Blue Cayenne

This is a beautiful little cake cookie whatever–delicious, white chocolatey, and just a wee bit cookie textured.

This recipe is an adapted version of the Lemon Vanilla Dream Bars recipe from the great little book Pure Vanilla by Shauna Sever (Amazon).  You will find recipe after recipe after recipe (80! of them) for all the vanilla treats you crave in her book. There are vanilla drinks, vanilla cakes, vanilla breakfasts. There also are cogent essays about the history and fraught present of vanilla production.

Sever’s recipe calls for swirling a generous dollop of lemon curd through the cake batter. There was no lemon curd to be found in my pantry, so I switched things out to use a British-made Wilkin and Sons Tiptree Raspberry Jam  I had in my refrigerator. (I got carried away and bought a 32 ounce jar of the imported jam at Costco. What does one person do with 32 ounces of raspberry jam?) The raspberry jam changed the whole character of the little cake but I kind of think it was for the better. The red swirls on the top of the cake are beautiful and the bites of treacly jam dispersed throughout the cake were a delightful surprise in each bite.

(Incidentally, Ina Garten has a recipe and video showing how to make your own vanilla extract. It’s fun! Here is a link to that video: Ina’s Vanilla.

Here is my take on the Vanilla Raspberry Cake bars: 

I’ve told you before how I feel about stone fruits. They rock my world.

But, alas, the season is coming to an abrupt end and I find myself scouring the produce aisles of my local markets for the last stone fruits of the season. I’m finding nectarines here, peaches there, but, like Elvis, apricots have left the building.

But then…cue some dramatic music… there they were the other day tucked away in a small display on a side aisle in my local Jon’s Supermarket.  APRICOTS!

Woo-hoo!

So, OK,  they didn’t look like apricots–no fuzzy skin, pink where orange should have been. (I know. I know. This isn’t my first rodeo. These should have been unmistakable warning signs that something was awry but, you know how it is. I. Wanted. To. Believe.)

Once home, I rushed to the sink, washed the pinkish little fruits, took an eager taste and waited for the distinctive apricot tang.  And waited.

Ack!

These were not apricots.

Damn.

Pluots, maybe. But not apricots.

Damn, again. 

Broke my heart.

So, I picked myself, dusted myself off and, reminded of that old adage “when life gives you lemons…,” I made a fruit tart. 

I’m calling it my “It’s Not Apricot Fruit Galette.”  It was delicious, by the way.

This recipe is adapted from a New York Times recipe authored by Melissa Clark. You can find the original recipe here.

Summer salads are a “thing” at my house. Cool and light after a hot day, a salad is the perfect way to wind down the day and ease into a cool evening with a good book and a sweet pup.

Here is a beautiful (and delicious) Peach and Raspberry salad to add to your summer salad repertoire. It’s beauty will grab the attention of everyone who sits at your table.

Appearance is an important consideration in choosing the foods that we put on our tables. Food researchers tell us that our appetites are stimulated in significant ways by the appearance of our food. In other words, our eyes send signals to our brains that tell us certain foods like a pretty chocolate cake promise good taste—a  brown shriveled banana…not so much.

So, if the food researchers are to be believed, right now your eyes are messaging your brain that the beautiful greens and reds and yellows in the Peach and Raspberry Salad photo that appears at the top of this page promises a delicious meal. You can’t help yourself.

The science of appetite arousal is not lost on the food industry either. They factor food appearance into just about every part of their operations—from packaging to lighting to the colors they choose to paint the walls of their public spaces.  Have you ever wondered why, for instance, your food is usually served on a white plate? The answer is that the arrangement of food on a white plate makes the color of the food pop, not to mention the fact that a white plate messages your brain that the food is clean, safe to eat, and fresh.

Home cooks know this instinctively…or we should.

Dressed in a peachy vinaigrette, this Summer Peach and Raspberry Salad is a knock out. It  hits all the right flavor notes, too.

Trust your eyes on this one.

Here’s the recipe. (If, after enjoying this salad, you find yourself in the summer salad “groove,” you can find other Blue Cayenne salad recipes here.)

This recipe was inspired by one in Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook Simple. You can buy his book on Amazon (here) or at your local bookstore.