Looking forward to making this....

One of the downsides of keeping this blog for a while (and, let's face it, getting older) is that I worry about repeating myself. I know I've written more than once about macaroni and cheese and bread pudding. On the other hand, we don't tire of our favorites, right?

I did a search of my archives and it appears that I've really never written about the fruitcake that is so fabulous it should be called something else. We've all heard those tired old fruitcake jokes and have maybe even had to politely eat some of those dark, heavy bricks bursting with chunky nuts and oddly colored "fruit". The fact is these are neither cake nor fruit and really should be called something else so that the name fruitcake might be bestowed upon a lovely confection I like to make for the (secular) new year. The recipe came from an early issue of Saveur magazine.

This one takes a little time. I like to candy the fruit peel myself which will add a day to the process. Also the pans are a strange size. I've used small (4 cup) bundt pans before and this year I am going to try an actual pudding mold with a snap on lid that I found recently at our local thrift emporium.

The cake isn't just baked, but steamed, which makes it moist and tender. While slightly boozy from the orange liqueur, it mostly tastes like fruit, butter, and almonds. Nothing green and oddly chewy here, just pure fruity loveliness.

Sadly, I don't have any photos, but that's ok because what I do have is a link to the recipe. It's a bit of a production, but if you've got a little time, there's no sweeter way to ring in the new year.

Insanely Good

When I saw this recipe in my friend's Fine Cooking magazine, I was very, very interested. So many flavors that I love: brown butter, pecans, blue cheese, and Brussels sprouts. Sounds a little busy, doesn't it? But it is a heavenly combination.

The first time I made it I followed the recipe exactly and loved the rich, buttery flavors. When I made the dish tonight, I used onions in place of shallots, half and half instead of heavy cream, and Gorgonzola in place of the blue cheese because these were what I had on hand. The resulting dish was a little lighter, but no less delicious.

I particularly love the Brussels sprouts which are sliced and then roasted before being tossed into the pasta. I'd never had them prepared this way and will definitely consider the roasted sprouts as a side dish.

Power Bars

Two of my kids and I are not big breaskfast eaters so the mornings when we have to zip out the door for a day of classes can be a little hairy. Thus, I am always on the lookout for healthy, nourishing take along snacks to provide a boost.

I made these last night after searching through internet recipes. I found lots of interesting ones but most were either scary (corn syrup? powdered milk?) or contained expensive, esoteric ingredients like agave syrup and stevia powder. I'm sure you could use those and these would be tasty but plain old honey suited my tastes just fine. There's lots of good stuff here, and room to play around with ingredients. The key for my family is to use the food processor to reduce the offensive elements (cashews, pumkin seeds, and walnuts) along with dried fruit to a barely noticeable paste. Mixed in with oats, peanut butter, and honey, you can hardly tell how nutrient dense these bars are. You can even add some protein powder of your choice (I used a yucky excessively vanilla flavored whey powder my doctor wants me to use in smoothies but it's much less noticeable here).

Let me know what you think of these and if you have a favorite to go type recipe for busy mornings.

Printable recipe

Chocolate Financiers

Usually when I make meals to take to friends in need, I stick with the tried and true and rarely branch out. But this particular friend, in addition to needing a meal high in iron, also sticks to a gluten free diet. The beef stew was an obvious choice, as was the spinach salad but what about dessert?

I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen ages ago. In the weird circularity that it The Interwebz, she pulled the recipe from Gluten Free Girl who pulled it from David Lebovitz. With all those links, I'm not even going to type up the recipe as you should have no trouble looking it up.

And you should. These tasty little bites are worth all of the 5 or 6 minutes you'll spend in prep time. Seriously--these are a snap to make, involving little more than almond meal, cocoa, sugar, butter, and eggs. Almond meal is usually on the shelves at Trader Joe's, but you can also throw blanched almonds in the food processor and make your own.

Your result will be like a mini-brownie, but with a chewy texture and rich, nutty flavor. They're fairly sturdy and should travel well, but none of mine have made it too far as everyone here has hoovered them down immediately. I had to sneak out the batch for my friend under high security.

As for the name--financiers--does anyone out there have any idea where this comes from? I picture serious men in pinstripe suits heading off to the bank, but that just seems so wrong for these tasty treats.

Iraqi Macaroons

The seder meal is rarely terribly innovative at my house, especially when I am serving to my older relatives. We start with gefilte fish and matzo ball soup and then move on to some kind of vegetarian main dish alongside brisket or chicken, allowing me and the kids who are concerned about such things to keep vegetarian while the meat eaters are satisfied, too. There's asparagus, tzimmes, and fruit salad as well along with charoset and horseradish.

Even dessert is pretty standard. Unless the holiday falls super early in the year and edible berries have yet to arrive on our supermarket shelves, I make a flourless sponge cake rolled around whipped cream and strawberries which, I'm sorry to say, does not photograph well. This year's berries were not so good, especially after the exuberantly fragrant ones we ate last month in San Jose, but liberal additions of sugar and vanilla brought them to life. Plus, when surrounded by clouds of whipped cream, what's not to like?

It was feeling a bit too formulaic for me this year and I started looking around for something to spice things up. While re-reading the Passover chapter in Nigella Lawson's Feast, I came across her recipe for Iraqi Macaroons which looked more or less like the standard homemade variety with the addition of freshly ground cardamom and rosewater. Freshly ground cardamom? I'm there!

Aren't they cute? So plump and nutty, and vaguely exotic. And they were the surprise hit of our seder. I thought they'd be politely declined (more for me!) but everyone requested a few in their take-home packages.

Do give these a try as they are quite delightful. Being quite sturdy I imagine they would likely travel well. Also, as I'm finding more and more folks eschewing wheat, I like having a few wheat free options for sharing. The recipe is here.