In the comments of the “help me, help you” post, Karen asked for “Pecan Pecan Pecan stuff!”  There are pecans in some of my Thanksgiving recipes.

My favorite Thanksgiving recipe with pecans is my stuffing. Man, I really love that stuffing recipe!

But I double-checked and realized I did not have a recipe up for pecan pie. I haven’t made a pecan pie in years… it’s just so rich … and our family really loves pumpkin pie, so I figure, why bother?

But Karen asked, and I shall deliver!

And not just with any old pecan pie, but a pecan pie with chocolate … and with bourbon … and Cinnamon Whipped Cream … BOOM!

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Last November, I found and pinned this adorable dessert recipe on Pinterest. Like so many things I pin, I didn’t get around to making, as planned, last holiday season.

But, also like so many wonderful things I find on Pinterest, it was there when I wanted it (that is the joy and wonder of Pinterest!) and I got around to not only making it this year, but also sharing it with others at the cooking class I taught last night at Les Gourmettes Cooking School.

I’ve rewritten the recipe to be a little more clear and detailed.

When I first tested the recipe, I used two different size pumpkin cookie cutters. A 3×3-inch cutter that made the most of the pumpkin bread cutouts. And a smaller 2×2-inch cutter.

I was surprised to find that the cutouts from the smaller cutters looked nicer when the cake was sliced.

This is a photo of the second cake I made, once I’d figured out the tricks and tweaks. All other photos are of cake number one.

I found that covering the bottom of the loaf pan with a thin layer of the pound cake batter, then arranging the pumpkin bread cutouts on top, created a cleaner and more defined pumpkin look.  This is something that could not be done with the larger cutter, because the cake would be too tall and not covered with enough pound cake batter down the center, on the top.

There is a bonus TIP at the bottom of the post. Just in time for all of your Holiday Baking. You are gonna LOVE it!

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I needed to find a small pumpkin cookie cutter for a dessert recipe I am teaching in my class tonight at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. I didn’t have to go to the store to buy the cutter.

No, that would have been too easy.

I had to find it amongst the hundreds of cookie cutters I already own. Honestly, getting in the car and going to Sur la Table to buy one, would have been quicker and less frustrating!

I store the cookie cutters in these four jars, which I had just washed after emptying them all in search of the one elusive cutter. It’s a job that needed to be done. I store the jars on top of the cupboards in the kitchen. And we all know how greasy and nasty the stuff on top of kitchen cupboards gets!

Do you want to get a taste of the huge cookie cutter collection that I’ve amassed after teaching children’s cooking classes for 18 years?

Sure you do!

We might as well start big. Not surprisingly, the largest collection is the Christmas cutters. Nearly 100 here, alone.

Animal cookie cutters are always fun. Elephant. Moose. Pig. Horse. Giraffe. It’s a regular zoo over here. When you live in the desert southwest, one saguaro cactus cutter will not do. You need at least six! Howling coyotes, boots, cowboy hats, buffalo, prickly pear, chili peppers, roadrunners, armadillo, longhorn … no cliche is to be missed.

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With holiday baking in full swing, I wanted to share a tip with you that I’ve used for years, more times than I’d like to admit.

Don’t you hate it when you open your container of brown sugar, only to find a rock-hard, impenetrable, tough-as-nails substance? Yeah, see those white patches in my sugar above? That’s where I could barely scratch the surface with the metal measuring cup.

I was able to chisel out a chunk. I then “grated” the sugar rock with a strainer into the bottom of the baking dish for THIS recipe. If I would have needed the brown sugar to be mixed with other ingredients, as it is in chocolate chip cookies, I would have called my sweet neighbor, “Gladys,” asking to borrow sugar.

How many times has this happened to you?

If you’re a non-baker like me, more often than you would like to recall. What do you do when it occurs?

Begrudgingly, jump in the car and head to the grocery store?
Call a Gladys to “borrow” sugar?
Throw the brown rock sugar away?

Well, No More!

If you’re in a real pinch and are at mid-point in your recipe, you still may want to call Gladys. But you’ll be able to pay her back a few hours later when you’ve revived the rock sugar in that container.

Here is the trick that works.

Every! Time!

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Last summer, I introduced my Illinois bestie, Jen, to Pinterest. One of the first things she spotted was these cookies. We went directly to the store and bought the ingredients.

Best. Chocolate Chip Cookies. Ever!

Since they are so fabulous, I have not made a batch since!

Don’t act surprised, you know why… I’d eat them before they had a chance to cool and then loath myself for days on end. Yesterday I decided to tempt fate. I whipped up a batch, set them out to cool, and left the house.

Upon my return, I immediately packed them up and placed the cookies in the freezer. I did not eat one.

Little miracles happen every single day!

Later this week, the frozen cookies will board a plane with me to Canada and be served at a 4th of July picnic.

Classic American Holiday + The Canadian Wilderness + Extra-Special Chocolate Chip Cookies = Perfection.

I used the reddish Alaea and the white Kona sea salts I brought home from Hawaii for two of the baking sheets of cookies and the pink Murray River salt for the third one. Use whatever sea salt you have on hand.

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When we left for Hawaii on May 22, the peaches on my tree looked as if they would be ripe any day.

Connor would be coming home on the weekends while we were away and Marissa was home one short weekend for the wedding shower of her college roommate, Paige.

The wedding is in August and Marissa is a bridesmaid.

I told both the kids and my dad to keep an eye on the peaches and to please please please pick and eat them. I hated the thought of the luscious fruit going to waste.

If not picked, they’d either fall off the tree and rot or more likely, the bugs would get to them as soon as they ripened. The idea of it made my stomach actually ache.

