I usually plan menus in reverse. I start with what I want to make for dessert and then worry about the rest of the meal later. Since I was working around a Southern Barbecue theme for Bryan’s birthday, I knew I wanted a layer cake. I ended up making John Besh’s Père Roux’s Cake which was really good, but a little too sweet for me. It is a white layer cake filled with layers of a banana-rum-caramel and topped with cream cheese frosting, I have some ideas for adjustments on the cake and will likely share my version in the future. For those of you interested in giving it a try, the recipe is available here. If you have his beautiful cookbook, My New Orleans, note that there is a major error in the printed recipe. It calls for 3 tablespoons of baking powder! A version in Food & Wine calls for 1 tablespoon so I went with that. In addition to the cake, this was the perfect time for a pecan pie.

I have been MIA, but with good reason! For starters, my friends at Floriole opened their bakery and café and I have had no reason to bake since freshly made croissants, tarts and cakes are a couple of blocks from my office. I’ll be writing more about Floriole soon, but if you are in Chicago you really need to drop what you are doing and go! It is the most exciting thing to open in Chicago in a long time and definitely my favorite bakery.

But really, my time has been spent planning Bryan’s birthday party which was this past Saturday. It was a great night with lots of good friends and good food. A few of the recipes from the Southern-style barbecue were real stand-outs and worth sharing with you. I’m starting with Bryan’s favorite, which is a recipe for skillet cornbread from the Lee brothers.

Here in the Midwest we are hovering between seasons. Winter is over but spring produce is just starting to trickle into the markets. Consequently, I end up eating some strange things that don’t necessarily belong to any season. This salad is a good example. It was inspired by something I ate at Hot Chocolate a couple of months ago that stuck in my head.

After working on my recipe index, I was surprised to see that I didn’t have a recipe for peanut butter cookies. This is strange for a couple of reasons. As someone who never cared about chocolate, peanut butter cookies were always a safe choice when I was a kid (the other option, oatmeal, was always risky because too often they contained raisins- yuck). Also, peanut butter cookies are one of only three things my mom baked on a regular basis. Her peanut butter cookies are my favorite. They are thin and crispy and always over-baked. Yes, my mom is a pretty classic over-cooker. She just wants to make sure it is Done. As a result, I developed an appreciation for well-browned baked goods at an early age, I think it makes me very European. I still bake things longer than I should if I am baking for myself. There is something about that deeply browned edge that makes me very, very happy.