Thanks to all of you and your support of sated magazine! As a reminder, there are couple days left in the giveaway to win a free copy of the first issue. We will also be announcing pre-order information very soon, so please keep checking back!

I apologize for the late post; what with trying to finish up work on the first issue, plus a visit to wine country last week (writeup of that trip forthcoming as well!), I was finally able to sit down and share this very spring-y strawberry ice cream with you, as well as the trip to Pebble Beach that inspired this ice cream.

Another year, and another Food and Wine at spectacular Pebble Beach. Even if there weren’t an event that brought together some fabulous chefs, food, and wine, I’ll still be excited to come down to this gorgeous spot. Brisk blue skies and stunning views as always.

This year, I was thrilled to be invited by Driscoll’s to attend again – I’d gotten a chance to visit some of their farms in a previous year, so I was pleased to see how they were doing. It also meant a bus ride down to Pebble Beach with the likes of Stephanie, Irvin, Sabrina, Shauna, and Kamran, which is basically like the best college road trip ever.

At one of Driscoll’s numerous farms in Monterey, we were treated to a breakfast spread that included a lot of freshly-picked berries.

Hello, giant yogurt parfait.

Breakfast was followed by a tour of the berry farms, where we got to see berry bushes up close and personal. My last visit I got to see strawberries; this time, it was blueberries and raspberries. Unfortunately most of the berries had not ripened yet, but we were able to see how much work goes into caring for these plants.

After the berry farms, we were whisked off to Pebble Beach Food and Wine proper, where we got to go in the Grand Tasting Tent. I’ll have to confess I wasn’t quite as diligent about snapping pictures of food as in previous years- but I captured a few favorites.

Chef Johnny Iuzzini serving up the charm…and dessert.

His dessert, a mix of strawberries, rhubarb, and coconut meringues, was one of my favorites.

Chef Ben Spungin had one of the more elaborately themed tables; his “Sweet Antiques” booth was filled with old-fashioned cameos, books, and other paraphenalia.

Here’s Chef Spungin sporting a chocolate handlebar mustache.

His black tea custard with tobacco-infused crumble and honey was inventive and spoon-licking good.

After the Grand Tasting, we took a walk by the beach to clear our heads and burn off some calories, and enjoy the endlessly beautiful views.

Thanks to Driscoll’s for another chance to visit their farms and Pebble Beach. I came home with a craving for berries, so the very next day I set about making some strawberry ice cream. This has pretty much been my favorite flavor since childhood – my madeleine, if you will. Roasting the strawberries helps bring out and intensify that lovely sweet flavor – and you can save some of the leftover strawberry puree to drizzle over the top.

I also broke out the trusty pizzelle maker to make some graham cracker pizzelles for accompaniment. I like the warm honey crunch with the rich fruitiness of the ice cream. You can very easily turn the pizzelles into little cones for the ice cream as well. Me, I like dipping little pieces into the ice cream and eating them, kind of those those snack packs of biscuits that come with a mysterious candy-flavored dipping sauce. Trust me, this is much better.

Thanks all for your support of sated! And now, a quick diversion:

I’ll be providing cookies for a book event tomorrow: the authors Improv Sewing: A Freeform Approach to Creative Techniques will be doing a demo and book signing at Britex Fabrics in downtown San Francisco. I was approached because they were looking for a local blogger to provide treats for their event. Well, I was flattered to help out and who knows? I might actually learn how to do more with a thread and needle than sew buttons back on! A baker I am; a seamstress I’m not!

If you’d like to learn about the book, you can visit the website for a cute video.

Thanks also to everyone for their support of sated! As a reminder, if you are entering the contest through Twitter or Facebook to win a copy of the magazine, you must follow sated on Twitter and leave a comment, or like sated on Facebook and leave a comment. We see some people only following us without leaving a comment, so make sure you’ve done both parts! Thanks, good luck, and have a great weekend!

Dear readers,

It’s been a little while since my last cookbook was published. Some of my friends have been asking me what my next project would be, and I’m so excited to finally be able to announce it to the world:

I have been collaborating with Stephanie of the beautiful Desserts for Breakfast to create a new food magazine! About nine months ago, while sharing thoughts about our personal goals, we started tossing around the idea of producing our own magazine, to reflect our own particular vision of food. The idea evolved over months of late night discussions and lots of hard work, into sated magazine.

