Dudleya setchellli


This next one was also among the same type of soil. It’s interesting because it looks like there’s separate male and female flowers right next to each other. Either that or one type turns into the other type over time.

Claytonia exigua

This next one is some kind of Mallow I believe.

Among more common flowers we saw Sisyrinchium bellum

Triteleia Laxa (being pollinated)

Anagallis arvensis (Alien)

Luke had a really cool hiking GPS which kept track of everywhere we went. You can even see a graph of speed and elevation vs. distance. Hi-tech! Check out a link to the path here

I finally got around to making something with rhubarb, and boy was it worth it. I’ve always liked rhubarb in jams and desserts. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really a coincidence that it goes well with strawberry, which happens to be the same color. I wonder if whatever causes the color also causes them to taste well together. I cheated slightly by using frozen pre-cut rhubarb (is it even in season right now?) that I got from Whole Foods. It’s great what you can get frozen these days. Often times frozen fruit is as good if not better than fresh because they’re able to freeze it at the utmost peak of ripeness.

The crust was perfectly flaky and tender. It was very quick to put together too, with just a few pulses of all the ingredients in my food processor. Something that may have provided the superior texture is that the butter pieces were actually quite small. When they say in books to leave “pea size” chunks of butter, they really mean that, and no larger. If they’re larger you end up using too much water to get the dough to come together well, leading to a tougher dough since flour and water creates gluten, which then creates a tougher crust. Actually, now that I look at the recipe it turns out there’s a higher butter to flour ratio than other recipes I’ve tried (8 Tbps/cup rather than 6 Tbsp/cup), so that probably helps too. Once again, more butter equals more better!

I made this strawberry ice cream this past weekend from strawberries I bought at a random stand across from a gas station in Saratoga, CA. My fiance Lisa introduced me to the stand and now we go there every year because their strawberries are simply the best around. I made the ice cream the same evening that we bought them, and since they usually pick them the morning they sell them, they likely went from the ground to this ice cream in less than 24 hours. Talk about fresh! Boy did it make a difference too. This was the best tasting strawberry ice cream I’ve ever had. The recipe is from the Ben and Jerry’s ice cream book. Just looking at the color is a little misleading because it’s not very red, but the strawberry flavor is amazing even without a chunk of strawberry in your mouth. I’ll definitely be making this one again.

This past Valentine’s Day I made apple fritters for the first time. Lisa and I really enjoyed them. They’re slices of apple dipped in a batter, then fried to a crispy deep brown. They’re best served while still warm, dusted with some powdered sugar and cinnamon (in this case, Vietnamese cinnamon). It tasted best when it had cooled off enough not to burn your mouth, but was still crispy all around. If you wait too long, the moisture in the piping hot apple begins to soften the crispy coating. I noticed through some experimentation that they’re crispiest if they get a deep brown color.

I used Gala apples, which are my favorite for eating, though the recipe called for Granny Smith. I think next time I’ll probably try Granny Smith, just to taste what the added tartness of that apple lends to it.

Even though I’ve been making desserts for several years now, this is actually the first time I’d fried anything. I’m sure I’ll be doing more fried desserts in the future. Let’s see, there’s doughnuts, funnel cake, beignets…

This is called Queen of Sheba. Pretty fancy name huh? Well it deserves it! I’ve made this chocolate torte quite a few times now, and every time I’m reminded of how good it is. If you’re looking for a super-chocolaty cake with a very unique texture, this is it.

I made it for a party I went to recently and everyone loved it. Since the party was a wine tasting one, I decided to substitute an Orange Muscat (which I normally use for making Zabaione) for the brandy, but I only used a tablespoon and a teaspoon for it because I wasn’t sure how strong it would be. Now that I’ve tasted it, I think I could have substituted the full 3 tablespoons. The Orange Muscat gave me the idea of topping it with candied orange zest, which went great with the chocolate.

The recipe is adapted from Alice Medrich’s book Bittersweet, a highly acclaimed book that every lover of chocolate ought to have. The recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of flour, but I like a bit more cakiness so increased that to 3. I also added an extra egg white to the 4 that were called for because the eggs I used seemed to be a bit small for “Large” eggs. I think I’ll have to make this a couple more times to be sure what the best recipe is. I’m not sure if it always needs that extra egg white for example. When I figure it out I’ll definitely post it here.

