Chili-Grilled Eggplant and Sweet Roasted Pepper Tartlets in Poppy Seed Shells

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Tom and I love to have dinner parties.  Mainly because Tom knows that I like to cook up a storm and then sit back and accept all the praises that our guest will send my our way.

I’m crazy and he loves me – what can I say.

On the last dinner party, we had his best friend and his wife over.  We had them numerous times before and they are the type of dinner guest that will pretty much eat anything we put in front of them.

I call it having an adventurous palate.

I love cooking for them.

And the best part? The best friend wife is a vegetarian who lately is venturing into the raw food movement.  Which means that she forces me to be an adventurous cook - the best kind if you ask me.

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TWD: Lots-of-Ways Banana Cake

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It’s funny how sometimes both of my baking groups (Heavenly Cake Bakers and Tuesday with Dorie) are in synch and totally random pick a recipe that shares a common ingredient.  Sometimes the recipes are so close that I have to make an executive decision and choose which one I want to bake more.  No sense in having 2 cakes in the house, especially when I try to get rid of it as fast as I can in the first place – no temptation in sight!

This past weekend Tuesday with Dorie choice won.  Thank you to Kimberly from Only Creative Opportunities who made the choice.

And what a choice it was.

This cake was very simple to make (the best kind) and as Dorie explains very flexible. Since you pretty much can replace any of the ingredients with what you have at hand – which in my mind means one thing:

No trip to the supermarket to find an ingredient that I ran out and forgot to put on my shopping list.

Have I mentioned how I hate to go to the supermarket?

No? Well now you know – your welcome.

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Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee Cake

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As most food blogger out there, we collect recipes from all over.  We print them out, we bookmark them, we tear them out of food magazines, we earmark them with post it on cookbooks and soon, before you know it, we have a cooking TO DO list.

Mine is pretty long, and pretty overdue.

I had this recipe in my list for quite a while now.  I found it via Leite’s Culinaria website a couple of months back and printed it and saved it for that moment in time where I would totally have the nerve to tackle it.

Anyhow…

At first the recipe scared me; it had yeast and needs kneading, and the use of a rolling pin!   Three things that I’m not good at using or doing.  I made bread before – it was a traumatic experience and decided to stick to things that I’m good at, like cake and complicated savory dishes. Anything that has yeast in it has a life on its own and I’m a control freak so that is not a good combination - I know how to choose my battles, and bread is a higher power – so I stay away.

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