The Sweet 100 from Cakespy

Just like the Omnivore's Hundred, this list surveys what food items you've had but this list is directed toward your sweet tooth.  The original list can be found at Cakespy.

Instructions:

1) Copy this list into your site, including the instructions!
2) Bold all of the sweets you've eaten!
3) Cross out any of them that you'd never ever eat.
4) Consider anything that is not bold or crossed out your "To Do" List.
5) Optional: Post a comment here linking to your results--or just post a comment letting us know how many you've tried, or what you're going to try next!

1. Red Velvet Cake
   
2. Princess Torte
   
3. Whoopie Pie
   
4. Apple Pie either topped or baked with sharp cheddar
   
5. Beignet
   
6. Baklava
   
7. Black and white cookie
   
8. Seven Layer Bar (also known as the Magic Bar or Hello Dolly bars)
   
9. Fried Fruit pie (sometimes called hand pies)
   
10. Kringle
    
11. Just-fried (still hot) doughnut
    
12. Scone with clotted cream
    
13. Betty, Grunt, Slump, Buckle or Pandowdy
    
14. Halvah
    
15. Macarons
    
16. Banana pudding with nilla wafers
    
17. Bubble tea (with tapioca "pearls")
    
18. Dixie Cup
    
19. Rice Krispie treats
    
20. Alfajores
    
21. Blondies
    
22. Croquembouche
    
23. Girl Scout cookies
    
24. Moon cake
    
25. Candy Apple
    
26. Baked Alaska
    
27. Brooklyn Egg Cream
    
28. Nanaimo bar
    
29. Baba au rhum
    
30. King Cake
    
31. Sachertorte
    
32. Pavlova
    
33. Tres Leches Cake
    
34. Trifle
    
35. Shoofly Pie
    
36. Key Lime Pie (made with real key lime)
    
37. Panna Cotta
    
38. New York Cheesecake
    
39. Napoleon / mille-fueille
    
40. Russian Tea Cake / Mexican Wedding Cake
    
41. Anzac biscuits
    
42. Pizzelle
    
43. Kolache
    
44. Buckeyes
    
45. Malasadas
    
46. Moon Pie
    
47. Dutch baby
    
48. Boston Cream Pie
    
49. Homemade chocolate chip cookies
    
50. Pralines
    
51. Gooey butter cake
    
52. Rusks
    
53. Daifuku
    
54. Green tea cake or cookies
    
55. Cupcakes from a cupcake shop
    
56. Crème brûlée
    
57. Some sort of deep fried fair food (twinkie, candy bar, cupcake)
    
58. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting
    
59. Jelly Roll
    
60. Pop Tarts
    
61. Charlotte Russe
    
62. An "upside down" dessert (Pineapple upside down cake or Tarte Tatin)
    
63. Hummingbird Cake
    
64. Jell-O from a mold
    
65. Black forest cake
    
66. Mock Apple Pie (Ritz Cracker Pie)
    
67. Kulfi
    
68. Linzer torte
    
69. Churro
    
70. Stollen
    
71. Angel Food Cake
    
72. Mincemeat pie
    
73. Concha
    
74. Opera Cake
    
75. Sfogliatelle / Lobster tail
    
76. Pain au chocolat
    
77. A piece of Gingerbread House
    
78. Cassata
    
79. Cannoli
    
80. Rainbow cookies
    
81. Religieuse
    
82. Petits fours
    
83. Chocolate Souffle
    
84. Bienenstich (Bee Sting Cake)
    
85. Rugelach
    
86. Hamenstashen
    
87. Homemade marshmallows
    
88. Rigo Janci
    
89. Pie or cake made with candy bar flavors (Snickers pie, Reeses pie, etc)
    
90. Divinity
    
91. Coke or Cola cake
    
92. Gateau Basque
    
93. S'mores
    
94. Figgy Pudding
    
95. Bananas foster or other flaming dessert
    
96. Joe Froggers
    
97. Sables
    
98. Millionaire's Shortbread
    
99. Animal crackers
    
100. Basbousa
     

TWD: Dimply Plum Cake

Boy, is this recipe forgiving!

