Bananas about hazelnut pancakes, for New Year's breakfast

I hope everyone is having a wonderful final week of December!

I'm excited to have a new recipe up on the Anthology blog--this time, baked bananas and hazelnut pancakes for New Year's breakfast! Trust me, these aren't your average banana pancakes. Click on over for a full description and the recipe.

(Also, please be forewarned. While making these pancakes, I got this and this stuck in my head on endless loop.)

This year, I had an extremely quiet Christmas, but I did pack this recipe with a bunch of holiday cheer. For example, the cacao nibs on top of the pancakes are from these delicious cracked cacao beans that my friend (and sometimes-contributor to this blog) Andréa brought for me from a new Portland bean-to-bar chocolatier, Woodblock. (She also brought me some chocolate salt from the Meadow, which is kind of wild, and will probably show up sometime soon on the blog. :)) Oh, and you see that beautiful wooden bowl below with the hazelnuts in it? That's a hand-turned bowl from Scotland that my friend Lauren brought me when she visited in early December. (Apparently, she stalked my blog to see if I owned a wooden bowl yet--the unseen perks of having a food blog!) It's so beautiful and smooth that I sort of want to use it as a pillow.

This is my last week in LA, and then I'm finally headed home to the Bay Area. A quick trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota is on the books for early January. brrrrr (seriously, this California girl does not own cold weather gear). If you have any recommendations of awesome foodie places to see in the Twin Cities, please leave me comment below!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Read on for recipe...

Backyard Apple and Walnut Cake, with Rose Geranium Ice Cream

I have been trying with all my might to resist the fast-approaching onset of fall. I'm pretty much in denial about it all: the shortening days, the colder weather, the disappearance of summer produce from the markets, the upswing in activity with everyone returning from their summer vacations. On Monday when I met up with a few food-blogging friends in San Francisco for dinner, I refused to bring a thicker, non-summery coat and froze my ass off walking to the car, even though I knew full well beforehand that it was getting colder. Usually this is one of my favorite times of the year, and I relish the change in the seasons and everything that goes along with it, but for some reason, this year, I just don't feel ready yet! I haven't accomplished even a quarter of what I set out to do over the summer, and fall also means that 2012 is drawing to a quick close, and I haven't accomplished even 10% of what I set out to do at the beginning of the year...! I needs more time!

But alas, you can only resist change for so long before your mom starts showing up at your door bearing bags and bags of fall fruits in the form of adorable little apples and elegantly-shaped pears from the neighbors' yards back home!

These apples were too cute and sweet and juicy for me to turn them down, so before I knew it, I ended up with a bags! of them scattered about my kitchen. ... So of course the most efficient way to use them would be a cake! (or pie, really. But there's pie down the road for this blog, I promise.) A cake stuffed so chock-full of apple-y goodness that it turns into a super-robust and moist pound cake--none of that light and fluffy summery stuff. This backyard apple + walnut cake means Fall Business.

I've also been craving a walnut cake for the longest time and so am finally happy to have delivered on that front. Apples and walnuts are such the classic combination, and the bites of buttery nuttiness are perfect amidst the richness of this cake. A thank you is due to the wonderful folks at California Walnuts for sending me these fabulous specimens for the cake!

Oh, and so we can all feel good about being "healthy" and all, there's some whole wheat flour thrown in there for good, rustic measure. :)

You *could* serve this cake with whipped cream, or, you could make good on another summer goal of mine: make rose geranium ice cream. (check!) I've been on the search for rose geranium since I first read about it in the Chez Panisse desserts book years back, and finally, when my friend Toni took me out to the amazing Flora Grubb Nursery in the summer, I found a beauty of a rose geranium plant to bring home! Surprisingly despite my notorious brown thumb, the plant's been thriving ever since, exploding out of its new pot every which way with large, spindly leaves. The rose geranium ice cream is wonderfully flavored from the leaves, with tints of the haunting floral and slightly spicy-sweet smell of the plant.

...happy September! (though I am still going to refuse for a teensy while longer to admit that fall is pretty much here. <-- stubborn :))

Read on for recipe....

Lemon Verbena and Olallieberry Crumble Muffins

Muffins! It's a wee tad unbelievable and insane that I actually have never made muffins (from scratch--plenty of box stuff as a kid) before!

