These fruit pastries can be a nice little dessert after a meal or a great partner with coffee in the morning. I've been having fun making and sharing these and decided they might be nice for people to make during the holidays.  They are so pretty, especially with raspberry jam.  I've made blackberry and blueberry, too, and they are just as delicious.  The dough is a snap to make in your food processor - it takes just a couple of minutes.

It's summertime and everyone should know how to make a classic fruit crisp dessert.  They are easy to make and you can make them with so many different fruits.  I'm making this one with blackberries, but you can add blueberries and raspberries for nice mixed berry crisp.  And leftovers are great the next day or even as a sweet treat for breakfast with your coffee.  

Sometimes serving individual little cheesecakes is just a little more special than slicing servings from a large cheesecake.  If you're having a small dinner with just a few people, mini cheesecakes are a fun option.  I have two ways to make mini cheesecakes, which are easy and work well - one is Wilton's inidividual mini cheesecake pans and the other is this Norpro mini cheesecake pan.  But what if you don't have these pans and don't want to invest in something like this when you're only going to use them once in a blue moon?  You can bake a whole cheesecake in a 9x13 pan and just cut out individual cheesecakes with a cutter.  

"Crostata" is a term used for an Italian tart. This dessert is a chocolate lover's dream and comes from Katherine Thompson, the pastry chef at several top NYC restaurants, including L'Artusi in the West Village and L'Apicio in the East Village. The recipe is from a book called "Women Chefs of New York", which features great women like Sara Jenkins, April Bloomfield and (my favorite) Gabrielle Hamilton. My future daughter-in-law, Robyn, gave me this terrific book for Christmas and as soon as I saw this recipe, I wanted to make it.   

I was saddened last week to hear about the death of Gina DePalma at the age of 49.  She was the highly acclaimed pastry chef at Babbo and the recipient of numerous awards for her work.  I had written about her before in this post about making her Mosaic Biscotti (which includes a video of her).  Mario Batali called her "the mother soul of the entire kitchen" at Babbo.  

I would like to share with you Gina's recipe for Lemon Goat Cheese Cake that was served at Babbo.  Goat cheese has such a delicious tang and it's great in this cake. The cake is light and airy, unlike a cheesecake.  It has such a light texture because you separate the eggs and whip the whites into a meringue, which you then fold into the egg yolk batter.  The results are almost souffle-like. 

After the cake has cooled, a delicious lemon syrup is poured over the top and sinks down into the cake and adds even more lemony goodness.

Have you ever made a crostata?  You might have been scared off because it requires making dough, but if you have a food processor, you can use my 60-second pie dough recipe, and that makes this a super quick and easy dessert to make.  You can use whatever fruit you like, but the blueberries are so great right now that I used those. 

One of the nice things about crostata is that it is free form - there is no crust to crimp or pan to line perfectly. You just roll out the dough, place the filling in the middle and fold the dough up around the filling.  Also, you can make this dessert earlier in the day and let it sit in the fridge until you're ready to bake it.  Love that!

If you're like me, most of the time for Valentine's I prefer to stay home and prepare a nice dinner myself. And it's not just because Valentine's Day is notorious for being a bad night to go out, but it's nice to make something a little more luxurious than normal and break out some of the great wine we have at home. So if you are one of those people who are going to make a Valentine's dinner yourself, maybe the dinner is work enough for you and you don't want to labor over a complicated dessert. These easy stuffed strawberries are quick and simple to fix and go great with a glass of champagne.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This homemade candy not only looks so pretty but it's absolutely delicious, and I'm not even a big peppermint fan. Making it yourself is quite a fun project and you can make it quite a bit ahead as it keeps well in the fridge or the freezer. I remember the first time I ever made it and tasted it and could not believe how addictive it was - so it makes great gifts at the holidays! 

I'ts hard to see the enormous amount of apples in the farmer's markets right now and not think of apple pie. I was going to make a straight up apple pie for you with a cheddar cheese crust but then I decided to make it a little more fun.  Instead of adding the cheese to the crust, I put it in the filling and made pretty rosettes on top from thin apple slices instead of a pie crust.  

If it's hot where you are, Italian granitas are a refreshing and delicious way to enjoy something frosty.  They are super simple to make, require only two or three ingredients and everyone loves them.  For this post, I'm showing you how to make a coffee granita, which is popular is Sicily, but once you understand the technique, you can make all kinds of granitas - watermelon, strawberry, lemon, even almond - which is a favorite in Catania.  