It was a Murphy's Law kind of day.  My brain decided to take a holiday that day and did not return until the next morning.  I don't know why I thought it would be a good time to bake. I think I did everything I could to sabotage this recipe.

First, I decided that seeing double when reading was normal and ended up reading "2 eggs" instead of "3 eggs."  Well, I did not have 3 eggs, only 2.  But I did have egg whites so I added 3 tablespoons of the egg whites. I was sooo pleased with myself. Only after having thoroughly beaten in the eggs and the egg whites, I decided I should break out the reading glasses (which I don't need often...yet) and perched them on the tip of my nose. 

Surprise, surprise.  Imagine my disbelief at seeing "2 eggs."  Still I persevered and continued on. When the batter was ready, I happily placed the cake into the preheated oven then set the timer.  

Ding! DIng! The timer went off, and I eagerly went to take the cake out of the oven. The cake looked weird.  It looked raw.  Well, probably because it was.  It was only half done. I stood there in front of the open oven gaping and scratching my head in puzzlement when I noticed the oven thermometer.

Don't ask me how it happened.  I set it at the correct temperature, 350.  Truly, I did.  Really. I cross my heart.  The little spindle thingy in the thermometer pointed toward 300.  

Well, at this point, I decided I really had nothing to lose so I cranked up the oven to 375 and left it in the oven for another 20 minutes.

And voilà!

The edges weren't burnt, just a bit over-caramelized.  I left it alone until the next morning and dug in.  The verdict?  I have just one thing to say...Dorie, I love you.  You are a genius.

This is a scrumptious cake no matter what you try to do to it.  It's moist, not too sweet and very, very tasty.  I will definitely make this again and again and again. But next time I'll have my reading glasses on and triple-check the oven temperature.

Thank you to Michelle of Bake-en for choosing this recipe for this week's Tuesdays with Dorie.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Chunkers

Today is my first Tuesday with Tuesdays with Dorie (TWD)! Woohoo!  For those of you who are wondering, "What is Tuesdays with Dorie?"...TWD is an online baking club where each week a member selects a new recipe from Dorie Greenspan's Baking, From My Home To Yours for all the members to bake.  The results (and pictures) are posted on each members website on Tuesdays. 

This week's recipe, Chocolate Chunkers was chosen by Claudia of Fool for Food.  

I love chocolate and boy, is this packed with chocolate! Four kinds of chocolate! The cookies were too sweet for me, but it was very good with a glass of ice cold milk. Next time, I'll cut the amount of sugar, replace semisweet with bittersweet chocolate, use dried cherries and macadamia nuts.  Yum.  

I'll have to see what my tasting panel at work says.

The Omnivore’s Hundred

For all you foodies out there, here's a quick, fun game posted on Very Good Taste.

Below is a list of 100 items that "every good omnivore should have tried at least once in their life."  Copy and post it on your blog or, if you don't have a blog, print it and pass it around to your friends and co-workers.

Here are the instructions from the original post at Very Good Taste.

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.

2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding (a favorite, absolutely love it)
7. Cheese fondue (most recently had one made with Raclette and carmelized apples, mmm)
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese (will never try)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (love them all, especially elephant ears and churros)
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost (don't think I'll ever try)
75. Roadkill (uh...no thank you)
76. Baijiu (Are you kidding??  I barely survived drinking Korean soju & baiju is more potent!)
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse (could never ever)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (I grew up in Hawaii & this was - is - a staple on many menus; goes well with rice and kimchi)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake (fried rattlesnake; was surprisingly good)

Last Gasps of Summer

Around this time each year, a countdown suddenly begins in my head, and I feel a quiet desperation.  I get this sudden urge to buy every piece of fruit I see, especially peaches and watermelon.  Now that I think about it, I get the same urge with berries in mid-summer...you should have seen the blueberries I hoarded!

