Olive oil cakes make me feel like a real health-nut. It is a small part of what draws me to them, mostly I like how they taste. This Gina DePalma recipe may be the best I have come across. The cake itself is made with a healthy dose of olive oil, almond meal, and some citrus. It is bright and beautiful on its own, but the glaze that DePalma suggests makes this one of my new favorite cakes. The brown butter glaze adds a richness that is the perfect compliment to the bright cake. Also, it is pretty.

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My friend Karin likes to pronounce financiers like the occupation, which I highly recommend.

I had a financier from The Little Door Next Door in Los Angeles a few years back that set my standard for these tiny cakes pretty high. It was crisp and caramelized on the edges and tender in the middle. It had an intense almond flavor and was completely delicious. Every other financier has paled in comparison, they can be sort of  insipidly sweet. Long story short, I had written off financiers.

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This recipe is not for everyone. It is definitely not a classic flavor profile, but it is lovely.

It is the second recipe I have tried from a spread on coffee house baked goods in this month’s Bon Appétit. The other recipe was the Parmesan shortbread, which I didn’t care about. They weren’t bad, I just didn’t know when I would want to eat them (certainly not with coffee!). But I want to eat this cake all of the time. The sesame flavor is so dark and deep that the first bite is a little shocking. Your palate quickly adjusts and then you enjoy the contrast between the sesame and the pears. The cake is completely gorgeous and grey and sweet.

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Remember how much I love Kim Boyce? Last weekend I fell in love, all over again, with Good to the Grain . It was prompted by an article I read about Kim’s new Portland bakery, Bakeshop. Lamenting the fact that I couldn’t go visit the bakery right then, I pulled Good to the Grain off of the shelf. As usual, I wanted to make everything in the book.

I decided to try the apple and graham coffee cake, but realized I was out of graham flour. Quelle Horreur! I wrote to Kim for help (the perks of being a food writer?). She offered some good suggestions, but I stopped myself before trying any of them. I could tell that she wanted me to make the cake with graham flour. And with good reason! The recipes in her book are so perfectly formulated that you want to make each one exactly as intended to see what Kim had in mind.

I decided to make the hazelnut muffins.

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They don’t all need to be showstoppers.

Sometimes, you just want a simple piece of cake, a weeknight dessert in the tradition of the Busy Day Cake. This orange and walnut flavored cake made with olive oil (practically health food!) is perfect eaten out of hand, or plated with some whipped cream. It is a thoroughly satisfying cake that will keep in your cake dome for a few days guaranteeing everyone in your home a satisfying dessert (or snack) whenever they need one.

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You probably weren’t expecting me to return with dessert (although, at this point, maybe you were). I know that everyone else is currently writing about salads and whole grains and cleanses. Screw that, I want some sticky toffee pudding.

I have been wanting to write about sticky toffee pudding ever since I returned from our honeymoon. It is one of my favorite sweets and difficult to find in the US. But it seems to be everywhere in the UK. With good reason— it is amazing!

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I don’t have a garden—yet. But I know from those of you that do that zucchini are taking over. CSA boxes are full of them and there are piles of the the summer squash at farmers markets. So I thought I would dedicate this week to the humble zucchini. I’ve got a couple of recipes that can help answer the question, what am I going to do with all of this zucchini!? Let’s call it Zucchini Week. Like shark week, but tastier. For humans.

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I think rhubarb is fantastic. Not only is it a harbinger of summer in the Midwest, it is so perfectly tart that I never grow tired of it. A couple of weekends ago, I bought about 4 pounds of rhubarb at the market, and proceeded to find delicious ways of using all of it up. This buckle was up first. read more+++

I didn’t know Imitation Strawberry Extract was in season.

That was Bryan’s response to the McCormick bottle sitting on our kitchen counter.

It’s always in season.

Admittedly, it was an odd sighting in our apartment. It was even an odd sighting on the pages of a Saveur. Most contemporary recipes don’t call for imitation anything—it just isn’t cool anymore. But not so long ago, it was very cool. So modern! I am sure we consume more flavorings and colorings now, we just don’t like to talk about it. At least not those of us that read magazines like Saveur. I don’t have any major philosophical issues with a teaspoon of artificial extract, so I decided to give this crazy strawberry cake a try.

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As you probably know by now, Chicago was hit by a pretty intense blizzard this week. It came just as we were preparing for the first Lottie + Doof and Floriole dinner. We decided to go ahead with the first dinner as planned and were cheered by a great group of people who braved the cold and mountains of snow to eat dinner with us. As a food writer, I spend a lot of time behind the safety of my computer and it was a real treat/challenge to have what happens in the privacy of my kitchen happen in real time and space. It turned out to be such great fun that I can’t wait to do it again.

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