Tis the Season for a Holiday Trifle!

Trifles can be as easy or as complicated as you want to make them. They usually contain some form of cake, a fruit and/or pudding and whipped cream. The particulars of what and how to layer are up to you.

Pains au Chocolat

Croissant dough takes, as my son would say, “a minute”. For those of us older than 40, “a minute” means serious time.  It’s not your everyday dough. Christmas breakfast calls for something special, though, so 3AM did not seem an unreasonable hour for kneading. With no one but Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd keeping me…

Chocolate coeurs á la créme

Coeurs translates as heart in French. This simple dessert isn’t shaped anything like a heart, it doesn’t contain any hearts… so I’m guessing Chocolate Love with Creme is a closer translation. Chocolate, creme, berries + EASY definitely = love/heart. Serves 6-8 Ingredients: 225 g ricotta cheese, strained 55 g confectioner’s sugar, sifted 300 ml heavy…

Orange Granitas in Chocolate Teardrops

Tempering chocolate is tricky and I still don’t have it down. Luckily, the granitas is frozen so that alone inhibits the normal melting that would be happening to this dessert at room temperature. Instead of explaining tempering, I’ll include a video here. Maybe we can learn together. The granitas, luckily, is much easier. Juice of…

Guinness Stout Chocolate Cake

It’s September and time to make a Birthday Cake! My friend, Lee, passed along this recipe from Epicurious for a not-too-sweet dark chocolate cake. The recipe makes a three layer 8″ round cake. If you make all three layers, your cake will be about one foot tall! I opted for a two layer 8″ round….

Chocolate Mousse + Lavender Crémeux + Berry Compote = Bliss.

I won’t lie. This is about to get complicated. At times like this, I wish I had another set of hands, an assistant and more rubber spatulas. But, alas, still me in my tiny kitchen. This dessert should have an official name, but it doesn’t. Comments are always welcome so if you can think of…

Coffee Chocolate (Dobos Torte) Rolls

I bought a new cookbook today called Petite Sweets, full of mini-desserts. The recipes are downsized versions of traditional desserts. They’re so gosh-darn cute! But are they good? Let’s try one and find out… This dessert roll is inspired by the Austrian Dobos Torte, traditionally made of seven layers of cake spread with a coffee-chocolate…

Two-toned Zuccotto

What could be better than ice-cream cake? Italian Ice Cream cake! This domed dessert is made with Italian sponge cake which has been cut into slices to line a bowl that is then filled with ice-cream, candied fruits and nuts. Start by making the sponge cake: 1 cup cake flour (I use Pillsbury Softasilk) 1/4 tsp…