Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there! This post doesn’t have any recipes – I just really wanted to write something for Mother’s Day. So if you feel like seeing some baby pictures of me, read on…

On my first Mother’s Day as a mom, there are a lot of thoughts running through my head. I found out I was pregnant last Mother’s Day, in 2012. Yes, I learned I’d be a mom on Mother’s Day. So I guess this day will always be doubly special to me.

The other thought on my mind is about my own mom, who’s now a grandmother. Although my parents live in Hong Kong, she come here for a few months when Isabelle was born, and she’s planning to fly in again as often as she can. Being a doting grandma suits her well. It also makes me happy to think of Isabelle with her loving “PoPo” because I never knew my grandmothers. My paternal grandmother passed away before I was born. As for my maternal grandmother, I only met her once, as an infant.

My mother had me when she was 26. When I was 26, I had graduated from college, been working for several years, and was living a relatively carefree and indulgent life in San Francisco. Still “finding myself,” as it were – at 26, I felt like I had ages to settle down and get serious about life. At 26, my mother was already married and had moved from Hong Kong to America to be with her new husband, to a country where she didn’t know anyone else and her English was still shaky. And then she and my dad decided to start a family.

When I think of complaining of the hardships of new motherhood, I think of my mom. I think of her and my dad living in their tiny graduate student apartment while my dad finished his degree at Berkeley. I think of my mom recovering from a difficult birth and trying to take care of her new baby on her own, without her own mother by her side to help her out.

Flying back and forth across the Pacific was also out of reach for an impecunious young couple. A visit back to Hong Kong to show off their new baby wasn’t in the plans, until I was about 6 months old, and my mother received the news that her mother had suffered a stroke.

Even the trip to Hong Kong was an adventure. My parents found an inexpensive flight on Air Siam that would go to Hong Kong via Bangkok. Upon landing in Bangkok, the passengers were all asked to disembark, then informed that the airline had gone out of business while they were in the air and all company operations has ceased – effectively stranding everyone in Thailand.

My mother has never been one to back down from a challenge, especially when she thinks she’s been wronged. She and a handful of other passengers besieged the ticket counter and managed to get us seats on a United Airlines flight to Hong Kong, and at last we made it to my parents’ home city.

I wish I’d been old enough to remember that first trip, but of course I don’t recall anything. I’m glad that my grandmother had the opportunity to see me once. Sadly I never got another chance to meet her. A short while after my parents returned to the US, they received the news that she had passed away.

There’s a photo in my parents’ home of my grandmother and grandfather seated, with my dad and mom, her brother, his wife and their children, standing behind them; the classic Chinese family portrait. That was my grandmother to me: the solemn dark-haired woman in the photo. I still see it every time I return home.

I wish I’d been able to know my grandmothers, and I dearly hope that Isabelle will have the chances that I did not. My biggest joy today, though, is that my mother will get to know her granddaughter. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Mom and Isabelle

This last weekend was my birthday, and I have to say it was one of my most memorable ones, despite the fact that I practically forgot about it until it was upon me. I had a lot of other things on my plate like Isabelle’s red egg and ginger party, and getting ready to go back to work. However, my family didn’t forget, including Isabelle! She slept through the night for the first time, the night before my birthday – almost 9 hours! I woke up on my birthday morning both refreshed and very confused as to why I felt so refreshed.

Lunch at Delfina Pizzeria. I loved the Gricia – guanciale, spring onion, panna, and black pepper. From the look on Snickers’ face, she agreed with how tasty it smelled.

BiRite Creamery after lunch – strawberry balsamic for me, malted vanilla for Mike. Here’s Snickers continuing to beg for a bite. She’s pretty much the world’s fanciest, most gourmet dog.

We had a very San Francisco sort of day: lunch at Delfina Pizzeria, ice cream at BiRite, and then an afternoon of ridiculously lovely weather (maybe that part wasn’t so San Francisco, but we weren’t about to complain). Then in the evening, another parenting milestone: Isabelle’s first time with a babysitter let Mike and me have dinner at Rich Table. We almost felt like a young couple again!

So excited to be able to have oysters again! These are Malpeques with crushed wildflower mignonette.

