Is the cupcake craze over? Apparently not in the Bay Area, where new cupcakeries are still proliferating. A couple weeks ago DrinkEatPlay invited me to judge at the 2nd Annual Bay Area Cupcake Challenge, where 13 cupcake bakeries competed for Best Cupcake and Best Bakery. Two cupcakes from each competitor equaled a whole lot of cupcakes to taste!

Above, about half of the cupcakes I tasted. Fortunately all the cupcakes came in mini size for tasting, since I don’t think I could have made it through 26 full size cupcakes! As it was, even with careful rationing of bites and deliberate pacing, I still felt like I was crawling (waddling?) across the finish line. Not surprisingly, organizers encouraged attendees to bring containers to take leftovers home with them.

You can see the winners of the competition at the contest website. Below, some of my favorites from the day:

Bacon and cupcakes? That’s like the ultimate mashup of food trends. The Cupcake Shoppe transcends the obvious, though, with a French Toast Bacon cupcake – I was so there, as was apparently everyone else since this was voted best cupcake of the competition. Excellent cake texture, true French toast flavor, and the bacon was the crunchy salty cherry on top. The giant dollop of French toast frosting was a little overwhelming, but again, something that could be less of an issue with a full size cupcake.

Their Mocha Supreme cupcake (on the bottom) also had my favorite chocolate cake of the day – moist without being soggy, and deep dark chocolate flavor.

These were probably my red velvet cupcakes of the numerous incarnations I tasted. Distinct red velvet and cream cheese flavors, and cute presentation to boot. Nice job Fresh Cupcakes!

Her Oreo cupcakes were pretty cute too, and I was impressed how she got the frosting to taste like Oreos without being over the top sweet.

Salted caramel also appears to be a permanent addition to the cupcake canon, and the best one I tasted at the competition was from Love Bites. Excellent chocolate cake, and a perfectly sized dollop of salted caramel frosting made this a winner. I also really liked their Snickerdoodle cupcake, which really tasted like snickerdoodles!

Sift had my favorite color scheme: pink and more pink. On the left: their Battle Royal with almond cake, blueberry tequila filling, and acai berry frosting. On the right: Pink Champagne, a mix of raspberry and champagne flavors.

Clever: this campfire prop near a display of S’mores cupcakes.

I found Sweetcakes slightly ironically named, because the reason I liked their cupcakes so much was that they were not overly sweet! Their frostings were far and way my favorite – light, creamy, and flavorful. When I bite into a cupcake, I don’t want to feel like I just took a mouthful of butter. The strawberry frosting on Sweetcakes’ strawberry cheesecake cupcake tasted like real strawberries – pure joy.

Their chocolate vanilla cupcake was also a winner for me – the layer of chocolate ganache on top of the cupcake upped the decadence factor, and the frosting was again fluffy and light and perfectly sweet without being cloying. I like, very much.

Tiny Treats had the most creative take on red velvet with their inside-out red velvet cupcakes. And how precious are the little flags?

Finally, Kingdom Cakes had the most creative combinations of all the entrants, and my personal favorite cupcake. Their pear gingerbread (on the right) had fabulously moist and spicy cake topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting and an outstanding fig, pear, Meyer lemon and vanilla bean preserve. Wow. Complex, layered, and just really tasty. Their other entry, on the left, was equally multifaceted: butternut squash and truffle cake with pineapple custard filling and sage frosting.

Conclusion: The cupcake bandwagon continues to fill with new faces, so bakers need to keep innovating to stand out from crowd. It was a pleasure to see so many local cupcake makers continuing to do creative, well-executed takes on this seemingly neverending trend. There’s certainly no excuse to be eating a bad or boring cupcake here in the Bay Area!

If you’re hungry for cupcakes now, here are some options from my site:

Blackberry Lemon Cupcakes

Coconut Cupcakes with Yuzu Buttercream

TCHO Chocolate Cupcakes with Mint Filling

Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemon Creme Chantilly

Chai Cupcakes Two Ways

Vanilla Saffron Cupcakes with Rosewater Buttercream

Vanilla Bean Fig Cupcakes with Orange Blossom Honey Frosting

Goji Berry Cupcakes with Himalayan Pink Salt

It’s almost New Year again – Chinese New Year! The Year of the Dragon starts on Monday, Jan 23. Just in time for me to share some (mostly food-related) snapshots of my trip to Hong Kong.

