Tag Archives: cream cheese

Happy pi(e) day!

Happy pi(e) day, everyone! The anticipation almost killed me, but it’s finally here.

Last year’s pie was so delicious that I’m repeating it. It’s a chocolate cookie crust, sprinkled with toasted peanuts and caramelized bananas, covered with cream cheese peanut butter mousse, and topped with dark chocolate ganache.

Also in the works is a deep-dish, double-crust apple pie. Just because. It’s classic, it’s delicious, and who doesn’t love apple pie?

Happy eating!

Whip it (whip it good)

The Whip is one part art gallery, one part restaurant, and one part bar. Given that it’s on a less-gentrified stretch of Main Street, it’s also a popular hipster hangout – but please don’t hold that against it.

I met Elisa for brunch there on the weekend, and the quality of food really blew me away. I’ve only had evening appetizers there, and while the food was well-prepared, it wasn’t terribly inventive or amazing. Apparently they’ve got the A-team working weekend brunch, because it was some kind of wonderful.

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Cupcakes and crack dip, oh my!

I made a whack of cupcakes and hors d’oeuvres for a friend’s birthday this weekend.

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Comfort food for rainy days

This weekend was the winter farmer’s market and I picked up some gorgeous buttery baby potatoes, baby sunchokes, walnuts, and fuji apples. As soon as I got home, I sliced up the sunchokes and pan-fried them with garlic and rosemary. There’s a distinctive sweetness to sunchokes that gets me every time. I’m going to boil the potatoes, smoosh them with the palm of my hand into little medallions, and then roast them in the oven with olive oil and rosemary. The fuji apples are ridiculously crisp and sweet, and I have yet to smash open the walnuts – but I can’t wait!

A friend gave me some organic carrots and vanilla (talk about extravagance), so I did what any normal person would do and made a four-layer carrot cake with cream cheese-vanilla icing. The icing tasted so vanilla-y and creamy – remarkably like vanilla ice cream – that I ate more than a quality-control portion while waiting for the cake to cool.

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Birthday (cup)cake(s)

For Elisa’s birthday party last night I made three kinds of cupcakes:

(a) white cake with banana-white chocolate ganache filling, whipped white chocolate icing
(b) lemon-coconut cupcakes with lemon curd filling, cream cheese icing, candied lemon chip
(c) chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese filling, sour cream chocolate icing

Tonight, I made gnocchi from scratch and they turned out to be delicious, fluffy pillows of potato goodness. I sauteed them in brown butter, with button mushrooms and red swiss chard. SO DELICIOUS.