Sounds ambitious and a little crazy, right? Yes to both. There were several times when Stephanie and I looked at each other and we weren’t sure when the light at the end of the tunnel would appear. Obviously there’s so much more to creating a publication than writing words and taking photos. But in the end, all the behind-the-scenes work is worth it if you, the audience, can see our words and images presented the way we envisioned them being seen.

sated is food with intimacy and personality. We want readers to feel like they are being invited into their friend’s home – their friend who is eager to share her enthusiasm for food . There’s so much information on food out there today that people feel overwhelmed with the need to be up to date on everything. sated isn’t looking to be trendy. sated is a leisurely exploration into the sideways and byways of food  – its history, its meaning, and most importantly its beauty.

Our first issue of sated is dedicated to dark chocolate – a fairly easy choice for two dessert lovers! We’ll put the table of contents up on the sated site soon, but we’ve put together some pretty great content I’m proud of: articles about the craft chocolate movement, how-to features, chocolate guides, and, of course, lots of chocolate recipes accompanied by Stephanie’s stunning photography. We are wrapping up production and we’re looking to announce its release within the next couple of weeks. So prepare yourself to get sated.

I’ve been blogging about food for five and a half years now, and I’ve gotten some truly amazing opportunities through my site. I hope I never stop blogging, but as my Facebook profile says, I’m always looking for the next horizon. Having written my own books and for other publications, I wanted to take on a new creative project that would challenge me and help me expand both my existing skills and develop new ones.

I’m a pretty private (shy) person, which may sound strange for someone who writes about her life weekly on a public blog. I’m still surprised when friends or acquaintances outside the food world come up to me and say they’ve visited my site. I tend not to broadcast my inner thoughts and aspirations too publicly – probably stemming from my twin tendencies to be self-reliant and to fear failure. Easier to share things when they’re all finished and done, and all the rough edges hidden away behind the curtain. So yes, I downplayed this magazine for a while, even to my friends, so I wouldn’t have to answer anyone, “oh, that magazine thing I was working on? Yeah, I have no idea what I’m doing or where it’s going,” or “oh, the magazine project? yeah, that didn’t quite pan out the way I planned.”

But the time for self-doubt is over. So sated is me throwing my windows open to the world, a public statement from me and Stephanie about how we feel about food, so I hope you’ll support us, and tell all your friends about it, and let us know what you think. Visit the website to learn about the magazine – we’ll be posting up more material and updates, and when the magazine is published you’ll be able to purchase it through the site. Also, if you’re interested in contributing to sated, use the e-mail links on the site.  I mentioned that I have a hard time asking for help, but a magazine is not a two-person job, and I have no problem saying that out loud now! To fully realize the vision we have for sated, we’ll need many more talented people on our team. If you’re intrigued by the sated mission, drop us a line!

To help celebrate the announcement of this magazine, I’m sharing a recipe that I made for the San Francisco Food Bloggers Bake Sale last weekend. Thank you to all of you who came out and supported us, by the way – it was a great event and everyone enjoyed themselves, and we raised quite a bit for Share Our Strength!

I made a duo of cookies, one of which was Chocolate Raspberry Sablés. Sablés are one of my favorite cookies for their dreamy, crumbly texture – butter and sugar meshed into a delicate cohesion, ready to melt at the lightest bite into crisp-tender goodness in your mouth. Two secrets: don’t overwork the dough and don’t overbake. I added some freeze-dried raspberries (chocolate and raspberry are one of my favorite combinations) for a bright burst of contrast. These are wonderfully poppable – and addictive.

Also, we’re running a giveaway to celebrate sated. We are giving away two copies of the premier issue of sated to Dessert First and Desserts for Breakfast readers. There are several chances for you to enter:

1)Leave a comment on this post for one entry.

2) Leave a comment on the Desserts for Breakfast post for one entry.

3) Follow sated on Twitter and tweet about it for one entry (you do not need to post a comment here; we’ll track it through Twitter).

4) Like sated on Facebook and leave a comment on the page for one entry (you do not need to post a separate comment here).

5) Sign up to be on sated’s mailing list for one entry (you do not need to post a separate comment here).

The giveaway will run until May 18, at which point we’ll choose two lucky winners at random to receive the very first issue of sated.

