first time making pancakes, with quite some help cooking them. i very nicely made the batter, which was SUPER easy, just dont over-mix them. and also took photographs of the followinglovely poppy seed pancakes (yes, i do love them):

we had lovely honey we bought from a small shop in a park somewhere in eastern europe. the shopkeeper was selling quite a few types of honey, and as you can see the honeycomb was inside the jar as well. this was realaly rather lovely honey.

I had some leftover cornmeal (from my attempt at corn pudding, some Mauritian traditional dessert) and I had a craving for the kind of Kenny Roger corn muffins I used to eat. I didn't have any corn on me, but I decided to bake cornbread. It turned out rather dry so I made a moist honey pecan syrup to drizzle all over the bread.

It's getting to be subzero temperatures and what I crave is a hot pie. Since I've gone back to my supermarket shopping lifestyle, I've discovered a whole range of "vegetarian" substitutes, like this vegetarian brown sauce. The first thing to try with it: Shepherd's Pie! Delicious.

One of the houses on the way to the farmer's market. This is the official end of the CSA season, and I miss their vegetables already. I'm not quite sure I can distinguish non-organic from organic produce, but I found the CSA veggies to be extremely flavorful and fresh.

made two cakes this year, both different style and in texture, but both equally pretty, or so i think.

here's them

2 white chocolate cake layers sandwiched with dark chocolate ganache, frosted with white chocolate frosting and sprinkled with pistachios. the layer cake was a cupcake batter that i baked in a cake pan, and it was only enough to cut into two layers.

just as a note, the white chocolate was grated into very fine 'flour' before being mixed into the batter. this gave it an intense white chocolate taste that you wouldn't normally get, and also is different to the usual chocolate batters which would require cocoa powder, or the chocolate to be melted. those cakes can end up dense and moist, but this made for a stronger white chocolate flavour and a light, dryer cake.

the dark chocolate ganache is a simply recipe, and the white chocolate frosting was meant to be cupcake frosting. the white chocolate doesn't melt easily and seizes very easily when being heated, so be careful with that. otherwise, the frosting was very easy and went smoothly. the only thing particular about it is that it needs to be chilled to be stiff enough for frosting apparently, although mine was already rather stiff fresh. i did chill it however, but also had to subsequently set it to room temperature for a bit so it would be spreadable.

the second was the brownie mosaic cheesecake, baked higher this time with a sprinkling of nuts on the ganache surface. the deeper cake made for a creamier centre and t\he brownie bits came out awesome. the tip of freezing the brownie bits before cutting really led to cleaner lines and nicer cubes. but all in all the cheesecake melded together very nicely.

i used bourbon cream (just the biscuits!) for a chocolate crust that went better with the chocolate flavours in the cake. this was well received, but quite rather rich. i liked the creamy inside though. and as with all smitten kitchen recipes, these were easy and came through with brilliant results.

possibly liked the white chocolate one best of all.