HCB: Plum and Blueberry Upside-down Torte

August 08, 2010 by Monica in Baking, Baking Club, Desserts, HCB, Sweets

Tom is in high heaven right now… for the past 2 weeks I have prepare sweets that are dear to his taste buds. Lemon cake, Apricot-Almond Berry Buckle and now this upside-down Torte.

I almost did not make this cake. For some unknown reason I keep thinking that the Chocolate Feather Bed was the next cake and that this one was due the following week.

I think I was just blocking it out from my head, because we had had way to much fruit in my baking of late and I was pretty over it.

So when I read Marie’s Last Cake, Next cake recap and realized my mistake, I was all “oh man, another fruit cake - crap!”.

I was not looking forward to this one, but it was on the list and it had blueberries in it and Tom goes ga-ga over blueberries, so someone was going to be happily eating cake this weekend.

I did not even half the recipe - I figure lets overload him on fruit and he will eventually shout “ENOUGH!”. At least that was my strategy and I was sticking to it.

I started by making the decision to use my cast iron pan, I did not want to do the “do it here and then pour it there” dance.

Peel n’ eat Shrimp sauté or Shrimp Scampi

August 06, 2010 by Monica in Dinner, Quick Meal, Seafood

We were craving shrimp last night. And wanted something fast, easy and yummy. And we wanted to get our hands dirty and make a mess at the dinner table. We wanted to peel n’ eat.

And dip.

So Tom showed up after work with a pound and half of shrimp and I showed up hungry!

This is a quick recipe. You can have this in the table in less than 20 minutes top. And that’s if you choose to do the dipping sauce.

The great thing about this is that you can do it with any liquor that you have around the house. Tequila, Rum, Brandy, Sherry, Dry wine - pretty much anything that will make them sizzle.

ABC: Apricot-Almond-Berry Buckle

August 04, 2010 by Monica in ABC, Baking, Baking Club, Cake, Cookbooks, Desserts, Fruit, Sweets

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I sang the praises of the yumylisious Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee cake?

The one that I have baked 4 6 times and made me embrace my inner conflicted relationship with yeast and rolling pins.

Well, I was so impress that I ran out and bough Flo Braker book "Baking for All Occasions. Because I knew that if she could pull that off with a coffee cake, what else can she pull off?

Afterwards, I got a shout out from a fellow HCB baker, Hannaa from Hanaa’s Kitchen who along with her friend Wafae launched a monthly baking project called the ABC of the Month, which stand for “Avid Baker’s Challenge of the month”. The concept is to choose a book and to bake from it and post the results on the first Tuesday of each month. Guess which book they choose to with in 2010?

uh, yeah...I joined them faster than you can type – “I’m in!”