Thanks so much and good luck! Please stay tuned for more updates, including previews of issue one!

Before I finish off my mousse experiment, I want to remind all you faithful readers that this Saturday is the big Food Blogger Bake Sale! We have had a location change since my first announcement: the bake sale will be this Saturday, April 28, at Omnivore Books from 11-4.

Omnivore Books was the location of our first bake sale so I’m really excited to be back here! And, to continue a very fine tradition that started when Rose Levy Barenbaum was speaking the day of our first bake sale, Alice Medrich will be at Omnivore from 3-4 to talk about her new book, Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts! I can’t think of a better agenda: stop by for a treat and then listen to a pastry master speak. If you’d like to see who’s participating in this year’s bake sale, go on over to the official website and see all the volunteer bakers listed on the side.

I really hope you all can come out – please Facebook/tweet/spread the word about our bake sale so we can get a great turnout! If you don’t live in San Francisco, check out the national list of blogger bake sales to see if there’s one near you. Thanks so much!

Now, onto the final mousse of the taste testing!

Chocolate Mousse #5: Sabayon based

Unfortunately I have to start off my notes about this last mousse with a little disclaimer: this recipe is called Pâte à Bombe chocolate mousse in the cookbook but I don’t think that’s correct. Pâte à bombe is made from combining hot sugar syrup with whipped egg yolks – the resulting ultra-rich and airy base can be used for everything from mousses to ice cream. It would undoubtedly have made an excellent chocolate mousse, but the recipe I made instead is really a sabayon based mousse, which is also a perfectly valid mousse method, just different.

Sabayon is also another wonderful pastry staple that has near-endless uses: it’s basically the French version of the Italian zabaglione, and is little more than eggs and sugar whisked and cooked into a buttercup-golden custard that can be layered in desserts or just eaten by the spoonful. In the case of mousse, it lends a gorgeous creaminess and fullness of flavor. This is the one other mousse recipe in my lineup that uses cooked eggs, and the extra steps in this method are indeed worth the effort, in my opinion.

You might be thinking that this method seems similar to the creme anglaise mousse #4 I made, and in principle they are very similar. But if you compare the ingredient ratios you’ll notice there is much more egg in the sabayon recipe. This makes for a much thicker and darker mixture. There’s also less dairy in this recipe, so the chocolate flavor is more pronounced, with less cream to soften out the edges. I found the mousse to be sweeter and creamier than #4 as well.  Zabaglione is traditionally made with Marsala, so it seems perfectly reasonable to splash a bit in this sabayon as well.

I really enjoyed this mousse – along with the first mousse, these two seem the most suited for straight eating. Just a couple more mousse-making tips – these apply to all the mousses I’ve made:

- Temperature is key. You’ll notice a temperature range for the melted chocolate in every recipe. When you are combining chilled whipped cream into warm chocolate, if the temperature difference is too great the cream will set the chocolate, creating little hard chips that ruin the texture of the mousse. You want the chocolate to have cooled down enough to avoid this temperature shock.

- Folding technique is also crucial. You’ve incorporated all this lovely air into the various mixtures – the last thing you want to do is mash it all out with over-vigorous mixing. That’s why most of the recipes feature steps where you incorporate a small bit of one mixture into another – for example, folding a third of the whipped cream into the chocolate – to help balance out the densities and make it easier to fully combine the two component together. Fold quickly and smoothly, and with as few strokes as possible – the more melt-in-your-mouth your mousse will be.

I hope this was a interesting tour of how many different ways mousse can be made. I would say that I could see uses for all of the five mousses I did try: #1 and #5 are great for eating, #2 is also good for milder palates, while #3 and #4 work well as dessert components. There’s still so many other methods I didn’t explore: pâte à bombe, meringue, Bavarian, or even the water-based mousse. I guess a second round is in order in the future? I’m going to take a little break from mousse right now, though, and let you all try and hand and tell me which one you like best.

Happy mousse making!

Remember back with mousse #1, where I discussed how eggs enriched a mousse like nothing else? The only issue was that the eggs in the classic French style mousse weren’t cooked, so it should be avoided by those with health concerns. However, the next two mousses use eggs that are cooked, so you don’t have to worry about anything – except perhaps your waistline! I think they’re worth the extra effort.

