Your Daily Sweets (2005-2012)

[Chufi]

Flourless orange-almond cake. I'll be honest -- I think this cake looks much better than it tastes. The batter uses whole oranges, which are simmered for 2 hours and pureed. The puree is mixed with almond meal, sugar, eggs and baking powder.

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whole orange & almond cake (Claudia Roden recipe). It's one of my favorites. So moist and juicy, and it keeps well (tastes even better after a couple of days).

And a whole tub of mascarpone spread on top 

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Patrick, that's practically the same recipe as Claudia Rodens Whole orange cake.. only that one does not have the ginger..

Now I am not as accomplished a baker as you are but this is one of my favorite cakes.. what didn't you like about it?

[Patrick S]

Now I am not as accomplished a baker as you are    but this is one of my favorite cakes.. what didn't you like about it?

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Well that me clarify that I didn't hate it. I ate two pieces, one after it cooled and another this morning. But the taste seemed just a little bit pithy to me. The oranges I used were not very good, and that may have been a factor. I'm not knocking the cake in any general way, and I know a lot of people on Chocolate and Zucchini blog and elsewhere really rave about this type of cake.

[Daniel]

Tonight,

I went to my local Italian Jernt..I had the tiramisu..A huge layer of cream with chunks of white chocolate on top of a thin layer of lady fingers soaked in espresso..A couple of glasses of red dessert wine.. Then a blue cheese with a couple of glasses of white dessert wine.. Then a couple of espressos.. Life is good..

[Ling]

For my grandma's birthday--a mango strawberry sponge cake from Anna's Cake House...reputedly the best Chinese bakery chain (for cakes, at least) in Vancouver.

(I must've eaten more than a hundred slices of cake from Anna's over my lifetime!)

[Pan]

Daniel, what's the name of the place?

[Daniel]

Celeste.. Might be the best tiramisu in the city..

[Pan]

I just noticed that we don't have a "best tiramisu" thread yet in the New York forum. Perhaps we should start one. [Edit: Thread begun here.]

Edited January 15, 2006 by Pan (log)

[Ling]

Last night (well...this morning) when I got home, I ate an entire gingercake from the freezer. Damn that was good.

[RuthWells]

I was knocking about Philadelphia with my SIL yesterday and we stopped in at Miel. She had a Linzer tartlet, about which she had no complaints. I had the fresh fruit tartlet, which was gorgeous but left me cold upon eating. The crust was thick and dense, there wasn't enough pastry cream, and the fruits were too heavily glazed. I know that the founding pastry chef left Miel in late summer of 2005; I think they've gone downhill. <pout>

[avocado]

Lemon-vanilla frozen yogurt with dates.

I'm still playing with the ice cream maker I got for Christmas; this has been my least favorite so far. It's just really....yogurty. The chewy frozen dates are nice though.

[Patrick S]

I tried a banana bread recipe that includes orange zest, and I'm sold on the combination. It doesn't really taste orange; rather, the orange just seems to accentuate the banana flavor.

Edited January 16, 2006 by Patrick S (log)

[Ling]

^I especially love the last picture! Where is the recipe from?

[Patrick S]

^I especially love the last picture!  Where is the recipe from?

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Its Cook's Illustrated Orange-Spice Banana Bread. I used sour cream instead of yogurt, though. And I left out the walnuts. Its really good.

[amccomb]

^I especially love the last picture!  Where is the recipe from?

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Its Cook's Illustrated Orange-Spice Banana Bread. I used sour cream instead of yogurt, though. And I left out the walnuts. Its really good.

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I made this same recipe. I whipped a tub of mascarpone with just a touch of orange blossom honey and spread that on each piece. Mmm.... I, too, am sold on the subtle orange flavor.

[Megan Blocker]

Spent the afternoon baking today! I made madeleines with chocolate chips (granules, really, like these from Michel Cluizel):

Also made some shortbread dipped in bittersweet chocolate. Yum.

[Ling]

^Mm...looks great, Megan!

I did two white cakes today, so I ate two slices of each. (One slice when each cake cake out of the oven, and another slice from each when they had cooled down a little bit. I am very stringent with my taste-testing, you know. )

I liked the KA cake a bit more, which is the cake on the right.

I had chocolate at breakfast too. (Valrhona on toast, with olive oil and fleur de sel).

Edited January 16, 2006 by Ling (log)

[Patrick S]

Those are some of the best-looking madeleines I've seen.

[Jmahl]

It's pretty clear that I am out of my league on this thread, but here is a slice of cheesecake in the French style.

Light, and will you know, so, so good.

You guys and gals inspire me, so I will just keep trying.

Jmahl

[Beanie]

It's pretty clear that I am out of my league on this thread, but here is a slice of cheesecake in the French style.

Light, and will you know, so, so good. 

You guys and gals inspire me, so I will just keep trying.

Jmahl

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That looks really delicious. What is the French style? It looks more cakey than a dense, NY-style cheesecake. Would you share the recipe?

[Jmahl]

Now Beanie you have struck me to the heart. I am sworn to silence on the recipe by my dear late Mother. This is the only recipe I can't share. Its silly but that's were I am. However I can tell you it is not cakie since it contains no flour. Just cream cheese, eggs, sugar and vanilla. The whites are beaten to peaks and then incorporated into the batter. After being in the oven for approx one hour the oven is turned off and the cake is allowed to remain in the oven until cool. It drops somewhat, cracks a little and is wonderful warm or cold. With a little fruit sauce and an expresso. Its a sin.

To make the point, My mother's hand written recipe card says "do not open the oven door."

Over the years my wife and I have made literally hundreds of these. And they are still great.

As to why the "French Style" I was just reading the other day that New York Cheese Cake is "dense" while the French make a lighter, soufflé style. So that is why I call it that. The truth is I really don't know. My mother started making these 50 years ago in the Bronx - I have no idea where the original recipe came from.

Edited January 17, 2006 by Jmahl (log)

[JCD]

Dinner is always so good I don't need dessert.....

[Jmahl]

JCD -- sometimes dinner is dessert.

Sweet dreams.

[scase805]

Well, my girlfriend left for a week-long trip to Italy tonight , but she was kind enough to leave me a whole plateful of bread-pudding. We both work at a specialty food store in Philly, so we got a bunch of bread, including Raisin-Pecan, Honey Fig Nut and some left-over Panettone from the store. The gf made some homemade caramel, so all I had to do was heat-up the pudding, scoop a little ice cream on that bad-boy and drizzle away with the caramel. i would have taken a photo of it to share, but I ate it too fast - oops!

[Ling]

That looks really delicious. What is the French style? It looks more cakey than a dense, NY-style cheesecake. Would you share the recipe?

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Hi, I know this isn't Jmahl's recipe, but here's a really simple souffle-style cheesecake Mid-Atlantic recipe

I've also seen souffle-style cheesecake recipes that call for proportionately more eggs (say, for example, 8 eggs per 1 lb. of cream cheese) while the rest of the ingredient ratios are pretty typical. Perhaps you could experiment--all you have to do differently is separate the eggs, then make the batter using only the yolks. Then, whip the whites to stiff peaks, and fold the cheesecake batter into the beaten whites. The cheesecake should souffle in the oven, then fall.

[Ling]

I had a few requests for my caramel apple pie recipe, and it's now entered in Recipe Gullet.

Ling's caramel apple pie

Sorry about the delay! I hope you decide to try it.

(And yes, I do realize that the instructions are a little anal...)

Edited January 17, 2006 by Ling (log)