Pumpkin Cake

It just dawned on me that I came up with this recipe six years ago!  Jon and Ken were transferring to Wilmington to open a new store there and I made this as their going away cake - because Jon really liked the pumpkin butter.

It's still really good all these years later.  While I made a sheet cake back then, I usually make it in a tube pan - we have a great square tube pan that makes a perfect cake every time - or as a layer cake.

This time around I frosted it with just cream cheese whipped with a bit of pumpkin butter.  Yum.

Pumpkin Cake:

  • 2 1/4 cups cake flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 3/4 cup Pumpkin Butter
  • 1/3 cup vanilla yogurt
  • 1/3 cup honey
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 3 large eggs

Preheat oven to 350F. Line half-sheet pan or 2 9" pans with parchment paper. Butter and flour. Sift  flour and next 5 ingredients into medium bowl. Whisk pumpkin, yogurt, honey and vanilla in small bowl to blend. Using mixer, beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Mix dry ingredients into butter mixture alternately with pumpkin mixture.

Spread batter evenly in prepared pan(s). Bake about 30 minutes or up to 45 minutes if using tube pan. Cool in pan on rack.

Yum.


Strawberry Peach Pie

I was going to make a Green Tomato Pie.  Somewhere between the tomatoes and the refrigerator, I changed my mind.

The tomatoes will keep.  I had a basket of strawberries that needed eating, along with two peaches that looked absolutely gorgeous - but just didn't cut it in the flavor department.

A Strawberry Peach Pie was born.

I cut up the peaches, cleaned up the strawberries and cut the largr ones.  Added about 3/4 cup of sugar, a bit of cinnamon, and a couple tablespoons of cornstarch.  I then added a splash of apricot brandy to the bowl and mixed everything really well. There was a bit more liquid than necessary, but - what the heck.  I put it all in.

Baked at 425° for 45 minutes and let cool.

It was real good.....

And, no... I didn't make my own pie crust.  I bought it.  Homemade are better.


An American in Paris

Okay... to keep the Olympic theme going, we went to France for dessert tonight.  I picked up the cherries at work today on a whim, and they ended up being the perfect end to the day!  I actually make clafoutis fairly regularly, but this is the first time I ever made one with cherries!  It was way-good!

The original recipe came from Bon Appetit magazine...

Cherry-Almond Clafouti

  • 1/2 cup whole almonds (about 2 ounces)
  • 1 1/4 cup whole milk
  • 1 tbsp plus 1/2 cup sugar
  • 8 oz dark sweet cherries, pitted, halved (about 2 cups)
  • 3 large eggs, room temperature
  • 1/2 tsp almond extract
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/4 cup all purpose flour
  • Powdered sugar

Blend almonds in processor until ground but not pasty. Transfer to small saucepan, add milk and bring to simmer. Remove from heat; let steep 30 minutes. Pour through fine strainer, pressing on solids to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard solids in strainer.

Preheat oven to 375F. Butter 10 inch diameter glass pie plate, sprinkle with 1 tbsp sugar. Scatter cherries evenly over bottom of dish.

Using electric mixer, beat eggs, almond extract, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup sugar in medium bowl until well blended. Add strained almond milk and beat to blend. Sift flour into egg mixture and beat until smooth. Pour mixture over cherries. Bake until set and knife inserted into center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.


Peach Upside Down Cake

We have peaches!  And for the first time in a long time, we seem to have good peaches!  My stomach is smiling!

But after all the savory peach dishes a few days ago, I thought it time to revisit an old favorite - Peach Upside Down Cake.

Pineapple may be the more traditional fruit, but absolutely anything can be used in an upside down cake.  i have used everything from Apricots to Grapes, Peaches, Apples, Bananas...  You get the picture.  They all work.

I use a 12" cake pan because I have a 12" cake pan! Otherwise, I'd use a 12" skillet like my mother used to do.

Peach Upside Down Cake

The Topping (or bottom...)

