These cakes would make an amazing hostess gift if you really want to show someone how much you love them. They may look like they took hours, but this recipe is all about the shortcuts. I used a box cake mix and canned frosting, adding fresh fruit and sugared flowers to keep it rustic and simple. There are also shortcuts on sugaring the edible flowers; I started by painstakingly painting each petal with egg white, and then dipping each petal […]
This is summertime in a cake, a cornucopia of fresh berries (and sugar plums) from the farmer’s market: blueberries, strawberries, gooseberries, currants, cherries, sour cherries, sugar plums, and black raspberries. Black raspberries! I was so excited to find them at the market. They’re my favorite berry and very different from a blackberry. If you have the chance to try some, don’t hesitate because they have a short growing season. I used these fruits on a Victoria sponge, with some strawberry […]
They had beautiful golden yellow tomatoes at the farmer’s market yesterday and I went a little crazy. There’s nothing like the smell of a real, grown-in-the-earth tomato. It brings back childhood memories of going out to the garden to pick tomatoes for supper, standing barefoot in the rough ground, and brushing the dirt off a sun-warmed tomato to breathe in that pungent tomato smell. The scent of a tomato is unique – it reminds me of geraniums, or maybe rosemary, […]
This is a classic recipe from a classic source: The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook. For people who live in the Washington area, The Inn is the place to go to mark a special holiday or family celebration, and we’re lucky to have their cookbooks as a source of inspiration for those extra special occasions we spend at home. The lobster with grapefruit butter sauce is an unlikely combination of flavors, but the grapefruit plays off of the butter and […]
This is a recipe of my mother’s, which is lightning fast in the assembling, though slow in the cooking. I added a lot of bacon, to make it more substantial. I like it for a campout because it can be made ahead of time as a casserole and then heated on the campfire before serving. There’s something classic and funny, in a Blazing Saddles kind of way, about sitting around a campfire eating pork and beans. Campfire Baked Beans with […]