Along with the usual rounds of family, holidays, and general gluttony, I also went on an egg custard tart-eating quest. This traditional dessert now appears in all sorts of variations around town – flaky crust, cookie crust, mini size, Portuguese style…they get really addictive!

Egg custard tarts, mini size. The lighter colored one in the back is made with egg whites – the “healthy” version of egg custard tarts.

It’s always fun to see the extravagant holiday decorations around town, like this supersized Santa.

Angry Birds was big in Hong Kong this year – avian-themed merchandise abounded. My favorite spotting was these Angry Bird cakes, complete with Santa hats.

The macaron craze is still strong over there; here I am holding up a macaron in front of Le Gouter Bernadaud.

Look what I spotted in the Botanical Gardens – a cacao tree!

I love these Chinese donuts. These aren’t the youtiao served with hot soy milk at Chinese restaurants; they are more like beignets, fluffy clouds of fried dough heavily dusted with powdered sugar. The lighter and less greasy they are, the more skilled the chef.

A poster advertising various sweet soups, a popular choice for dessert on a chilly winter night. My favorite is the black sesame paste, a big warm Snuggie of a soup.

Another classic Chinese candy that I can’t find in the US: dragon beard candy. Spun sugar wrapped around peanuts and coconut, it’s like a more sophisticated cotton candy. The silky white threads are meant to resemble dragon whiskers, hence the name. Although you can buy it in packages, part of the whole experience is watching the street vendor make it, and eating it fresh.

One of my guilty pleasures is looking for incidents of Engrish, especially on menus. I have to say this is one of the funnier examples I’ve seen – fish gangsters! (P.S. I wanted to also note we didn’t actually eat any shark’s fin – it was just on the menu).

Believe it or not, the advertised effects of the ginger tea above are meant positively – ginger is often taken for its health benefits. I found the drink a little too gingery and spicy for my taste, but the husband loved it.

More egg custard tarts, this time from the famous Honolulu Cafe. Their tarts have the flaky crust, and a pleasantly eggy custard. So far my attempts to replicate the flaky crust have met with middling results; until I have something I’m happy to show off, I’ll share a recipe for a simpler egg custard tart with a cookie crust at the end of this post.

Here’s a cupcake emissary from the US: the famous Chikalicious of New York City has set up a cupcake shop called Kisses in Central District in Hong Kong.

The shop features a mix of classic and Asian-inspired flavors. The Ferrero Rocher flavor is one of the best sellers, not surprising to me since the candy is a classic choice for gift-giving in Hong Kong.

I liked the Ferrero cupcake, but my mom preferred the green tea cupcake. The store manager told us that they make their cupcakes less sweet to suit the locals’ tastes (like my mom). In fact, “less sweet” was a common refrain at bakeries around Hong Kong.

Sift Bakery, one of my favorite bakeries in my parents’ neighborhood, also introduced its own line of cupcakes.

I tried their lemon meringue cupcake, which was pleasantly zesty and had a great balance of meringue and cake.

No trip to Hong Kong is complete without eating as many xiao long bao as possible – preferably at Crystal Jade.

Normally, there’s no point in trying to sneak egg tarts on a plane back to the US – they’re much better fresh. But I did bring back one tart – this giant egg custard tart pillow I got as a Christmas present. Snickers isn’t quite sure what to make of it.

And another shot of Snickers with a new friend: Rilakkuma dressed up as a dragon for Chinese New Year celebrations. She wishes you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

The egg custard tart recipe below uses a pâte sucrée style crust to house a rich, just barely custard. A couple of tips: use deeper tart tins, preferably with sides at least an inch high, so you can get  the proper thickness of custard – a shallow tart won’t have the right ratio of crust to custard. Baking the custard is a bit like doing crème brûlée: it need to be just set but not liquid, so it barely yields to the bite. Watch the tarts carefully in the last few minutes of baking! And yes, these tarts are best consumed fresh!

Happy New Year! I hope your 2012 is off to a wonderful start. I’m back from Hong Kong and Vietnam, and eager to write a post about that trip, but first I need to finish another vacation post…about the last stop on my honeymoon. Thanks for your patience and I hope you’ve been enjoying the recaps…it took longer than I thought but I hope I did the trip justice!

The last stop on our honeymoon was Venice, that classic city for romantics. One of the best things about being on a cruise ship was that we got to enter the city from the sea, and essentially sail along the entire length of the city. We were advised by the captain to be on deck, as this was one of the most spectacular port entrances in the world.

