Category Archives: Butter and Egg

Happy Pi Day! Celebrate with Pie

Posted on March 14, 2011 | 8 comments

I first learned about Pi Day when my daughter was in Middle School. I wondered where this day had been my whole life. Best celebrated at 1:59 p.m. on March 14 to match the first few digits of the number Pi (and the extent of most people’s memorization, 3.14159), with a pie, of course — savory or dessert version.

Math moment: What is Pi anyway? Ahem — Pi is the number expressing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It’s used in engineering, science and statistics and begins with 3.14 and goes on into infinity. It’s also captured a lot of people’s imaginations. The record for Longest Pi Recitation belongs to belongs to Japan’s Hiroyuki Goto, who memorized 42,195 digits. How is that even possible?? A teen holds the North American record.

It seems Pi Day as we know it didn’t catch on until about 20 years ago, when it was begun at the San Francisco Exploratorium. Now it is celebrated around the world.

I’ve gathered a few pies to help you celebrate. It seems like a more fun way to mark the day than memorizing digits. But, to each his or her own!

From the Gourmand Mom comes everything from Pumpkin Coconut Pie to Black Bottom Banana Cream Pie.

This is my own recipe for Classic Apple Pie. You could add a Pi symbol in crust (or cut out a Pi symbol) to the top of this, or any, pie.

Seeking something savory? This Shitake, Leek and Chicken Sausage Pie comes from Pie Maven.

When I think of Pie Mavens, I think of my friend Leah Brooks and her stunning and sometimes unexpected fruit pies, like apple with thyme or double lemon blueberry, or her chocolate cream, pumpkin, lattice-topped cherry, or perfect pecan pies!

This one from Serious Eats may take the, uh, cake. It is made in the shape of the pi sign!

Enjoy your Pi Day!

Updated for 2015: This year’s is an especially wonderful Pi Day as we will hit 3/14/15 at 9:26:53—the first 10 digits of Pi!

Photos: Orlando News Center, Serious Eats

Image: allisonweiss.tumblr.com

8 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes

Tagged Apple Pie, Dessert, Food, Holiday Baking, Pi, Pi Day, Pie, Pie Recipes

Photo Friday: De Kaaskamer Cheese Shop

Posted on March 11, 2011 | 3 comments

As I’m sure many of you know, my family loves cheese, enthusiastically and nearly unconditionally. So it was that I flagged De Kaaskamer Cheese Shop in our guidebook on our recent trip to Amsterdam. It turned out I didn’t have to. As if by homing device, we managed to sniff out this haven of cheese (the name translates to “Cheese Chamber”) and spontaneously beeline to it almost the minute our luggage hit the floor of the hotel.

We adored much about Amsterdam, as we wandered its pretty streets and canals, admiring antiquarian books and handmade shoes, art, music, beer, and the citizens of Amsterdam themselves, most of whom seemed to roll upright and speedily on two wheels apiece, in all weather and clothing, carrying paintings, floor lamps, babies, friends, and yes, food.

In De Kaaskamer, we sampled Goudas of various ages and a delicious crunchy Beemster, which is very similar to the Saenkanter cheese that is a family favorite. The clerk told us that Gouda simply designates the “wheel” shape of the cheese, rather than a type. Gouda cheese originated from the Gouda region of the Netherlands, but apparently the name is not protected by terroir (place), and all kinds of cheeses can be referred to as Goudas. We satisfied ourselves with visions of pastoral Dutch farmland, portable cubes of wonderful 3-year Gouda, and a large baguette, and took to the Amsterdam streets.

Bonus pic: Willig Cheese Shop at Night or One Can Long

Have you seen and photographed something unusual, whimsical, beautiful, or otherwise interesting in your travels? Has anything surprised you or caused you to pause? Or have you simply experienced a small, lovely moment that you wanted to capture? If so, I hope you’ll share with us by leaving a comment with a link to your photo. I look forward to seeing it!

Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman

Happy New Year: Celebrate with Traditions from Around the World and at Home

Posted on December 30, 2010 | 7 comments

In Denmark, the New Year may be marked by breaking dishes on friends’ doorways. In Swaziland, tradition has it that people celebrate a long harvest season and bring their king back into the community from a brief seclusion.

