I like blackberries with yogurt (especially nice thick Greek yogurt), or I'll put them in with some other kind(s) of fruit for a plain fruit salad. They're also great mashed into vanilla ice cream.

I picked so many fresh blackberries last summer than I overdosed on them. I put a lot in a ziplock bag in the freezer. I found them at the time of the picnic, but when I defrosted them, they had started to ferment. I guess the process must have started before I froze them, but I didn't realize it at the time. I'd like to say they'd be great for wine or something, but they tasted horribly fishy, as if they'd been kept in close quarters with rotting fish

That doesn't sound ambrosial...

It was certainly disappointing.

The best way to freeze berries is to spread them out on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. When the berries are frozen, take them off the sheet (use a spatula if they're stuck on) and then put the frozen berries into a ziploc bag. This works well with strawbs, raspberries and blueberries as well. When you go to use them, they're not frozen into a big glom, and you don't have to defrost them before you use them.

As well as tart cherries after pitting!

I did that with at least some of the berries I had, but I don't remember what I did with these. They weren't really all that stuck together, but there was no room for them to be laid out flat in the freezer.

Yesterday I made the crostata from the apricot crostata recipe in the Washington Post food section, and filled it with sweetened sour cherries. Very tasty. Interesting crust, like a rich cookie in taste and texture. It is indeed more forgiving than standard pie crust, and a nice change of pace, but a bit frustrating to work with since it breaks so easily.

Key-lime souffle cake (actually one of those strange "pudding" cakes that separates into a pudding layer and a cake layer... I love these things)


I really like the desserts in the book this came from: Karen Barker's American Desserts. She's the pastry chef at the Magnolia Grill in Durham, NC.

I came across this recipe on Chowhound and am VERY intrigued. Seems easy enough, which makes it a perfect candidate for a dinner party. But does the combination of chocolate, olive oil, and salt really work? I don't want to scare my guests or anything.

Also, for those of you who make tuiles -- is granulated or powdered sugar better? I've seen vastly different recipes.

I'm not sure why she calls this a mousse. What the recipe makes is ganache. Generally, a mousse is made with whipped cream and/or beaten egg whites. Essentially what the recipe has you do, is make a chocolate truffle, and instead of rolling it in powdered sugar or cocoa and eating it out of hand, you put a small scoop into a bowl, drizzle some olive oil around it and sprinkle it with Maldon salt (My FAVORITE fleur de sel--I got hooked on it seven or eight years ago, and it's my go-to table salt).

You could try it in advance, to see if you like the combination of flavors, by tasting a little bit of chocolate with olive oil and salt. The addition of cream will change the texture, but not really the basic flavor.

I love the combination of salt and chocolate, and that recipe looks delicious. Zora is right, though, it's a ganache.

And, if you don't like the taste of chocolate and olive oil/salt, you could rescue the whole thing by whipping some egg whites and folding them in to make a true mousse, no?

If you can scoop the ganache, ala truffles, it will be pretty hard to fold whipped egg whites into it.

And the funny thing is, if you read the recipe closely, under step one it says "Be careful not to stir too vigorously, or you will add too much air to the ganache. "

I made a sabayon/zabaglione type thing for the first time the other day, using Henriques 15-yo Malmsey madeira (what is the Portuguese word for sabayon, anyway). Served with roasted peaches. Yum. And I'm pretty sure I could make this while moderately drunk if I wanted to serve it warm.

Needing a quick, fuss-free dessert over the weekend, I took a standard panna cotta recipe and added some canned pumpkin, a few spices, and a slug of brandy. I wanted to make a caramel sauce to go on top, but ran out of time, and anyway my guests seemed to think the idea overkill. Everyone loved the panna cotta, though.

Soften 2 t gelatin in 1/4 c cold milk
Scald 1 1/4 c heavy cream, 1/2 c milk, and 1/2 c sugar
Remove from heat and stir in the gelatin mixture
Whisk in about 1/2 cup pumpkin, a tablespoon of brandy, a pinch each of clove and ginger, two pinches of nutmeg, and about 1/4 t cinnamon
Strain mixture into 6 well-oiled ramekins and chill for a minimum of two hours

The only holiday baking I've done this year was a persimmon pudding I took to a friend's party last weekend. It was someone else's old family recipe. It turned out very rich, sweet, and delicious. I used more persimmon than the recipe called for, since I didn't know how many persimmons I'd need and had left over once I'd gotten the required amount of pulp. I didn't have any other use for it, so I put it into the mix. It was like a bread pudding made with pumpkin pie filling .

When I was trying to work out some kinks in the recipe, I started looking for other persimmon pudding recipes to compare, and there's an entire website devoted to them .

Poor, neglected dessert thread

This Pierre Herme/Dorie Greenspan pineapple and tapioca thing called "Gourmandise" (recipe here).



