Kiwi Matcha Lime Tea Cake Recipe

I remember when kiwi fruit first started showing up in the market and were a real novelty. It's funny to think they were originally named for their brown exterior, because I now think of kiwi as the vibrant green color of the fruit inside. Back in the 80's they seemed to appear exclusively in fruit tarts, providing a bright color contrast. Kiwi fruit is in season at the moment and thanks to a surplus, I've been experimenting. It turns out, they are surprisingly versatile and can take the starring role in many recipes. There are two kinds of kiwi fruit commonly available and they are different both in look and taste. The green variety is tangy and has a citrus-like flavor. The yellow version is a little more elongated and tastes sweeter with tropical notes. Technically both are berries, refreshing and juicy with a little crunch of seeds. They are full of vitamins and good both raw or in recipes. One kiwi has more than 100% recommended daily allowance of vitamin C and con......

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Healthy Banana Bread: Recipe

In my continuing effort to eat more whole grains, I have been using King Arthur's organic white whole wheat flour. Let me just say right off the bat, this stuff is amazing! It has a milder flavor and lighter more delicate texture than traditional whole wheat flour which makes it it terrific for baking. It's milled from high protein, hard white spring flour. King Arthur Flour suggests you replace 1/3 all purpose flour with white whole wheat in your baking, but I've found in most quick breads and cookies I can replace half the all purpose flour with white whole wheat and barely notice a difference in taste or texture of the finished baked goods. I wouldn't use it for something super delicate, like a pie crust or angel food cake, but experiment for yourself. I was looking for a recipe for a cake made with fresh guava, and read that you can actually substitute guava for banana in banana bread. I've now tried this bread with guavas and with a combination of guavas a......

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Mocha Banana Bread: Recipe

I read recipes like a scientist would, imagining the results in my head. Like a scientist I also tweak the ingredients and techniques to come up with different results. I rarely follow recipes word for word anymore. Perhaps I'm a mad scientist since I start with solid recipes then I veer off in my own direction. I guess this also means my kitchen is really my lab. Reader comments (that I find with recipes on the internet) allow me to be historian in addition to scientist, to see where things went well, where they didn't and make changes accordingly. The only problem is, I don't always know those making the comments well enough to trust their comments. Is it possible they didn't follow the directions? Do they have radically different tastes than my own? Who are these people passing judgment on someone else's recipes? In looking to develop my own version of banana bread, I started with some cookbooks then moved on to the internet. I found that banana breads are f......

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Cranberry Coffee Cake Recipe

You know it's Fall when fresh cranberries appear in the supermarket. I always buy a few extra packages and throw them in the freezer. One more culinary confession? I still have a package left from last year! Ok, I'm not sure exactly when I bought them, but it wasn't in the past couple of months so I can only assume... Cranberries are grown in bogs in the Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Washington State and Oregon. Native Americans were using cranberries when the pilgrims arrived here--they cooked with them, used them to dye fabric and even used them as medicine. Cranberries are most commonly used in sauce served with turkey at Thanksgiving but the introduction of dried cranberries has made them more popular year round. They are tangy and filled with vitamin C. Fresh cranberries freeze very well, though I suggest not waiting a whole year to use them! With the weather cooling down, it's a perfect time of year to bake a coffee cake. This one is not too sweet and has a lovel......

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Blackberry Upside Down Cake Recipe

When a wine is described as "jammy" I always think of blackberries. Rich, ripe, fruity flavors so intense they almost taste more cooked than fresh. Blackberries, when fully ripe and sweet, not sour, taste like jam to me. Jammy also means "lucky" according to an Australian English dictionary I recently consulted. I think one slice of this cake will make you feel very lucky indeed! I certainly feel lucky to have gotten the berries from my friend Alton who brought them back from his mountain cabin hideaway, Shadow Woods. I'm assuming since you are visiting this site, that you probably use the internet to find recipes. I sure do. One thing I particularly find useful are the reader comments. For example the recipes on Epicurious often have suggestions from readers on changes and improvements they have made to the posted recipes. Sometimes their suggestions make sense, though not always. This recipe started out as one I found online, but based on reader comments......

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Plum Cake Redux Recipe

I love the taste and texture of cooked plums. Plum jam is mouth-puckeringly delicious. Somehow when the plums cook, they concentrate and the richness, sweetness and tanginess all intensifies into something much more decadent than the raw version. Even the plum color becomes more bold and jewel-like when cooked. One thing that really complements plums is almonds. Almonds are rich, buttery and almost creamy. They are sometimes a bit bland which is exactly what you need to balance out the intense tang of baked plums. About a year ago I wrote about making a recipe your own. The recipe in question was a plum cake and I shared the changes I made to suit myself and encouraged you to do the same. So with a bag of French plums as my inspiration, I revisited this recipe yet again. The biggest change I made was in substituting some of the flour with almond meal. What possessed me to purchase almond meal, I cannot say. But there it was, along with the bag of plums, taunting me, "c'mo......

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Guinness Stout Chocolate Cake Recipe

Blackout! Sometimes deep, rich, chocolate cakes go by that name, but in this case it was the real thing. Heading down the street with my precious ingredients I noticed the traffic lights weren't working and when I got home, I realized that wasn't all. Hard to bake a cake without electricity. But fortunately after a two hour lull, we were back in business. Ever since I blogged about Guinness I've been looking for an excuse to make a Guinness Chocolate Cake and the latest "Is My Blog Burning?" seemed like a good one. IMBB is that mostly monthly event whereby bloggers world round blog about cooking with a certain type of ingredient or on a specific theme. Of course the eighth IMBB event was supposed to be one in which we used spirits or wine, so I imagine using Guinness is a bit of a stretch but then again, you could wash it down with a spot of Irish Whisky or an Irish Coffee. This recipe comes from a St.Patrick's Day special served at Diamond Jim Brady......

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Apricot Ginger Quick Bread:Recipe

I buy bags of dried fruit all the time and promptly forget that I have them. Then one day, I go rummaging around and realize I had better do something before it all turns into an archeological discovery for future generations. I also try to keep small amounts of nuts on hand because they too don't last forever. What I can't use quickly I store in the freezer and that's meant to be a temporary solution. Unless of course I forget that they're in there and then they too can become relics of a time gone by. What I intend to do with dried fruits and nuts is to snack on them, add them to homemade granola or bake with them. I'm not much of a baker, but I do like making quick breads. Quick breads are breads that do not use yeast to rise and so they are much "quicker" than the traditional breads that need time to rise and rest. Quick breads just cry out for dried fruits and nuts. Banana bread is a classic example of a quick bread. And frankly, it's the banan......

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Black Russian Bundt Cake Recipe

Holiday party season started officially last weekend. We had so many events to go to we needed most of the week to recover. This weekend was much the same. One of the best events last weekend was a tree-trimming open house at Elizabeth's house in Palo Alto. Elizabeth is a managing editor at Weldon Owen, a publishing house that is responsible for the Williams-Sonoma series of cookbooks among other things. While Elizabeth doesn't work on cookbooks (at least not yet!) she is a terrific home baker. The spread of baked goodies she prepared looked bakery beautiful and I felt a personal responsibility as her friend to try absolutely everything. That's just the kind of friend I am. The biggest hit was the Black Russian cake. You may know about doctoring cake mixes, and you may have even heard of adding Kahlua to a cake, but the vodka in this cake really gives it a holiday kick! Elizabeth not only came up with the recipe (after doing much research online) but she chose to make ......

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