When you have fresh berries around, a clafoutis is a great way to showcase them. A clafoutis is a French dessert that is somewhere between a cake and a custard. It is just firm enough to slice easily, as cakes are, but it is based heavily in milk and egg, and has a lovely custard flavor and texture to it. The vanilla-scented batter is a great backdrop to all kinds of fruit. Pear Clafoutis is one of my favorite variations, but I’ve used blackberries for this batch.

Fresh blackberries go very well with the vanilla custard flavor of this dish. They’re bright and have a nice sweetness to them - and I have to admit that their beautiful purple color is offset very well by the pale clafoutis. You can use frozen berries, but your clafoutis will take a few minutes longer to bake and the berries might loose a little bit of their texture as the dish bakes. I think that fresh berries are your best bet, and you can easily mix in some blueberries or raspberries in this, too.

This clafoutis batter mixes up very easily in just one bowl (or in the food processor) in about 2 minutes. It has very simple ingredients, so as long as you have berries on hand, you can quite literally start putting this together on a moment’s notice. When you pull it out of the oven, you’ll notice that it rises like a souffle, thanks to the number of eggs in the batter. It will fall slightly as it cools, so don’t worry if yours doesn’t remain puffed up after it finishes cooking.

You can serve this dish warm or chilled, it is very tasty both ways. It can be made a day in advance, but it really looks and tastes its best within a day of making it, so I would try to make it the day you will be serving it if possible.

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Two of the most observed traditions of St Patrick’s day are probably pinching someone who isn’t wearing a bit of green and knocking back a couple of green beers. Ok - those probably aren’t the most popular St Paddy’s Day traditions, but they certainly seem to be ones that people enjoy! I personally like to celebrate with a little bit of Irish Food, like corned beef, braised cabbage and some homemade baked goods.

I’ll always do an Irish Soda Bread. These loaves are easy to make, since they’re leavened with baking soda and not with yeast. there are many variations on the traditional loaf, and I like mine slathered with Irish Butter. Soda Bread Farls are another great variation on this type of bread, baked directly in a skillet instead of in an oven.

Irish cream makes an appearance in many of my desserts for St Patrick’s Day. Irish Cream Brownies and Bailey’s Cheesecake Bars aren’t exactly traditional desserts, but they’re delicious none the less. Irish Coffee is a good pairing with an dessert.

I would do more green desserts, but green is one of those colors that doesn’t always flatter foods that aren’t naturally green. That said, there are some green dessert ideas out there. Homemade by Holman made some absolutely amazing Shamrock Sandwich Cookies. These dark green cookies are soft and cake-like, so these sandwiches are really a variation on whoopie pies. The secret to making them is piping out the cake batter into clean shamrock shapes before baking them. Nutmeg Nanny whipped up some Green Velvet Cupcakes for the holiday, too. Like the whoopie pies, these also use green food coloring with great effect. Keep in mind that it is a good idea to go with a lot of food coloring; the brighter the color the better your green sweets will look.

Most measuring spoon sets have just four spoons: 1/4 tsp, 1/2 tsp, 1 tsp and 1 tbsp. With these four spoons, you can get done all the measuring you need to do for most recipes. That said, there are plenty of times when you might end up with a measurement that doesn’t fit neatly into one of these sizes. For instance, an old recipe might call for “a pinch” of something, while a big recipe that you’ve cut down for a smaller batch might end up needing 2/3 of a teaspoon. I will divide or estimate as needed to make these sizes work with my existing spoons, but it is much more convenient to have measuring spoons that encompass these unusual sizes. This set of Odd Size Measuring Spoons covers just about all the measuring spoon bases you might need. The set includes a “pinch”, 1/8 tsp, 1/4 tsp, 1/2 tsp, 2/3 tsp, 1 tsp, 1 1/2 tsp, 2 tsp and 1 tbsp measures, all clipped together for easy storage. I’ve seen several other off-size spoon sets that don’t include the standard measures along with the unusual ones, so it’s nice that this set will do it all. Each spoon is also marked with milliliter equivalents, which is handy if you use European/international recipes that don’t rely on teaspoons for measurements.

Pomegranates are packed with antioxidants, which means that there are a lot of potential health benefits packed into each fruit. Pomegranates are a bit difficult to eat, since each little seed - although tasty - doesn’t have a lot of juice or flesh surrounding it, so it takes quite a while to consume one. This is where pomegranate juice comes in, making it easy to enjoy the flavor of pomegranate without the work involved in eating a whole fruit. The juice can be used in many different types of dishes, and while I often see it reduced in a sauce, I used some to sweeten up a chocolate bundt cake.

This cake is moist, chocolaty and has a tender, but slightly dense, texture. It’s a great bundt cake because it’s easy to make and each slice is satisfying to eat. I used pomegranate juice as the primary liquid in this cake, where I might use milk, buttermilk or coffee in another chocolate cake. There is a lot of cocoa powder in here, so you can’t directly taste the pomegranate flavor in the cake. You can definitely tell the juice is there, however, because there is a lovely fruity sweetness to the cake that adds some complexity to the flavor. Not wanting to skimp on the chocolate, I incorporated some chocolate chips into this cake, too.

I used POM Wonderful pomegranate juice in this cake, because it is pure pomegranate juice and not simply flavored white grape juice. Definitely take the time to look for pure juice when you make this cake, both for that fruity flavor and for the antioxidants (don’t forget that there are also plenty in the cocoa powder in this cake!). It’s pretty easy to justify having a second piece when you can say you’re doing it for health reasons!
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