Three chocolate covered pastries on a plate.

Profiteroles

12/27/2023

Profiteroles, small choux puffs filled with vanilla ice cream and draped with a bittersweet chocolate sauce, are a fabulous dessert to have in your repertoire. They are equally wonderful for a large dinner soiree as they are for an intimate dinner for two. The puffs, crafted from the same P¢te…

Continue reading...
A stack of doughnuts on top of a counter.

Croquembouche

12/19/2023

Croquembouche is one of the many classic French pastry dishes attributed to Antonin Carême, known as the “king of chefs and the chef to kings.†He served as chef to French, Russian, and English royalty and aristocracy in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. A recipe for this unique pastry…

Continue reading...
A trifle with raspberries and whipped cream.

Raspberry Orange Trifle

12/13/2023

Trifle can be traced back to mid-nineteenth-century England as a dessert consisting of biscuits soaked in wine, layered with custard, and topped with whipped syllabub–a sweet cream with added acid. Today there are countless versions of Trifle, many incorporating fresh berries for color and taste. In the place of the…

Continue reading...
A cake with a slice taken out of it.

Gâteau Favorite

12/05/2023

This wonderful g¢teau is an example of how the addition of a single element to a classic cake elevates it to another level. In this case we add a layer of flourless Chocolate Souffl© Sheet to our Dacquoise, serving two purposes. One, it provides additional complexity, with the soft and…

Continue reading...
Donuts with chocolate and white icing on a plate.

Black and White Cookies

11/29/2023

For those who grew up with the occasional bakery treat of a Black and White Cookie, this recipe should bring a smile to your face. There is something about this cake-like cookie, with the sweet vanilla and chocolate icing, that is simply fun to eat. In my version below, the…

Continue reading...
Apple Cranberry Sour Cream Pie

Apple Cranberry Sour Cream Pie

11/16/2023

Center City Philadelphia of the 1980’s had a wealth of very good restaurants. For classic French cuisine, there was Le Bec Fin and La Panetière. In Season and Friday Saturday Sunday (still in existence) featured innovative American menus. The Garden in a beautiful townhouse on Spruce, offered country French cooking…

Continue reading...
A cranberry bundt cake on a plate.

Cranberry Orange Cake

11/08/2023

Martha’s Vineyard in the fall has its own unique beauty and seasonal rhythm. The crowds thin out, up-island beaches no longer require permits and driving to down-island towns no longer demands careful time planning. In the 1980s at Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, there was a pot of clove-laden apple…

Continue reading...
A three tier chocolate cheesecake on a white plate.

Triple Chocolate Mousse

11/01/2023

This elegant and chic dessert, is perfect for a small dinner soir©e. It features a trio of chocolate mousses – dark chocolate, mocha (milk chocolate), and a white chocolate mousse which interplay harmoniously with each other. Surprisingly for a mousse dessert it slices beautifully, allowing for thin slices to be…

Continue reading...

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter for baking tips and a link to the latest recipe.