Japanese families may celebrate the New Year for two weeks of “firsts” including “first writing”, in which family members inscribe favorite poems or sayings with fresh ink. In the Philippines, wearing polka dots and eating round fruit is said to attract prosperity and luck.

Traditional Hmong people, pictured above, thoroughly clean their houses and place the dirt outside near a loop of rope that has been tied to a tree. Children jump in an out of a loop to confuse the dirt spirits. The Dutch, pictured below, make doughnuts, called oliebols, which are only eaten at the New Year, have great firework shows, and often celebrate the day as many seaside dwellers do, by running into the sometimes freezing water — here, with the New Years Dive. at Scheveningen, in Amsterdam.

All over the world, people celebrate the New Year — often at the turning of the Julian calendar on January 1, but sometimes not — and do so with a wide variety of traditions, celebrations and rituals.

This is a wonderful list of New Years celebrations from around the world. Many traditions have to do with driving away evil spirits and ringing in the new.

The New Year used to coincide with Spring (which makes sense in agrarian societies and perhaps even today), until Julius Caesar’s Julian calendar was created in 46 B.C. and declared the New Year to begin January 1. Many Europeans held firm to their Spring celebrations all the way until the 1560s, when France’s King Charles IX finally decreed that the year should officially begin on January 1. It still took Pope Gregory in Rome a full 18 years to follow suit, and some Europeans even longer. Those who continued to celebrate the New Year in April were considered fools — yes, April Fools.

More New Year Traditions

Do you make resolutions? Irresistible to those of us who like an occasional “fresh start”, New Years resolutions are said to go back 4,000 years, all the way to ancient Babylonia. Because the New Year occurred at the Vernal Equinox, many Babylonians resolved to make good on their word and return borrowed farm equipment, so their neighbors could begin the new year of farming.

How about Auld Lang Syne? If you sing Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve, you’re like much of the English-speaking world, who brings out this maudlin Scottish tune each new year at the stroke of midnight. “Auld Lang Syne” means “old long ago” or the “good old days”. The song as we know it was penned in the 1700s from an older traditional tune.

Then, there’s the New Years Baby. This symbolism is said to go back to ancient Greece, where parading a baby in a basket represented the rebirth of Dionysus, the God of Wine and symbol of fertility.

From ancient times, the New Year has been an occasion for contemplation and celebration. Happy and Healthy New Year to you and yours. Please let me know if you wear polka dots, break dishes, run into the ocean, or enjoy another or your own New Year tradition.

Images: PTD Phonsavan, Lybil BER, J.C. Leyendecker, Michael Lipman

Three Great Christmas Cookies

Posted on December 22, 2010 | 2 comments

Heading somewhere for the holidays and in need of a dessert or hostess gift? Or simply haven’t gotten your fill of your holiday baking? These three relatively simple, festive and classic holiday cookie recipes should help you in either case.

Spritz Cookies

I grew up making Spritz cookies every holiday season. A certain whiff from an electric beater takes me right back to childhood winters.

Spritz cookies are made by pressing the soft dough through a cookie press and through various plates with interchangeable shapes. I love the efficiency and fun of pressing out lots of little cookies. Once pressed onto a cookie sheet, you can decorate them with the sprinkles of your choice. I think one of the keys to good Spritz cookies is: Be sure your recipe includes almond flavoring (or add 1/2 tsp. per 4-5 cups of dry ingredients, or half as much as your vanilla flavoring). The other is: Have fun decorating. This can be a very festive and delicious cookie. If you do color the cookies (which I recommend!) you might want to try professional paste frosting colors, which, with a little patience, produce a nice deep color. (You can get a box of 8 small color jars from ChefMaster, available at specialty baking stores, for around $7).

It also takes a little practice to learn to press the right amount of dough out per cookie. (Most presses have adjustable settings.) The good news is you can just scoop dough that didn’t work out back into the press and try again.

This site, from Wilton, offers the classic Spritz recipe, plus links for buying a cookie press. I recommend the reasonably priced Cookie Max.

Butterballs

You may know them as Mexican Wedding Balls, or Russian Tea Cookies. Butterballs are mine (and a lot of people’s) favorite cookie — They’re tasty, melt-in-your-mouth buttery, sugar-coated, and just all-around great, any time of year. I find the ones in The Silver Palate Cookbook to be the best of the best, perhaps because they’re largely sweetened with honey, which provides a great taste and crunch.

Here is a copy of the recipe, from The Silver Palate Cookbook.