Do I need another bundt cake pan?  No.  But I couldn't resist this swirl cake pan from Nordic Ware.  I was picturing all kinds of cakes in it.  Lemon pound cake, Coffee Cake, and of course, chocolate cake.  For this recipe, I'm using my favorite chocolate cake recipe and combining it with a rich red wine chocolate glaze that I spied in Bon Appetit.  Chocolate and red wine are such a great combination, why not combine them in a cake?

When I made this incredible caramel mousse recipe previously in order to layer it in a trifle, it was so, so good that I knew I wanted to use it in a recipe all on its own.  This mousse has such a luscious, rich taste to it that you just need a little of it to feel as though you've eaten a lot of dessert. Because of that, you can serve small portions of it piped into small wine glasses or served in these great little tasting spoons that my good friend, Yvonne, gave me. This dessert is perfect for those. 

ceramics from Fifty One and a Half

I've been posting about the joys of making homemade ice cream for a long time now but I have modified my recipe for the better and I wanted to share it with you.  Making homemade ice cream is super easy and delicious. Not only do you know exactly what is in your ice cream, but you can make any combination of flavors that you want.  

In my old recipe, I used a simple mixture of cream, half and half, sugar and whatever flavorings I wanted (I did not want to make ice cream with eggs). Now this worked just fine and was absolutely lucious and delicious. The problem was keeping the leftover ice cream in the freezer - it would form ice crystals and the ice cream wasn't so creamy anymore.  This problem is solved by simply adding a cornstarch slurry and a little light corn syrup into the mixture, which prevents this crystallization. 

We just flew back last night from being out in Boston and watching our oldest son, Barry, run the Marathon. What a picture perfect day it was and it was so exciting to see him take part in such a great event. He worked hard to get there. I loved the atmosphere at the race, with everyone cheering total strangers on and people applauding the military and all the "Boston Strong" tee shirts.  I've never seen so many policemen in my life. And an American with an incredible background story won the men's race - how awesome was that?  Here's a picture of Barry after the finish line:

Doesn't this cake look like Spring and/or Easter?   I even thought some Peeps on the top and sides might be cute. I put a little tiny jar in the middle of the cake where the hole is, filled it with water and put in some little rosebuds.  I wish I had some spring flowers to put in the cake but it's just too early here in Michigan.  

I'm a big admirer of Thomas Keller and everything that he has created.  He is so innovative and amazing so I think it's funny that one of his favorite desserts is a good old fashioned pineapple upside down cake.  Of course, his version uses a fresh pineapple and dark rum but it's still a great classic dessert.  You can also use almost any other kind of fruit in this recipe instead of pineapple.

The recipe starts out with making what he calls a "pan schmear" - a combination of brown sugar and butter with other flavorings - that is spread on the bottom of the pan.  The recipe will make more than you need, but it's difficult to make a small amount.  So you can either use it within a couple of weeks, freeze it for a later time or make two desserts.  In my version I used a little more than he called for and froze the rest. 

Breaking out the limoncello at this freezing time of year makes me dream of the Amalfi coast and the warm sunshine and beautiful lemons there.  I was going to make limoncello cookies, but then decided to do a limoncello biscotti recipe - better for dunking in hot coffee.  

I'm not a big frosting person and neither is anyone in my family because we don't like the sugary graininess that most frostings have.   But this frosting is different. This frosting has been my favorite way to make frosting for a long time now and if you like a creamy type of frosting, you will like this version.  It's super smooth and not over-the-top sweet.  

When I was in a Crate and Barrel in Chicago last year, I saw this small glass Hurricane on display and, although it's meant for a candle, I immediatley knew I was going to make a trifle in it.  I played around with various flavor combinations but finally decided to make something for fall.  That meant pumpkin.  And wouldn't caramel go great with pumpkin?  And you have to have whipped cream in there somewhere.  One thing led to another and here it is - pumpkin cake layers with an incredible caramel mousse filling and whipped cream.  And it's all topped off with some caramel jewels.

There are four components to this cake.  It may look daunting, but each component is a snap to prepare. The pumpkin cake is simply the same cake that is used in this classic Pumpkin Roll - I just doubled the recipe and made it in a bigger sheet pan.  The caramel mousse is incredible and not at all hard to make.  The little caramel jewels are surprisingly easy to make - just cook sugar and water together until it turns golden and drizzle it on a sheet of tin foil.  It hardens up in a snap and you just lift the little jewels right off. 

There will be cake trimmings leftover after you cut out your layers. These are definitely for snacking, so don't throw them away. 

Panna Cotta is a popular Italian dessert that's very easy to make and is a great do-ahead dessert.  This version makes an elegant presentation because it uses two different flavors of panna cotta - Amaretto and vanilla.  The layering is very pretty and the flavors make a nice, lighter tasting dessert than my previous chocolate version. Although there is a time and place for chocolate, right?