Chocolate Ricotta and Lemon Poppyseed Pound Cakes

I am, by nature, a very indecisive person.  The moment that I have to choose between two or more things, I become a very unhappy person.  Sometimes, my indecisiveness is a good thing.  For instance, when I could't make up my mind about what kind of pancakes to make when my best friend requested pancakes during my recent Los Angeles visit, I made a tasting menu of four different pancakes.  That was fun, and it worked out for the best of all of us.  But, despite having positive outcomes every now and then, being as indecisive as I am really just causes me more trouble than it's worth.  Case in point: pound cake.

Between chocolate pound cake and lemon poppyseed pound cake--two of my favorite pound cake flavors--how am I supposed to decide?  So, naturally, I made both.  Naturally.

The lemon poppyseed pound cake is the same cake base as the one I use in my lemon-lavender pound cake recipe, except when I'm craving something with no fuss to the lemon, I just add poppyseed instead of lavender.  Dense yet moist, with a powerful kick of lemony goodness and the tiny little crunches of poppyseed embedded inside, all topped off with a deliciously tart and sweet lemon icing.  Mmmmm.

As for the chocolate ricotta pound cake, the ricotta cheese lends the cake an incredibly light fluffiness and slight tang that you just don't normally get in a chocolate pound cake, and I like that unexpected soft texture with the deep, dark chocolate inside.  You could opt to top this pound cake with dark chocolate ganache, but that's perhaps a little too heavy with the ricotta.  I find that a quick sprinkle of powdered sugar makes for a perfectly simple finishing touch.

This post is light on words and heavy on visuals, because I've been so tied up in writing for my day job that I find myself incredibly at a loss of words at all other times.  I'll sit down at the computer to type out posts or emails and just not have anything to say at all.  Even my twitter has been unusually quieter for the past few weeks.  Is this normal?

So, since my words are still struggling to come out, I leave you with just one simple question:  which will you choose?  Lemon poppyseed pound cake or Chocolate ricotta pound cake?

or, both?


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Thyme for Watermelon + Strawberries

If there's anything that is quintessentially "summer" for me, it's watermelon.  Once I have my first watermelon, I know that summer is finally here.  (Similarly, the disappearance of watermelons from the markets marks the end of summer for me, too--but that's sad and months away, so why worry about it now? ;-))

My family used to end all of our summer dinners with a big bowl of chopped watermelon, ice cold from the refrigerator.  Usually we would eat it plain, but sometimes, as a treat for me, my mom would give me a bowlful of Chinese sour plum powder in which to dip my watermelon chunks, and I absolutely loved that!  Though Chinese sour plums are a bit of an acquired taste for most, I just loved the juxtaposition between sweet and sour and salty between the mouth-puckering powder and the juicy watermelon.  So, as I started cooking, I started looking for the sweet and savory interplay that I loved from the watermelon + sour plums in other forms, of which one of my favorite is the watermelon, strawberry, and thyme salad with balsamic vinegar and ricotta salata.

Alright, so before everyone thinks I've gone bonkers to mix strawberries and watermelon into a savory dish, let me try to first convince you that I'm not crazy.  After all, salty+sweet has always been a great combo in savory dishes (and especially Asian ones): case in point, sweet and salty pork, or sweet walnut prawns, or the beloved orange-flavored chicken.  I even believe that the whole current let's-put-bacon-on-our-desserts craze is merely a manifestation of our desire to have a full flavor profile ranging from the sweet to the savory in one bite.  And this salad, if I might say so myself, delivers just that.  Between the fragrant earthiness of the fresh thyme leaves, the sour-sweetness of the balsamic vinegar, and the salty creaminess of the ricotta salata shavings, the traditionally saved-for-dessert strawberries and watermelon really come into their own, with everything else helping to bring out the sweet juiciness of the fruit itself.

This dish is also an insanely easy one to make and a perfect appetizer salad for a summer BBQ or picnic.  The longer the watermelon and strawberry chunks marinate in their light dressing of balsamic vinegar and thyme, the more the flavors really meld and combine, so preparing this the morning of a party or BBQ and then sticking it in the refrigerator until service really helps to make this dish even better.  All you have to do at the last minute is top the salad with some fresh shavings of ricotta salata, and voila! an easy yet super-unexpected way to start your meal.

Of course, this is a dessert blog, so I couldn't very well leave you without a way to end your meal, too, right?  To take a cue from my family's post-dinner watermelon-eating, nothing is better than watermelon except ice cold watermelon.  So, it's sort of no wonder that, ever since making watermelon sorbetto last summer, I've loved the idea of watermelon in ice form.  I also really liked the pairing of fresh thyme with watermelon and strawberries in savory form, so I translated it into a dessert: watermelon and strawberry granita with thyme-infused whipped cream.

Granita is one of my favorite things to make around the beginning of summer, which coincides (quite unfortunately), at my school, with finals week.  Since I'm stuck indoors furiously writing final papers when the weather is just starting to hit 80 degrees with no clouds outside, I always hanker for a bit of summer indoors as well.  Enter the granita, the perfect dessert to make when you're stuck inside, because, though it's ridiculously easy to make, you do have to baby-sit it for about six hours at a time, stopping every thirty minutes to scrape up the ice crystals forming around the edges of the pan until you reach a lighter-than-air and ultra-fluffy ice.  (Thirty minutes being about my attention span anyways, so it works out to have forced breaks from work to stir--and sneak tastes of--the in-progress granita.)

As much time as it takes to make granita, this one is well worth it.  The strawberries and watermelon make a refreshingly delicious ice--especially to eat on those hot summer nights sitting outside on the porch, and the hint of rosewater that I mixed in adds a slight and sweet mysterious aroma to the whole thing.  The thyme whipped cream on top makes the whole thing turn out like a sophisticated, grown-up version of my favorite orange creamsicles, with the herbal creaminess melting lusciously into a spoonful of flaky ice.  Try also freezing the cream right on top of the granita, which makes for an excellently creamy and cold summer treat.

So, with this watermelon, I now officially declare summer here!


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