Oh, rhubarb. You ubiquitous late spring presence, you vegetable of desserts. I can never resist you when I see you at the farmer's market, all brightly colored and stalky and tempting. I've done rhubarb pie before on this 'blog, but I was thinking it might be delicious to do something slightly different than the standard combination of strawberry and rhubarb. Don't get me wrong; I adore strawberry rhubarb pie, but decided to mix raspberries with my rhubarb instead, just to mix things up a bit. I know, it's crazy, but everything turned out all right in the end, I promise. Won't you come along for the ride?

Ride on, soldiers, at girlcate.com.

When I was about 12 years old, I had what might have been deemed an unhealthy obsession with the mini lemon-poppy seed bundt cakes at one of our local bakeries. I would eat them whenever I could, relishing especially the crispy, buttery bottom sides of the little things. They were moist and delicate and wonderful, but I think the thing I was most enamored with was the shape: the treats had the form of full-sized bundt cakes, molding and all, but were about the size of a standard muffin. I forgot about my erstwhile gustatory preoccupation at some point while I was growing up and getting old and boring and less willing to eat cake for breakfast. But thankfully, a little while ago I happened upon a recipe for lemon cake in Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts. For some reason, although the recipe made no mention of poppy seeds, I was reminded of my childhood obsession, and thought it would be fun to tweak Maida's probably already stellar recipe and perhaps approximate the glory of the mini bundt cakes of my youth. The 12-year-old in me squealed with joy and anticipation.

come squeal with me, beyond the horizon.

I'm pretty much a sucker for any treat that involves the words "caramel" or "caramelized." I can't help myself. Whether it's chocolate with caramel, or caramelized onions, or coconut with caramel, or anything topped with caramel sauce, I'm pretty much on board. So when I was sifting through the annals of Lottie and Doof and came across this favorite cake of his, my culinary interest was immediately piqued.

get piqued, over yonder.

When I was a kid, I loved me some fig newtons. I remember them being moist and chewy and just the right size for sneaking out of the kitchen. Plus, they had actual fruit (or rather, "fruit") in them, so they didn't quite count as "real" cookies. Having eaten a few of these guys as an adult, however, I've been disappointed by the chalky, gristly quality of the dough and the over-sweetness of the filling. So I was really excited when I came across an organic, planet-friendly, small-bakery type of fig newton at Urban Rustic a few weekends ago. And they were really quite good; they were flavorful and chewy and not nearly as gristly as the packaged kind. But they were still a little bland, and I started thinking to myself, "you know what? I can probably make these cookies myself, and make them better." So I set out to do exactly that.

get your filling of figs, below the fold.

It's a trip to Germany this week at afternoons in tablespoons. Last weekend, Kenan and I planned to head over to Chris and Jodi's place to catch up on Lost and do some hanging out. Chris is part German, spent some time in Berlin last year and seems to have a general delight for all things Deutschland. So when I was scheming about things to make for the gathering, I immediately decided strudel would be sufficiently delicious and German-themed. I'd never tried it before, so I thought it'd be fun to give it a whirl.

Teutonic delights, below the fold.

Snow days. You probably heard all about it on the news: massive snowstorm batters the east coast, end of the world as we know it, we'll never be able to leave our houses again, Fox News makes outrageously irresponsible and and misinformed statements about global warming, yadda yadda yadda. What it meant for me was that I got to leave work at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. It was amazing; it felt like skipping out of school at recess. And what was even better than the coming home early was that there was ample time to bake. So I pulled out Elinor Klivans' wonderful Big Fat Cookies, looking for an inspiring idea for cookies. I've made many of the recipes from Klivans' book before, but not in recent years, as my copy lives at my mom's house. But I was wanting to make some of those recipes again, so a few weeks ago, I went out and bought a new copy, and I've since spent a bit of time reacquainting myself with the aforementioned big, fat cookies. And so, on that snowy, blustery afternoon, I chose a recipe for chocolate-dipped macaroons, because, well, macaroons are awesome. Let's get to it, shall we?

get to it, indeed, yonder.

Chocolate pie, my friends. I think that's pretty much all one needs to know. Last weekend was super duper cold in this city, and the cold always ups my craving for comfort foods. We had a small get-together on Friday night, wherein Boots made delicious, delectable pizza, and I pulled out a recipe for a chocolate souffle pie from the good folks over at chocolate bar. I'd made it before, a few years ago, and had nothing but fond memories of sinking my teeth into this rich, chocolatey, melty pie; I was certainly ready to relive the experience.

live and let pie, below the fold.

Apparently, I was in the mood for some fancy-pants baking this past weekend. Like, multiple-day, million-step, fussy-as-can-be baking. As I mentioned in my last post, I'd been fantasizing recently about chestnuts. I just love those little guys so much; they're sweet, they're meaty, and I feel like they're a bit underutilized in the baking world. I mean, sure, one always hears about chestnuts going in turkey stuffing or whatnot, and of course there are always those dudes selling them on the street, but I don't think I see chestnut desserts quite as often as would be desirable. So I started poking around for something inspiring to do with chestnuts, and lo, I found one over at the Queen of Domesticity's place: a chestnut cake filled with chestnut pastry cream, frosted with a bittersweet ganache, and finally topped again with a chocolate-armagnac glaze. Holy moly.

Holy moly, indeed, over this way.

A couple of weeks ago, Kenan and I were over at Boots and Coach's place, enjoying a nice dinner. Afterward, while we were digesting and enjoying some quality bonding time with the sofa, I started leafing through a few cookbooks I had brought over to plan for my next baking adventure. Looking over my shoulder, Boots noticed a recipe for steamed gingerbread pudding and asked, coyly, if I could make something similar for her half-birthday, which fell the following week. I said yes whole-heartedly. I mean, I probably hadn't heard anybody mention half-birthdays since middle school, but I find something charming about the idea that people in their mid-twenties can still get excited about (and celebrate, and bake for) un-birthdays. So we set the (half-)birthday celebration for last Friday, and I started researching.

get spicy, over this-a-way.

A few weeks ago, my good friend Hiro wrote to me with a desperate plea for some advice on chocolate chip cookies. She recently moved to Denmark, and is having trouble replicating the crispygooeychewy texture that is so desirable in these enigmatic little mounds of dough and chocolate. Always eager to take on a challenge, I assured her that I would do some research and come up with a good recipe, along with an at least pseudo-scientific explanation of why (and which) things can go wrong when whipping up a batch of these suckers.

get your chips on, over here.