Sugarplums

One more from the Silver Palate team — This one is in The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook: Sugarplums. Mythical, festive, evocative Sugarplums. (Blame it on The Nutcracker and The Night Before Christmas.) They are certainly as much fun to pop into one’s mouth as they are to contemplate. The original Cognac Sugarplum recipe calls for corn syrup and cognac. I substituted agave syrup, a mild and more natural sweetener for half the corn syrup, and all of the cognac (using a little under 1/3 c. for the cognac portion.) And I did away with the cherry on top, the better to enjoy the pure, undiluted Sugarplum experience.

Here’s hoping you have a warm and yummy holiday!

Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

2 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes

Tagged Baking, Christmas Activities, Christmas Cookies, Cookies, Holiday Baking, Mexican Wedding Balls, Russian Tea Cookies, Silver Palate, Spritz Cookies, Sugarplums

Downplay Gift-Giving and Bring up Ritual, Meaning and Fun

Posted on December 10, 2010 | 4 comments

I am thrilled to have Amy at Frugal Mama here today with a guest post. I always get tons of practical and inspirational tips from her lovely blog and am honored that she wanted to write something for Slow Family:

“I think the best way to de-commercialize Christmas and other holidays with kids is to have lots of non-gifting traditions,” says Nancy Shohet West, Boston-area essayist, friend and author of the newly-released The Mother-Son Running Streak Club, a memoir about bonding with her son by running a mile with him every day for a year.

I like the way Nancy thinks about giving presents: as just one of many holiday traditions. (Clearly dedicated to routine, given she is now on day 1,215 of her daily running streak, I consulted Nancy when I took on writing this article for Suz and Slow Family Online.)

It’s Not that Gifts are Bad…

I’m not saying we should completely give up presents. But too many can empty our savings, clutter our homes, and pile landfills with more junk. I knew things had gotten excessive in our family when we had to take a lunch break from Christmas present-unwrapping. Now we have a one-gift-per-person rule.

This year we plan to revive the stockings, but instead of tiny wrapped do-dads, we’ll fill them with exchanged notes for everyone that begin with phrases like “I love how you…” and “I remember when you…”

But I still sometimes worry that fewer presents will be disappointing.

Make Those Traditions Constant and Pleasing

Holiday rituals — as keepers of our values and pleasures — have the power to replace the joy of giving and receiving gifts. As Nancy describes in her blog post A Month of Holiday Festivities, special activities fill all of December:

the town tree-lighting
a school holiday concert
a cookie exchange
buying a Christmas tree
decorating the house
throwing a party
making candy (truffles, peanut brittle, white-chocolate candy cane bark, toffee, and peanut-butter buckeyes)
a church pageant, evergreens sale, and children’s service
an annual holiday photo shoot and
composing the family’s customary 12-stanza poem

Breaking with Tradition: Does This Happen to You Too?

Not everyone is as naturally inclined toward ritual as Nancy, however, and some of us face significant obstacles.

Since having our first daughter who is now eight, we have lived in five different places. (My husband’s medical training keeps us moving.)

Plus, we celebrate Christmas in different places each year: at my parents’ Ohio farm, in my husband’s native Milan, or wherever we are living at the time. I’m sure people with blended families have an even more complicated geographical itinerary.

Traditions change even at my parents’ country house, which has been in the family since 1868. Some of my favorite memories used to be singing carols around the fire on Christmas Eve while my uncle played guitar, eating tins of caramel clusters that family friends would send us every year, and taking a tractor ride up to the woods where we’d cut down a Christmas tree, roast hot dogs and make s’mores.

But my parents don’t own that little piece of woods anymore, my uncle doesn’t come these days (he has grandchildren of his own), and those family friends sold their popcorn company.

Then there’s the issue that I’m sure many mothers of young children face: even if it’s possible to continue the same childhood traditions, do you want to? Or do you adopt new ones? If so, which ones?

Finally, piling on more have-to’s onto our loaded holiday plates can risk overwhelming us, instead of delighting us. (If you have the feeling you need to pare down, Nancy recommends asking your children which traditions mean the most to them.)

So, creating a spectrum of rituals that your family looks forward to every year is not simple, but I think it’s worth working towards. Especially for the power of tradition to take the pressure off material things.

