Chocolate Hazelnut Truffle Cookie

Chocolate Hazelnut Truffle Cookie, a photo by cookinglikespago on Flickr.

Sometimes things are so good, you end up repeating them. I made this cookie a few years back, before I started the blog. I found the recipe online, off a link from the World Nutella Day page. I didn't give the recipe much thought for awhile.

Then I saw a chocolate hazelnut spread in a cute neighborhood kitchen store. This store also had Callebaut chocolate at a really cheap price. So I brought home my treasures and went back to the World Nutella page. Then, without thinking I chose this cookie recipe again. It was only after reading the really funny post awhile that I realized I had made it before.

These are so good! The filling is made with chocolate, chocolate hazelnut spread, sour cream, and Frangelico. Oh wow.

Now to go back to the store for more and try another recipe from the amazing stash of Nutella recipes!

Fig Almond Tart

Fig Tart, a photo by cookinglikespago on Flickr.

I'm finally back to baking and blogging! I've been gone for the past month because I sprained my ankle badly, which made baking impossible.

I also had to hunt for an apartment while on crutches because my husband and I moved from the Midwest to San Francisco! As you all know, this is such a great food city. Not only do I have a 3 page list of restaurants I want to try, but the fresh produce here is amazing.

I've saved this recipe for 2 years now because it's hard to find dried figs, let alone fresh figs in Wisconsin. This past Saturday I checked out my first farmers market at the Ferry Building Marketplace. It was so packed with people! And what did the vendors have for me? Black Mission figs!

I jumped on the first ones I saw and then realized more than one vendor had them, and there were other varieties too! I also saw Valencia oranges, lots of peach varieties and beautiful berries. A girl/baker could get used to this!

Unfortunately, I can't find the recipe on Bon Appetit.com, but it's from their July 2011 issue.

Coffee Cake

Oh wow.  Just looking at this picture makes me wish I had more of this cake lying around.  This is another brioche recipe from TSOB, and what a great one.  I think I've got brioche down now; what a rich delicious bread!

Chocolate Blackout Cake

Happy Birthday to my husband!  This celebration calls for a decadent chocolate cake.  And this blackout cake I got from Food and Wine is a great one.

On the technical side, I was surprised that all the chocolate in this cake comes from cocoa powder.  I also thought that the cornstarch in the frosting needed to be cooked longer than the recipe says to get rid of it's flavor. I love the idea of crumbling a cake layer and decorating the cake with the crumbs.

Bee Schnitten

This unusual "cake" is actually brioche bread.  It's a TSOB recipe, and quite a unique one.  Schnitten means "cut" in German.  The bread is baked whole, then cut in half and filled with pastry cream.  It's coated with honey before baking, so that's why it's a bee.  I decorated the top with pastry cream to look like the rings on a bee.  Another yummy addition to this cake is that the crust gets soaked in a rum simple syrup.  It tasted like a coffee cake, without the crumble.  

Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream

After making the galette, I still had some rhubarb to use.  So I decided to make ice cream, because one can never say no to ice cream.  I mean I even like lemon ice cream and that's saying a lot, given my lemon dessert aversion.  Once again, ice cream did the trick and now I can confidently say that I like rhubarb (with strawberries and sugar of course.)  Recipe courtesy of Martha Stewart.com.

Strawberry Rhubarb Galette

I'm not sure what possessed me to buy rhubarb at the farmer's market the other day.  I generally don't like it because it's too tart.  But I guess seeing new fruit at the market is exciting, since all winter it's been apples only. Rhubarb's natural pair, strawberries, would have to counterbalance it for this to work.  I also found some golden raspberries at a new grocery store a few feet from my house.  I had the right start for me to rethink my feelings for rhubarb.

I decided to make this galette for my Memorial Day weekend party.  I hadn't made a galette before and wanted to see what it was about.  The dough was super easy to make since you use a food processor.  It was cool to roll out the dough so wide and get it onto the baking sheet- major skills there.  The galette is basically pie, just with the majority of the crust around the border instead of on top.  The recipe comes from Jacques Pepin via Food and Wine magazine.

Overall, this dessert isn't my favorite, but pie isn't my thing either.  Everyone else enjoyed it though, and that's what matters. Also, I guess rhubarb isn't so bad after all.