Melt between a half to 3/4 stick butter and pour into pan.  Sprinkle brown sugar on top of butter.  Arrange fruit in pan to look nice when you take it out of the pan.  Don't crowd the fruit - you want the batter to reach the bottom of the pan.

The Cake:

There are Bisquik recipes out there, sponge cakes, boiling water cakes, all sorts of things for upside down cakes.  I suppose any of them wopuld work.  It's what you're used to, I guess.

I make a basic yellow cake and replace the vanilla with whatever flavoring I'm making the cake.  If you don't have a cabinet full of flavorings, just use vanilla.  If you've never baked a cake from scratch before, this is a really easy one to make.  Or... use a mix.  BUT... choose a mix that does NOT have partially-hydrogenated fat in it. (Almost all of them do...)

  • 2 cups cake flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla (or flavoring of choice...)
  • 3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350°.  Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla or flavoring to milk. Slowly add flour alternately with milk. Don't overmix, but batter should be smooth.

Carefully pour over fruit and bake 30-35 minutes or until cake is done.

(You can also use this recipe as a layer cake!  2-9" pans, greased and floured, and bake about 20-25 or so minutes.)

It really is that simple!


Pastel De Tres Leches

Mexican three milk cake

This is what I came home to yesterday! Neener. Neener.

I have seen recipes for these for years and have never made one. Victor saw this in a magazine and made it while I was at work.

(Note: THIS is why a well-stocked kitchen is so important. We had all the ingredients necessary in the house. Had he needed to go to the store, it probably would not have been made!)

The cake just screams flavor and is surprisingly light considering the ingredients. Absolutely wonderful.

Pastel De Tres Leches (Mexican Three Milk Cake)

Ingredients

  • 1 ½ cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp sea salt
  • 6 eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 3 tsp vanilla – (Mexican, if you can find it)
  • 1 - 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
  • 1 – 13 oz can evaporated milk
  • 3 cups heavy cream
  • Fresh fruit (strawberries, peaches, mangoes, whatever you like)


Spray the bottom and sides of a 9x3 inch springform pan with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, set aside.

Combine eggs and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and beat on high speed until doubled in volume, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to low; add the water and 1 teaspoon of the vanilla. Mix well. On very low speed or by hand using a spatula, gently fold dry ingredients into the batter.

Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the cake is firm on top and has pulled away from the sides of the pan. Remove from oven and place pan on a rack to cool for 10 to 15 minutes. Turn the cake out on a serving platter, place a cake plate over the cake, and turn it right side up. Set aside to continue cooling.

While the cake is cooling, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk, the evaporated milk, the remaining 2 tsp vanilla, and 1 cup of the heavy cream; set aside.

After the cake has cooled, using a serrated knife, gently slice off the top skin of the cake and discard. Prick the cake all over with a long toothpick or skewer. (This will allow the cake to soak up the milk mixture) Pour milk mixture over the cake in several batches, allowing it to soak in as much as possible each time. Refrigerate.

When ready to serve, pour the remaining 2 cups heavy cream into a chilled bowl and beat with chilled beaters until stiff peaks form. (We add sugar and vanilla to our whipped cream) Either pipe or spread the whipped cream on the top and sides of the cake and garnish with fresh fruit, or slice the cake and place a dollop of the whipped cream on top of each slice and garnish with the fruit.


Christmas Stollen

It's not often that I totally and completely screw something up - but when I do, I really do it big-time!  Welcome to one of those times!

A friend of ours gave us her Oma's Christmas Stollen recipe last year and I've thought of making it ever since.  Thought of it.  I hadn't made it.  On Thursday, in the midst of baking Christmas Cookies, making candy, and being my festive little self, I decided it was time to make it.  (I also want to make a traditional Christmas Pudding and about a bazillion other things, but we can only haul so much stuff up to North Jersey.)  But I digress...

I had all the ingredients (no big surprise here) and decided to make a half-recipe.  Even I couldn't eat 8 loaves of Stollen.