Rich Table serves up creative, whimsical dishes in a rustic, casual setting – pretty much the epitome of SF dining right now. We had the chef’s tasting menu, which included this fantastic array of small bites. Clockwise from bottom left: Mimolette cheese cracker with chickpea salsa verde; scallop chip with pickled green strawberries and yogurt; the house Douglas fir levain with cultured butter; dried porcini doughnuts with raclette; sardine chips with horseradish (if you look closely you can see a whole sardine embedded in each chip!)

The menu is very seasonal and subject to the chefs’ whims. There was clearly a flower theme for this evening: see this absolutely gorgeous presentation of richilini with sepia, ramps, and black onion oil.

The second pasta dish, of tajarin (a tagliatelle-like pasta) with beeswax confit lamb and dandelion greens.

I love me some perfectly cooked salmon, and this was a fantastic one with some smoked tomatoes and sauce gribiche.

Another contender for prettiest dish: charcoal grilled New York strip steak with chimichurri and flowering greens.

A palate cleanser before dessert: what they dub the “California Creamsicle”, essentially a cucumber granita with yogurt on top.

Dessert! The staff very sweetly put a candle on my dish of mint chocolate cream, milk ice cream, and salted chocolate cookies. Perfect mix of flavors and textures.

With all the excitement of the birthday weekend, it took me a while to get around to making a birthday cake for me. I already had some pretty amazing ice cream and dessert on my day, so cake wasn’t really necessary, but it’s a fun tradition for this blog I like to keep up. Since I had quite a bit of passion fruit puree left over from making Isabelle’s cupcakes I decided to put it to good use. For my birthday cake I combined two of my favorite flavors: passion fruit and mango. This is also a nod to those whipped cream and fresh fruit cakes you see in Chinese bakeries, and that my mom would often get for my birthdays when I was a kid. Even today a mango mousse cake says, “Birthday” to me.

I played around with a few sponge cake recipes I have; I wasn’t entirely happy with the one I made – you can see the texture is a little spongier and coarser than I wanted, so I’ve given my basic standby genoise recipe. You want thinner layers for this cake, since you’re building it in a cake pan. I like to use a pan like this pan with a removable bottom so it’s easy to unmold the cake. You can also make this in a round pan as well.

I kept the passion fruit curd because I like its intense, puckery punch – it’s a nice exclamation point after the creamy sweetness of the mango mousse. You can use either fresh fruit or frozen purees for this recipe, although with fresh mango coming available it’d be a shame not to take advantage of them. This light, fluffy, not-too-sweet cake takes me right back to my childhood birthday parties. Maybe in a few years I’ll be making one for Isabelle!

Success! Last weekend we threw a red egg and ginger party for Isabelle! This is a Chinese tradition where the new baby is officially introduced to relatives and family friends, and the baby’s name is revealed. Historically the red egg and ginger party was held when the baby was one month old, as high infant mortality rates meant that a baby surviving to one month of age was indeed a cause for celebration. Also, the mother was also typically kept at home to recover during the same month, so this party was also meant to mark her “return” to society.

Well, those mothers back then must have been pretty tough because I was certainly not up to having any parties at one month! These days, many families are more relaxed about when the red egg and ginger party is held: sometimes it’s at baby’s 100-day mark, sometimes it’s just within baby’s first year.

We decided to have the party right around Isabelle’s 100 days: I felt like I’d settled enough into the groove of parenting to take on planning a party, spring weather had arrived, and I would be returning to work in May, so the timing seemed perfect. Like most Chinese celebrations, red egg and ginger parties involve lots of food. These days they are usually lavish banquets held in Chinese restaurants. I decided I wanted something different, mainly since most of my relatives are in Hong Kong and if I didn’t have to worry about feeding hordes of family, I preferred to be a little more creative with our smaller, more intimate party. Since you’re on my site, you must know the logical conclusion was a dessert party!

The party was held outside in the patio of our complex, to take advantage of the delightful spring weather and to accommodate all the little kids. You know you must have passed some milestone in your life when planning get-togethers involves more figuring out of children’s activities than choosing the alcohol.

Presents and red envelopes for Isabelle! I love whoever wrote her name with the sidewalk chalk we handed out to the kiddies.

Traditionally red envelopes, or “lucky money”, were given as gifts to the new baby, and often pinned to their clothes. Although we got Isabelle a pretty red dress to wear, we forewent the money-pinning: the day was hot enough without her wearing an extra layer of money!

Here’s Isabelle in her party dress! I can’t believe how much she’s grown since she was born!

