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baked oats |
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green chile chicken enchiladas |
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chow mein |
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bakery-style butter cookies |
Recipe: pumpkin mousse
I didn’t completely abandon Thanksgiving, you know. Despite having seafood for three courses, we did end our meal by tipping our hats to the pumpkin pie, sort of. I love pumpkin pie and I love pumpkin, but I wanted something a little different. I chose pumpkin mousse because it was lighter, which seemed more appropriate for chasing all of that seafood.
As a child, I only knew of sugar plums through The Nutcracker and Twas the Night Before Christmas. Several years ago when I had a subscription to Saveur, I jotted down a recipe for sugar plums, mostly because I had never tasted one before. These sugar plums are confections, not the fruits that you can read about on Wikipedia. They are quite easy to make and tend to be a huge hit with people who either don’t care for chocolate or just enjoy the autumny spices and dried fruits. It’s a heady aroma that wafts through your house when you make a batch: orange peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, toasted almonds, honey.
Recipe: lemon mousseline torte
Like I said earlier, my in-laws were visiting this weekend and there was much cooking going on at our house. It was my MIL’s birthday on Sunday, so I thought I’d bake a cake in celebration. My FIL is a huge fan of chocolate – one of those types who won’t actually eat desserts that don’t have chocolate. My MIL likes chocolate, but she loves custards, citrus, fruits, and other non-chocolate desserts too. It was a good excuse to make a non-chocolate dessert. Ever since I completed my pastry course this past spring, my MIL has been wanting to bake with me to learn some techniques and a recipe. I chose the Lemon Mousseline Torte because I never actually made it in class (my partner and I made the Zebra Torte for that lesson).
I altered the recipe slightly because we didn’t have time to make the pâte sucrée cookie base. The lemon chiffon cake had a terrifically lemony-tart flavor. I used a 9×2 inch round pan, but one day would like to get my hands on a pair of 9×3 inch rounds because the chiffons rise beautifully in those pans, allowing for more or thicker layers from each cake.