Approach from the sea.

As we sail down the Canale di San Marco, the city unfolds before us. The architecture is an amalgamation of the fanciful, classic, and ornate, as befits buildings that appear to float on the sea.

Continuing down the canal, we reach St. Mark’s Square, the lagoon-edged main piazza of Venice. The porous, nearly nonexistent border between land and sea isn’t quite as apparent when you’re high up in an enormous cruise ship, but when we were riding a little ferry down the canal, it was undeniable. It was difficult at first to get over the feeling that the boat wasn’t riding low in the water, it was that the city was at sea level. I felt like I was in a bathtub that was on the verge of overflowing – probably one of the least romantic ways ever to describe Venice, but that was my thought!

And a final view of St. Mark’s as we round the bend of the canal and head towards the west end of the city where the big berths for the cruise ships are located. A truly magnificent way to enter La Serenissima.

Iconic gondolas, lined up at the water’s edge.

After disembarking, we made our way to St. Mark’s Square, the natural starting point for visitors. Here, a view from across St. Mark’s Square of the basilica (undergoing restoration work) and the campanile. This was the best shot I could take while trying to crop out the virtually permanent horde of tourists filling the square. I can’t imagine what it’s like at the height of summer/tourist season.

One of the facades in the interior courtyard of the Doge’s Palace: that memorably pink and white building next to the basilica. We wanted to go on the tour that took you through all the secret passageways and rooms of this massive building, but unfortunately it was sold out. The regular tour was still worth it for a great introduction to the history of this singular city.

I took this shot of the island of San Giorgio Maggiore from one of the windows of Doge’s Palace. The colors of the sea and sky were unexpectedly dramatic – I love how tiny the island looks underneath the clouds.

Ok, so I didn’t really look too closely at the statues above when I posed for this photo…

I loved this stand with fresh cherries and coconut, enticing under splashing water.

The view from the famous Rialto bridge. Although the Grand Canal is undeniably stunning, the bridge is too crowded with tourists to do much more than snap a shot and move on. It was more fun to wander the byways and side-ways of the city, and see what curiosities lay around each corner. Despite the labyrinthine layout, we never really got lost – or else we were just really good at interpreting the little map we had!

One of the gondoliers of Venice, poling down a typically picturesque canal. I was taking photo after photo of canals until I realized I’d run out of memory cards long before Venice ran out of beautiful canals. They’re like secret passages: I want to follow each one to see where they end.

You never know when you’ll round a corner and find a charming little footbridge over a tiny canal. There’s pretty much no end to photo opportunities in Venice.

More fruit for sale: they looked increasingly good as the temperature rose during the day.

Another postcard perfect view down the Grand Canal. It was fascinating to see the city shift and show its different faces under the ever-changing light that day. I thought Venice was perfectly ethereal in the grey, misty morning, and almost overwhelmingly Technicolor at bright midday, like I’d wandered into a movie.

Especially when you see things like this. Doesn’t it look like some kind of speedboat chase going on?

What a funny coincidence is this! I travel halfway around the world to see a real estate ad for my hometown! Nice to know they think so highly of San Francisco.

A canal packed with gondoliers waiting for passengers.

And of course, some photos of sweets to round out the post! Some confetti-colored marshmallows in the window of a sweet shop.

Marzipan fruit. I like the little leaves they added.

Super colorful and delicious looking torrone.

A beautiful panforte. Panforte means “strong bread” but it’s more like a cross between a cake and confection, made with fruit, honey, nuts, and spices.

Venice at night. The Grand Canal earns its moniker “Most Beautiful Street in the World.” I loved ending our honeymoon in this city of dreams. It’s a town built for exploring, where your destination is not the goal but the rather the leisurely journey there. A sweet ending to our trip. I wanted to go back the moment I left.

When I got home I received the perfect book to commemorate my Mediterranean trip: Francine Segan’s Dolci: Italy’s Sweets. This charming, painstakingly researched book covers the wide range of Italian desserts, some well known to Western palates and others pleasant discoveries, from cannoli to panna cotta to angel hair pasta pie. Each recipe in the book is annotated with its region of origin and historical notes. Numerous stories, sidebars on local festivals and customs, and glossaries fill the pages, making it a great armchair jaunt to Italy. I found myself eager to go back and visit all the parts of Italy I missed. This is a wonderful regional cookbook and a great cookbook, period.