Over the weekend, the talented Julie of always with butter came down from the North-ish East Bay to spend a day doing bloggy and photography-obsessive things, like paint new backgrounds, coo over the most beautiful eggs at the local farmers' market, jump up and down excitedly over the 99-cent organic flavored butters we stumbled upon at the store, and teach me endless things that I didn't know about goats' milk and goats' cheese. (Seriously, this girl makes her own chevre. That's how bad-ass cool she is! Previously, I just thought the coolest thing I could make with goats' milk was cajeta.) Painting new photography backgrounds took up most of our time during the day since we had to wait for paint to dry, so towards the last wee bit hours of sunlight, we decided we still had time for a quick baking session--after all, it would be a shame for two bakers to get together without actually pulling something out of the oven!

Since we were running a tad short on time, we had to (unfortunately) nix our original idea of making cinnamon rolls and were trying to decide on what to make instead when Julie unearthed the shocking truth that I had never before made muffins. It's just one of those things that was always on my list of things to do but never really percolated to the top amidst all of the other things I wanted to bake. As for flavors, I had a few insistences (cause I'm particular like that. :P). First, if I made muffins, they would have to have a crumble topping, cause why wouldn't they! Then, we had to find a way to incorporate my crazy over-producing lemon verbena plant that I just purchased a few weeks ago and is already growing like nobody's business. Finally, I remembered that I still had a bag of frozen olallieberries from last season in my freezer--because I hoard flats of it every year for enjoying year round--that needed to be cleaned out before the next olallieberry season begins. Hence, lemon verbena and olallieberry crumble muffins! :)

The lemon verbena flavor in these are subtle but lend a hint of brightness and lemony scent to the whole muffin, which goes so well with the sweet darkness of the olallieberries. The berries turned out to be a great alternative to the more muffin-classic blueberries, because they're just as sweet as the blueberries (i.e., sweeter than blackberries) and they sort of melt into the muffin batter during baking, creating these amazing pockets of jammy goodness. Julie shared the trick that frozen berries are less likely to sink into the batter, which worked like a dream and produced muffins where the purples and blues of the olallieberries are immediately visible on the top. And the crumble is possibly my favorite part, with the combination of butter, brown sugar, and flour creating rich golden nuggets to top off the entire muffin. Breakfast magic! :)

[click on photo below for a larger image]

In the news sector, the third annual Bay Area Food Bloggers' Bakesale to help end childhood hunger is happening THIS COMING SATURDAY, April 28, from 11 - 4pm at Omnivore Books' in San Francisco! I'll be there with dark chocolate tarts (caramel might be involved! as might passion fruit! *hint hint*) for the bakesale, and there will be excellent treats from bakers all over the Bay Area there--all for a good cause. If that doesn't whet your interest, baker/chocolatier/cookbook author-extraordinaire Alice Medrich will be there from 3 - 4pm signing copies of her latest book.

Also, also! Stay tuned because next week will come the announcement and unveiling and all the gory details about a biiiiig project that I've been working on for almost the entire past year with Anita Chu of dessert first. If you want a sneak preview, you'll just have to come to the Bakesale this weekend! Hope to see many of you there!

P.S. If you're not in the Bay Area, this bakesale is actually part of a national campaign, with bakesales happening all over the States! Check for your city here.

Read on for recipe....

Rhubarb tarts with orange-honey fromage blanc

It's been insanely busy here in the studio working non-stop on a big upcoming project that I promise I'll divulge more about soooooooon, so personal desserts that I've been whipping up just for me have taken a turn for the ultra-simple and fast. But of course that doesn't mean they aren't still finger-lickingly good!

I've been waiting so, so patiently for rhubarb to finally hit the markets in my area, so when I at long last saw them at the grocer a few days ago, I pounced. (My apologies to the poor innocent bystanders that I must have trampled in my race to the rhubarb!) Given the mad success of rhubarb in pie form last season, I really wanted to make a rhubarb tart of some sort this year and settled on something super simple and yet surprisingly good: rhubarb puff pastry tarts with orange honey fromage blanc. I love how in the oven, the rhubarb stalks create this bubbling tart filling all on their own, melting into the puff pastry below. There isn't anything else in the tart itself except a dash of vanilla bean and some turbinado and brown sugars to add a bit of rustic sweetness. I served these with dollops of orange and honey-scented fromage blanc on top and a few more drizzles of honey--the tart sourness in the fromage blanc is a really fun alternative to plain old whipped cream, and the orange and honey softens the kick from the cheese. I love simple desserts like this that demonstrate how mixing just a few really good ingredients can make something absolutely divine.

Speaking of news, in all of the Italy excitement, I forgot to say that I'll be at BlogHer Food again this year (in Seattle! Yay!) talking (again) about food photography with Anita Chu of Dessert First. I hope I'll be seeing at least some of you there!