I am not sure exactly what went wrong, but the dough just never came together right.  I'll use the excuse that I was interupted a couple of times, but I just wasn't paying attention when I started out the mixing.  The recipe calls for lots of butter and it just never incorporated with the flour right.  It was heavy.  It was greasy.  It wasn't right.  I had never made this recipe before, but I've made enough different doughs to know when one is "smooth and elastic" and when it's tough and greasy.  This one was not smooth and elastic.  But Mr. Determination had to follow it through.  I did the first pitiful rise, and then formed into loaves and did the second.  Pitiful.  Recipe says 350F for 35 minutes.  At 55 minutes it wasn't baked inside.

The loaves spread forever but didn't rise as I imagined they should have.  It smelled fabulous.  It wasn't baked inside.  I tried to convince myself it tasted great.  The following morning, Victor toasted two slices for breakfast.  It was okay, but it wasn't Stollen.  We tossed them.  I conceded defeat - for the moment.

Saturday dawned, and I decided I was going to make them, again.  I was not about to let a supposedly fabulous recipe get the better of me.  Am I ever glad I did!

I followed the recipe once again.  This time I paid attention.  I worked the dough.  I made sure the flour incorporated correctly.  It was night and day different.  Smooth and elastic.  Silken perfection.  Rise.  Form.  Rise, again.  Into the oven.

Stollen

Exactly 35 minutes later, they were ready.  Rich, light, buttery heaven!  We pretty much devoured one on the spot.  And two of them are hading up with us to North Jersey.

Merry Christmas, indeed!

And speaking of Merry Christmas, the cookies are done, as well!  I made up a huge tray for work, today, and have started on trays for the neighbors...
Cookie Trays

And I am going to have to work twice as hard at the Gym... I've been eating an awful lot of them...

Cookie Trays


Gino Delivers

The finishd tray

We had to cut the cookie baking a bit short because of weather, but what we lacked in quantity, we definitely made up for in quality.  Damn, these are some mighty fine cookies!

Victor made Aunt Emma's filling, but Gino made the dough and rolled them out and put 'em together.  They may flat-out be the best ever.  light, flaky... perfect in every way! Victor and Gino did the bulk of the work - I was at work.  But it's pretty obvious they didn't need me around.  The stuff they made was just stupendous.

Victor and Gino making Nonna’s Biscotti

Methinks that next year we'll get Gino down here for a few days and just let him do 'em all.  I think he's ready!

Tim and Gino rolling out biscotti


Pfeffernusse and Nutmeg Logs

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the kitchen smells so delightful!

Really delightful!  We've been selling tons and tons of pfeffernusse at work, so I decided to try my hand at some homemade!  I have a vague recollection of my mother making them once when I was a little kid, but they were never a family tradition in our Irish household.

I also made them once when we had a "Christmas Around the World" party back in the early 1970's.  (I had Germany.  I made a stollen, too - it was terrible, from my very hazy recollections...)  But I digress.....

Pfeffernusse - which translates to pepper nut - is an easy cookie to make.  The only caveat is the dough needs to be made a day ahead of baking.

Pfeffernusse

  • 4 1/2 cups flour
  • 4 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp ground cardamom
  • 1 tsp ground cloves
  • 1 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1 cup finely chopped almonds
  • 1 cup finely chopped candied orange peel
  • 2 tbsp lemon zest
  • 3/4 cup dark molasses
  • 3/4 cup brandy

Powdered sugar for dusting

Mix the flour, baking powder and soda, and spices and set aside. In a separate bowl, beat the sugars into the butter. Add the egg yolks and mix. Add the almonds, orange peel, lemon zest and mix some more. Stir one third of the flour mixture into the butter mixture. Add the molasses and brandy. Then add the the rest of the flour mixture. When fully blended, cover and refrigerate overnight.

The following day... heat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll spoonfuls of dough nto small balls and place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet about 2" apart.  (I use parchment paper - it's worth it!!!)

Bake for about 12 - 14 minutes.  Roll in powdered sugar while still warm.  Roll once again when fully cooled, before serving.

Okay.  Easy.  And really, really good!

