Buona Pasqua … Happy Easter!

Swimming in a sea of Hazelnut Chiffon Cake slices from Nick Malgieri’s Perfect Cakes, Easter Bunny is having a lovely time.

He sends his best wishes to you and yours for a lovely Easter and a beautiful Spring!

Ciao!

Have you ever looked at a dish of lovely sweetness and known, beyond a doubt, that you would love it even before it touched your lips?

This is how I feel about tapioca pudding. I only recently had it for the first time despite knowing for eons that I would love it.

And I did.

I don’t know what possessed me to finally buy it but there I was a few weeks ago in the grocery store gently placing a bag of tapioca in my shopping cart.

While the calendar may say spring Mother Nature is saying something altogether different so this weekend I decided we needed a lovely creamy dessert to keep us warm and fuzzy (on the inside).

I pulled out my bag of tapioca and made the most beautiful pudding.

The recipe I used is from Bob’s Red Mill (maker of the tapioca I purchased).

When I served my pudding, I dolloped on a spoonful of a delicious Italian cherry jam that I am enjoying these days. So. Good.

This is my entry for Magazine Mondays even though it’s not technically from a magazine. But who’s going to tell on me???

For those of you that don’t know Magazine Mondays is an event I created to help us all deal with those magazine piles that can sometimes seem overwhelming. This is your chance to finally try all those recipes you’ve clipped!

Here’s who joins me this week:

Tina of Life in the Slow Lane at Squirrel head Manor made Quick Mushroom Ragu from the March/April 2011 issue of Cook’s Illustrated.

Tia of Buttercream Barbie made Sunshine Cinnamon Rolls from Southern Living.

Have a great week, everyone!

Ciao!

Right about now, if you scan your local magazine stand, you are bound to see cover after cover on any number of food magazines trumpeting the bounty of spring.

The first strawberries. The first asparagus. The first artichokes.

And, be still my beating heart, pea shoots.

Pea shoots!

For those of us still wondering if it’s safe to tempt fate by (finally) putting away our winter coats, this is a bitter, bitter time of year.

For somewhere out there (not here), there are places that have have been warm and sun-kissed for long enough already in this young year that locals are enjoying strawberries, asparagus, artichokes … and pea shoots.

Sigh.

How’s a Cream Puff to fill this bitter void?

You know how? I’ll tell you how. Chocolate … the great baking equalizer.

While some people are trying to figure out what to do with the first spring rhubarb, I say bake a chocolate cake.

Pour that chocolate on nice and thick!

Thanks to Joanne Chang’s Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe, I had a big, beautiful chocolate cake to make me feel better about the pea shoots.

This is a most interesting cake because the process is a bit in reverse. Rather than starting by creaming butter and sugar, you begin by mixing your dry ingredients and adding your butter to that mixture. The eggs come later.

You know what else this cake has that pea shoots don’t have?

Crème fraîche. A powerful tenderizer with a lovely tang, crème fraîche makes this cake so tender and moist.

The milk chocolate buttercream is a delicious crown for this cake, not too sweet and just right.

It almost makes up for the pea shoots. Almost.

Ciao!

As mentioned above, this cake is from Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe by Joanne Chang. It’s an exceptional baking book that I highly recommend. The cake is called Midnight Chocolate Cake with Milk Chocolate Buttercream.

As some of you know, my family, along with business partners, owns a shoe manufacturing company called Mellow Walk Footwear. In a time when there are very few Canadian shoe manufacturers, we remain a thriving company that produces top quality shoes proudly made in Canada.

The company was started by my father and his partner in 1993. While I worked there for many years, my brother has worked there since he was a teenager.

November of this year will mark the tenth anniversary of my father’s passing.

This is a difficult anniversary to think about but my brother, in his sweet and loving way, reminded me that we are fortunate for all the wonderful memories that we have of our father.

He wrote a tribute to our father that was posted on our company’s blog. You can read it here.

So proud.

Ciao!

Whoosh!

That’s the sound that February and March made as they whizzed right by. They were good months, but also difficult ones as a big work project took up a good chunk of my time.

More than once I caught myself staring longingly at my baking pans and my long-neglected mixer, but with no real energy to actually bake something.

Finally, though, I’m back and it feels so good.

I celebrated by trying out a few recipes from the March 2011 issue of Martha Stewart Living. The first is the Yeasted Chocolate Coffee Cake, which was so delicious. I actually made it with quick-rising yeast because I was all out of active dry yeast and the results were excellent.

The real gem, though, is the Cinnamon-Streusel Coffee Cake from the same issue. This is one of the best sour cream cakes that I have every made. It’s moist and not too dense, with a lovely streusel running both inside the cake and on top of it. I made the glaze a bit thick and so it look a bit on the goopy side but I didn’t hear any complaints!

It feels so good to be back to Magazine Mondays. I have some entries that were languishing in my inbox so here they are — the folks who actually joined me quite awhile ago for MM:

Wandering Coyote of ReTorte made Whole-Wheat Oatmeal Waffles from the February 2008 issue of Gourmet, Flaky Biscuits from the May 2010 issue of Canadian Living and Egg and Shrimp Sandwiches from the June 2010 issue of Canadian Living.

Tina of Life in the Slow Lane at Squirrel Head Manor made a Fresh Ham with Cracklings and pan Gravy from the March 1990 issue of Gourmet.

Mary of Caramels, Bonbons et Chocolats made Rosy Almond Marshmallows from Chatelaine.

Ranjani of Four Seasons of Food made Veggie Burgers from the March 2011 issue of Food & Wine.

Have a great week, everyone!

Ciao!

It’s a return to baking. After too long of an absence.

It’s good to be back. More details soon …

Ciao!