Chocolate Mousse #4: Custard Based

This mousse uses the classic creme anglaise as a base. Folded into the melted chocolate, and then lightened with whipped cream, it totally captures the rich-yet-airy paradox, especially when fresh. Not surprisingly, the creme anglaise gives the mousse a very full and creamy mouthfeel. I found as I was making these mousses that it was really hard to wait for them to set up: I pretty much wanted to eat them straight out of the mixing bowl. Freshly made mousse has the softer, more pudding-like consistency that some people seem to associate with mousse, rather than the firmer, denser product that results from a few hours of chilling.

This mousse tastes similar to the chocolate chantilly mousse (#3), and it also has the same dense, thick texture right out of the refrigerator, but allowing it to come to room temperature brings back its lovely creaminess. It also works really well as a dessert component, either as a layer in a chilled cake or as part of a composed dessert.

Another thing to note is that the higher cacao percentage you’re using, the drier and denser your mousse will be. So choose your chocolate accordingly. You can also adjust the mousse consistency by adding more or less whipped cream at the end – for eating, most people as I noted seem to go for a softer mousse, so you could add more. For assembling a dessert, you want it to a little more structure and be able to stand firm, so cut back a bit on the whipped cream.

The main thing to watch out with this mousse method is to not overcook the creme anglaise, which leads to a curdled mess. Don’t let the mixture come to a boil – it should be about 180 degrees F when it thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. You should also keep stirring while the custard is cooking, to make sure the part at the bottom doesn’t cook faster and start sticking to the pan. Some creme anglaise recipes also use extra measures like straining the cooked custard to get rid of any lumps, or immediately plunging the pan into an ice bath to stop the cooking. Cooking with Chocolate suggests using an immersion blender to make sure the custard is completely smooth. Any of these methods can help keep your custard silky smooth.

If you’re attempting your own mousse comparison at home, I’d recommend doing #1, #2, and #4 at least – these three provide a really good range of textures and chocolate intensity, and you might be surprised at which one is your favorite. There’s still one more style I have to cover, though, so stay tuned!

Apologies for falling behind on the mousse recipes – I wanted to add on a review of my latest kitchen gadget, one that’s very apropos for mousse-making.

The photo above is of the Tovolo Quick Hand Mixer. I picked mine up on sale from a kitchenware store – I’ll confess that normally I would have passed this by as unnecessary (I mean, all a good pastry chef needs is a whisk and some elbow grease, right?), but the price, plus the fact that it’s a perfect illustration of gear trains and the benefits of mechanical advantage made it too fun to pass up.

I wish I had taken a photo of the inside before I assembled it- apparently you can’t take it apart again, but imagine that instead of the three gears of a traditional egg beater, there’s more like a couple dozen gears, meaning when you turn the crank it sets the blades below spinning with very little force. It’s kind of like a turbo charged egg beater. It’s fun – it took me about a minute to whip about a cup of cream with barely any effort.

A few more reasons I like it: If you often use your stand mixer, you know it’s a pain when you have a recipe that makes a batter, and then requires whipping egg whites or cream in a clean mixer bowl – and you only have the one mixer bowl. Having something like this gadget means you don’t need to clean and reuse the mixer bowl.

Also, the thing about using stand mixers to whip instead of doing it by hand is that it’s easy to overwhip (I have terrible luck with overwhipping egg whites in a stand mixer). When you do it by hand, you use your eyes and your hands to gauge when the whipped cream, or egg whites, have reached the right stage. Using this little prep mixer, I can feel the resistance against the blades increase as the cream begins to thicken, and I can tell when it’s thickened to the right point for me. It encourages you to be more “in the moment” instead of zoning out while baking. Next thing you know, I’ll be getting a butter churn!

Needless to say this little prep mixer came in very handy when I had to whip up a lot of cream for the next few mousses.

Chocolate Mousse #3: Chocolate Chantilly

This is the simplest and most straightforward mousse: chocolate lightened with whipped cream. This is the mousse you whip up when you need a last-minute dessert, or the rest of your pantry’s run bare (perhaps you used all your butter to make some pies?). Because there’s virtually nothing to this recipe, it’s all the more important to use a really good chocolate, and to whip the cream properly.

