Cakes

You can go home again: Sour Cream Apple Cake

You can go home again: Sour Cream Apple Cake

  I lost it. Well. No. Not “lost it” like lost my mind. I lost a treasured recipe. It happened several year’s ago. Somewhere, out of the blue, I remembered a wonderful sour cream apple cake that I used to bake for parties. I had…

Nana, Spunk,  and Vinegar Chocolate Cake

Nana, Spunk, and Vinegar Chocolate Cake

Nana was my grandmother. When I was a little girl, I would spend long happy weekends at her house. She always had a stack of books for me to read–young reader mysteries, as I recall. Sometimes she would take me to the tiny beauty shop improbably…

Spiced Persimmon Tea Cake: Perfect for a Blustery Morning in SoCal

Spiced Persimmon Tea Cake: Perfect for a Blustery Morning in SoCal

Here I sit on a blustery December day in Southern California enjoying a hot cup of my favorite Darjeeling tea and a slice of this spice cake. Sweet Juliet is curled up at my feet enjoying a quiet nap. Mmmm. Life is good. I think…

Happy Halloween from Blue Cayenne

Happy Halloween from Blue Cayenne

  Happy Halloween from those of us here at Blue Cayenne. Juliet, our chief quality officer, is particularly into the Halloween party mood today. She is all dressed up in  her frilly Halloween collar and can’t wait until the doorbell starts ringing tonight. Did I…

Pumpkin Season…and that’s no boloney (or is it?)

Pumpkin Season…and that’s no boloney (or is it?)

  I’ll admit it. The pumpkin push is beginning to get to me. I like pumpkin, but… There are sixty pumpkin items on the shelves at Trader Joe’s! You read that right. Sixty! And Trader Joe’s is not alone in its bid to promote pumpkin…

Blue Cayenne is two! Woo-hoo! Join the party for a slice of lemon-spice visiting cake.

Blue Cayenne is two! Woo-hoo! Join the party for a slice of lemon-spice visiting cake.

This lemon-spice cake is my recipe gift to you today. It’s a visiting cake. The occasion? This week marks Blue Cayenne’s second birthday. Woo-hoo! Let’s party! But, what in the world is a visiting cake? Cooking diva Dorie Greenspan (Dorie’s Cookies, Baking Chez Moi, Around…

Blueberry, Lemon and Almond Cake

Blueberry, Lemon and Almond Cake

Yotam Ottolenghi. <sigh> This Ottolenghi recipe was featured recently on the NY Times food site and it is wonderful. The crumb is light and the almond flour gives this little cake a delightful texture. This cake is so good, in fact, that it is almost…

Mr. Bates and The Queen’s Cake

  Apparently Queen Elizabeth is a foodie. She loves raspberry jam cookie sandwiches, white peaches, Dubonnet and gin, and chocolate biscuit cake. Scones are a constant at her tea table where she reportedly crumbles some of them up and slips them under the table to…

Day-O! and Banana Cake

    Join Juliet and me as we conga around the kitchen island singing Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song . Got you in the mood for a banana recipe? The way I figure it, everyone needs a few good banana recipes. Bananas are a health food, after…

Olive Oil Cake

Olive oil in a cake? Yuck. Don’t get me wrong. I love olive oil. I regularly drive to Los Alamitos’ Antica Olive Oil store to buy the best olive oils I can find. There, I enthusiastically swirl, sniff, sip and swallow  the various offerings freshly poured…