Four Seed Tweety Bird Cookies

When I was buying the ingredients for these cookies from bulk item section of whole foods, it looked like I was feeding a very expensive bird so I thought dedicating this cookie to Tweety bird was appropriate. I was having a craving for nuts, granola, and an oatmeal cookie and these cookies are the [...]

Sirloin Steak with Red Wine Sauce

MMMM…Love those grill marks!
I couldn’t wait to use my new cast iron grill. So I found this simple recipe for steak with red wine sauce. The grill came preseasoned, heated evenly, and made great grill marks. The steaks came out just the right amount of pink and the red wine sauce didn’t hurt [...]

Rosé Wine Apricot Clafoutis

Inspired by my favorite celebrity chef Mark Bittman’s recent New York Time’s video on clafoutis. I decided to create my own version of this easy French dessert. I had a lot of left over dried apricots thanks to a Costco impulse buy and decided to reconstitute these super sweet fruits with a little rosé [...]

Cherry Wine Syrup over Ice Cream

At one point I made the mistake of opening a fruit wine with only two people around to help drink it. The sweetness got overwhelming and both of us gave up after two glasses. To be honest it really drank more like a liquor. Since then a good portion of the remnants has [...]

Chestnut Souffle

To be honest, I am amazed how well this turned out. I just happened to have a couple of packages of whole chestnuts that needed to be used. Unfortunately, the internet and my cookbooks did not have much to offer by way of any recipes calling for whole chestnuts. Most recipes require chestnut paste. So [...]

Tackling Yeast: Two Bread Recipes

In the past when I’ve tried a yeast recipe, I’ve found myself lacking the patience to let things rise or some accident left the yeast a little…ummm….dead, like horrible yeast massacre dead. One time the water was too warm, another setting the dough left to rise by an over enthusiastic radiator precooked half of it. [...]

Chocolate Raspberry Pavlova

For me one of the best parts of the holiday season is the desserts; and few desserts can top a fluffy rich pavlova. This recipe is from one of my favorite cookbooks Nigella Lawson’s Forever Summer. The pavlova is flavored with cocoa and bittersweet chocolate chips, topped with a generous pile of raspberries and sweet [...]