When we arrived home on June 3rd, surprisingly there were still peaches on the tree! My dad said that they were always hard as rocks when he checked and I never did remember to ask the kids if they had any.

The little fruit flies, gnats, or whatever those nasty little bugs are, had already been to work on more than 2 dozen of the peaches, but I was able to pick a decent boxful! Joy!

I made a delicious Peachy-Chicken entree one night (coming soon to a post near you) and today I am using the last of the peaches for this dessert.

It’s a partially-make-ahead dish. I’m starting it today and we will be enjoying it on Sunday for Father’s Day.

Of course, I had to make one serving from start to finish so I could photograph and post it for you today.

The things I do and the sacrifices I make for you people!

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I wanted to let you know that there is a new heading in the Complete Recipe Index under the “Holidays” tab – Cinco de Mayo. It was called to my attention yesterday that it was missing. It is there now, with more than 35 dishes listed, the following recipe included.

I found this creative dessert on Pinterest. Over the years, I’ve made fruit pizza for many parties and cooking classes. You know – the recipe where you make a sugar cookie crust, top that with a frosting and then arrange cut fruit and berries on top.

This is a fun take on that. Instead of sugar cookie crust, we have sugar cookie “tortilla” chips. The frosting is colored to look like guacamole. And the fruit is chopped to imitate salsa.

Perfect for Cinco de Mayo!

You’ll notice that the recipe calls for pure lemon oil or lemon bakery emulsion instead of lemon extract. (I didn’t have lemon bakery emulsion, but wanted you to see a bottle of it, hence the almond in its place.)

What is the difference between the three?

An extract is flavoring dissolved in alcohol, while an emulsion is flavoring suspended in water with an emulsifier. Pure essential oils are more pure and clear-tasting and stronger in flavor when placed in a batter than an extract.

Bakery emulsions keep the incorporated flavors more stable while your mixture goes through temperature changes, and they combine more easily with other emulsions (such as butter, sugar, and egg) than extracts do. When extracts hit the heat and the alcohol evaporates, so does a bit of the flavor.

Not that extracts are bad. Extracts are perfect for everyday baking where the flavor is playing a supporting role rather than a starring one. Such as vanilla in a batch of chocolate chip cookies. The oils and emulsions are what you want to use when you want that specific flavor to really shine through and to give intense flavors to things like candies, frosting, and fillings.

That’s it for the flavorings lesson today… on the recipe…

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On Monday, Chef Beau MacMillan from Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain was the guest instructor at Les Gourmettes. The class and the menu were outstanding. This dessert was the crowning glory. Beau made a dense, not too sweet, polenta-pistachio cake, topped with olive oil-cured strawberries and drizzled with a winning zinfandel-dried cherry syrup. Out of this world!

Since he brought pre-made individual cakes, I was the happy recipient of the cake batter he demonstrated for the class. My boys will be so happy with their dessert this coming weekend!

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Here is a quote from yesterday’s post:

“So back to the drawing board. I hope to have it down by tomorrow and post the recipe and my success.”

What I hoped to have down was the recipe for “The Rebel Within” from Craftsman & Wolves, a restaurant in San Francisco.  “The Rebel Within” is a buttery, cheesy, sausage flecked muffin with a soft-cooked egg in the center. The egg yolk in the muffin should be soft and runny with the oozing yolk dripping like liquid gold onto the plate.

The muffin is named after a Hank Williams III song. Williams is the grandson of the legendary Hank Williams and the son of Hank Williams, Jr.

So, the big question is… did I get it right? Was I successful? Was the liquid gold running onto my plate?  No. No. and No!

I really wanted to name this post “Muffin Extraordinaire” but it’s honestly only “Muffin Almost There.”

I developed the recipe by using the blueprint of the muffin that I found on the restaurant’s website. It’s a tongue-in-cheek blueprint with a hint of what ingredients to use, but it has no real portions. At least it gave me a starting point.

First, I tried soft poaching the eggs for 3 minutes in simmering water and then shocking the cooked eggs in ice water, as with THIS method. But once the muffins were baked, the yolks were firm, not even close to runny.

The second go-round, I tried only poaching three of the eggs for one minute and shocking them in the ice water. I cracked the remaining three eggs directly into the bottom layer of batter in the muffin tin.

I imagined that the 1-minute poached eggs would work and that the raw eggs would run all over the place and make a mess.

Once the muffins were baked, I anxiously cut into one of each type of muffin. The result? Exactly the same as the first time around. The yolks were cooked firm. The raw eggs did not run and make a mess, as I anticipated, they were firm right in the center of the muffin, just as the poached eggs were.

Even though the yolks didn’t turn out as I had hoped, I am going to share the recipe I developed while trying to get it right, because even without runny yolks, the muffin is AMAZING! Wonderfully scrumptious. Somehow the muffin is dense, yet still fluffy and fabulously flavorful.

Instead of naming my version “The Rebel Within” I shall name mine “The Easter Egg Within.”

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This is the dessert I made with that microwave lemon curd I posted yesterday. The recipe said to serve it warm or at room temperature. I served it warm. That was a mistake.

I had a piece the next morning (yes, for breakfast – don’t judge!) that was at room temperature –

So. Much. Better.
Do not serve it warm!

As with the curd, this recipe comes from the February issue of Southern Living. I only altered it slightly; using Meyer lemons instead of regular lemons, honey yogurt instead of plain, and adding a bit of garnish.

The one other change I’ll make when I make it next time, is to cut the crumb topping in half. Not that it was overwhelming or that it was not wonderful, just to cut down on the fat and calories. It’s just that half a stick of butter seems like a better bet than a full stick when you can do with less, you know?

If you love lemon, lemon curd, lemon bars… yeah, any sort of lemony-goodness, you’ll love this. It’s a keeper!

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