Holiday Rituals that Captivate

Here are some activity ideas, besides the ones already mentioned, that could populate your holidays. Presents or no presents, your family will remember this time as one of warmth and magic.

Make a gingerbread house (Suz has great suggestions for both hand-made houses and kits, as well as workshops and classes)
Attend religious events, such as midnight mass or creche scenes
Drive around festive neighborhoods at night or go to a festival of lights (zoos often put these on)
Light candles or make a cupcake Menorah
Give away toys to the hospital, deliver meals to shut-ins, volunteer at at shelter, or drop off cans at a food bank
Read aloud together Twas the Night Before Christmas in holiday pajamas
Or read books about the history of Santa Claus and how Christmas Chanukah, Kwanzaa or Winter Solstice is celebrated around the world
Make hand-crafted gifts and cards
Go sledding, skiiing, tubing, or ice-skating
Eat food you only make at this time of year, such as eggnog, roasted chestnuts, rugelach, mulled cider, cut-out sugar cookies, mincemeat, kugel, gingersnaps, peppermint bark, or potato latkes
See the Nutcracker, or stay home and play board games
Go to the botanical garden for a toy train exhibit, or downtown for a horse and buggy ride
Set cookies out for Santa, or deliver plates of goodies to neighbors
Every Friday night, watch a classic holiday movie like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Invite an international student over for a holiday meal
Take a train ride to a festive old-fashioned town
Send care packages to friends or family who need a boost
Make snowflakes (create your own or try these beautiful snowflake patterns) and use them as decorations, gifts or ornaments
Don’t celebrate Christmas? Make a tradition of going out for Chinese food and the movies on Christmas day.

Boost Your Chances of Success

Don’t worry if you miss one year of a time-honored ritual (or one you wanted to become time-honored). Nancy was torn about missing her favorite holiday concert last year, but it made her more appreciative when she was able to go again this time.

I think the rituals we are most likely to stick with are the ones that we have strong beliefs about (like fostering a love of nature) or that we get great pleasure from (cookies we think are delicious, not just “what grandma made”).

If some traditions involve more values than pleasure (like visiting Uncle Eggbert for a piece of fruitcake); or the pleasure involves pain (like stringing lights over that stickery bush), follow them with something that’s pure enjoyment: staying up late watching The Sound of Music, or eating fondue by a blazing fire.
Remember the procrastination-prone thank you notes? Nancy creates a ritual out of that too, making it fun by taking her kids to a local coffee house, where they get to drink hot chocolate with whipped cream while writing to grandma.

What holiday rituals does your family look forward to year after year?

Amy Suardi loves finding the silver lining to living on less. Subscribe to her blog Frugal Mama to get free bi-weekly ideas on saving money and making life better.

Stories and photos by Amy Suardi/Frugal Mama

4 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Crafts, Holidays, Nostalgia, Seasons

Tagged Activities, Baking, Children, Christmas, Crafts, Family, Rituals, Simple Christmas, Simple Holidays, Simplicity, Traditions, Winter

Build Your Dream Gingerbread House Part Two

Posted on December 6, 2010 | 4 comments

Updated for 2011.

Creating and designing gingerbread houses is a fun and classic holiday activity. It can also — let’s face it — be messy and time-consuming, what with baking the pieces for and constructing the house, gathering all the needed supplies, and having an area in your home that you don’t mind getting a little frosting-spackled.

The clever solution for would-be gingerbread architects who are a little short on time and materials? Find a spot that supplies all the needed ingredients and merely requires you to show up, be creative and pay for what you use.

One such spot is San Francisco and Mill Valley, CA’s Gingerbread Builders, which offers standard and custom houses and everything you need to create stunning ones, including catalogs for inspiration, staff assistance, plenty of time and all manner of frosting and candy decorations. And best? It’s open every day on a drop-in basis.

Other Bay Area spots offer gingerbread house workshops at specific times. These include the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, Cake Art in San Rafael, Autumn Express in San Francisco, and Spun Sugar in Berkeley.

Across the country, in Lexington, MA, Wilson Farm offers a gingerbread house workshop on a historic farm that features lots of other fun activities. In Newton, MA, Create a Cook has a two-part gingerbread house workshop, in addition to other kids’ cooking classes.

New York City’s Taste Buds offers lots of gingerbread house and holiday cookie workshops.

The Creative Discovery Museum in Chatanooga, TN, has gingerbread house workshops.

