Carrot cake is a quintessential dessert of spring. This recipe is moist slightly sweet, and perfectly spiced. It is paired with a rich and velvety cream cheese frosting.
Asparagus is so beautiful this time of year, so I wanted to create a recipe around it. I made some basil and pumpkin seed pesto, and drizzled it on toasted bread with asparagus, avocado, and shaved Parmesan.
Because his family is a true-to-the-bone pancake family, I really wanted him to share with me the secrets to making a good pancake, thin and delicate, perfectly browned on the outside, soft on the inside. He gave me a recipe, one that he has memorized. A set of very specific instructions, the right temp, the right amount of time for frying. I followed it to a tee, and sure enough, the pancakes came out the way I had always dreamed they would.
Last week Deb from Smitten Kitchen posted a picture of these black and white cookies which reminded me that I've always wanted to make them. Soft lemony pillowy cake-like cookies with vanilla and chocolate frosting on top.
For my first icy experiment, I decided to make a frozen yogurt (let's ease into it with something a bit healthier), particularly a balsamic strawberry frozen yogurt - which is one of my favorite flavors from my favorite ice cream shop here in Seattle.
These caramels!!! Now, I'm not going to take the claim to fame for inventing this caramel recipe, because it is a very slight adaptation from Ina Garten's fleur de sel caramel recipe, but I did come up with the idea to cover them in dark chocolate and top with some flaked sea salt, and that's got to mean something.
The cookie recipe that I finally settled on is soft and chewy. Slightly sweet with lots of melty chocolate, crunchy pecans, and a sprinkle of Maldon salt to tie it all together. The most delicious parts of this recipe, in no particular order, are the 1) brown butter 2) maple sugar 3) dark chocolate 4) pecans and 5) Maldon salt.
