Food, Photography and Bon Mots
It’s the season for gift giving. Here’s an idea: Gift a snacking cake. Your gift will be as unique as it will be delicious. This recipe is adapted from a recipe in Chetna Masan’s great cookbook, The Cardamom Trail. You can find the book at…
Whoa! It’s Christmas at my local Costco! I haven’t even embraced the idea of Halloween yet, let alone considered spending $1000 (Yikes!) for an artificial tree. (For that price, maybe the tree comes complete with the presents!) Pumpkin is beginning to sound good to me, though.…
Happy belated new year to those who celebrate. Last week, the Internet was rife with recipes for Honey Cake to celebrate Rosh Hashanha. Some of the postings were ebullient paens to the cake and its spicy flavors. I couldn’t resist and selected a recipe from…
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 for Marion Burros’ iconic Plum Torte. This month marks the 40th anniversary of that recipe…
Cookies never get old. These Oatmeal Brown Sugar Cookies are a delight worth adding to your repertoire of cookie recipes. This recipe is from the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen Cookbook Shelf Love. The cookie is called Verena’s Road Trip Cookie in the book. It is a…
Lovely. Such a nice word. This cake is lovely. It’s pretty. The swirl of berries inside makes it beautifully appetizing. And, most importantly, it is delicious. Right now, we are in the midst of a bountiful berry season here in Southern California, so this…
Suddenly, the scent of plumson a mountain path:sunrise!—Matsuo Basho, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Plums are in! I’ve got to agree with the delightful Basho haiku above. Plums are all good things–even sunrises. As you know if you read this blog,…
It was a party in a dessert bowl. We were celebrating the happy birthday of my neighbor and good friend Sarah, and I needed a light dessert to follow an ambitious Mexican menu. Sarah loves everything lemon, so I prepared this Melissa Clark (New York…
So many interesting holidays. So little time. Nowruz, the Persian New Year, was celebrated on March 21, the Spring Equinox. With spring just “springing” here in Southern California, this is a belated nod to that celebration. Nowruz has been celebrated for more than 3000 years.…
This is a Dorie Greenspan recipe. This little cake is maple sweet and miso savory at the same time, or, as Dorie puts it “on the brink of savory.” In a preface to this recipe, she wrote that, were she to own a B &…