The recipe I picked to try is what Segan calls an updated version of tiramisu. Fitting, since she notes that this near-ubiquitous dessert originated near Venice. This updated version is made with pâte à bombe – egg yolks whipped with hot sugar syrup – which cooks the eggs. Although Segan first saw this dessert marketed as “tiramisu for pregnant women”, of course this dessert is appropriate for anyone worried about eating raw eggs. The finished custard will keep in the refrigerator for a couple days, and is luxuriously creamy. The recipe layers the custard over savoiardi (the Italian name for ladyfingers) – I used my own recipe from my cookbook.

Ladyfingers lined up, ready to bake. Don’t be shy about the powdered sugar; I think after this shot I did another sifting. It’ll ensure that the tops bake up crisp, while the insides stay soft and spongy.

The recipe suggests assembling the individual tiramisu in espresso cups, but I put mine together in jam jars instead. I thought it would be cute to line the ladyfingers around the edge and fill the center with the custard. However you put it together, it’s a tasty combination.

That finally does it for my trip to the Mediterranean! Now, I have to finish going through the photos for my winter trip to Hong Kong. At least I know I won’t need half a dozen posts to cover it!

Hello dear readers,

In a couple of hours I’ll be boarding a plane to fly back to the US, so I’ll be ringing in the new year at home. It’s been a great two weeks in Vietnam and Hong Kong, filled with family and, as always, a surfeit of good food. Below is one of my favorite photos I took during my trip, on a bus ride rounding the Hong Kong harbor – one of the prettiest views in the world, in my quite-biased opinion:

I didn’t get to bake while I was in Hong Kong (although I ate way more egg custard tarts than was probably good for my cholesterol), so for my last post of 2011 I thought I’d post a chocolate tart I made for a holiday party a few weeks back. We actually had back-to-back potluck parties one weekends, and the hubby generously offered to help bake, although he warned that he didn’t want to have to roll any dough out because “it’s too hard.” Hey, I have a 2012 resolution for you!

Because I didn’t want to scare away my kitchen help, I came up with a tart that used a crushed chocolate cookie crust -  the easiest homemade crust possible. Ok, I didn’t want to be make things that easy; I baked the chocolate cookies and then crumbled them up in the food processor. It adds a little more time and effort to the recipe, but I think it’s worth it, and for some reason guys seem to get a kick out of pulverizing things to tiny bits in a food processor.

Pressing crushed cookies into a tart tin also gives you the opportunity to use the wonderful dough tamper, which Rick Rodgers rhapsodized about. I also like using this little tool when I’m blind baking any tart crusts, to push down any dough that might have puffed up; oftentimes, I don’t even bother with using pie weights and just tamp down any puffy spots. Works a charm.

To make the tart holiday-worthy I filled with a layer of white chocolate peppermint cream, and topped it with a dark chocolate ganache – can’t get any easier, right? The white chocolate filling is meant to be soft and just this side of gooey, so keep the tart refrigerated and take it out about 15-20 minutes before you’re ready to serve it. Rich but not too sweet, I like to think of this as the big cousin to Andes mints and peppermint patties. I kind of wish I still had some of this waiting for me when I get home.

Have a wonderful New Year’s, all of you, and the sweetest of wishes for 2012!

Hello from Hong Kong! If it seems like I was just here…it’s kind of true. I usually make a trip here every other year, but family events mean that I’ll have made two trips here in 2011. I’m certainly not going to complain about twice the opportunities to eat egg custard tarts, xiao long bao, dim sum, and, well, just about everything else. The eating never really stops here.

I’m also making a short jaunt to Vietnam for the next few days, so the posting schedule will unfortunately be delayed. If you want to keep abreast of what I’m doing, I’ll be updating my Twitter and Instagram feeds when I can. And I’ll check in when I return to HK on Christmas, so hopefully they’ll still be a Christmas post on Dessert First this year!

Hope all of your holidays are going well and your kitchens are full of the scents of baking and the sounds of laughter!

Photo courtesy of Driscoll’s

About a week ago I got to be part of an exciting event: Driscoll’s held a holiday cooking and food photography workshop in San Francisco and several local food bloggers, including yours truly, was invited to attend.

I had previously got to tour some of the farms that grow Driscoll’s berries, so another chance to sample their delicious product was most welcome.

