use real butter

Recipe: dark chocolate tartelettes

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! Gong Xi Fa Tsai! Jing Nian Quai Le!

It is the year of the Rat and in case you didn’t know, it’s Peabody’s year. Last year was the year of the Pig, which was my year. Since I made it through more or less in one piece, I’m going to assume that I was working the good juju. Peabody tells me she’s sharing the good juju with me into this year. I love that girl. In turn, let’s just say good juju all around for everyone! I sincerely wish each of you everything your heart desires in the new year – health, happiness, luck, fortune – all of it and more. xxoo

I began my morning quite early because I was behind schedule on making dumplings. Well, let me explain why. I spent yesterday telemark skiing with a bunch of awesome tele babes on the mountain. I felt well enough to tele all day with my D70 in tow too.

a bluebird day

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Recipe: lemon meringue pie

Feeling puckery lately? If you’ve been cruising the food blogs, then most likely you’ve run across one or two or four hundred Daring Bakers brandishing their lovely Lemon Meringue Pies.

that’s right kids, we knead to bake

Jen of The Canadian Baker hosted the challenge this month and it was down to the wire for me this time. I started my treatment on Thursday and thought I’d recover with enough time to do the challenge yesterday but… things don’t always go as planned when your body gets pumped full of poison! However, I didn’t want to abandon my fellow DBers, so I managed to make a handful of tartelettes. Forgive me for the lack of detail I usually devote to my DB challenges. She’ll be right next time.

mixing the dough

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Recipe: zebra torte

It’s a battle for time, energy, and daylight hours. I haven’t endeavored on many of the more involved baking projects since I’ve been well enough to ski. After my initial ski whore phase where I was willing to tele any thin veneer barely covering grass and rocks, I have now reached the picky phase – only if there are freshies. We had no such freshies yesterday and so you get the recipe for Zebra Torte.

slice layers from the vanilla chiffon cake

I made this once before in my pastry skills course last spring. Problem with that course was that we crammed as much as we could into each 5.5 hour class and wound up divvying duties between partners which meant I didn’t get my hands on each step of the torte.

folding in the dry ingredients for the chocolate roulade

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