My idea for our version of the red egg and ginger party was to have desserts with Asian flavors, to reflect the merging of Western and Chinese sensibilities. Here, one of my favorite items, chocolate cupcakes with passion fruit curd filling. Some of the cupcakes have piped chocolate frosting on top, while others have fondant toppers made by my wonderfully talented friend Sarah of Sarah Lindsay Cakes. There are dragons, since Isabelle was born in the Year of the Dragon (she made it just in time), and little nests with red eggs and ginger. We did have a bowl of real eggs dyed red as per tradition, but I like the little fondant ones better – so cute! I suppose, in retrospect, having a bunch of desserts also meant that practically every dish had eggs in it, so I think we fulfilled the “egg” part of the party!

Although I wanted to make as many of the desserts as I could, I’m not crazy. Pre-baby, I’d be happy to work myself into the ground for a project, but now with a baby who needs me, I have to be realistic about what I can accomplish. Some of the desserts at the party were from some of my favorite local vendors, like these vanilla and chocolate cream puffs from Pacific Puffs. I guess these were the one item that wasn’t Asian in any way!

A pic of me with fellow food blogger Crystal and our babies. Now we have another thing to bond over besides food!

It was a little hard to take pictures of the whole dessert setup at the party because we were so busy and because of the uber-bright daylight, so here are some indoor set-up shots of the desserts we had. As a side note, I really liked the yellow and red paper pom poms we had to decoration – if you look in the first party photo, you can see where they’re tied to the trees and chairs.

A tower of chocolate cupcakes and cream puffs.

A shot from when I was filling the cupcakes so you can see the passion fruit curd filling. Passion fruit is one of my favorite flavors and this curd has a minimum of butter to really let the sweet-tartness shine through.

Lychee raspberry macarons from my favorite macaron place in the Bay Area, Chantal Guillon. The lychee raspberry was originally a special limited flavor for Valentine’s Day, but it proved so popular they extended the run – lucky for me! Chantal Guillon regularly rotates in other seasonal flavors.

Raspberry ginger lemonade – It’s called a red egg and ginger party because you’re also supposed to serve dishes with lots of ginger in them. Ginger is said to have warming, revitalizing properties, which help the new mother recover (my mom did put a lot of ginger in my food while she was here). I worked both red (ok, pink) and ginger into this drink.

The strawberry-white chocolate pocky I was testing in my last post made it onto the menu! Next to them are some red egg-shaped almond sugar cookies.

No pictures because they weren’t that exciting but we did also have fortune cookies and ginger candy from Hong Kong – my preferred way of eating ginger!

Lastly, the red egg and ginger party is also when you tell everyone the baby’s name. We of course gave Isabelle her English name when she was born, but we let my parents come up with her Chinese name. We decided that in English she would have Mike’s surname, but in Chinese she would have mine. I actually think it’s kind of cool that she has two completely different names: it’s like having an automatic alias!

In the excitement of the party we forgot to tell our guests her Chinese name, but we did have it on display with the presents. My mom, who practices Chinese calligraphy, wrote the name in two different styles for us:

The first character is my last name, Chu. The second character, “ai”, means love, so in a way her name in Chinese means “beloved”. The last character, “ling”, means bell, which my parents chose to go with Isabelle. I’m so grateful to my parents for giving Isabelle such a lovely name and I’m looking forward to teaching her about both sides of her heritage.

Thanks to all our friends who came! Happy 100 days Isabelle!

Fun fact: I finally had a dream where my baby was in it. I guess it took a while for my subconscious to catch up, but I suppose now I’m a mommy through and through. One of my biggest fears when I was pregnant was that I would never have a free moment again. Would I never be able to do anything without thoughts of baby running through my head like a subliminal bassline?

Well, three months in, and now that I’m I’m surprised at the free time I’ve been able to find (I know, I know, you experienced parents are saying it’s because I only have one kid. I realize that and I’m relishing it as much as I can.) Of course, said free time comes in unexpected drips and drabbles. The challenge in trying to write, photograph, nay – think coherently at a moment’s notice, sort of becomes a do-or-die necessity when you become a parent.

So my main distraction for the last couple weeks has been organizing a little party for baby, while trying to take care of said baby. Since she’s only three months old and obviously will remember nothing of the event, it’s hard to explain to her why mommy needs some time to test recipes, make decorations, clean the house, etc. And she’s such a fun distraction now, not just a she’s-hungry-again? distraction or she’s-been-quiet-for-five-minutes-oh-god-what’s-wrong? distraction. She likes to have babbly “conversations” with me, or to be held in my lap and look around the house.