Held in the Hands On Gourmet kitchen in the Dogpatch, we were treated to an entertaining cooking demo by the talented Rick Rodgers, who presented several suggestions for holiday treats (I was particularly enticed by the blueberry cobbler cocktail). I have been a Rick Rodgers fangirl ever since I got hold of his Kaffeehaus book, so this was a big thrill for me. Apparently we both are enthusiastic users of pastry tampers (if you don’t have this very useful kitchen tool – do get one!)

After Rick, we then got to see some food styling and photography by the lovely Caren Alpert and Carol Hacker. Caren is a wonderful food photographer – I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her in action before and she is a master of minimalist tactics. She easily makes bounces out of foil, bedsheets, white paper, etc, proving you don’t need tons of expensive equipment to create beautiful photos. Carol owns one of the most extensive prop collections in town: I basically covet her entire inventory. She’s also an experienced stylist and provided pulled the event together with some perfectly chosen pieces from her storeroom.

Photo courtesy of Driscoll’s

You can see some more photos of the event, including the food and the setups,  on Driscoll’s page.

Driscoll’s also invited all of us attendees to participate in the event by bringing a dessert made with blackberries. As an incentive, the winner would get a free berries for a year. Now, as a baker, I’m a fan of berries, but hubby is a fiend for berries. I actually don’t make berry desserts as often as I would like because any berries we have get eaten before I can bake with them! So when the husband found out about the contest, he told me I had to enter. For him. So I did.

My entry was what’s pictured at the top of the post: a lemon cupcake on a graham cracker base, with a blackberry jam filling and blackberry buttercream. I pulled it together in the late hours the night before the event, brought them in and crossed my fingers. A couple days later, I got the tweet from Driscoll’s saying my entry had won! Thanks, Driscoll’s! Please know you’ve made our household very, very happy!

Also, as the winner of the contest, I will be working with Driscoll’s on a new recipe to be featured on their site. I’ll let you know when this recipe will be revealed! In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy the winning blackberry recipe below. The blackberry and lemon combination is a classic, and I added the graham cracker crust to add crunch and textural contrast to the very light, almost chiffony cake. I wanted to make sure that blackberries were the star, so you get a double dose with the filling and the buttercream. You can substitute blueberries or raspberries if you like – it’ll be a winner either way.

Two other announcements: 1. If you’re tired of my old, non-updated About Me page, head on over to Knitting Contessa where I’m interviewed as part of her 12 Days of Knitting Contrismas event. I’m also giving away a set of my two books in the interview, so check it out!

2. The wonderful Shannie of Shannie Cakes, who did my wedding cake, has released her line of holiday cakes. I helped photograph these beauties, so take a look at her website – and if you are looking for a custom cake, I can vouch for their tastiness!

I’m guessing that everyone is in holiday shopping mode, so if you’re still looking for a gift for your favorite baker, or maybe for your own bookshelf, there’s a great selection of baking cookbooks looking for an eager home. Some of my favorites from this year are listed in the sidebars to the right of this post, but let’s take a look at some of the latest releases – there’s truly something for every taste. May you all never run out of bookshelf space!

For the Aspiring Pastry Chef:

If you know chocolate, you know Valrhona. If you know Valrhona, you know their École du Grand Chocolat, a pastry and chocolate school extraordinaire. For those of us not lucky enough to attend, Cooking with Chocolate: Essential Recipes and Techniques is a chocolate course in book form. Written by Frédéric Bau, the founder of the school, it is an extremely well produced collection of essential techniques and recipes.  The chapters cover just about everything: ganaches and other bonbon fillings, classic pastry doughs and batters, mousses, ice creams, cakes, tarts, entremets…the list goes all. The recipes do not call for specialty professional equipment and are scaled for home baker-size yields, so this book is quite accessible for everyone, while providing a wealth of impeccable chocolate techniques to master.

For the Traveler:

Since I just visited this Italy this summer,Dolci: Italy’s Sweets is a lovely reminder of that trip. Francine Segan has written a dreamy survey of Italy’s sweet traditions. If all you know of Italy is tiramisu, this book will be a pleasant surprise. From biscotti to panettone, spumoni to cannoli, Francine explores the country from tip to heel, sharing some gorgeous photos. I like that she notates each recipe with its region of origin, and also provides some great historical tidbits and stories to really give you the full meaning behind these desserts. The next best thing to hopping on Alitalia for a little bit of la dolce vita.

