Back to School!

I start culinary school this Thursday!!! I am so excited (see the three exclamations). It's going to be a bit of a rough transition to go back to school after 5 years, but I'm so happy. The chef jacket is so cool, like being in a real restaurant. I'll be posting here way more sporadically, but I intend to keep baking from time to time.

Almond Chocolate Chip Torta

You know when you buy a cookbook, and it sits on your shelf untouched? Well, sadly that's what happened to my copy of Lidia Bastianich's "Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy" for about the past six months. It's a beautiful book; more than just a cookbook, with pictures and descriptions of the many regions of Italy. The problem for me is most recipes seem to have exotic ingredients or take way longer than a weeknight meal should take.

I decided to give the book another shot, especially since I wanted to do some more baking. I found this recipe and the only weird ingredient I had to search out was almond meal. After searching my regular store, which had almost every other kind of flour and meal, I found some at Whole Paycheck, oops, Whole Foods.

The cake was pretty good; I couldn't really get over the cornbread-like texture of the cake to say it was great. I hope if you pick up the book, you like it better than I did!

Vanilla Ice Cream with Chocolate Caramel Sauce

Another long gaps between posts. I finished the HP books, and am now on to watching all the movies. Also, I've been away on a vacation this past weekend. So, to make it up, and show I'm not incredibly lazy, I've got two posts for today.

This ice cream and sauce was what you only wish you could get when you ordered an ice cream sundae at most places! The ice cream was so rich, and was more like a custard. I also used a whole vanilla bean, which by itself, makes this whole recipe worth it! The sauce is again that amazing creamy caramel I made awhile back, but even better because of the chocolate.

What a great way to (almost) end summer!

Blueberry Scones

I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been immersed in the Harry Potter books. I'd never read any beyond the first three, and decided I wanted to catch up. And man, are those books huge! One's a 900-pager!

Anyways, to ease back into things, I whipped up this batch of scones for breakfast. I was meaning to use fresh, whole currants from our CSA, but I'd let them sit for two weeks and they weren't that good. I used a decent recipe from Whole Foods.

Next up: on to the vanilla sauce, for real this time.