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 PanetiÃ¨re. 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…

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…

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…

A chocolate cake with raspberries and whipped cream on a plate.

Warm Chocolate Cake

10/25/2023

In the mid-1990s, while working as the pastry and event chef for Restaurant Associates’ catering division, the executive chef asked me to come to his office. The chairperson for an upcoming event for 860 guests at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ocean Life had requested the popular…

A blueberry crumb cake on a glass plate.

Cherry Cheese Kuchen

10/18/2023

I was wondering how to use the pitted sweet cherries in my freezer, and the idea of making a kuchen, a German yeast coffee cake, came to mind. In this Cherry Cheese Kuchen, the cherries are placed atop a vanilla and lemon-scented cream cheese filling, which rests on a circle…

A plate topped with pastries covered in powdered sugar.

Pistachio Madeleines

10/10/2023

A delightful variation on classic Madeleines, these Pistachio Madeleines are baked in the same iconic scallop-edged molds and feature a subtle pistachio and almond flavor. The flavor profile is further enriched by the inclusion of browned butter (Beurre Noisette). A fundamental staple in French cooking and baking, Beurre Noisette is…

A pie with apples and powdered sugar on a plate.

Apple Galette

10/05/2023

Apple picking is a quintessential fall activity in New York’s Hudson Valley. The region boasts numerous orchards, and while I’ve explored many over the years, my personal favorite is Wilklow Orchards in Highland, just outside New Paltz. Wilklow offers a wide variety of apples, picturesque hilly terrain, is dog-friendly (see…

A chocolate cake decorated with a swirl pattern.

Chocolate Cherry Torte

09/28/2023

Throughout The Friday Baking Project, we’ve explored a variety of cakes where chocolate takes the spotlight as the primary flavor. These include French-style chocolate cakes, such as the Reine de Saba and cakes with chocolate fillings such as last week’s Chocolate Mousse Cake or the decadently rich Chocolate Truffe Cake.…