For the Creative:

Baking Style: Art, Craft, Recipes wins my award for most personal and imaginative baking book of the year. This “baking diary”, as author Lisa Yockelson dubs her book, is a collection of essays about her experiences growing up baking, which also serve as headnotes to some very whimsically titled recipes. Her recipes are grouped by mood, time, flavor, making this book an adventure to read.  An essay titled, “learning to knead”, chronicling her less-than-successful first attempts at yeasted dough, prefaces a recipe named, “a 14-year-old’s rolls still tasty after all these years”. A piece about the importance of salty-sweet contrast in baking leads to two shortbread recipes, one a “hint-of-salt shortbread, restrained version” and a “wildly lush hint-of-salt lavender shortbread, unrestrained version.” A wonderfully extravagant and indulgent cookbook.

For the Health-Conscious:

When I get asked if I ever bake “light” or with substitutes, I respond that it’s not my baking style. But I realize that many other people might like to know about alternative baking methods. So I’m happy that Cooking Light has come out with the Cooking Light Way to Bake, which offers a full range of recipes, from cookies to cakes to breads, designed to be lighter and healthier. All the recipes have nutrition information, and all the ingredients are natural and easily found, which I really appreciate. A bevy of sidebars offering baking tips and tricks also makes this a valuable baking resource; it would be a great gift for beginning bakers!

For the Specialist:

It seems like the macaron craze has calmed down slightly in the blogosphere, but I don’t think they’ll ever fully go away. As Pierre Herme himself said, in France they are not a trend, but an essential cornerstone of French culture. There’s no better bible for these ever-beguiling treats than the master’s book, Pierre Herme’s Macarons – finally translated into English. Take a look at the outrageously lavish photos and you’ll get the macaron itch again.

If you live in San Francisco, you’ve probably heard of gobs. If you don’t, you might be wondering why I’m including a book that sounds like it’s about the Ramones. Steven Gdula is the Gob Guy, and gobs are his version of whoopie pies. Unfortunately, it looks like he is no longer selling them (ever?) but that makes me all the gladder that he’s documented many of his great gob flavors, like orange cardamon ginger and strawberry basil shortcake, in his book Gobba Gobba Hey: A Gob Cookbook. You can also stop by his site for more recipes and gob-making tips.

For the Cakemaker:

I’m a big fan of Chef Karen Krasne’s Extraordinary Desserts shops in San Diego, so I was pleased to find out she’s published her first cookbook. Extraordinary Cakes showcases her wonderful talents in cake making and decorating. Her style is sophisticated and modern; she doesn’t use fondant or gum paste for her decorations, so her cakes have a more natural feel. The cakes, organized by season in the book, have a nice mix of classic and unexpected flavors, from passion fruit ricotta to yuzu almond. There’s also a nice section on cake decorating techniques and selecting fresh flowers for decorating. A nice addition to your library if you like making showpiece cakes.

For the Francophile:

What a wonderful book to have translated into English! The Art of French Baking is a beloved French classic, bringing many of the staples of French patisserie to home bakers. Thanks to the efforts of the one and only Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini, now English speakers can also enjoy this sweetly simple guide to French desserts. Everything from pâte sucrée to pastry cream to sablés to tarte tatin is contained in this book, accompanied by some fabulously vintage-y illustrations and photos. You don’t need a professional certificate to bake French, just this charming book.

For the Food Geek:

I love encyclopedias: they appeal to my inner obsessive desire to catalogue the universe into neat and tidy boxes. The Culinarian: A Kitchen Desk Reference is compact enough to easily hold, but packed with useful basic information, as well as offbeat trivia and helpful tips. I looked up puff pastry, chocolate, and whipping cream, and found some concisely written entries that included advice on how to distinguish between different chocolate designations, store frozen puff pastry, whip cream properly. This is my favorite type of reference: detailed and useful, but also wonderfully readable, when you just feel like feeding your curiosity.

If you are curious at all about where some of your favorite desserts came from, Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert is a must-read. Michael Krondl studies the history of sweets in several areas of the world with deep dessert traditions: India, the Middle East, Italy, France, Vienna, and the United States. Not only does he uncover the stories behind desserts like gingerbread, halvah, and Sachertorte, he also illuminates how the politics, culture, and religion of the times influenced the development of different desserts. As the ancient desserts of the India and the Middle East are not as well known in the US, I found those chapters particularly fascinating. Seeing history through the lens of desserts – exactly my cup of tea.

Happy December! Thanks to all who entered the Teacake Bake Shop giveaway. The winner of the cookie sampler, chosen at random, is:

Reader #10, Amy! Congratulations and hope you enjoy!

