A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo tour through the magical, mysterious souqs of Syria and Egypt. One of the most captivating areas for me in every souq was the spice area. Some vendors have their spices in big bins, and others get more creative with their spices, building beautiful pyramids of fragrant powdered spices.

[Read more →]

After a month of putting up only photos, I decided I couldn’t go another day without putting up a recipe. I’m wracked with guilt over my inattention to creating useful contributions to the blogosphere. OK, not really. But here’s a recipe anyway!

This recipe combines two delicious things: wine and cake! This cake is moist and flavorful, with a tender crumb and rich flavor- thanks in part to the “secret” ingredient: red wine in both the cake batter and the glaze.

[Read more →]

A few weeks ago I posted about this Banana Caramel Upside Down Cake. I made it again recently, but instead of bananas I upside downed pears sliced on a mandoline, put some orange zest in the caramel, and used whole wheat pastry flour instead of white flour.

Divine! Although I did dump it out and realize it wasn’t done yet, so I had to re-upside-down it, cook it some more, then re-un-upside-down it. It worked surprisingly well in the end although there was a period of severe swearing that involved liquid hot caramel magma all over the kitchen and my pants, but the cake looked good after all that so no big deal in the end.

This is a pretty easy cake that was inspired by a delicious, gooey pear-ginger cake we used to make at Rose Pistola. I had no recollection of the recipe so I made a few attempts and came up with this excellent facsimile of the original cake. Of course, it doesn’t have to be made with bananas, you can use another kind of tasty fruit like peaches, mangoes, pears, plums, or apples. You can get creative with adding citrus zest, toasted coconut, or chopped nuts into the batter as well.

[Read more →]

My nephew turned 5 recently and swore he wanted a circuit board cake. At the 11th hour he decided he wanted a car cake instead. Online searches for car cakes yielded a lot of lameness and ugly-ass cakes, so I winged it. Wung it? Whatever. I figured something out, and was pretty pleased when it actually, totally looked like a car.

I know the icing isn’t perfect here- that’s the beauty of making something for a person who is only 5. Perfection is not what they’re after. They are after copious amounts of frosting and candy on a cake that’s shaped like something other than a cake, which makes them pretty easy to please. I think the biggest compliment came when, after admiring the cake for several minutes, my nephew turned to my Dad and with saucer eyes and his jaw hanging open, and said- “GRAMPA- do you realize this CAR is EATABLE?!?!?”

Eatable indeed! I made this somewhat nasty hot pink strawberry cake in a 9×13 pan and then cut a third of it off, lengthwise. Then I cut the long skinny piece I had in half perpendicular. Like this:

I flipped the 2 pieces 90 degrees and set them next to each other on top of the remaining large cake and stuck them on with frosting. They were kind of slope-y which actually made it look more like a car. I wanted really sturdy, fluffy frosting for this, so I used a fluffy meringue frosting (my mom made it so I’m not sure how- something about like this) and tinted it blue to attach the cake pieces and cover the whole thing in gobs and gobs of icing. I made a little bit of white royal icing for the windows, doors, and writing. Tic-tacs for lights and blinkers, oreos for wheels, sour belts for racing stripes and windshield wipers, some weird white tootsie rolls for the bumpers, and voila! A car that any 5-year-old would love.

My mom calls this an apple cake-pie, but I don’t know why. She has been making it since I was a kid. It’s delicious! The hardest part is peeling and cutting the apples, which I hate. I mean, really hate it. Like, if you want to come over and peel and cut the apples I will make you this cake and we can each eat half!

[Read more →]

I made Heidi’s Salt-Kissed Buttermilk Cake from 101Cookbooks last week, and want to encourage you to try it! The cake came out incredibly moist and delicious, and was easy to make.

I made it as a dessert, which was OK, but I think it would be an absolute knock-out for brunch. Next time I’m going to cover the entire top with berries. I used big smooshy blackberries and wished I had one in every bite!