Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[Moopheus]

Chocolate pecan pie, recipe from Medrich's Bittersweet. With whipped cream. I wanted to take a picture of it, but the CCD in my digital camera crapped out on me.

Now the question is, how not to eat it all at once.

[Patrick S]

Thanks for complimenting my cake, Megan and Ling! I made this using the cake recipe you (Ling) recommended, and I think I'm pretty much converted to it as well.

A Bittersweet Deception cookie from Alice Medrich's "Bittersweet".  Gawd, they're rich -- one was plenty!

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Thanks for posting the recipe, Ruth. These are some great cookies! I made mine with Lindt 70% and left out the nuts.

[Ling]

^I could post a pic of my Bittersweet cookies, but they are slightly less regularly shaped and not nearly as pretty. I forgot to add that I scaled down the sugar b/c I only had semi-sweet chocolate left in the cupboard, so I used that. They are fantastic! One of the best chocolate cookie recipes I've ever used!

[RuthWells]

Thanks for posting the recipe, Ruth. These are some great cookies! I made mine with Lindt 70% and left out the nuts. 

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Quite welcome! Yours seem to have spread quite a bit more than mine did -- did you adjust the chocolate and/or butter at all?

Edited because my brain is still asleep -- I'm guessing the omission of the nuts accounts for the difference. With the nuts, you get cookie "clumps" -- no real spreading to speak of.

Edited October 3, 2005 by RuthWells (log)

[Ling]

^My cookies spread out as much as Patricks, but I used half the amount of nuts and also my butter was quite soft.

[RuthWells]

^My cookies spread out as much as Patricks, but I used half the amount of nuts and also my butter was quite soft.

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I'm sure it's the nuts making the difference, as the butter gets melted with the chocolate.

[Ling]

^You're right. I just woke up (it's around noon in Vancouver). I'm really dumb in the morning.

[Ling]

I had 2 lemon tarts today--one from Sen5es and one from the bakery at Capers (an upscale grocery store). The one from Sen5es was definitely tastier (but it was also three times the price).

[cathrynapple]

a chocolate chunk cookie, two lindt truffles (greasy!), one godiva punpkin spice chocolate (pretty nice), bananas and strawberries with devon custard, and some mint chocolate candies.

[CanadianBakin']

2 frozen Chocolate Sparkle Cookies using Thomas Haas recipe on recipegullet. They are so good frozen!

[RuthWells]

Scraps of chocolate meringue left over from making Pierre Hermes' Concorde cake, which will be tonight's Rosh Hosh dessert....

[Ling]

2 frozen Chocolate Sparkle Cookies using Thomas Haas recipe on recipegullet. They are so good frozen!

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Yeah, what is it about frozen treats that make them so good? I love the extra chewiness of frozen brownies. Many of my breakfasts, lunches and dinners also qualify as "desserts", but the best dessert I ate today was a frozen brownie slathered with like 3 tbsp. of Nutella. Mmmm...my mouth was so happy.

[Megan Blocker]

Pistachio madeleines from Ceci Cela on Spring Street.

[Moopheus]

Finished off the pecan pie. Don't know what to make next. It is a conundrum.

[kthull]

I made Herme's Tropical Tart from the Desserts book for a friend's birthday. Luckily, a slice made it home for me to try. Not bad...I was anticipating more.

[Rehovot]

Browned-butter orange cranberry crumb cake.

Be still, my arteries.

[Woods]

Inspired by the "What's for Dinner?" and "Breakfast -- The most important meal of the day" threads in the "Cooking" forum, I ask you...

What are you cooking for dessert for yourself?

I just pulled a strawberry/blackberry crisp out of the oven.  Cinnamon, brown sugar, and St. Brendan's Irish Creme was mixed in with the fruit.  The crisp topping contains a buncha butter, brown sugar, toasted coconut flakes, flour, and rolled oats.

Smells amazing.  I'm about to go try it now that's it's cooled down a bit.

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I made gateau anglais from The Art of the Cake because it was easy and rummy. Very good and indeed easy and relatively quick to put together. The rum flavoring with currents was just right.

Woods

[racheld]

Chris brought home two peaches; he extended the bag, saying, "I smelled this as I rounded the banana aisle. I think you could just brush the velvet off." I opened the bag, inhaled the almondy peach breath captured within the plastic. The two must have weighed more than a pound. They had just a blush of true peach, with great swells of deep purple swirled across their necklines, their softness under my fingers a remembrance of orchards and trees and wasps defending their bounty.

I touched the button on the electric kettle, removed the two little ID stickers, ran the fruit briefly under the cold water. The silvery stream parted and sluiced away from the unheeding velvet, leaving it as dry and untouched as before, with tiny dewlets adhering in a couple of places. Peaches in a bowl, scalding water cascaded on, time for a minute. Icy water replaced hot; hands into bowl to feel easy skinslip under my cool fingers. The slick globes emerged, inner color mirroring the gentlepeeled skin, round and perfect as an apple on a plate.

A soft pat with paper, drying of hands, then the little crescents falling from the knife into the bowl--the scent of Summer, memories of four-bushel days in a hot kitchen, preserving the sweet depths of flavor in jewelly jars. Quick snowing of sugar, squeeze of lemon, gentle toss and cover laid on, to rest on the counter, melding and yielding juices, until time to spoon into two bowls with a scoop of Edy's Double Vanilla.

Capture Summer where you can.

[Ling]

^You write beautifully, Rachel. How poetic.

Today: date square from UBC, and a sizable wedge of lotus seed mooncake (2 yolks)

[racheld]

Thanks, Ling...peaches are poetry.

Last night we had brownie-crumb sundaes with another scoop of the Edy's. A nice contrast to all the quesadillas, salsa and margaritas which made up dinner.

[Ling]

Yesterday:

-3 brownies (at home)

-bite of a creme fraiche cheesecake with walnut crust (at restaurant)

-chocolate cake with ganache center (at a restaurant)

-lotus seed mooncake with 2 yolks (I ate half of a big one...quite filling haha)

-the last of my jar of Nutella

[Verjuice]

Visited the family for dessert after they broke their fast (it's Ramadan and I'm in Arabia, where, during this time, sweets after dinner are taken very seriously, even by those who might otherwise pass). They ate (forgive my spelling) homemade kunafa made with ricotta (my dad prefers this lighter version to the original), qatayef (with walnuts and raisins), qaymat (crispy, bite-sized, deep-fried and soaked in honey), freeki (buttery!) with clotted cream, and something that translates as "ladies' forearms" and which is stuffed with cream and garnished with candied orange flower blossoms (I think)... bowls of warm rose scented syrup passed all around to be drizzled over the lot of it.

Still hungry after all this was cleared away, so my baby sister and I made sundaes with vanilla ice cream, peanut butter, nutella etc. She added marshmallow fluff to hers, and then we split a Luxury Flake bar for dessert- I mean, em.. a digestif.

I then spent an hour on the phone in the study eating countless mini Toblerone bars out of the secret stash in the desk.

Then I went out and had some Turkish coffee and sticky toffee pudding. My friend didn't want her walnut maple bar, so I ate that as well.

And when I head to bed in fifteen minutes, I'm taking the jar of Nutella with me. So there.

[Ling]

^OMG. I love you.

[CanadianBakin']

Cranberry Pear tart from the latest Fine Cooking magazine. It's very good!

[Moopheus]

Pumpkin Pie. I was at the farmer's market on Saturday and the pumpkins were just calling out to me--they wanted to be made into pie. There was a little bit more of the custard filling than fit in the shell, so I think I'll just fill a couple of ramekins and bake it.