Read on for recipe....

Apple Cider Donuts

Sometimes I feel as if my East Coast friends delight in going out of their way to point out all of the awesome and cool things we're missing here in California, as if to make up for the fact that we do have (relatively) mild weather and access to an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables all year round. "The blueberries are better!" I'll hear, or "The corn is far superior." Or "You don't have seasons here." (Actually, we do. Just subtle ones, and you have to have lived here for a long time to perceive them, but that's part of the charm.) And sure, every place has what it's good at, what makes it special, and that's what's neat about it--that's why I love traveling, so there's no need to go about rubbing it all in anyone else's faces, people! Harumph.

Rant aside, enter apple cider donuts.  I first heard of these beauts last year, during one of my friend's "California doesn't have x" conversations. Then, this year, another friend based in NYC instagrammed a photo of apple cider donuts about to be devoured (Ah! You foodies on Instagram and Twitter torture me so!) and Jackie, a fellow tortured foodie/photographer, and I decided that something must be done about this situation. So we set out on our own apple cider donut -making adventure! (If this were a movie, cue the montage of hilariously random escapades on the Quest for the Cider Donut.)

These donuts! were yummy--crispy fried outsides, with cinnamon sugar crunch, and fluffy, cake insides. mmmmmm. They don't really taste much like apple, to my surprise--though I'm told they aren't actually supposed to--but they are nice and cinnamon-y and spicy. Jackie and I took to dipping ours in our mugs of hot apple cider (something my grandpa taught me to do with Chinese donuts and sweet soy milk), which made these donuts even more delicious. ...or coffee! they are good with a hot cup of dark roast, too.

Then we took to photographing our creations! It is so much fun to watch another photographer in action, and it's amazing to see how different people perceive the exact same subject in such drastically different ways: it's a wonderful reminder of how diversity makes this world a much more interesting and exciting place. Sure, you could attribute the differences in our images to cameras or lenses, but when it comes down to it, I'd like to think that a lot of it is about the photographer, our individual experiences, how we see and interpret the world. Such fun to remember that not everyone has the same set of eyes, or heads and hearts behind them!

Jackie also managed to capture some rare photos of my kitchen in action, so if you've ever wondered what behind-the-scenes desserts for breakfast headquarters looks like, please go check out her post about our donut adventure! Somehow, she's managed to magically make my perpetually messy kitchen look dreamy. :-D

P.S. If you remember, Jackie and I went traipsing around Hakone Gardens together in the summer. Check out our posts from that afternoon here and here!

Read on for recipes....

Peaches with Ginger, Pecan, and Brown Sugar Cake

This post should be more aptly entitled "Summer's Last Hurrah."  Like these peaches.  Just when I thought the sad end of stone fruit season had come, I ran into these peaches at the market.  And they are some of the juiciest, most peachy-tasting peaches I have ever had.  Most of them didn't even make it into dessert form--they just disappeared into my belly as soon as I brought them home.  True noms!

What I did manage to save, though, went into this cake, which was designed purely as a sweet vessel for thick slices of these wonderful peaches.  (Like, seriously, people. This is about the peaches.)  The cake itself is a ginger-pecan cake, with the perfect balance of freshly grated ginger to add a bit of spice and toasted pecans to add a bite of nuttiness.  The frosting is a simple affair--basically a creamy, sweet bed on which to rest peaches, with the dark, rich undertones of brown sugar instead of white sugar.  Just because dark sugar is so much more superior. :-)

[click on photo for a larger image]

As for summer, I'm having the hardest time getting my head and body and spirit back in the game for the new academic year.  *sigh*  This is not entirely helped by the fact that I am... get this... going on vacation!  Ohhhhh yeah....  :-)  I know, I know, I'm totally playing hooky from one of my schools (granted, my home institution is still on summer break, so I feel at least partially justified in this), and I am headed out to the Big Island of Hawai'i.  Haha!  You don't know how excited I am for this.  I've never been to Hawai'i before, so this is going to be extra awesome.  (I'm sorry if you're jealous...)

That said, please!  I need your recommendations for places to go, things to eat, experiences to have on the Big Island!  If you have any, please leave them in the comments below.  Any and all recommendations would be greatly appreciated.  I'm also looking for any contacts to cacao growers on the Big Island for a special project, in case any Hawai'i cacao growers or anyone who knows anyone reads this blog.

Just a few more days of work before vacation, but at least, in the meantime, I have a slice of peach cake left in the fridge... :-D


Read on for recipe....