In Camano Island, WA, you can decorate a gingerbread house at the Cama Beach Nature Preserve with Gingerbread Lady Alice Blandin.

Seeking a larger project? This person in my town transforms their house into a lifesize gingerbread house each year!

So, whatever your taste, time allotment, budget and desire, there’s a gingerbread house project for you, and a place to create it!

For more ideas and how-tos, see my earlier post about Constructing and Decorating a Gingerbread House. Have fun!

Photos: Top Three – Gingerbread Builders, Kyla Eaglesham, Susan Sachs Lipman

4 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Community, Crafts, Holidays, Home Ec.

Tagged Christmas Activities, Cookie Decorating, Cooking Classes, Drop-In Cooking, Drop-In Crafts, Family, Food, Gingerbread, Gingerbread House, Gingerbread Workshops, Holiday Activities, Holiday Decorating, Holiday Traditions, Holidays, Kids Cooking

Build Your Dream Gingerbread House Part One

Posted on December 3, 2010 | 8 comments

It’s the rare person whose imagination isn’t captured by the delight in creating a gingerbread house. There’s the architecture aspect, as the house’s pieces are baked and fitted — and icing-caulked — together in a variety of ways. There’s the decorating, which can be done with all manner of bright candies and objects and patterns that can recall familiar items — or not! And there’s the very satisfying, whimsical, one-of-a-kind structure that results.

Here are some tips and ideas from around the web for creating gingerbread and other candied houses.

From Wilton, comes this extremely informative and creative guide to decorating gingerbread houses that covers multiple styles.

Celebrating Christmas offers recipes, ideas, and enough blueprints for homes and landscaping (from ponds to flower-lined paths) to satisfy your inner general contractor.

Gingerbread House Heaven is another site with lots of ideas and beautiful pictures for inspiration. Think you can’t light a gingerbread house with real lights, for instance? Think again. This site shares how, in addition to offering instructions for melted-candy windows that will make the light glow realistically through. Roofing textures and various recipes for edible clay are among the many other things covered.

If you’re still seeking good gingerbread recipes and building how-tos, Simply Recipes has plenty.

Rather skip the headaches of building and just move in? Here are lots of turn-key house ideas, like using milk cartons or other bases, as a way of getting right to the decorating fun.

With small children, especially, the easiest and most pleasing thing to do is cover a short milk carton with frosting and let them stick on candies and other foods to decorate. The milk carton (or a village of them) can sit atop a piece of foil-covered cardboard that can also be frosted. And, of course, you can buy a pre-assembled gingerbread house and get right to the decorating.

Some decorating ideas include:

Gumdrops, cut in half – edging or decorations
Jelly beans – edging or decorations
M&Ms – ornaments or decorations
Fruit loops – decorations
Nilla wafers, crushed or whole – walkways
Ritz crackers – walkways, shingles or siding
Gummi bears – decorations
Chocolate soldiers – decorations
Chocolate kisses – bells or decorations
Chocolate nonpareils – shingles or decorations
Candy canes – gates or decorations
Licorice, small pieces – edging or bricks
Necco wafers, whole or broken – shingles, walkways, decorations
Pretzel sticks – fences and logs
Shredded wheat cereal – thatched roofs
Graham crackers, halved, and candy canes – sleds
Graham crackers – shingles
Upside down ice-cream cones, frosted and dipped in green sprinkles – trees
Brown sugar – dirt
Confectioners sugar – snow

And, for the modern home, orange-half barbecues and ice-cream cone satellite dishes!

Here’s hoping you enjoy a fun and creative holiday!

Photos: Public Domain, Wilton, Susan Sachs Lipman

Stay tuned for Part Two: Gingerbread Workshops

8 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Crafts, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes

Tagged Baking, Cake Decorating, Children's Crafts, Christmas Activities, Cookie Decorating, Cookies, Cooking, Crafts, Easy Crafts, Family, Food, Gingerbread, Gingerbread House, Gingerbread Recipes, Holiday Baking, Holiday Traditions, Holidays

How to Make: All-American Apple Pie

Posted on November 27, 2010 | 11 comments

While I love to bake, and have made my share of crisps, tarts, cobblers and other fruit desserts, I’ve always been a bit intimidated by the double-crust pie. So when my daughter asked to make a classic apple pie for Thanksgiving, I thought, No time like the present to tackle the double-crust together.