For everyone else, no need for sadness, as we are entering the prime cookie-baking season of the year. My fab friend Annelies just threw a cookie swap party over the weekend – keep an eye out for some truly tasty cookie recipes popping up on the blogs in the next few days. I have to admit I was a little unoriginal with my entry: I used one of my favorite linzer cookie recipes (making them always puts me in a holiday frame of mind), but I changed up the presentation with some little alphabet cookie cutters.

I’m going to be really nerdy and point out that we were asked to bring a dozen cookies to the party, and the phrase I chose worked out to a baker’s dozen. Sweet, yes? I also inadvertently provided some of the party entertainment by essentially bringing edible anagrams; obviously bloggers will be ardent wordsmiths, and I’ll let you figure out how we got from “Happy Holidays” to “Laos”.

For those of you looking for some more cookie inspiration, there are quite a few new cookie books out for the holidays. Let’s take a look (FYI, my full cookbook roundup will be following soon!)

One Sweet Cookie: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes by Tracey Zabar is the sort of fantastic concept I would have loved to do: ask your chef friends to contribute cookie recipes for a virtual cookie swap. This engaging little cookbook serves up the most well-credentialed cookie party ever, with recipes from some of the best known chefs and bakers in the business, including Sarabeth Levine, Lidia Bastianich, Dorie Greenspan, Maida Heatter, Daniel Boulud, and Thomas Keller, to name just a few. This cookbook has a very high readability value, as it’s absorbing just to read what each chef has to say about the recipe they selected: often a funny anecdote, sometimes a little history lesson, other times a baking tip. The cookie selection ranges from the refreshingly basic (although I’m assuming ice-cream sandwiches by Thomas Keller taste anything but basic) to some wonderfully, chefly twists on classics. If you want to bring Jacque Torres’ chocolate chip cookies or Michael Laiskonis’ gingersnaps to your next holiday gathering – this is the cookie book for you.

Cookies at Home with The Culinary Institute of America is the latest in CIA’s line of cookbooks for the home cook. I also have their chocolate book and artisan bread book, and they all boast appealing design and layout. Cookies at Home is a straightforward collection of cookie classics, with all the usual suspects and a few international varieties included. What I really like are the initial chapters on baking methods and decorating techniques. Knaster offers up a wealth of tips and tricks – the little refinements that take your cookies to the professional level, like having your ingredients all at the right temperature, or how to pipe with a parchment paper cone, or how to make uniformly sized cookies. This would be a fantastic book for beginning bakers to give them a solid starting repertoire, and for anyone looking to sharpen their cookie-making skills.

I’m not the most talented cookie decorator, but The Art of the Cookie: Baking Up Inspiration by the Dozen by Shelly Kaldunski might finally get me to pull out my piping bag again. There aren’t a huge number of cookie recipes, but this book is focused more on decorating technique, which Kaldunski details very well. The recipes are divided into two sections: the first takes five basic cookie recipes and shows numerous ways to shape and decorate them in some fun and creative ways. The second section takes some other traditional cookie recipes like biscotti, meringues, and shortbread and updates them with some modern ingredients and presentation. One major thing I love about this book is that it’s beautiful; clean, appealing layout, and nearly every recipe has a full page photo, which gets two thumbs up from me. This is a great book for the holidays, and for anyone who loves giving cookies as gifts and wants to add a little flair to their creations.

Finally, although this isn’t technically a cookie cookbook, I have to mention that I got Momofuku Milk Bar and immediately set about making the infamous Compost Cookies. They are kitchen sink cookies on overdrive; combining chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coffee, graham crackers, potato chips, and mini pretzels pretty much guarantees tastiness. I had to add them to this post though, because in the recipe, it mentions that when you add in the pretzels, if you’re lucky you might end up with an unbroken pretzel in your cookie. Look what happened when I made them!

(I swear I did not manipulate the dough to make this happen). I felt like I’d found the equivalent of a four-leaf clover in baking!

What kind of cookies are you making for the holidays?

Hi all, hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend and are getting a good start on your holiday shopping! I’m going to be posting up my annual gift recommendations in the next week, but meanwhile I thought I’d like to start off the holidays with a little giveaway!

Teacake Bake Shop is the sort of bakery I would have loved to open – it’s cute, girly, and all the pastries are sweetly sophisticated. The first Teacake opened in Emeryville (near Berkeley) while I was still in pastry school. When I found out the owner was a young female Asian entrepeneur, I thought, hey, she’s living out my dream!