One thing I’ve noticed is that people tend to overestimate how whipped “whipped cream” has to be. Most everyone knows not to overwhip cream into crumbly butter, but they often think that “soft peaks” means a cream that’s solid with defined peaks that hold their shape – which is really closer to firm peaks.  It may not be intuitive at first, but whipped cream has the most volume when it reaches soft peaks. For the airiest and lightest of mousses, you want to incorporate the whipped cream when its volume is maximized.

If you look at the photo above, you can see that the cream is starting to hold swirls, but it’s still on the very edge of liquidy. If you whip until you can see peaks of cream standing up and they stay in place without collapsing, it’s reached firm peak stage. It’s not overwhipped, but it’s already lost volume as the cream is beginning to pack into itself. When I was at a Valrhona demo, I was surprised to see how loose and soft the chefs kept their whipped cream. But they had to be doing something right, as the finished desserts were wonderful, so I’ve followed their cream-whipping example since.

Cream whisks better when it is cold; it you want to be extra careful, you can also chill the bowl and the whisk. It’s also best to whip cream at a medium speed, as it allows air to incorporate into the cream in a more even manner, resulting in a more stable final product. As with many things in pastry, measured and methodical wins over hurried and haphazard!

Here’s a spoonful of the whipped cream: the cream is just holding its shape, but the tip is curling over. After I snapped the photo, it continued to droop and eventually collapsed.  Time to fold it into some waiting chocolate.

After all that talk about whipping cream to the proper stage, it’s a little ironic to note that this mousse has the thickest texture of the three mousses so far, with a dry, brushed-velvet finish. Note that this is after the mousse has been chilled: if you eat it right after you make it, it’s absolutely has that creamy-foamy mouthfeel, so for me this is another candidate for of those consume-immediately-mousses. I guarantee you’ll fully appreciate the importance of soft peaks in whipped cream if you have a spoonful of this mousse when it’s newly made. The chocolate flavor is somewhere between mousses #1 and #2: mild, but definitely chocolatey.

Don’t put your whisk away yet, as there’s two more mousses to go this week!

Thanks for the feedback on my mousse project! As I anticipate typing the word “mousse” about a hundred times in the next couple days, I am totally waiting for “mouse” to slip into one of these posts and elude both the spellcheck and my mousse-addled eyes. If only I could blame Autocorrect when that happens…

Without further ado, mousse #2!

Chocolate Mousse #2: Egg Free

The second chocolate mousse in my lineup has a rather unexciting name like #1: it’s merely described as egg-free chocolate mousse. However, it’s definitely tasty, and it’s a good alternative for those people with egg allergies.

This is also the only mousse that relies almost entirely on gelatin to set the mousse. Although there’s whipped cream folded in, the amount of milk added means the mixture stays fairly liquid  – unlike mousse #1, you can’t eat this straight from the mixing bowl (maybe you could drink it like the world’s richest chocolate milk). It requires time to set in the refrigerator, and it softens quickly once it’s taken out.

It’s almost like a Bavarian cream, except it’s even lighter since traditional Bavarian creams are made with a creme anglaise. In fact, the Cooking with Chocolate does contain a recipe for a Chocolate Bavarian Cream, but I didn’t make it as it was described as “one of the least chocolatey.” And, as I mentioned, I had run out of chocolate and refrigerator space. Maybe if I ever do a second go-round of this exercise, I’ll get to make this one.

The generous amounts of dairy give this egg-free mousse a fantastically soft and creamy mouthfeel. I feel like it almost straddles the line between mousse and pudding. Some people like their mousses thick and firm, while others prefer them light and soft. This mousse would be for the second group of fans. It practically dissolves in your mouth the second you lick it off the spoon.

All that milk also gives this mousse a lighter, milk-chocolately flavor. It’s almost the polar opposite of mousse #1: where the first is like standing outside in the summer sun, #2 is like spring sunlight streaming in through the window. It’s delicate and soft, like a childhood memory of chocolate mousse. In fact, this is probably a very kid-friendly chocolate mousse; it’s got comfort food written all over it.

Despite their being at opposite ends of the chocolate mousse spectrum, I think this is a great mousse for straight eating as well. It’s the airiest of the five, and the strong dairy component means it can show off flavor infusions well, if you feel like playing around with your mousses. In comparison, I probably be more judicious about adding flavors to mousse #1 because I think that recipe really showcases the chocolate, and I wouldn’t want other flavors to take away from that. This mousse is a more forgiving base to play around with.

