Passionfruit Tapioca and Lemon Cream Tarts

Happy Valentine's Day! Or otherwise known as, Happy stuff-your-face-with-desserts day! Now, I realize that I'm a little bit late to the Valentine's Day party, but this being a journal and all, I wanted to share what the dessert I'm actually having for Valentine's Day rather than making something weeks ahead of time that I wouldn't actually make again. ... and, I'm just running behind, so please forgive me! :)

It seems that, whenever I think about Valentine's Day desserts, I always come back to passionfruit. It's not your typically romantic fruit, like red strawberries dipped in chocolate--and frankly, it looks like dinosaur eggs, with its bumpy skin and bizarre, seedy insides. But, I think it's the name that gets to me, with passion, and I like that it's a little bit tart and sweet, like love.

This year for Valentine's Day, I decided to mix passionfruit with another thing that my bf and I are obsessed with: tapioca. I've always joked that you can't date me unless you like tapioca (with tea, that is), and one of the first things that happened years ago in our relationship was that Richard learned to like tapioca milk tea, just to hang with me. That's the sign of a keeper! Then, a few days ago, he showed up with a bag of lemons from his backyard (<3), which I also wanted to incorporate into the dessert.

Hence, passionfruit tapioca and lemon cream tarts! with passionfruit curd filling, which is super luscious and studded with small rounds of soft tapioca pearls, and mascarpone whipped cream, which is flavored with fresh-squeezed lemon juice and zest for an overall brightness to the dessert. It's one of those desserts that make you feel like you're eating pure rays sunshine, even if the weather outside and stormy and cold (as it finally is here in the Bay, after a winter of no rain!).

Even though it's a bit late, here's wishing you all a Valentine's Day filled with sugar and candy and delicious desserts (forget love and romance, all we need is sugar anyways)!


Read on for recipe....

Happy Valentine's Day!

much ❤,

Stephanie

Smoked Salmon, Sweet Potato Blinis, and the last remnants of Valentine's Day

Okay, I am forcing myself to post nothing new until I've finally posted photos from the Valentine's Day event that I did way back when!  I'm actually quite proud of how everything turned out, despite the fact that I didn't get a chance to snap very good photos.  But, I do have a recipe at the end of it for you all--and a savory one at that!

So first, a bit of back-story to this Valentine's Day event that I did.  At my 'day job,' we are required when we are first year newbies to run Friday afternoon social events, which is basically food + beer + equally-attractive-non-alcoholic-beverages.  Everyone goes through it, and it's sort of a hazing ritual of "how good can you do a Social?"  When I was a first year, we were particularly competitive about it, and our Friday afternoon social events began to get more and more intense and involved and finally culminated in an eleven course gourmet dinner, served entirely in miniature at the end of the year.  I think that clearly established my year as the undisputed Social champions for quite some time to come.

Being the proud winner that I am, I find it necessary (and, I admit, a tad bit egotistical) to remind everyone of our dominance once every year.  And so on the Friday social of Valentine's Day every year, I step in and show them how it's done.

This year's menu included:

Red velvet cupcakes

Pina colada cupcakes

Orange, pomegranate, almond dark chocolate tartelettes

Chocolate-dipped tuxedo strawberries

Handmade dark chocolates

Apricot+goat cheese open-faced sandwiches

Red pepper hummus + pita bread

Smoked salmon, avocado cream, and sweet potato blinis

And, I love the tag-holders that I found!  Aren't they brilliant?  :-D

The event went really well, I think! though my kitchen still hasn't quite recovered from it all.  But, hey--as a one person job, I think I'm allowed some bit of mess in the kitchen.

Some of the things that I made were old favorites, like chocolate covered tuxedo strawberries and apricot goat cheese open-faced sandwiches:

Others, like icing shots, were new ideas that I was really itching to try out.  (They were popular, too!)

And, of course, you always need savory things to balance out the sweet, which is where platters like the red bell pepper hummus came in.

By far, one of the favorites this time around was a new savory dish: Sweet potato brown butter blinis, with smoked salmon, avocado sour cream, and chives.  It was a runaway HIT.  This is most definitely a dessert blog, but because these blinis were so good, I have to post the recipe for you all!  The blinis themselves have such a smooth, dense, earthy texture from the caramelized sweet potato and brown butter.  The fresh avocado sour cream adds a freshness to it all.  Top with the smoky saltiness of the salmon and the garlicky bit of chive, and you get one delicious bite of, well, delicious.  These work great as an appetizer and finger food, but they're so yummy that I could just sit down to a whole meal of them!

Finally with this post, we can bid adieu to all of the Valentine's Day festivities from this year!  Moving on to spring!!!

Ah, and one last thing that I learned from this whole experience: I desperately need to invest in an off-camera flash so that I can get decent on-site photos of food and events!


Read on for recipe...

Like Me: Conversation Heart Cupcakes

Oh man, I am so behind on posting Valentine's Day desserts--there's a huge backlog on my blog queue!--because my every spare minute has been going into catering a department Valentine's party yesterday (more on that in a few days).  But now that it's over, I can finally catch up with the times!