My cousin Mary Kate (she'd kill me for referring to her as "Mary Kate" - she's been "Kate" for the past 40 years...) sent off this recipe for our family Reunion Cookbook back in 1986.  I've had it for 22 years, looked at it for 22 years, and finally decided to make them yesterday.  Damn, am I sorry I waited 22 years to make them!  They are really, really good!

Frosted Nutmeg Logs

A Christmas tradition at the Hodsdon house!

Cookies:

  • 1 C butter
  • 3/4 C sugar
  • 3 C flour
  • 1 egg
  • 2-1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 4 tsp rum extract (I used Tortuga Rum)
  • 4 tsp vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg, nutmeg, and extracts. Stir flour into creamed mixture. Shape into 1/2" x 3" rolls and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Cool. Frost with Vanilla-Rum Icing.

Icing:

  • 1/4 C butter or margarine
  • 3 C powdered sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 tsp rum extract
  • 2 tbsp cream
  • Nutmeg

Cream butter. Add part of sugar and extracts. Mix. Add remaining sugar and enough cream to obtain desired spreading consistency. Frost cookies and run the tines of a fork down the frosting. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Makes 3-4 dozen. Another really simple, but extremely tasty cookie!  They're also excellent unfrosted!

So there are now several doughs in the refrigerator ready to be baked - and more tomorrow and Saturday!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.....


Christmas Cookies Part Deux

Cookie baking has never been more fun than it was this weekend. Our 10 year old nephew Gino came down from North Jersey to spend the night with us and learn how to bake some of the traditional family cookies. There is absolutely no better way to get into the holiday spirit than to spend it baking with an enthusiastic kid!

From the onset, Gino approached this seriously. He definitely wanted to learn how to make them. But he also approached it in fun. Cookie baking is never supposed to be a chore. If you can't have fun doing it, you probably shouldn't be doing it.

We had quite a list of cookies we wanted to get made, and started in as soon as he arrived. The first thing we made was the dough for Aunt Emma's Apricot Cookie. It really should refrigerate overnight, so we wanted it in the 'fridge fast.

Next up was Nonna's sugar-free batch of biscotti. We guided him along, but this was Gino's baby from start to finish. He did all the measuring, mixing, forming, baking, slicing, second baking... The whole shebang. they came out great. Nonna said they were the best ever - and when it comes to her cookies, she never lies!

Next were Uncle Rudy's Biscotti. These are the traditional anise cookies. We take the same basic recipe and make several variations. This year it was Orange and Apricot Macadamia. Both dipped in chocolate.

Then we started on the thumbprints. We made the Vanilla Almond dough and a variation of hazelnut and chocolate. (Changed the nut to hazelnuts and added cocoa powder). We filled them with Aunt Emma's apricot filling, and some with blueberry and some with cherry. These are melt-in-your-mouth butter cookies, and the chocolate version this year is really rich and fudgy. We took a bit of the dough and made logs - which were then dipped in chocolate. One of the great things about the nut cookies is their versatility. One dough can make several different cookies - all unique.

Leah and Ross, Nonna and Elizabeth came over with Pizza and we took about a 30 minute break from the baking to get something other than sugar into our systems. The upside (and the downside) of cookie baking is eating cookies non-stop all day long!

Pizza cleared up, visitors gone, it was back to cookies. It was time to roll out and fill Aunt Emma's. Gino and I took turns rolling the dough paper thin, and then it was cutting, filling, folding, crimping and froming. It's quite an ordeal for such a small cookie, but tradition is tradition - and they are worth every minute spent making them!

By 8:30pm we had the last of the cookies in the bins and were ready to put our feet up. We had been at it for hours and the cookie bins are looking great. We aren't making as many as we have in the past, but this year what we lack in quantity, we've definitely made up for in quality.

Thanks, Gino!


Christmas Cookies

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Well, actually, it's beginning to look a lot like I've been in the kitchen making a mess, but the two concepts do go hand-in-hand with one another.