So now you have probably the two most different mousses I made. The next few ones start to get closer in style, and the differences become more nuances. Stay tuned!

Sometimes you find yourself in an inspiration drought. I know that seems practically impossible these days, when Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest means there’s all sorts of inspiration for the taking, all the time, but sometimes I find the reverse happening. When you’re surrounded by everyone else’s cool ideas, and it seems like everything original has already been done, it’s hard to have room for creative thoughts of your own in your mind. Sometimes I find I need to step away from the overstimulation and let my brain wander and percolate ideas on its own. Like the classic writers’ advice, to stop reading when you’re trying to write your own book, so you don’t let other voices drown out your own.

I can’t guarantee that the project I came up with is wholly original, but at least it was a happy kickstart.  I tried to re-organize my bookshelf for the tenth time (I keep coming up with new algorithms for determining hierarchy) and ended up picking out Cooking with Chocolate: Essential Recipes and Techniques, which was a nominee for IACP best baking book of 2011. I concur with the short-listing: it’s a comprehensive compendium of classic chocolate techniques, easy to follow, and written in English – that last criterion can be a real killer when searching for advanced/professional level baking books!

Leafing through the book, I came across an entire chapter of mousses, which immediately perked my instinctive need to compare and contrast all the versions of a dish to find the best one. The chapter notes indicated that, “each mousse here has a different intensity and should be tasted and used differently”, which sealed the deal for me – this was my weekend project!

Over the next couple of days I made five mousse recipes from the book, tasted and contemplated, and tried to write down adjectives other than “creamy”, “rich”, and “delicious”. I’m going to post a recipe a day for the next five days, and share my thoughts on each different preparation.

Nota bene: there are many more ways to make chocolate mousse recipes than five – I simply chose several from the book that looked intriguing, plus I didn’t have enough chocolate in my pantry (hey, I’ve been baking a lot with chocolate recently). If you have a favorite chocolate mousse recipe, by all means write me a comment and let me know! Also, the comments on all the recipes are my own observations and not the book’s – my heartfelt suggestion is to make all the recipes yourself, and come back here and post your opinions:)

On to the first mousse!

Chocolate Mousse #1: Egg White Based

The first chocolate mousse recipe is described (a little non-sexily) as egg white based, which just means that the mousse is lightened by folding in whipped egg whites. (All the other mousses I tried are lightened by folding in whipped cream, if that helps clear things up). This mousse is probably best known as French-style chocolate mousse, and numerous versions can be found in many a classic cookbook – some have butter, some omit the cream, but all depend on eggs to provide richness of body and flavor.

The eggs are not cooked in this recipe though, so French-style chocolate mousse should considered carefully by those with possible health concerns. However, as all the rest of the mousse recipes to follow are raw egg-free, there’s no need to feel left out!

This is probably my favorite mousse for just eating – its texture when fresh is that perfectly elusive combination of airy and melting, and the chocolate flavor is intense – exactly what you want when you need a good hit of chocolate. It has a lasting, sweet finish, slightly dry on the tongue. You can see in the lineup in the top photo that it’s the darkest mousse by far – probably since it hasn’t been lightened up with whipped cream like that others (don’t think I’m writing off all the other versions – they have their virtues which I’ll get to in the next days!). It just has that very appealing “chocolately” look.

This mousse recipe comes with a warning to eat within 24 hours, because of the raw egg yolks, but I think there’s another reason as well: it really taste best fresh. The mousse will thicken more and more as it chills, so if you prefer a very soft, creamy mouthfeel, you can serve it after just a couple hours of chilling. After several more hours, it will develop a firmer, more springy texture that is the hallmark of this style of mousse. It’s best to let the mousse sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes before serving, to let it soften slightly. This mousse, or some version of  French style chocolate mousse, is definitely one to have in your back pocket when you have surprise guests over.

Hope you enjoy! Come back tomorrow (yes, tomorrow!) for round two!

It’s been raining a lot over here. April showers have come early, or maybe they’re winter rains that lost their way. Normally I like rain, especially after a dry winter that made me think I’d forgotten the sound of rain on the roof. In typical be-careful-what-you-ask-for-fashion, I am totally re-familiarized with rain. I still like the rain, particularly when I’m inside reading a book in my favorite spot on the couch. I’m not such a big fan anymore when I have to take my apparently hydrophobic dog out three times a day and stand for about 10 minutes outside convincing her to do her business.

