white apples . a blog

Pearfection or Brown Butter, why are you so delicious?

This Winter, Juni fell in love with pears, which is odd given her clear preference for face-squishingly sour fruits, such as pomegranate and kiwi and pineapple. Therefore, our fruit bowl has been well stocked with Bosc pears for the past several months. I also love pears. Fresh pears are so juicy and sugary and pleasantly gritty. And they have the most fetching shape of all the fruits. But I have never met a pear in a dessert that I liked. They always seem to melt away into the other flavors, losing any identifiable pear-ness. A few months back, I baked a particularly disappointing Pear Butterscotch Pie from Gourmet Magazine (RIP). Not that it didn't taste good. It was pie. It tasted good. But it did not taste at all like pear OR butterscotch. It tasted like pie spices. It could have very well been an apple pie made with mediocre, out-of-season apples. So pears seem to always fail me in baking. Their flavor and texture are too delicate. They require a light touch. Or, as it turns out, brown butter.

Red Velvet Sins

Red velvet cake - what exactly is it?  These days you can't sidle up to a bakery counter without stumbling over a red velvet cupcake, always the house specialty.  From what I can tell, it is a very moist buttermilk cake with varying amounts of cocoa, though never enough for it to actually acquire a chocolate flavor.  And it is startlingly red.  Shockingly red.  Absurd, naughty, over-the-top red.  I can't decide whether it's three inch stilettto heels and a vampy dress kinda red or ridiculous clown shoes and a curly wig kinda red.  Either way, I like red velvet.  I like the flavor, which I can't quite put my finger on.  I like its ubiquitous companion - cream cheese frosting.  I like the contrast between rich, evocative red and billowy, snowy white.  I like its strangeness.

when night is day...

...a girl needs her chocolate and bourbon.  Specifically, chocolate bourbon cake.  This recipe ran in The New York Times on December 3rd and has been featured on several blogs since then (in its far, far prettier incarnation as a fancy Bundt cake rather than my, shall we say, rustic loaf cakes).  This is a nice, moist, fine-crumb, boozed up cake that makes a great late-night snack.  I am in need of late-night snacks these days, since Juni seems to be confused about daytime and nightime.  She is out like a light when the sun shining but is wide awake in those wee hours of the morning when her silly mama wants to get some sleep.  Thus the 4 am chocolate binging. 

But back to the cake.  This cake has a full cup of bourbon.  And a quarter of a cup of instant espresso.  This is not a demure cake.  This is an up-all-night-slamming-shots-of-Maker's-Mark kind of cake.  This cake is that fancy dinner party guest who has had far too much to drink and is now telling dirty jokes and speaking way too loudly.  You get the picture.  It's fun.  Make it.  I opted not to sprinkle the bourbon over the cake after baking, since I didn't want to get all carried away with the booziness.  But be my guest.

All the world is a birthday cake.

For my birthday in July, Charlie baked me the best chocolate cake I've ever had, using this fantastic recipe - two rich chocolatey cake layers separated by an oozy, delicious raspberry puree filling and covered with a deep dark chocolate ganache.  Raspberry and chocolate is one of my all time favorite flavor combinations.  So, since Charlie's birthday was last Thursday, I had to repay the baking karma by making him a birthday cake that aspired to an equal level of decandance.  Since, Charlie is a peanut butter fan, I used Smitten Kitchen's irresistible recipe for chocolate peanut butter cake.  This creation consists of two layers of sour-cream chocolate cake (supposed to be three, but my third cake pan is trapped beneath my oven...) frosted with a peanut butter cream cheese frosting (yum, yum, yum) and topped with peanut butter chocolate ganache.  That's right.  I just said that.  Chocolate ganache.  With peanut butter.  My favorite part is the the drippy effect from the ganache...  Doesn't it make you want to stick your fingers in it?

We've been so busy with work and baby preparations and general nesting, that we didn't get a chance to do anything elaborate for Charlie's birthday this year.  Dinner and cake.  Nonetheless, happy twenty-ninth birthday, Charlie!!!  I hope your wish comes true...

Black Bottoms and A Certain Shade of Blue

This tasty combination of cream cheese and chocolate is a Black-Bottom Cupcake.  The recipe is from smitten kitchen, a lovely and irresistible food blog that I stalk on a regular basis.  I whipped these guys up this weekend while Charlie was in the process of clearing out the soon-to-be nursery.  And then I ate them.  In embarrassing quantities.  What they lack in usual cupcake cuteness, they make up for in simplicity, flavor, and the fact that I happened to have all the ingredients in my kitchen already.  They are dark chocolaty without being overly sweet.  And I love the chocolate chip cream cheese filling and the lack of complex frosting maneuvers.  I used Valrhona cocoa powder and chocolate.  I take no responsibility if you happen to use something starting with "H" and ending with "ershey's". 

And since cupcakes are for celebrating, we had something to celebrate this weekend... Charlie accepted a position as an assistant professor at Duke University.  Congrats to my boy with all his scientific awesomeness and professorly skillz!!!  And, yay!  We're moving to North Carolina next Summer!  We are excited to be moving back to the South after spending what will be two and half years in this foreign country called California.  I miss country ham, magnolia trees, thunderstorms, grits, manners, humidity, fried chicken, use of the word y'all, sandwiches (no, I don't want a taco... I want a sandwich).  I miss being closer to family and friends and Krispy Kreme.

And in an appropriate bit of synchronicity, Andrew Knowlton from Bon Appetit (don't pretend like you haven't seen him as a judge on Iron Chef America) just named Durham-Chapel Hill "America's Foodiest Small Town."  Ahhh.  Perfect.