It's the holiday season, and that means breaking out the Kitchenaid and going to town making a bazillion cookies. Every year we swear we're going to make less - and every year we seem to make more. It's a holiday tradition in excess, for sure.

This year, though, we have Gino, Victor's 10 year old nephew coming down to help and to learn a few of the traditional family cookies! This shall be fun! Gino has definitely shown an interest as well as an aptitude for learning. (His dad's a really good cook, too!)

The most important cookie to learn is Aunt Emma's Apricot Cookie. This particular cookie elicits arguments all Christmas season from various cousins - and one particular uncle. "It's made like this" It's rolled like this" It's... It's... It's..." It's delicious no matter HOW you put them together - and everyone seems to think THEY have the "right" way. Sadly, Aunt Emma hasn't been around for about 15 years to let everyone know that WE do them the right way!

We'll also be making several different biscotti's and pizzele's... And my mom's spice cookies, Aunt Dolores' Rum Balls... and... and...

I've already made a half dozen different doughs... Vanilla Almond, Chocolate Almond, A Peppermint Pinwheel I've never made before, as well as a Spiced Apricot and Walnut that I sort of made up... All sitting in the refrigerator awaiting that magic moment when the double ovens get fired up and the score of sheetpans get covered in parchment, the butcherblock island cleared off of all but rolling pin and flour and the Christmas music blares from the speakers all over the house.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, indeed!


The Best Birthday Cake

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Okay. I know my way around a cake. I LOVE cake. It's one of the essential food groups, right up there with full fat ice cream and deep dark chocolate.

I don't think I could even remotely remember the number of cakes I've baked in my life or the number of cakes - wedding cakes, anniversary cakes, engagement cakes, birthday cakes, whatever cakes - I've decorated. But there comes a time when one just wants to EAT a piece of cake. And good cake - like an exceptional wine or an honest politician - is not always easy to find. Until today, that is...

We were invited to Victor's cousin Kristy's today for her 40th birthday party. A fun-filled afternoon of family and food - with emphasis on the food. One never worries about going hungry at one of these family events. No matter how many people are there, there's always enough food for twice again as many more. I just let the belt out another notch and dive in. After all... it's family, right?!? Uncle Rudy's chicken livers were the best, ever, and the table was bending under the weight of pastas, sausages, meatballs, baked ham, fried chicken, salads, breads and rolls. I ate some of everything. Okay. I ate a LOT of everything. But as I was eating, I was keeping my eye on the sideboard. There was one of the best-looking birthday cakes I'd ever seen calling my name.

The cake was the creation of Shannon (aged 9) and Kayla (aged 7) McDonald. Shannon and Kayla are the daughters of the aforementioned Birthday Girl.

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The truly impressive part is they made the cake themselves. And decorated it themselves. All of it. It was a visual masterpiece from two girls of such tender years. I looked at it in awe - recalling the first cake I ever made with my sister Judy when we were about their ages. THAT cake was a blue and green marble cake that had the look, feel (and weight!) of Carrera marble! Of course, our cake looked reasonably good, too, until we bent the knife trying to cut it...

Shannon and Kayla's cake lived up to its looks - and more. It was a rich, yet light and delicate chocolate with a barely perceptible layer of raspberry filling. The raspberry offered the perfect compliment to the chocolate and the rich and creamy vanilla icing. Nothing overpowered. Every bite was a perfect balance of flavors. It was like biting into heaven.

As I was searching my memory for that cake we had made lo these many years ago, it dawned on me that Shannon and Kayla added an extra ingredient to their cake that Judy and I had not added when we made that cake for ourselves.

They added a heaping tablespoon of love.

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Fantasia Confections and a Stroll Down Memory Lane

What seems like several lifetimes ago, a very shy little boy was forced into a job at a local Donut Shop in San Francisco. Well… ‘forced’ may be too harsh of a word, but it certainly wasn’t my idea to get up early on Saturday mornings to scrape parchment paper pan liners and wash sheet pans. My father had decided that his enormously shy son needed to get out of the house and actually interact with people once in a while – and he knew the owner of the donut shop really well.

