The Proof Is More Than In The PuddingGuinness Chocolate Pudding with Irish Whiskey Whipped Cream Dessert Here is a recipe I found on BBC Goodfood, which uses rich dark chocolate and Guinness stout. Guinness is Tom’s favorite beer, and I love chocolate! It seemed like a good recipe to attempt for St. Patrick’s Day. I think it is better than lava cake … light, yet super chocolatey that falls somewhere between a brownie and a truffle … Wow! I combined a bar of Lindt 85% cocoa dark chocolate with a Lindt dark chocolate sea salt bar. The Lindt flavored dark chocolates are only 47% cocoa so be sure to use at least one bar of the 70% or greater. Next … Read more…

The Proof is in The (Bread) Pudding Cajun Bread Pudding with Jack Daniels Sauce Dessert This Cajun Bread Pudding is one of the most requested desserts at our holiday parties. It is tied for popularity with Tom’s Famous Black Russian Cake, both of which are easy to make and guaranteed to Wow! your friends and family.  Tom always dresses up for the parties. If you Google bread pudding recipes you will get 177 MILLION results! So why should you give mine a whirl? Because the combination of the raisins and cinnamon in a moist, custard-like interior together with the Jack Daniels sauce remind me of an adult version of cinnamon rolls. Yum, yum, yum! I have been making this recipe … Read more…

Best.  Cake.  Ever!Orange Chocolate Chunk Bundt Cake with Chocolate Ganache Dessert I have been working from home since mid-March and, judging by the empty shelves of flour at the market, everyone but me has been baking! Thumbing through my cookbooks for inspiration, I came across the Barefoot Contessa’s Parties!, which was the first cookbook I ever purchased. Ina has a recipe for Orange Chocolate Chunk Cake with chocolate ganache that she said was a big hit at her store.  Yum! This recipe uses the zest from four oranges together with fresh-squeezed orange juice and buttermilk to make a delightfully moist, citrusy Bundt cake with big chunks of chocolate and, as if that isn’t enough, the moistness is sealed in by … Read more…

Don’t Eat The Entire Bowl! Barefoot Contessa’s Chocolate Orange Mousse Dessert We served French fare for Christmas Eve this year using several recipes from the Barefoot Contessa’s Barefoot in Paris cookbook.  As you can tell from the photo below, her Chocolate Orange Mousse is a recipe I make all the time (watch out for flying mousse!). Paris bistros frequently serve chocolate mousse family-style in a big communal bowl.  At the beginning of Ina Garten’s recipe is a story about how her husband thought the bowl was all for him! Fortunately, I had read and remembered that story while dining at Chez Janou in Paris, so we did not commit a faux pas when an enormous bowl of chocolate mousse was … Read more…

Sensational Citrus Olive Oil Bundt Cake Citrus Olive Oil Bundt Cake with Kumquat Infused Syrup Dessert I never know what to do with the kumquats our tiny tree produces.  This year it was particularly prolific, probably due to all the rain.  In the past, I have made Kumquat Infused Vodka, but this year I was pretty much just letting the corgis and squirrels eat the fruit, but then I chanced upon a recipe for Candied Cocktail Kumquats from chef Ben Mims in the LA Times.                                                    (I had to get those kumquats off the tree before the Corgis … looking … Read more…