One of my favorite, favorite candies on Valentine's Day is conversation hearts.  I know, they're probably tacky like the rest of Valentine's Day, but there's something so classic and succinct about them that's irresistible to me.  In fact, I'm munching on a box right now.  :-P

I wanted to translate conversation hearts into a true dessert for Valentine's Day, and after some serious consideration and questionable prototypes last year, I finally figured out these Conversation Heart Cupcakes this year, which I'm really happy with!  With the forms in place, I also set out to update those messages on the hearts for the 21st century:

Ah, yes.  Welcome to the digital age!  Hehe, thinking up new messages for these conversation hearts were so much fun.  How about some Twitter-inspired ones?

(Though not pictured, I also had ones that said "RT me" and "DM me.")  Or, some Facebook-inspired hearts?

I had to also, of course, pay homage to one of my favorite tech sites, Gizmodo, with a <3modo cupcake.  And, the "I Digg U" one is credited to Richard, who proudly came up with the whole tech-inspired idea in the first place.

Of course, I also couldn't quite resist making a sideways dig at Apple, because, quite honestly, they really need to coin a better term for their video-output connectors than "dongle."  Hehe.

Yeah, dongle just took on a whole new meaning. :-P

The conversation hearts are actually super easy and simple to make.  They are made out of flavored couverture chocolate, and the hardest part is really the writing on the top.  :-)  Underneath, I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting just because I love the bright red-ness for Valentine's Day.  And, I made more pina colada cupcakes, too, because they are just so darn good.

I took these cupcakes to the event that I was catering, and everyone was so incredibly thrilled, but I think what they loved even more were the linguistics-inspired conversation hearts, which were the perfect meld of geeky, suggestive, naughty, and sweet:

Yes, I kid you not: those are all technical linguistics terms.  :-P

I hope you all have a wonderful and lovely Valentine's Day, full of sweet, yummy treats!

Read on for directions on making conversation heart cupcake toppers.

I like Pina Colada Cupcakes! (and getting caught in the rain)

I wasn't going to post these until next week since they aren't very "traditional" Valentine's Day fare, but they turned out so damn good that they just couldn't wait!  Hello, lover.

Pina colada cupcake:

Coconut cake

with fresh pineapple Italian meringue buttercream

Yes, the pina colada cupcake.  But, before you all get another look at these yummy-licious beauties, I must first inflict some pain on you, because every time I hear or say the words "pina colada," this immediately gets stuck in my head:

Yes, okay, I apologize for that.  But, misery loves company.  Now that we have a soundtrack (of most arguably one of the worst love songs ever), back to more pleasant things.

This idea of pina colada cupcakes has been floating around in my head for a while prior to execution.  The original spark of inspiration, to give credit where credit's due, comes from my friend Toni, who I regard as one of my biggest dessert fans and who happens to be an amazing photographer.  For Christmas, Toni got me Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Heavenly Cakes, promptly opening the book to page 23, pointing, and saying, "I want to make that into a pina colada cake."

A few weeks later (okay, the Christmas gift happened in mid-January), the pina colada cupcake was born (or baked, I guess, would be the more proper word choice)!  With a base of coconut cake, taken from page 23 of Rose Levy Beranbaum's book, and a liberal topping of Italian meringue buttercream flavored with freshly made pineapple puree, this cupcake is absolutely heavenly.  And I am not kidding.  It literally hurt me in the gut to give these cupcakes away to both the people who had ordered them, and, I have to confess, to Toni.  I just wanted to keep them all for myself.

The coconut cake recipe is really good and super coconut-y.  But what really makes these cupcakes for me, personally, is the fresh pineapple puree in the pineapple buttercream.  You absolutely don't want to cut corners here and use canned pineapple.  It's just not going to be the same.  And fresh pineapple puree is easy to make.  All it involves is cooking the pineapple down with sugar and water, draining away the liquid, and whizzing it through the food processor.  The resulting puree is so good and light-as-air that I ate most of it fresh out of the food processor.  It's better than any applesauce you will ever touch.  Don't throw away the pineapple syrup, either!  It makes a great base for homemade pineapple soda (just add fizzy water) or cocktails.

The punch of pineapple and coconut flavors in this cupcake linger in your mouth for a long while even after you've finished the cake, making you really, really crave more.  I can seriously scarf down about ten of those mini ones in one sitting if I'm not careful.  Trust me: make these for your Valentine.  Despite not being made of the traditional chocolate, they are sure to impress.

Oh, but a fair word of warning: you'll most definitely want to make an even number of these cupcakes.  If you and your Valentine have to fight over one, it's not going to be pretty.

(P.S. On an unrelated topic, a reader kindly brought to my attention yesterday that there was no obvious way to subscribe to this blog's feed located on the homepage--a gross oversight on my part!  (Thanks, June, for bringing this to my attention!)  I have since remedied this situation, and you'll find links at the top of the side bar -----> that can allow you to subscribe easily via your feed reader of choice (e.g., Google Reader) or via email (Thanks to my Adopt-a-Blogger mentor, Kristen, for pointing me in the right direction for this).  So go subscribe!

