Simple, elegant, delicious, vegan My daughter puts on a pop-up restaurant fund-raiser for homeless people every year, and all kinds of people come, so we always need to have good vegan desserts. One of the waitresses – a friend of my daughter’s – brought this vegan chocolate cake one year, and we’ve made it every …
Tag Archives: baking
Valerie cake
The best chocolate cake ever A few years back, I went to a Christmas party at a friend’s house, and everybody brought something. Our French friend Valerie brought this French chocolate cake, and it was so extremely delicious that after that party practically every single woman asked Valerie privately for the recipe. So every time …
Sweet potato pie
White girls can’t make no sweet potato pie… One year, I made this sweet potato pie for my office Christmas party. On the light-rail train on the way home that evening, I had the remains of the pie under my seat. One stop before mine, I stood up and moved over to the door, and …
Sponge cake with pineapple
With Pineapple! In the winter, pineapple is good when no other kind of fruit is, and this sponge cake makes it into a delicious dessert! How to make sponge cake: Preheat oven to 350. Put the springform pan together, or use a cake pan, and grease the pan. Separate 6 eggs and mix the yolks …
Raspberry meringues
Eggs for dessert! Spring is the season for eggs, and meringues are eggs for dessert. Try to use the freshest eggs possible – which means getting them from your farmer’s market, if not from your own chickens or your neighbor’s chickens. How to make meringues: Preheat the oven to 350 F. Separate five eggs, putting …
Pumpkin pie
Don’t use canned filling! Honestly, it only takes a few minutes longer (plus cooking time) to make pumpkin pie from scratch, and it will taste so much better and be cheaper too. But don’t use carving pumpkins The pumpkins they sell at Halloween for jack o’lanterns are bred to make good jack o’lanterns and not …
Pound cake
In France, this cake is called Quatre-quarts, meaning “Four Quarters”, because it is supposed to have equal quantities of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. That’s why it’s called pound cake in English, too – a pound each of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. So be warned – this is not health food. The …
Plum clafouti
Italian Plums in Portland It seems like every yard in Portland has at least one Italian plum tree, and they all come ripe at once in an avalanche of plums while every year we scramble to figure out what to do with them all. Sure, you can freeze them, dehydrate them, or cook them down …
Peach cobbler
Peaches in summer Don’t be tempted to buy peaches in winter, and even in summer, don’t buy peaches from big grocery stores, or you’ll think peaches are just naturally supposed to taste like cardboard. This is a recipe that needs good peaches, juicy tasty peaches that were picked when they were already ripe. July and …
Orange caramel cake
Shiny! A great way to use up some ageing clementines or oranges by making something yummy and pretty. How to make orange caramel cake: Preheat oven to 350. Grease a pie pan with butter, then melt the rest of the stick in a medium-size mixing bowl in the microwave. Add a cup of sugar and …