If all goes well I’m looking forward to writing a nice long post about Isabelle’s first party; in the meantime, I’d like to share one of the recipes I worked out for the event. For those of you who’ve been to Asia or Asian groceries, you probably know what Pocky is: little biscuit-y sticks dipped in all sorts of delicious flavored coatings. When I was little, Pocky only came in a couple flavors, like chocolate and strawberry. Now there’s about a billion different fancy varieties; making Pocky sort of Japan’s version of the macaron.

Although Pocky is near-ubiquitous in Asian supermarkets, I thought it would be fun to attempt a homemade version. I actually found a surprisingly straightforward recipe in Pichet Ong’s The Sweet Spot: Asian-Inspired Desserts, which produces a sweet, pliable dough that bakes into crisp little sticks. It’s also very quick to whip up, easily made in between baby’s naps, which is key these days.

The most time-consuming part, of course, is forming the cookie sticks. You want them thin enough to be elegant, but not too thin or they’ll be too fragile and snap too easily. They will puff up slightly in the oven, so keep that in mind as you’re rolling them out.

Although the recipe makes a chocolate dipped version of Pocky, my favorite flavor has always been strawberry. To that end, I decided to dip mine in white chocolate and then coat them with bits of crushed freeze-dried strawberries. The result was better than I hoped: The lightly sweet, crisp cookie sticks were very reminiscent of Pocky sticks (actually, almost like sweet breadsticks), and the strawberries were intensely flavorful. Very addictively munchable, as all stick-like snacks should be.

I hope to be able to share the rest of the party desserts with you soon!

Along with all the lovely growing, blooming things that herald spring is the baby in our home! Isabelle is three months today and I think she may have hit her growth spurt early. She’s a chubby bundle now!

The whole, “I swear she grew overnight” thing happened to me – last Monday I looked at her and thought, “Your face is way rounder than yesterday!”And all of a sudden her newborn-sized clothes were too tight for her. I guess our worries about her being a tiny newborn and not getting enough to eat have been thoroughly erased.

Three months is a great time with the baby: she’s truly no longer a newborn and I can see her becoming more aware of her world, and more interactive every day. She looks at her hanging toys and reaches for them, she cranes her head to focus on the overhead lights in rooms, she watches me puttering around the kitchen and coos in curiosity. She can roll over (proud mommy moment!), she’s getting into the hand sucking thing, and she does a mean karate kick to your belly if you’re not careful (she’s long-legged so we call her grasshopper baby).

The most amazing thing, of course, is that she recognizes me. She’ll focus on my face before anything else, she likes to hear me talking and singing to her, and if she sees me walking away, she’ll howl in protest. Not so great for my productivity, but there’s nothing to reawaken your sense of awe and joy than to see your baby smiling up at you. I’ve had many moms tell me how hard it was to go back to work at the typical three-month mark, as that’s when babies usually start being really interesting. I totally get it now – not that I don’t think she’ll be endlessly fascinating in all the months to come, but I feel very lucky that I’ll be able to stay with Isabelle for another month before I’m back in the office. Can three months have really passed so quickly? I guess 11+ pounds of baby say yes!

So in the spirit of spring and happy growing things, I picked up some irresistibly gorgeous strawberries and rhubarb. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to make with them, but my husband provided the inspiration when he asked me to make some ginger scones. I did, (and this post is not about them!), but then I got the idea to put the strawberries and rhubarb in a scone. Not surprisingly, these days I’m into things that can be made quickly and easily, and these scones fit the bill perfectly.

Cutting the strawberries and rhubarb into fine dice.

The perfect thing about scones is that they freeze wonderfully; in fact, that’s recommended protocol for scone dough since scones don’t keep well at all, and what’s the point of eating a scone if you can’t enjoy that fluffy, fresh-baked texture and the sugar-crisp top? When I worked in the bakery, we would make an entire sheet pan full of scone dough, score it into triangles, and freeze the whole pan. Every morning we’d bake off a half dozen or so to sell for the day. I think the utter freezability of scones only enhances their ease of making. When you’re caught on a sudden whim to make scones for tea, there’s no need to fear the extras will go to waste: you can just make the scones you need and freeze the rest instead.