It was fun! The result was a particularly yummy apple pie, a wonderful afternoon in the kitchen, a little pride, and the desire to bake all kinds of things with our newfound double-crusting ability.

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Here’s how you can make a classic apple pie.

For the crust:

2 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 stick butter, chilled and cut in small pieces
5 Tbsp. vegetable shortening
6 Tbsp. ice water

For the filling:

1/2 – 3/4 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. lemon peel
2 tsp. lemon juice
2 lbs. apples (approx. 5), cored, peeled and cut into thin slices.
(Galas or other less sweet cooking apples are a good choice.)
2 Tbsp. butter

Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel and lemon juice and let sit until the crust is prepared.

CRUST

Stir flour, sugar and salt into a mixing bowl.

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Add butter and shortening and, working quickly with a pastry blender or fingertips, combine until the mixture resembles coarse meal.

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Sprinkle on ice water, approx. 2 Tsbp. at a time, until dough sticks together.

Roll into a ball and refrigerate for at least one hour.

Remove dough from refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 425.

Divide dough into pieces of 1/3 and 2/3 of the original.

On floured surface, roll large dough piece with a rolling pin until it is approx. 1/4 inch thick and large enough to fit into the pie plate bottom and sides.

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Gently work dough into the bottom of the pie plate. There should be a little bit of overhang over the lip of the plate.

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Fill with desired filling into a fairly rounded shape.

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To fill with apples, make one layer of apple slices. Slices can overlap. Then sprinkle with the sugar mixture. Add another layer of apples and sprinkle. Repeat if desired. When the last layer is done, dot at intervals with small pieces of butter.

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Roll out the remaining dough until it is approx. 1/4 inch thick and place it over the filling. Prick dough with a fork to let air out while the pie is cooking or cut out decorative shapes with a cookie cutter. (You can do this step while the dough is still on the work surface. You have to then place the top crust dough fairly evenly over the filling.) If you’d like, you can make decorative fork marks around the outside of the crust.

Bake for approx. 40 minutes or until the crust is slightly browned and the fruit mixture is soft, even liquid in places.

Serve and enjoy!

Your pie may not last long! But you’ll be such an expert that you can whip up another.

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Photos by Susan Sachs Lipman

11 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes

Tagged Apple Pie, Baking, Dessert, Food, Fruit Dessert, Fruit Pie, Holiday Dessert, Pie, Pie Crust, Recipe, Thanksgiving

Make a Honey Spice Cake for a Sweet New Year and Fall

Posted on September 8, 2010 | 5 comments

Honey is one of the world’s oldest foods. Ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs from as far back as the 3rd millennium B.C. show bees being smoked from their hives to produce it. Nomads and traders helped honey’s popularity spread worldwide, while it remained a prevalent sweetener in the Middle East, where it still often, and wonderfully, appears in Mediterranean, Arab and Jewish dishes.

Jews around the world traditionally celebrate their new year (which this year begins at sundown tonight) by dipping apples in honey, and by eating honey and spice cakes, the better to usher in a “sweet new year.”

And lots of people ring in Fall by making honeyed cakes of wonderful harvest ingredients like pumpkin, and warm spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves.

This terrific and tasty honeyed spice cake recipe is from the San Francisco Chronicle. The resulting cake is at once dense, moist, and extremely flavorful.

Of course, you don’t need a new year or season to make this cake. Its firmness and ease of slicing makes it a natural for school lunches and after-school treats. It’s loaded with healthy ingredients and happens to taste especially good.

Photo by Susan Sachs Lipman:
Pumpkin spice cake at the Mill Valley Book Depot

5 Comments

Posted in Butter and Egg, Holidays, Home Ec., Recipes, Snapshot

Tagged Autumn, Cake, Depot Bookstore, Egypt, Fall, Food, Food History, Honey, Honey Cake, Jewish New Year, Mill Valley, Pumpkin Cake, Rosh Hashana, San Francisco Chronicle, Spice Cake

Blueberry Thursday: Blueberry Corn Muffins

Posted on August 19, 2010 | 8 comments

In the spirit of keeping those summer fruit recipes coming, here’s a recipe that combines two wonderful high-summer favorites, blueberries and corn. These muffins are inspired by both the Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook and the Williams Sonoma Muffins cookbook and bears a bit of each.