Anyway, just yesterday I bought two baskets of peaches from the Greenmarket at Union Square.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I can't possible consume all of it before it starts getting brown, icky and inedible.  They're all sitting in my fridge right now which helps to keep it longer but I'll have to figure out what to do with them.  There are only so many peach cobblers, upside down peach cake, arugula salad with peaches, grilled cheese and peaches and prosciutto with peaches and balsamic vinaigrette I can take.

   

Here's my dinner from the night before when I used up the last of the two kinds of watermelon I got last week.  I chopped up some smoked salmon (inspired from the appetizer I had at Tabla), sprinkled on some Kalamata olives, and drizzled some lemon vinaigrette.  Not my best attempt...perhaps, some sea salt would have helped or maybe feta.  There was something (or maybe many things) missing.  I'll have to work on this one.

Rant or Rave: Tabla Restaurant

The reviews I've read about Tabla Restaurant was peppered with adjectives like exquisite, bewitching, and deliciously satisfying. Well, the chef and all the kitchen staff must have been having a day off (if not, then definitely an off-day) when I went, because I could not apply any those adjectives to my first dining experience at Tabla.  

The decor is beautiful...as a matter of fact, one could say it was exquisite and bewitching. The service was attentive.  The ambience intimate and soothing.  The plating was very prettily done.  Unfortunately, the most I can say about the dishes I had is that they tasted good.  After all the great reviews, I expected more than just "tastes good."  I expected my taste buds to break into a happy dance, not smile faintly, yawn and turn in for a nap.  The tamale lady in my neighborhood has more exquisite, bewitching and deliciously satisfying offerings in her little pot than Tabla did on the day I was there.

I started with Bruleed Gingered Watermelon which had "house spiced smoked salmon" on watermelon with frisee and lime dressing.  I loved the concept and could not wait to taste it.

I'm not sure what the house spice was since I could not taste any thing other than the usual smoked salmon flavor.  I don't know where the "gingered" part was on the watermelon because I could not taste any ginger.  It was good and refreshing but rather ho-hum when the write up on the menu led me to expect so much more.

Next was Goan Shrimp Balchao & Shirred Egg.  My friend ordered the same, and it looked like he got all the shrimp and the sauce.  My dish looked like they ran out the sauce so they added some water to the dregs of what was left in the sauce pot and threw in few pieces of shrimp.  Even so, the watered-down sauce was good.  But, alas, no happy dance.  The pasta was not quite al dente...it was taken out before it got to that point.  Trying to twirl it around my fork was a challenge.  All it did was splatter mists of sauce everywhere.  It was the second most difficult dish I've ever had to to eat.

The most difficult dish I've ever had to eat was the dessert, Tahitian Vanilla Kulfi.  It was very pretty as you can see, but the flying carpet-like thing was a fried wonton skin which added nothing to the dish other than disappointment.  The little dollop of ginger sherbet was delicious...too bad there was only one mouthful of it.  The kulfi itself was rather yummy but it was frozen rock solid.  All I did whenever I tried to cut into it was to push it around in the sea of Kool Aid-like sauce.  An ice pick would have been very handy.  

I can't say that I would never go there again.  It wouldn't be my first choice, but I'd like to give it couple more tries before I write it off my list.  I mean, as disappointing as it was, all those reviews can't be wrong, can they?

Watermelon Craze

Have I been totally oblivious all this time or are restaurants suddenly enamored with incorporating watermelon into their dishes?  It seemed liked everywhere I looked this summer, there was watermelon on the menu - served usually with feta.   As a matter of fact, the other night when my friends and I went to dinner at Artisanal Fromagerie, Bistro & Wine Bar, we saw that they, too, had watermelon salad with feta on their menu.

The version served at Artisanal was absolutely delicious.  The creamy feta and the slight saltiness of the tapenade was just divine with the cool crispiness of the watermelon.  The perfect summer dish.