Runeberg Redux

Happy Runeberg Day!

I've moved, and taken up a new job, and now I'm back in a place with at least one Finnish colleague. A conversation we had made me reminisce about the days in graduate school when I would make Runebergintorttuja -- aka: Runeberg cakes -- for my Finnish professors on Runeberg Day, aka: February 5th, the national day in Finland celebrating the poet Runeberg (more about Runeberg here).

So I decided to brush off my rusty baking skillz and dig the cupcake molds out of their box (in my still-box-filled new apartment), and revisit my old Runeberg recipe. This time around, I made the cakes in cupcake molds, rather than their usual, tall 3-inch cylinders, so that they would be easier to transport to campus. I also took a bit of artistic license with the icing: traditional Runeberg cakes have only a simple ring of icing around the raspberry jam topping. There are other licenses as well, just because I could. ☺️ The cakes are now soaked in a syrup of calvados (apple brandy) rather than straight up rum, and the jam is now a combination of raspberry and grapefruit marmalade. You know, cause I can't help but make things schmancier. :P

Now I just have to suffer through having these cupcakes sit in my office all day until teatime! With the ginger and icing and almond and raspberry wafting out, they smell too good! Woe.


Continue for recipe...

Raspberry Rhubarb Pie for the Ultimate Pi Day

This past weekend was the Ultimate, Once-In-A-Lifetime Pi Day. And so I emerged from my baking hibernation to celebrate, because one only encounters 3-14-15 @ 9:26:53am once in a lifetime. It's a nerd holiday, okay?

One of my favorite pie ingredients is rhubarb, and so for the occasion, I made a raspberry-rhubarb pie--or is it a rhuspberry pie? raspbarby pie? rhupberry pie? raspbarb pie?

Whatever you want to call it, the Pi pie was divine, encompassing all the wonderful sweet and tart conundrum of flavors that rhubarb is so well-known for, accompanied by a no-nonsense, lightly vanilla-scented, flakey pie crust. And to set the scene: red tulips, for the everlasting, irrational love of pi(e).

(Pi Pie Pan is available here. This one was sent to me as a promo a couple of years ago when the company was kickstarting; but I didn't get a chance to bust it out until this year. As is always the case on this blog, I wouldn't be telling you about something unless I use and love it myself.)

Read on for recipe...

Grapefruit raspberry flourless chocolate cake

So many changes have been happening behind the scenes here at DfB that I've been waiting and waiting to have time to properly write about, but alas--that is all going to have to wait again for another post. Today, however, I'm being a good blogger: here's a recipe for Valentine's Day (or, you know, any day). And uncharacteristically, I'm actually posting it before Valentine's Day has already come and gone. Ah, #thelittlevictories.

This is a (gluten-free) recipe that I developed for my monthly Anthology Magazine Blog partnership (past posts for Anthology can be found here and here). Lately, I've been finding the desserts I make to be more and more maximalist (like this set of miniature quar-tarts that I never managed to post here). Maybe it's because I find myself with so little time in the kitchen these days that when I do go and design a dessert, I feel as though it has to, you know, somehow encompass the whole world. All this of course goes against my very nature of wanting to practice restraint with desserts--too much, after all, is too much. So I'm always really thankful when my time to design a recipe for Anthology rolls around each month. Given Anthology's wonderfully restrained nature, it's the perfect external force to require me to strip down my flavor instincts to the bare beauty of "simple" complexity, to let the bold flavors of a few carefully picked ingredients shine on their own. Anyways, click through to Anthology for the recipe, more description about the recipe, and more photos.

In the meantime, I'm really hoping to be able to steal some time somewhere to wrap up 2013 and talk about all of the big changes that have been going on already in the short time that has been 2014. Hopefully soon!

Read on for recipe....