I cut my scones into wedges, but you can also use a biscuit cutter to cut out round scones. Either way, make sure the knife or cutter edges are sharp so you can cut straight through the dough, without needing to run the knife back and forth or twist the cutter. The clean cuts will let your scones rise higher, with distinct fluffy layers.

Although these aren’t classic British scones, I love the British tradition of scones and clotted cream. Here, I did a play on strawberry shortcake with whipped cream by putting a dollop of vanilla whipped cream on top of the scones. The vanilla extract I used is from Heilala.

Founded in 2002 by New Zealand dairy farmer John Ross, Heilala is the only plantation-to-pantry grower and manufacturer of vanilla. They use no traders or distributors, reducing costs and unnecessary handling. Their vanilla plantation is located in the Vava’u Islands in the Kingdom of Tonga, making this the only vanilla from Tonga (the beans are of the Bourbon variety).

Whipped cream is actually a wonderful way to taste test vanilla – the cream provides a neutral base that conveys the vanilla flavor across without distraction. I found Heilala to have a very bright, round floral flavor. It is distinctive enough that I would use it in a recipe that features the flavor, like this whipped cream or ice cream or a pudding, instead of hiding it in a cookie or cake, although it would definitely make fantastic cookies or cakes as well.

With sunny spring in full effect here, it’s nice to bring in a bit of a tropical breeze as well with some island-grown vanilla extract. Scones with cream and a sunny afternoon with baby is pretty much perfection right now!

Disclosure: I received a sample of vanilla extract from Heilala for review. All opinions are my own.

Other ways with strawberries and rhubarb:

Ice Wine Ice Cream with Strawberry Rhubarb Compote

Strawberry Rhubarb Birthday Tart

Rhubarb Tart with Orange and Cinnamon

Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream with Graham Cracker Pizzelles

The days are starting to fall into some semblance of a schedule, albeit a very flexibly-written one. For example, baby is in her best mood in the morning, which means I usually spend that time interacting and playing with her, since she’s at her most adorable and responsive. Afternoons are more of a mixed bag: if she’s napping well I get some time to work on things, or, more usually, clean things up. If she decides she’s not into napping, the day kind of devolves into a cycle of rocking/walking/feeding/whatever quiets baby down. As with every parent before me, I’m sure, the importance of maximizing every scrap of free time becomes utterly paramount.

Last week’s example: I was testing out recipes for a separate project, and ended up with a bunch of buttermilk cupcakes. Perfectly satisfactory as recipe testing results go, but what to do with them now? Could I somehow repurpose them for a blog post? Sure I could eat them or give them away, but I’d rather find a better use for them, especially since I didn’t have time to do an entirely new recipe for the blog that day. Some of the ways I might have changed the recipe, like adding mix-ins to the batter, were no longer possible. I had also baked them in these awful random cupcake papers I was trying to use up, so they weren’t very photogenic either.

Compounding the challenge was the discovery that I had run out of granulated sugar. Oops, do I turn in my baker card now? How does a baker run out of sugar? I found out right after I had gotten home from taking baby and the dog out. Every parent knows that sometimes the prospect of re-loading baby and associated paraphernalia back into the car just to drive back to the store for one item, is too much to bear. No going back out again. So now I was reduced to the ingredients I had on hand in the pantry.

Luckily I wasn’t out of other forms of sugar. I ended up combining confectioners’ sugar and some Meyer lemons I also had lying around for a sweet lemon glaze to drizzle over the now-naked cupcakes. I also had plenty of brown sugar, so I also candied some walnuts, adding a sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper for some spice.

I’m pretty pleased with how the combination turned out. The buttermilk cake is a tangier version of a vanilla cupcake, pleasantly robust but not too dense. The lemon glaze gives a bright, sweet contrast and the nuts provide more textural interest as well as some spiciness – I always find spiced nuts super addicting. If I had planned out this whole recipe from scratch, I might have mixed the nuts into the batter, almost like a streusel, but they work fine as a topping too.

While I might never return to the total luxury of free time to waste, creativity under constraint isn’t a necessarily a bad thing either. Every thing I manage to accomplish outside of caring for the baby during the day feels like another little achievement to me, which I didn’t always appreciate pre-baby. Even mustering up the mental discipline to write a coherent blog post feels like a victory! So, here’s to making do and victory cakes to celebrate.

Ok, this post is going up a little later than I wanted but at least I made it before Easter – why is it when you *have* to get a post up on time that things invariably go wonky? I wanted to share this cake that I picked out from Martha Stewart Living’s special Cakes and Cupcakes edition, as it’s so apropos for the holiday.