Forget the damn pineapple chips, which took about 14 hours to bake (not one hour, like the recipe says), and this is a very easy, quick dessert. The components were nothing special by themselves, but tasted together you're like "yeah, that Pierre Herme is a genius". I doubled the tapioca, though, as 3 T of tapioca to 2 cups of liquid seemed way too soupy (in fact, I think it might be a misprint).

Strawberry-rhubarb clafoutis with some blitzed almonds using Bittman's base recipe. Sprinkled with sugar and thrown under a broiler. Also since I was out of milk, I uh... added water to the heavy cream as a substitute. =p It reminded me of Chinese sweet rice cakes, and was pretty. I think the juiciness of the fruit also made the batter not cook as well - so less cream next time.

My darling nephew was visiting last week, so with an extra person around to help distribute the calories, I tried out a recipe (copied below) I ran across for St. Louis-style Gooey Butter Cake. It came out pretty well. Not really a classic cake (why this post is not in the cake thread), but more of a coffee-cakey, snack-type of thing. Overall, I thought it was a bit too sweet, but darling nephew and rwtye disagreed on that point and liked it a lot. My favorite part was the crispy "top" that formed on the gooey layer. It held up well without staling too terribly quickly and would be good for a picnic or other casual occasion because you don't really need a fork to eat it.

The recipe is said to be a scaled-down version directly from a baker in St. Louis, which would explain some of the oddities in technique and ingredients. I did not make the crust part as written, but did the usual mix all the dry stuff together, add the hot liquids, then the eggs, then the fat. Much easier and it came out fine. Also, next time (and it is definitely tasty enough to make again), I might try it without the almond extract so the butter flavor is more prominent.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gooey Butter Cake

BUTTER CAKE CRUST:
6 tablespoons warm water (105-110 degrees)
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1/4 cup vegetable shortening (I used butter)
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

GOOEY FILLING:
2 tablespoons evaporated milk
4 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
2 2/3 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temp.
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 eggs
1 cup +2 Tbs. all-purpose flour

SPRINKLE WITH:
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

PREHEAT OVEN TO 375 DEGREES

CRUST: In a cup, dissolve yeast in warm water until frothy. Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, combine shortening, sugar, dry milk and salt; beat on low about 1 minute (mixture will be crumbly). Add yeast mixture and mix well, scraping the bowl. Mix in the egg (now it really is lumpy!). Add flour and mix until it reaches a sticky dough consistency, about 30 seconds. Scrape the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead about 10 minutes. Let dough rest 10 minutes. Divide dough in half; form halves into rounds by gently tucking under edges; then let rest another 10 minutes.

Spray two 9-inch square baking pans (NOT dark non-stick pans or dough will stick) with cooking spray. Roll out each dough half to an even crust. rolling from the center outward., until it is approximately 11"square.. "Air out" the dough by gently lifting it and laying it back down; now lightly roll into an 11" square again.

Lift dough and place into a prepared pan; press dough about 1 inch up sides of the pan, and trim any excess. Repeat process with the second half of dough. Use a fork to poke holes all over the crusts to keep it from bubbling up.

FILLING: In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, sugar, vanilla and almond extract. In a mixing bowl, cream sugar, butter and salt with an electric mixer. In a third bowl, beat cornstarch and eggs until smooth. Add cornstarch mixture to creamed butter mixture; beat on medium speed until combined, scraping down sides of bowl. Add milk mixture and mix to combine. Then add flour. Batter with be thick and stiff like a cookie dough. Divide filling between the two prepared pans and spread evenly. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the top. Bake on the center rack of preheated 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes or until a thin shell forms on the top (the goo underneath won't be firm). Cake is done when the top is light golden brown.

Cool cakes 30 minutes in the pans resting on a rack. To remove cake, run a knife around the pan edge. Place rack over top of cake and gently flip it over and life off the pan. Invert by placing a plate over the cake bottom, flip it and life off the rack. Sprinkle with another tablespoon of powdered sugar. Cool completely; cover with plastic wrap and let rest overnight.

Recipe from: Cuisine Magazine (Nov/Dec.Issue, 1999)

Recent panna cotta experiments: rosewater and orange blossom water. Getting the right amount of flavoring was tricky; it needs enough to be flavorful but not overwhelming when the dessert is cool, but you have to make that call while the mixture is still warm. (As usual, I did it by taste and have no idea how much "enough" actually is, so I can't provide a recipe.)

Still, both worked well. I served the rosewater panna cottas with crushed pistachio and a drizzle of acacia honey.
---------

Does anyone have a really good semifreddo recipe? Just a basic formula that allows for playing around with flavorings. Thanks.

i found this recipe the other night when looking for something to do with some cream I had. It met my secondary requirements of containing chocolate and not needing to separate eggs. I didn't have almonds so I left that and the almond extract out as well. Quite tasty.

Cool - thanks!

Last night, cherry crostata:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

Raspberry Tart May-it was like a thin cheesecake with berries and an apricot jam glaze. Berries were from Allenberg Orchards.

Click to view attachment