Monthly Archives: February 2010

Lemon Blueberry Yogurt Cake

Lemon Blueberry Yogurt Cake

Dan is a picky eater.  Do you know how hard it is to cook for a picky eater? Really hard!  So when I find something that he likes, I tend to latch onto it and go nuts.  For example, he really likes lemon and blueberry flavored sweets — so far I’ve made him lemon tarts, lemon bars, blueberry pie, blueberry muffins, and blueberry cake.  This recipe, however, is by far his favorite, as it combines his two favorite flavors.  I like it too because yogurt + minimal vegetable oil are used in place of butter, so I can eat almost as much as I want without feeling too guilty. The recipe calls for lemon zest, but I don’t have a zester. I do, however,...

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Reine De Saba (Chocolate and Almond Cake)

Reine De Saba (Chocolate and Almond Cake)

Another day, another Julia Child recipe. I’ve wanted to make this particular cake since I saw it on Julie & Julia.  In the movie, Julie Powell makes it for her husband and it’s so good that he just eats it by the handful, rubbing it all over his face in ecstasy — that’s gotta be one good cake! For both the cake itself and the frosting, the recipe called for chocolate to be melted with your choice of rum or coffee.  I didn’t have either, but I did have Kahlua.  I figured since Kahlua = coffee flavored liquor, I was actually covering both bases.  Unfortunately, this didn’t turn out quite as well as I hoped — the chocolate got clumpy once taken off the...

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First Ever Dinner Party

First Ever Dinner Party

Happy early Valentine’s Day/Chinese New Year, everyone! In honor of these two special holidays, the boyfriend and I decided to host our first official, true blue, not-just-booze-and-snacks, dinner party. “Firsts” are always an exciting event, and we were eager to start out strong.  Unfortunately, by the time we got around to cooking, we were running a couple hours behind schedule, so we had to really fly to get food on the table by 7 as promised.  Which means I had less time to take pictures — after my 3rd attempt to get the perfect action shot of him buttering the chicken, Dan suggested that we maybe forgo the step-by-step photos this one time and get cracking on the actual cooking. Such a wise man....

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Banana Nutella-Swirl Muffins

Banana Nutella-Swirl Muffins

Day fifty trillion of the Snowpocalypse. No work, no school, no where to go but the kitchen.  Which is where I discovered that I had a bunch of bananas ripening far too quickly on top of the fridge. Mmm, mushy bananas.  Time to smash them up and bake something nice!   This post from Meet Me in the Kitchen caught my eye, so I dragged my roommate through the snow to get some Nutella from Safeway.  Poor Shanna.  Well, she wanted to buy wine anyway. This is such a clean and easy, no-fuss recipe. Just mix up bananas, eggs, brown sugar, butter, and sour cream (which I swapped out for plain yogurt), scoop the batter into muffin pans, swirl in Nutella, and bake. Done! I forgot how...

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Ooey Gooey Monkey Bread

Ooey Gooey Monkey Bread

With the Snowpocalypse shutting down the city (and law school!) for the third day running, I was stuck in my apartment with nothing to do.  The snow-covered trees and buildings outside reminded me of frosting, and I just happened to have sugar, flour, butter and cream cheese, so . . . obviously I had to make Monkey Bread! This was my first time working with yeast — usually I make this recipe with Pillsbury biscuit dough. But I happened to have some packets of dry active yeast in my cabinets and way too much time on my hands, so I was feeling pretty ambitious. Monkey bread from scratch, baby! Isn’t it amazing how just a little warm water, yeast, sugar and flour can come together...

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Easy Veggie Pizza

Easy Veggie Pizza

Ah, Superbowl Sunday. A day of feasting on fat things — chips, dips, fried things, sweets, and every possible permutation of breaded chicken.  Great for the taste buds, not so amazing for the waist line. Who was it that said “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips”? So I decided to whip up something healthy-ish (but still tasty) for the Superbowl party Karen and I were going to.  I’ve made this dish for other parties and it’s always been a big hit.  No one can resist pizza!  And besides, what’s healthier than a big pile of raw vegetables? One of the best things about this recipe, aside from its taste and simplicity, is how pretty the final product is. With so...

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