I received a copy of this pretty publication and was invited to pick out a recipe to make from it. It’s filled with 50+ recipes for some of Martha’s prettiest cakes, illustrating a wide range of cake types and decorating styles. It’s more like a mini-cookbook than a magazine, and works nicely as a primer for a lot of cake-making and decorating techniques. You get some basic cake, frosting, and filling recipes, tips on tools and decorating techniques, and of course a gallery of beautiful cakes to inspire you to pull everything together.

The cake I chose was the Chocolate Cake with Truffle Eggs, which seemed fitting for Easter. It’s one of the less “decorated” cakes, with no frosting techniques required, but I figured I’d gotten my dose of cake decorating with my last cake. This cake is a heavy-hitting dose of chocolate – a basic cocoa-buttermilk cake layered with whipped chocolate ganache, and then covered with chocolate glaze. The “nest” is made from chocolate shavings, and then egg-shaped chocolate truffles dipped in blue-tinted white chocolate are placed on top. So, there pretty much isn’t anything not chocolate in the cake. Made with Valrhona 61%, it really hit my chocoholic spot – if I wasn’t worried about the side effects on the baby (and me) I might have eaten the whole thing!

The recipe makes a 7-in layer cake, but I decided to turn them into 4-in mini cakes instead. The recipe fills (4) 4-in pans perfectly, so you end up with four cakes – ideal for decorating a party table, or you can keep one for yourself guilt-free and give the other ones away. I also thought it would be cute to decorate the tops differently, so I made a couple of fondant chicks for one cake. I’m not sure if they look more like ducks than chicks, but it’s still pretty spring and Easter-themed, right?

Although the recipe looks long, it’s fairly stress-free to make, and it’s one of those multi-component recipe where you can make one part while the others are cooling, or setting up, etc. If you’re planning ahead, you can probably make the cake layers and eggs on one day, and then make the filling on the next day, and assemble and decorate right before serving. I even made parts of this with the baby strapped to me – and I didn’t get any chocolate on her!

Happy Easter, everyone!

Note: I received a copy of cakes and cupcakes from the publisher for review. All opinions are my own.

Pineapple carpaccio with lemon sorbet, cilantro granité, pineapple chips, and crystallized cilantro from Souvenirs.

Isabelle is two months old! I can’t believe how much she has changed in eight short weeks. It’s like the saying, “The days are long, but the years are short.” I’ve always been a nostalgic person. Even though I know there are years and years of joy ahead in discovering my daughter, I’m already feeling the passage of days. She can do so many things now she didn’t do before: the little coos she makes when she’s curious. Her smiles at me (she’s smiling!). The mini push-ups she does when she’s on her tummy and trying to lift her head. The way she looks around for me and focuses right on my face – who would have thought that being recognized would evoke such a palpable sense of joy?

Several people have asked me if I’m a baby person, which at first made me wonder, why would I have a baby if I wasn’t a baby person? But I realized the question really meant which stage of my child’s life I was most looking forward to. Hey, I get why many people don’t enjoy the infant/baby stage: the sleepless nights, the endless dirty diapers, the constant loads of laundry covered in spitup. Hubby Mike says he is looking forward to when she can walk and talk and he can communicate with her, and I’m looking forward to that too. But I guess my answer is yes, I’m a baby person. I love holding her in my arms and smelling her baby smell, I love watching her little innocent face as she observes the world around her. I will become one of those old ladies who stops moms with strollers to gush wistfully over the newborn sleeping inside. Right now, when those old ladies stop me to gush over my baby, I smile and tell them yes, I feel very lucky, every day. I try to commit every day to memory, because these are the days I want to remember.

This nostalgia is probably why I really enjoyed Souvenirs: Stories and Recipes from My Life, Chef Hubert Keller’s latest cookbook. If you don’t live in the Bay Area, you might have first heard of Chef Keller on television, on Secrets of a Chef or Top Chef. Here, though, Keller and his restaurant Fleur de Lys are San Francisco icons.  Keller brought his classical French technique to the US and adapted it to California ingredients and sensibilities. Fleur de Lys is now the quintessential modern French restaurant. Souvenirs contains the story of Fleur de Lys, along with Keller’s early years and his journey to chefdom. I was fortunate enough to be one of the recipe testers for the book, thanks to co-author Penni Wisner, and get an early preview of his recipes. The final product is a beautiful hybrid of cookbook and memoir that I’m very honored to have been of, if only peripherally.

