These just scream Christmas, don't they?  I wanted to show you this recipe to give you plenty of time to include this in your holiday entertaining.  I love cranberry desserts at the holidays - they are so pretty, with the cranberries looking like little jewels. These phyllo baskets are simply scrumptious and you can make the components of these ahead of time, making it a breeze to assemble right before you want them.

So, how many zucchini breads have you made lately?  Too many? If you don't know what to do with all that zucchini that's coming out of your garden right now, how about zucchini + chocolate?  Great combination, really.  This cake uses quite a bit of grated zucchini, which keeps it moist and absolutely delicious, but you can't really tell there is zucchini in the cake.  Ask my kids. 

Before I get on with the cake, I wanted to thank Saveur for the nice surprise this past week in being featured on Saveur's "Best of the Web".  They featured my post on Marcella Hazan's Roman Style Artichokes.  If you are not a regular reader of the magazine, check out their web site.  It's very good and has all kinds of great content.  

What?  You haven't got that ice cream maker out yet?  Seriously?  You think it's a hassle to make fresh ice cream, right?  Well, think about this - you make a mixture on the stove in the morning, chill it in the fridge all day and when you want ice cream after dinner, you simply pour it into your machine and 30 minutes later you have the freshest, creamiest, most delicious ice cream you've ever tasted.  So don't be a wimp - make some fresh ice cream and impress your family!   There's no fillers, no additives - just the best ice cream you'll ever eat.

We all love cheesecake, right?  But it does take time and effort.  You have to make the crust and bake it, then make the filling and, if you do it right, bake the cheesecake in a water bath.  Well, I'm going to show you how to make cheesecake without any baking at all.  It's a deconstructed cheesecake and you layer it in parfait glasses. The cheesecake filling doesn't have any eggs - that's why you don't have to bake it.  These are so easy and you can even make them up ahead of time and refrigerate them.

Once you know how to make this easy Pâte à Choux dough, you can use it to make a number of different things. Pâte à Choux is cream puff pastry and is used to make cream puffs, gougeres, and even beignets.  I love it because it is simple, fast and I can make it ahead of time.  You can make these beautiful cream puffs and fill them as a dessert with ice cream or whipped cream.  You can make them and fill them for lunch with crab or chicken salad.  You can add cheese to the dough and make savory little gougeres for appetizers, which I will make for a future post.  You can make the cream puffs ahead of time and then simply fill them right before serving - I love recipes that can be made ahead of time, and this one is one of the best and most versatile.  Once you have this basic technique in your cooking arsenal, you will be ready to make all kinds of goodies.

 

When Brian and I were on our great food and wine adventure to Oregon last summer, we saw lots of orchards that we could not identify.  As it turns out they were hazelnut trees.  I love hazelnuts.  Some people call them filberts.  They are the nutty goodness in Nutella.  Turns out Oregon is the major producer of hazelnuts here in the United States.  It was nice to see them used on so many of the restaurant menus in that area, especially in their wine country.  I wanted to cook more with them when I got home.

 

Well, the holidays are fast approaching - do you have your menus figured out yet? I have two boys coming home from college in the next week, both of whom have birthdays, and we give a big Christmas Eve party every year. It's a lot of food planning.  I've had cookbook reviews to do, I've been writing Christmas cards, baking a lot and buying and wrapping gifts.  But I did manage to finish this purple scarf I've been knitting for quite some time.  It's made out of Malabrigo (indigo 88) and it's super soft and very fun to wear.   Just had to show that in case we have any knitters out there.

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

Being part of a group like The Daring Bakers certainly makes you stretch. The monthly challenges make you bake things you never would have otherwise.  That's certainly true of this month's challenge.  Although French macarons are wildly popular right now and are so pretty, I probably never would have put them on my "to do" list.  Beside, they are famous for being difficult to master and unpredictable.  And they sure did not disappoint.   

Macarons are little almond cookies that are made with egg whites and have a filling that you sandwich between two of the cookies.  If you want to see what the perfect macaron looks like, the famous Beverly Hills bake shop, Paulette's Macarons, is the place to go.  They make perfect macarons in a rainbow of colors, incredible flavors and snazzy packaging.  And they ship.  

 

Last year at this time, when plums were in season, I posted a recipe for Chez Panisse's Plum Tart that people still e-mail me about. This year, for plum season, I wanted to share a recipe for an incredibly easy dessert that you can enjoy the next morning with your coffee. It's like a plum cake that takes only a few minutes to assemble and then bake. Since it only uses egg whites, I save my egg yolks and the next day I either make fresh pasta with them or some kind of delicious chocolate dessert that requires egg yolks.

So many people are looking for cherry ice cream recipes right now, I thought I would go ahead and share this wonderful version of the usual cherry ice cream we make. The combination of chocolate and cherries together is delicious. I paired this with a homemade cherry pie and thought I would go ahead and include that recipe for those of you who might want a good pie recipe. You can make any kind of berry pie with this recipe - blueberries, raspberries, huckleberries, or blackberries.

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

For this month's Daring Bakers Challenge, I was excited to see that we could make Milan cookies. I guess everyone is familiar with the classic Pepperidge Farm line of Milano Cookies, so these were fun to make using Gale Gand's recipe. The cookies are light and lemony with a layer of orange flavored chocolate sandwiched in between two cookies. Since the cookies have a lemon flavor to them, I thought a lemon ice cream would be nice to serve alongside. If you wanted something even lighter, you could serve the cookies with a lemon sorbet using the recipe from this post. Remember when making your ice cream or sorbet, it is so easy - make the mixture in the morning, stick it in the fridge to get well chilled and when you're ready for ice cream, it only takes about 20-25 minutes in your ice cream maker.

When  you need a dessert for a lot of people, this is it.  This beautiful pie is baked in a rimmed sheet pan and serves at least 12 people.  It's perfect for the Fourth of July because cherries are in season right now.  If you have even more people to feed,you can even make two pies - one with cherries and one with blueberries for a real Fourth of July look.  

Panna Cotta is one of those great desserts that you can make ahead of time.  It's so quick and easy and can be served in any pretty glass.  When I make this recipe, I always have some mixture left over and I pour the extra into small ramekins.  You can also pour this into coffee cups or espresso cups for a really fun presentation.

Panna Cotta means "cooked cream" in Italian and is a very adaptable recipe and  can be flavored with just about anything.  If you want to leave out the cocoa powder from this recipe, you can add some vanilla bean and have vanilla panna cotta.  Or add a touch of honey or a little pureed blueberries.  You really can flavor it any way you like.  

The last time we were in Napa Valley, I drove by Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery and I couldn't believe the line outside the door.  But that makes sense because anything that Thomas Keller does is going to be wildly popular.  Thomas Keller loves to put his own modern spin on old cookie classics, like the Oreo cookie and this one - the Nutter Butter. 

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes.  She has chosen Abbe's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

I love parfaits. They are such pretty things to make, with all kinds of possibilities from what ingredients you are going to layer to what glasses you will serve them in. For these, I used our small stemless champagne flutes. I thought they made a perfect parfait, because they are just 4 ounce glasses and so the desserts were not huge, they were just right.

This parfait is made up of two creamy puddings - one chocolate, one peanut butter. It's topped off with whipped cream. You can make the puddings early in the day and refrigerate them and then assemble the parfaits later. Or you can even make the parfaits a day ahead.

So it's Daring Baker's Challenge time again! This month, the February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. They have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.