have a drawer in his kitchen that I use for my (small, but growing) collection of chocolate bars, since I'm over there quite often now. Yesterday, I just had some chocolate (Valrhona) and some vanilla ice-cream.

No gravy? Here's my turkey sandwich: 2 slices of a fairly sturdy baguette, sliced about 1/2 inch each thick pieces of dark turkey meat cranberry sauce, cold maybe a few slices of thick, peppery bacon enough hot gravy to soak the bread and make it softer

Did I help you with a crust recipe? I don't remember...which recipe did you use? I don't think the type of nut would matter too much to a recipe...I used to make macaroons all the time for my ex and I used whatever I had on hand, and it was often almonds.

Are you going to post your recipe, Little Island?

Wow, the pasta dish looks great, Nathan. I've been meaning to ask the regulars to these Italian regional cooking threads--which region has been your favourite? I can't wait to do Sicily next month!!!

Do you have a refractometer (sp?) I think all the restaurants who make ice-cream and sorbets have one to check the consistency.

Check out Daniel's legendary Oink thread.

I love your sassy wit, Badiane. I think I'm going to be celebrating Canada Day in Seattle this year. There's a birthday party going on and I'll bring some sort of Canadianesque dessert, stick a Canadian flag in it, and wear a red and white dress.

Ok thanks...I'm only in Seattle on certain Fridays and Saturdays, so I'll have to catch them at Magnolia or U District on Saturday.

I have fried eggs for breakfast all the time. Yesterday, my bf put truffle salt and smeared white truffle cream on the eggs and they were incredible...an inexpensive way to start your morning off with a bit of luxury.

They are quite different...a chiffon cake, as you already know, is very soft and light-tasting (compared to a butter cake). The double chocolate cake is a bit denser and is great for layering.

No, I haven't heard of Little Prague yet. I see from the website that they have a stall at the Columbia City farmer market...is this near Columbia City bakery? Thanks for the tip!

I actually didn't use a real recipe...just kind of made it up as I went along, and they turned out great. The ingredients were (approximately) 3/4 cups of softened butter 1 1/2 cup white sugar 1 tbsp molasses an egg a loose pour of vanilla...probably about 1.5 tsp. 1 cup of pastry flour 2/3 cup of dutch processed cocoa .5 tsp baking soda pinch of salt 1 1/4 cup of chocolate chips Baked in the oven at 350 for about 10 minutes...they were very soft when they came out.

Gelato is no more "fancier" than DQ, but infinitely more delicious. Besides, the gelato maker is doing all the work...all you have to do is eat!

That's an absolutely amazing spread, Abra. I had the 2002 Leonetti Merlot recently and thought it was one of the better merlots I've tasted. Everything sounds delicious, especially the home cured pork confit and guanciale! (I had truffled eggs this morning for breakfast too...what a coincidence. )

That sounds really interesting, gfron. Did the garam masala really come through? Today I had brownies, a hazelnut Valrhona bar, some key lime chocolate bar (this wasn't great at all), and I finished the fruit tart a guest from last night's dinner party brought for us.

Henry's favourite things of the evening were the stuffed calamari, the sauce for the braised rabbit, and the dessert. Mine was probably the dessert. Honestly, I thought everything we cooked last night was just good...nothing blew me away. I thought the dessert was probably the best of the dishes we served. We changed around the rabbit recipe quite a bit, adding mirepoix, stock, a huge end of Salumi lamb prosciutto, and lots of wine to the braise. The sauce was still quite piquant when it was finished reducing--I can't imagine how sour it would've been without the bottle of wine and liter of stock we added to te recipe! We even rounded out the strained, reduced sauce with lots of cream and butter. So the resulting sauce was good, but a far cry from the original recipe (rather spartan, just basically water, red wine vinegar, an onion, parsley and some capers). We didn't use a recipe for the orecchiette dish, but wanted to use saffron somewhere, since we went to three places yesterday to check for bottarga and couldn't find any. I was pretty determined to have saffron, bottarga, and ricotta somewhere in our menu, but alas we had to settle for 2 out of 3. Henry wanted to find maggot cheese, but... The dessert was great and very different from anything I've ever made. Everyone seemed to like it a lot. However, I thought it was much better with the fig and the ricotta cream components on the side....alone, the Sebadas Olienese was good, but quite plain. I did modify the recipe a bit for the pastry and the filling as well. I added a bit of extra cream to the dough as it was quite dry as written, and the filling was more marscapone than ricotta because I ran out of ricotta. Also, the filling with all that orange blossom water, lemon, and orange zest was a bit too strong, so I balanced it out by adding the extra cheese and rounded out the taste with some honey. The black pepper ricotta cream is based loosely on a Mario Batali recipe...I added a tiny bit of almond extract and nutmeg, and about twice as much black pepper as he calls for. I really liked the figs poached in vin santo and honey...after the dinner party, we dropped off an extra dessert for the chef at Mistral and I made him a quick fig compote with black pepper, orange juice, and moscato because we were out of fresh figs.

Thanks for the welcome, Nathan. We had a few guests over for our Sardinian meal tonight. I don't think we had any Sardinian wine, but we had a some prosecco, moscato, and a bunch of New World wines. Antipasti: white truffle cream, balsamico, La Panzanella crostini calamari stuffed with anchovies Primo: grilled scampi with saffron orecchiette Secondo: Sardinian braised rabbit, fava beans Dolci: Sebadas Olienese (basically a pastry filled with orange blossom-flavoured ricotta and marscapone, brushed with honey) served with figs poached in vin santo and honey, black pepper ricotta cream

I just picked the book up today and I'm going through it pretty quickly...curious to know if anyone else has read it?