Souvenirs means memories in French, and this cookbook is a beautiful collection of memories. Chef Keller has lived the kind of life I think everyone hopes to have: filled with adventure, accomplishment, loving family and friends, and a great deal of good food. His joie de vivre is evident in the photographs and anecdotes that fill the pages of the book – leafing through it is like looking through a scrapbook filled with glimpses into a wonderful life. The book is set up in sections, each devoted to a particular time or theme in his life, from his beginnings in Alsace, France, to his formative years cooking under Michelin-starred chefs, to the restaurant collection in San Francisco and Las Vegas. My favorite sections have to be the one about love, where he shares memories of his marriage and the dishes he and his wife Chantal love to make together, and the one one Christmas in Alsace, because I can never resist anything Christmas-themed, especially if it’s in France! This is my favorite kind of cookbook: one that is deeply personal and elevates the recipes to more than just a collection of ingredients and techniques. You’ll always associate them with the accompanying stories: for example, the kugelhopf his father made for years at the family patisserie in Alsace, the spiced fruit compotes his wife loves to make, the cannelés he and Chantal had at a little restaurant in Bordeaux.

I had the opportunity to eat at Fleur de Lys and meet Chef Keller last year; he was wonderfully open and gracious, exactly as he comes across in the book. I’m delighted that his story has been captured so charmingly in this lovely book.

Following are some of the dishes that I helped test for the cookbook. Note these are all progress shots and the final recipes in the book might be slightly different – and of course, the photos are better!

Hot spiced wine, an Alsace Christmas tradition. Husband Mike is really into all kinds of mulled wine so he eagerly volunteered to test out this concoction laced with citrus, star anise, ginger, cardamom, and a host of other spices. The scent of the holidays.

Feuilleté of Crayfish, Scallops, Summer Vegetables, and Basil in Hollandaise Sauce. Another dish that Mike volunteered to test, because he’s a fan of Cajun crawfish boils. It was fascinating to make a totally different preparation of crayfish, French style. Here is the combination of crayfish, scallops, haricots verts, peas, and wild mushrooms in the pan.

Here is the final preparation, with the filling tossed in hollandaise sauce and spooned into puff pastry cases.  This was probably one of the most elaborate recipes we tested, but as Mike said, “It made me feel incredibly accomplished when I finished it.” It was pretty satisfying to eat, too.

Chicken liver mousse with smoked duck ham and pineapple-vanilla consomme. This beautiful dish is from the “Modern French Cooking” chapter, which covers the beginning of Keller’s career in the US and how he adapted his cuisine to American ingredients. Many of the dishes from Fleur de Lys show up here, including this chicken liver mousse. Playful, unexpected, yet still very French.

Galette des rois – the classic Three Kings Cake served at Christmastime (there is an entire chapter devoted to holiday recipes!) I loved the chance to work with puff pastry and I adore the almond cream filling.

Alsatian Plum Tart (before baking) – this is an ode to the Alsatian plum, or quetsch, in Keller’s native Alsace. It is a small, purply-black plum with golden flesh, perfect for jams and tarts. Alternatives here in the States are Santa Rosa plums or prune plums. Either way, a gorgeous celebration of the ending of summer.

Citrus tartlets filled with a lemon-and-orange puree and topped with lavender-scented meringue – an ideal spring treat. The filling combines Meyer lemons and Valencia oranges – from winter to spring in one dessert. They are a perfect treat to make now, on the cusp of spring and the return of sunny days.

Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s post with their favorite pie. I have about a hundred pie ideas to make now!

The two winners of a copy of Pieography are:

Commenter #3, ladywild

and commenter #6, Sarah! Congratulations! For the rest of you, remember my pie recipe is available on my site.

I’ve been slowly getting back into the kitchen – it’s easier on the weekends when there’s another pair of hands to take care of baby, while on weekdays it’s a tossup whether I manage to get changed out of pajamas before noon. I realized just how much my perspective had changed when making a layer cake, once a day-long project, turned into multi-day affair. Fortunately, with cakes it’s easy to break it down into components. And I actually finished it within my planned timeframe! That feels like a huge accomplishment these days.

