Desserts

Dolci: Apple Torta

Dolci: Apple Torta

 Since 2020, Americans have consumed between fifteen and nineteen pounds of apples per person per year. Whoa!  Time to amp up your apple consumption if you haven’t been doing your part.  This apple cake is tasty as a simple breakfast cake with a steaming cup…

Pumpkin Cake: It’s a Keeper!

Pumpkin Cake: It’s a Keeper!

  My Chief Quality Officer (CQO) Juliet and I wish  you a happy Halloween and a happy season of fall baking.  This Pumpkin Cake With Maple Frosting is perfect for both occasions.  This cake recipe is from Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen Keepers. You can buy…

Tahini and Honey Banana Bread

Tahini and Honey Banana Bread

Bored with all the traditional recipes for banana bread? Here is a unique variation on the traditional banana bread recipe—one replete with optional (and tasty) Middle Eastern vibes.  (If you are a banana bread traditionalist, don’t pass this recipe up because of the perhaps-unfamiliar Middle…

Summer’s Kiss: Plum and Rose Pie Bars With Almonds

Summer’s Kiss: Plum and Rose Pie Bars With Almonds

As you know if you read this blog, I love plums. I asked ChatGPT to write a haiku about plums. Here it is.  Crimson orbs of joy,sweet tang dances on my tongue—summer’s kiss in fruit. Summer’s kiss. What a beautiful metaphor capturing the delight of…

Buttermilk Biscuits With Strawberries and Cream

Buttermilk Biscuits With Strawberries and Cream

Love biscuits? This crisp-tender sweet biscuit is a perfect base for those oh-so-wonderful end-of-the-season (have I used enough hyphens here?) strawberries in our farmer’s markets right now.   This recipe is from Stella Park’s extraordinary cookbook BraveTart. You can order this great cookbook through your local…

Honey Cake: It’s a Honey of A Cake and Juliet is a  Honey of a Pup

Honey Cake: It’s a Honey of A Cake and Juliet is a Honey of a Pup

If you read this blog, you’ve met our CQO-OT (Chief Quality Officer and Official Taster), Juliet, many times before. Juliet is a 7-pound rescue Yorkie who brightens everything about our world here at Blue Cayenne. Last week, King Arthur Baking’s Facebook page featured a post…

Blueberry Muffin Loaves

Blueberry Muffin Loaves

There are few things better than a warm blueberry muffin and a hot cup of tea in the early morning drowsiness of waking up.  This is a very good muffin. Actually, it is a small loaf, baked in my small loaf pan shown below.  My…

A Very Fine Plum Cake

A Very Fine Plum Cake

This  Zoe Francois plum cake is absolutely wonderful. In the introduction to the recipe, she writes that this plum cake is her favorite cake in her cookbook, Zoe Bakes Cakes. (There are some outstanding cakes in that cookbook, by the way! So, that’s high praise…

Coming Up Roses: Strawberry Lime Almond Snacking Cake

Coming Up Roses: Strawberry Lime Almond Snacking Cake

A rose is a rose is a… strawberry.  Strawberries, North American natives,  are in the rose family. Grown in abundance by North America’s indigenous people, the pretty sweet fruits were part of the Columbian Exchange once European explorers and colonists arrived. Among other crops, Europe…

Coffee-Glazed Molasses Bars

Coffee-Glazed Molasses Bars

  This is a delightful little snacking cake. It’s got all the flavors—molasses, allspice, cinnamon, ginger. Oh. espresso. It’s got espresso flavor, too. It is just the kind of flavor bomb you need to jolt you out of your late afternoon funk…or your just-outta-bed bleariness. …