At some point I’ll have to try Julia Child’s version too. It’s in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking, under “Reine De Saba”.

This was a spur-of-the-moment idea I had, and it turned out very delicious. I toasted croissant halves (which you may not need to do if they’re fresh and crispy still), let them cool a bit, and then topped them with pastry cream lightened with whipped cream, fresh raspberries, and powdered sugar. I’m sure other fresh berries could be used as well, but I love the tartness of raspberries in this.

Incidentally, pastry cream is a nice thing to have on hand as well as a good way to use up extra whole milk. I normally don’t drink whole milk but I do use it in recipes sometimes. When I have enough of it left over, I usually make pastry cream and freeze it. The recipe I use is from the Baker’s Dozen Cookbook. Allrecipes also has a recipe, but it has twice the milk, twice the egg yolks, and butter. Other than that it’s the same, except for using a real vanilla bean rather than extract. Personally I like a perfectly smooth pastry cream, so I prefer the extract.

This is another use of the Danish dough that I used to make the Danish Twists recently. The recipe is in the good but out-of-print book “The Best Bread Ever“. I made the variation with raspberry jam and cream cheese. Personally I think the cream cheese isn’t really needed. I’d add more raspberry jam instead if I make it again. As with the Danish Twists, the dough turned out perfectly flaky and crisp. It tastes best the first day, but careful toasting in a toaster oven (speaking from experience, flaky dough like this can burn pretty quickly) makes it almost like just baked.

I’ve been wondering what other fillings might taste good. Apple, cherry, and lemon – basically anything you’d put in a pie – would probably all be excellent fillings. It would be a nice alternative to pies too, as the crust to filling ratio is much higher. And that’s exactly what you want when you have such a yummy crust!

One of the stranger things I’ve made, but very tasty too. This is tangerine juice, sugar, citric acid, methylcellulose, and xanthum gum, all blended together until it increases in volume 8 times. Then it’s baked in a 150 degree oven for 9-10 hours. The recipe is in Johnny Iuzzini’s book Dessert Fourplay. It’s actually just a component of one of his desserts, but it’s pretty nice as a light snack too.

Methylcellulose has the strange property of gelling when heated to a certain temperature, which helps keep the shape of these sticks when they’re baked.

My beautiful girlfriend Lisa and I are now engaged! As you can see in the picture below, I made a pretty crazy ice cream cake for her and wrote the proposal on top in funny spelling, with the ring in the middle. We jokingly talk like that sometimes. She laughed out loud when she saw it.

The ice cream cake consists of two layers of chocolate cake with ice cream in between. The ice cream between the layers is a layer of coffee ice cream on top of a layer of chocolate ice cream, with a bit of almond buttercrunch toffee in between. I served it with hot fudge sauce, caramel, whipped cream (which is missing from the photo below taken the next day since I ran out of it), and more almond buttercrunch toffee sprinkled around. I’m glad to report it was very tasty. The hot fudge sauce in particular is the best recipe I’ve tried so far. I will certainly be making it again. I made all of the components of the dessert from scratch, and though it took a while it was well worth it.

Earlier in the day we ate our favorite pizza at Giorgio’s in San Jose. We usually get the half Giorgio’s Special and half Johnny’s Favorite. It’s one of the things I eat again and again and always think “just as good as I remember”. Then we came home and watched a movie called Visioneers. We both thought it was good up until the end where of all things that could happen, the main character cheats on his wife! What a great thing to lead into a marriage proposal…haha. We both thought the situation was pretty funny in hindsight.

Today, for the first time, I made some homemade bagels. Both Lisa and I agree they’re the best we’ve ever had! We ate them with the usual topping: cream cheese. Part of the reason they were so good may have been simply that they were fresh. The crust was nice and crisp and the crumb had the perfect spongy-chewy texture unique to bagels. I think I’ll be making these again sometime. Perhaps I’ll add some interesting toppings like sesame seed.

The recipe was from The Best Bread Ever, an out-of-print cookbook that explains how to mix and knead bread in a food processor. I don’t think I’m going to try a different recipe since I can’t imagine them done any better than these were. I did subtract 25 degrees from the temperature settings since I noticed everything I’ve made from the book has settings on the hot side. I think my oven may be a little smaller than most home ovens though, so that could explain it.