I got a shipment of products from the quirkily-named Singing Dog Vanilla – I love their vanilla bean paste and I was thrilled to get to try out some of their other products. Singing Dog Vanilla works with farmers in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia to source their beans, so their vanilla tastes different from the more commonly-found Madagascar vanilla found in stores. It has more floral and fruit notes, which would probably come across really well in a custard or ice cream. However, I had a craving for vanilla cake.

The terms, “vanilla cake” and “white cake” are often used interchangeably, as nearly all white cake recipes use a little vanilla for flavoring. White cake is usually meant as a neutral canvas for fillings and frostings, so it’s not meant to be strongly flavored. However, I wanted this cake to really taste of vanilla. This was done by layering several vanilla ingredients: vanilla extract, vanilla bean paste, and vanilla sugar.

If you haven’t made vanilla sugar, it’s the easiest thing to make: Slice open a vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds, and place both the seeds and bean in a container of sugar. Covered airtight for about two weeks, and your sugar will smell (and taste) fabulously of vanilla when you open the container. Making vanilla sugar is also a great way to use vanilla beans when you’ve used the seeds for another recipe – this method works just as well with only the scraped-out bean. Use it in lieu of regular sugar whenever you want to punch up the vanilla flavor.

Because I was curious, I also made a version of the cake with just vanilla extract, for comparison. Naturally that cake was much more subtle in flavor, but it also tasted much less sweet. It was interesting that vanilla not only lends richness of flavor to items even when they aren’t specifically meant to be vanilla-flavored, but they also increase the sensation of sweetness. The triple-vanilla cake made with vanilla sugar, extract, and paste tasted like a sugar cookie, according to hubby. It also has a wonderfully fluffy crumb, yet holds together well – in short, ideal for making a layer cake.

The perfect pairing for so much intense vanilla is some bright citrus. It’s the season for one of my favorite fruits – Meyer lemons. Milder than regular lemons but still acidic enough to provide a refreshing contrast to the rich cake. Ok, I admit I just wanted to make a bunch of lemon curd. I also used Meyer lemon juice in the buttercream to increase the lemony-ness of the cake.

Don’t be afraid to be generous with the curd – the recipe makes more than enough.

The basic cake recipe below makes two 6″ cake layers; if you want three layers like I did, you can simply make the recipe twice. The second time, fill one cake pan with half the batter and make cupcakes with the rest – that way nothing goes to waste! You can fill them with the lemon curd and frost with the remaining buttercream for some pint-sized versions this cake.

The decoration for the cake is inspired by this one on Bakers Royale; I really like this alternative ruffle pattern as compared to the traditional ruffle cakes, as it’s faster to do and also uses less buttercream. I like buttercream but I find too much can overwhelm a cake. Since I wanted to focus on the vanilla and lemon flavors, I decided to go with less buttercream embellishment.

We were lucky enough to get some early warm weather here in the Bay Area, although this week it’s become more hit and miss. This sunny, sweet little cake will tide me over until spring proper arrives. And make me feel like I can hold onto my baker’s credentials still!

I’m excited to announce the release of Pieography: Where Pie Meets Biography by WWC Press. As the title implies, it’s a collection of pie recipes both sweet and savory from 39 women who love food – myself included! I was approached by WWC to contribute a pie recipe and an essay that explored how this pie speaks to our life experiences and our goals.

I was happy to participate in such a heartwarming project, and my contribution to Pieography is my “I Heart Summer” Strawberry and Lemon Verbena Pie. Although it’s already a blog post on this site, submitting it for the book and having to write an accompanying piece encouraged me to re-examine the pie and articulate how it represented me and my philosophy. Also, although you can get the recipe here, there are 41 other wonderful pie recipes in the book covering an impressive range of styles – from pot pies to quiches to ice cream pies to galettes. It was also lovely to read the biographies of everyone who created all these pies – such a diverse collection of talented and creative women, and a group I’m honored to be in.

Here’s a shot of the back cover featuring yours truly along with some other fantastically accomplished women! I’m truly proud to be part of this project with WWC. And I’m pleased to have a chance to share it with you! I am giving away two copies of Pieography to Dessert First readers!

To enter: Leave a comment below about your favorite type of pie and why. It can be sweet or savory, a fruit pie, quiche, tart – whatever holds first place in your heart. The contest will run until next Wednesday, March 6 and I’ll select two winners at random and announce them on Thursday March 7. Good luck, and I hope to read some mouth-watering descriptions in the comments!