Food, Photography and Bon Mots
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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. …
Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is perfect to celebrate spring and this year’s exceptional strawberry crop. This is a recipe for Strawberry-Pistachio Cake.…
I don’t know about you, but corks don’t sound all that appetizing to me. Nevertheless, these chocholaty treats, Bouchons au Chocolat, are basically called “little corks.” This Bouchon au Chocolat recipe is from Aleksandra Crapanzano’s wonderful cookbook Gateau: The Suprising Simplicity of French Cakes. Crapanzano…
Best cookies in Los Angeles! Three years in a row! That’s what the cookbook author says about these cookies and we can’t disagree. This recipe is from Rose Wilde’s cookbook Bread and Roses. The cookbook is available through your local bookstore and from Amazon here. Here…