So I’m ready for spring. And what better harbinger of sunshine than this package of dried apricots I got on my doorstep from Enduring Sun?

Apricots have such a maddeningly short season for such a jewel of a fruit. The alternative is to used more readily available dried apricots, but the quality of dried apricots is frustratingly variable; oftentimes they fall short of the memories in my mind’s eye of their fresh, ripe counterparts.

Thus, I was excited to get some samples of these apricots from Enduring Sun, the same brand that was featured in a Lucky Peach article(if that paean to apricots didn’t make you want to run out and find some fresh apricots, you have a heart of stone). These apricots are heirloom varieties from Tajikistan, carefully dried to preserve their moistness and flavor.

I received four different varieties: the Valentina, Larissa, Jelena, and Natasha. As you can see, they differ in size, color, texture, and yes, taste. I think it’s long overdue to see dried fruit represent the quality and characteristics of their fresh forebears: probably the reason I was never super enthusiastic about dried fruit was that they seemed like faded shrink-wrapped memories of the real thing (when you live in the Bay Area, it’s easy to be spoiled).

These apricots were delightfully plump and tender, and tasted like fruit, not just sugar. The Jelena and and Valentina (top two in the photo) had a nice, nuanced balance of sweet and tart. My favorite, though, was the Natasha – they had a wonderful soft yet chewy texture, and a really pure apricot flavor – I really felt like I was eating apricots, and not mystery fruit leather.

Although I could have eaten them all myself, I thought I should probably use some of them in a dessert. I was craving something simple and comforting to eat by a rainy window, and could be made without having to venture out again into aforementioned rain, so after rummaging around in the kitchen cupboards I came up with this butter cake with a apricot cream cheese topping and cinnamon streusel. The cake is rich and buttery and spiced with cinnamon and cardamom. The cream cheese adds sweetness, the streusel the crunch, because I’m currently into crunchy layers in my desserts. The apricots add some bright little grace notes to this cake.

Not bad while I’m waiting (along with my dog) for the real sun to come back out.

It’s almost spring, and that means that it’s almost time for the San Francisco Food Bloggers Bake Sale!

For the last two years, food bloggers across the country have banded together to hold bake sales in their hometowns in support of Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger. I had the honor of organizing the San Francisco bake sales, which have been resounding successes – last year we raised over $2500 in one day. I’m proud to be part of the event this year again. On April 28th, bake sales will be held all across the US by food bloggers, with all proceeds donated to Share Our Strength.

Last year I was joined in my organizing efforts by Irvin, Shauna, and Annelies, fellow bakers, bloggers, and all around amazing people. We’re all back this year and hope you can be part of our bake sale! I’m so excited that some of you have already been e-mailing me about the bake sale – I’m very touched that you remember the event and want to participate! Please be sure to sign up at the official San Francisco Food Blogger Bake Sale website – we have a dedicatd bake sale e-mail address so it’s easier to keep track of all the volunteers. If you send an e-mail to my dessertfirst e-mail, you might get missed!

Our location this year is Omnivore Books, the location of the first bake sale in 2010. We’re excited to return!

What are the San Francisco Food Blogger Bake Sale details?

When: Saturday, April 28, 11 AM to 4 PM

Where: Omnivore Books, 3885a Cesar Chavez St, San Francisco, CA

How can you help?

If you live in the Bay Area and you want to participate in the bake sale, please go to the SF Bake Sale website and sign up to volunteer! It doesn’t matter if you have a food blog or not, only a desire to bake! We need volunteers to help bake up goods to sell, and I would love a chance to meet all you local foodies! Bring a plate of cookies or a cake, whatever you feel like contributing!

If you aren’t able to bake up something, please come by and help support us! Purchase something yummy and make a donation to Share our Strength!

If you don’t live near San Francisco but would still like to participate, check Gaby’s page (the national organizer) to see if there’s another bake sale going on near where you live.

Here is some additional information on Share Our Strength and The Great American Bake Sale.

See my recaps of last year’s bake sale and the 2010 bake sale to see a bit of all the excitement.

I hope to see you all at the new bake sale homepage, and to see you April 28 at the bake sale!