Recovering from my eating out kick, I started cooking again this week. Dinners have been nothing elaborate - chicken sausage with rice and peas, sausage-stuffed ravioli (pasta post coming soon) - but I also had to make a dessert to take to the women's group I'm in (don't ask). I turned to my ultimate baking source: "Classic Home Desserts," by Richard Sax. The book is a baking bible. It's touted as "a treasury of heirloom and contemporary recipes from around the world" and I'd have to agree. It's a huge 700 page book with more than 350 recipes. And really, it's got everything in it -- all the basics, everything your grandmother ever made, fancier stuff. I've made pear pandowdy from this book, a flourless chocolate cloud cake, shoo-fly cake (wonderful take on shoo-fly pie), gingerbread, brown-butter coffee cake. This week it was Lightning Cake (recipe below) - mostly because of the promise that it would be quick ("Quicker than a mix" -- almost true) and that I had all the ingredients on hand (OK, except for the lemon zest, which I just left out). The thing is I'm not a big cake fan. To me it's just a vehicle for icing, and this cake didn't even involve icing. And yet, it's delicious. Very moist and the almonds and sugar add just the right amount of sweetness!
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