In other blog-related news, I've started a recipe index page, also located for now on the *new* left sidebar <----, where you can find a list of recipes by category.  It's still a work in progress, but hopefully, you'll find it helpful!)

Read on for recipe...

Happy Nutella Day! (Rice Krispies and Nutella)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: sometimes, simplicity is key.  Case in point:

Rice Krispie treats!  One of the easiest, simplest, yummiest, and quickest treats that you can whip up.  Take note: running short on time for Valentine's Day?  Rice Krispies literally take, like, ten minutes only.

Which is why these things were one of my STAPLE foods in undergrad.  Yes, yes, I know.  Totally healthy.  But, when I needed a quick fix of sugar for late night studying, these definitely hit the spot.

With rice krispies treats, simplicity is most definitely the way to go.  Rice krispies with chocolate chips?--too complicated and the textures are too incompatible IMO.  Rice krispies with nuts?--BLECH! (why try to make a perfectly good sugary snack healthy at all?)  Plain is always my preferred choice.  Maybe, hit them with a dash of sprinkles to dress 'em up, and you're good to go.

Unless, of course, it's Nutella Day...

On Nutella Day, take a knife (or any other paste-spreading implement), open a Costco, mega-sized jar of Nutella, grab a big dip of the totally delicious hazelnut chocolate spread, and liberally smooth it all over your rice krispie treat.  And enjoy.

Yup, life doesn't get much simpler or better than this.

P.S. If you *must* insist on making these treats healthier, you might be able to find organic, brown rice rice krispy cereal at certain food stores.  (In the Bay Area, I know that Berkeley Bowl carries it in the bulk section.)

Read on for recipe...

Rose and Basil-Dark Chocolate Macarons

I'm back! from my conference this past weekend, and does it feel good to be back in the kitchen again!

Okay, but before we get to those bite-size pieces of deliciousness, allow me to catch you up with what I've been up to for the past week.  (If you're interested--otherwise, skip to the food pics, I won't take offense.)  This past weekend was the annual national conference for my "day job," and all the linguists of the States (and elsewhere, too) flocked to the sunny Baltimore, Maryland.  This was a particularly big weekend for me, because I had my first talk at said national conference, and it was in a special session organized by the leaders in my subfield.  So I had myself pretty much shut up for the past couple of weeks working on the talk.  Once *that* was out of the way, I tried to see a bit of the city.

Bokeh at Baltimore's Inner Harbour

Unfortunately, we were in a pretty dead area (with no convenient transportation available), and the pub food that was so ubiquitous around the conference area was just downright horrid.  So, no fun food news to report from the weekend.  But, I did get to go to the Walter museum, and on the way, we checked out America's first cathedral/basilica, which we randomly ran into.

The Walter museum was actually one of the best parts of the weekend!  There were awesome exhibits of 16th through 18th century Italian art, arranged in chronological order, so that you could really get a sense of the development of styles throughout the centuries.  This one was a particular favorite of the group of linguists I was with:

Allegory of Grammar

Laurent de la Hyre, 1650

Anyways, despite it being fun to be around all of the people from my field, it is nice to be back in (warmer) California--and back in the kitchen (read: not eating gross, oily, fried bar food every day).  I was so glad, in fact, that I decided to use up the leftover egg whites in my fridge by making macarons (most definitely the antithesis to pub food).

Rose macarons

with dark chocolate-basil buttercream

Now that Christmas and New Year's are over, it's time to look forward to Valentine's Day!  (Yes, it's never too early for the next holiday, in my book.)  So, if roses are supposed to mean that someone likes you, and chocolates are supposed to mean that someone loves you, what about rose macarons with dark chocolate-basil buttercream?  If someone made these for me, personally, I'd probably hop into their arms with little hesitation.  ;-P

In all seriousness, though, the initial inspiration for these macarons did not come from thinking about Valentine's Day.  These are actually inspired by the movie, Like Water for Chocolate.  Now, if you haven't seen the movie yet, I highly recommend it!  We were assigned the film for a Spanish class that I'm taking this quarter, and so I watched it the night I returned from Baltimore.  Long story short, the film (based on the novel) is a long love story, punctuated by different foods that reflect the main character's various emotions throughout.  In one scene where she tries to woo an unrequited lover through her cooking, she makes this roasted quail with rose petal sauce that just looks downright divine.

Ever since then, I've been craving rose myself.  Then, a scoop of rose-vanilla ice cream from Ici in Berkeley today only helped to intensify rather than satisfy my craving.

When I was baking these, the whole house smelled of roses.  It was absolutely wonderful and fragrant!  To go with the macarons, I whipped up a quick dark chocolate buttercream, and to help balance the buttercream with the rose macaron, I added in some freshly-dried basil powder to the chocolate buttercream.  The basil, which you can't really place when you eat these, lends this great earthiness to the buttercream, which helps to keep it on the less-sweet side and compliments the flowery flavor of the rose perfectly.

Quite a nice way to unwind after a weekend of travelling, no?  :-)

Read on for recipe...

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's tradition for me to make two things at Valentine's Day: tuxedoed strawberries and a fruit tart. Here's my fruit tart from this past year: vanilla custard tart with fruit and passion fruit syrup.