The Donut Center, on Taraval and 40th Avenue had fairly recently moved up the street from its former incarnation as “Billie’s Donut Shop.” It was a neighborhood coffee shop, serving breakfast, lunch, and great donuts, Danish, coffee cakes… Bear Claws, butterhorns, figure 8’s, cinnamon rolls, coffee rings of every imagination…

John Kennedy was in the White House, the world was optimistic, no one knew where Viet Nam was. “High Hopes” had been JFK’s campaign song, and ‘high hopes’ permeated the air in the early sixties eight short blocks from the ocean in San Francisco…

There was an old German baker there named Hans. Well… I thought Hans was old, but as I look back I don’t think he was more than 35 at the most. He was a bit gruff, which made him seem old to this timid little kid. Hans made all the pastries and coffee cakes, and he made it look so effortless. Over time, as I had finished scraping the parchment paper and caught up on washing my sheet pans, Hans would let me roll out his pastry dough. He was extremely picky about how it was done, and I soon found out it wasn’t nearly as effortless as it appeared! It was exacting work. Proper temperature, proper pressure while rolling, rolling in certain directions to achieve proper proportions. In his heavy German accent, Hans explained to me why it had to be a certain way. He taught me how to feel the dough, what to look for, how to count (and remember!) how many times it had been folded and refrigerated.

Those early years at The Donut Center became the foundation for a life that has been involved in food – in one way or another – for the past 45 years.

This little stroll down Memory Lane comes because of an email I received a few days ago.

Back in 1966, I quit the Donut Center in a huff. I got into a fight with the owner – I have no idea what it was about – and got a job at Blum’s downtown. Blum’s was an institution in San Francisco. It was where blue-haired and bejeweled matrons held court over sumptuous sandwiches and even more decadent desserts, and where mothers and grandmothers brought their daughters, in their maryjane's, gloves, and with ribbons in their hair. It was located on Geary Street across from Union Square. It had a back entrance into Macy's. Blum’s Coffee Crunch Cake was one of those desserts – and it was to die for.

Fast forward to April, 1995. I am volunteering at Project Open Hand in San Francisco – an organization feeding AIDS patients throughout the city. I strike up a friendship with a woman named Helen Kane, who, after we share histories a bit, tells me she has the original Coffee Crunch Cake recipe from Blum’s! The following week, she brings me the recipe, neatly written on a 3x5 card.

In the ensuing 11 years, I have made the cake numerous times – always to raves. It’s a bit time consuming, and you can’t make the coffee crunch on a really humid day, but it is one damned good cake! Several years ago, on epicurious.com, I mentioned in a review of Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie, that I had the recipe, and I have shared it freely for years.

The email was from Sandy Weil, the daughter of the man who invented the Coffee Crunch Cake! She said that her father, Ernest Weil, had worked at Blum’s in the mid-40’s and had created the cake, and left in 1948 to open his dream bakery Fantasia Confections in Laurel Village – a small shopping district on California Street in the Laurel Heights neighborhood. The even better news was that her father had finally written a cookbook with all the recipes they had made there for 40 years! Of course I had to buy one, and the autographed copy arrived on Monday!

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I’ve been having a blast reading the stories, reading the recipes, and deciding what to make “first.” I finally decided that my trip down Memory Lane had to start with Danish Pastry. It was, after all, the very first thing I ever learned how to roll out, lo, these many years ago.

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Making Danish is a two-day process. The dough needs to sit overnight after the rolling/folding/rolling/chilling – repeat – repeat – repeat… But it is sooooo worth the time and effort! They came out fanfreakintastic! Light, flakey, buttery. The perfect amount of sweetness. I brought two over to our next door neighbors - still warm from the oven - and ten minutes later I received a swooning phone call thanking me profusely! They are really really good!

So... the shy little boy came out of his shell, and has lived and worked all over the USofA. But those memories of sweet youth and Danish pastry in San Francisco linger on...

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The book is available from http://www.lovetobakecookbook.com

Buy one, today!