A couple years later I had the opportunity to interview Agnes, the owner, for Edible East Bay, and finally had the chance to chat with one of my inspirations. There’s practically a cupcake shop on every block in the city now, but back when Teacake opened, there were only a couple around, so it’s really one of the originals, and I’m glad it’s succeeded and continued to grow. I have immense respect for all the local food producers and artisans – it’s people like Agnes who follow their dreams and open up a shop selling unique sweets, meats, cheese, jams, etc. that make the Bay Area such a vibrant culinary culture. There are four Teacake Bake Shops now, and again one of them is close to my current home. It’s always a treat to walk by and see the bakers working in the open kitchen (customers can see their cupcakes being made in front of their eyes), and there’s also a large room where they hold tea parties and classes for kids.

In fact, Jessie of CakeSpy stopped by her on her book tour! Check out her post to see some photos of the shop and of the two of us goofing around.

I’m excited to host a giveaway for Teacake Bake Shop, so you’ll get a chance to try out her goodies – or perhaps cross a gift off your shopping list! Teacake is offering up their Mini Treats Sampler, a collection of four of their bestselling cookies, including Strawberry Jam Thumbprints, Mexican Wedding Cookies, Sugar Cookies, and Chocolate Cookies Sandwiches. There are 30 cookies in the package – enough for a party, snacking during a gift-wrapping session, or to leave out for Santa.

To enter: Please note that Teacake Bake Shop will ship the prize within the continental U.S. only (not to Alaska or Hawaii). Please make sure you have an appropriate shipping address before you enter!

Simply follow Teacake Bake Shop on Facebook or Twitter, and let me know in the comments below. If you already follow them, that’s fine too – just note it in the comment! The giveaway will run through Sunday, December 4th and I’ll announce the winner on Monday December 5th.

Good luck! And if you live in the Bay Area, be sure to stop by a Teacake Bake Shop!

I rarely mention my non-food-related reading here (and judging from the pile of new cookbooks on my kitchen table, leisure reading time is at a premium these days), but I thought I’d have to mention The Night Circus as I haven’t made any literature-inspired recipes recently . (By the way, for all you Song of Ice and Fire fans, this is the most amazing fansite out there.)

The Night Circus is a novel about magic, but a kind of magic far removed from the carefully delineated, all-encompassing sorcery of the Harry Potter world. Magic in this world is a mysterious, shadowy phenomenon practiced by a rare few. Although at least one character has certain “systems” for wielding magic, no elaboration follows. I found this nebulousness frustrating, but in the end I realized that the author wasn’t really interested in exploring the hows and whys of the feats of fancy in her book. Magic is a conduit to create some fantastical and evocative imagery, and lead the reader into a world where everything is deliberately, delightfully, extraordinary.

In that sense, if you accept that the Night Circus isn’t story-driven, but a series of gorgeously imagined set pieces (much like a circus, really), I find it very successful at capturing an otherworldly feast for the senses. The book gets surprisingly meta about it: the creator of the night circus is intent on creating the perfect, immersive experience for the audience that will dazzle them through beauty and elegance, not gaudiness. Later, a sort of fan club of the circus springs up, devoted to obsessively cataloging and analyzing the wonders of the circus. All this provides plenty of opportunity for the author to spin some truly lovely imagery: a maze made of clouds, a ship made of books sailing a sea of ink, a wishing tree covered in white candles. The circus itself is appropriately elegant and exciting; seemingly endless walls of black-and-white-striped tents hide surprises around every corner, and air always smells of chocolate and caramel.

Maybe I have a weakness for turn of the century illusionry; regardless, The Night Circus is an easy read and leaves you feeling like you’ve stepped out of the concerns of day-to-day and you’ve been allowed to indulge in the pleasure of wonder – certainly something I found very enjoyable.

Since there were numerous mentions of carnival-themed food in the novel, it inspired me to make my own circus-y cake. I wanted to capture the black and white theme of the circus, so I came up with a dark chocolate glaze set with white chocolate plaques. But since there’s whimsy and surprise in the circus, instead of making the inside of the cake all black and white as well, I decided to do a gradient of colors.

There’s no food coloring, just different flavors. The bottom cake layer is devil’s food, the middle layer caramel cake, and the top layer white cake. The filling is caramel buttercream – I struggled the most with the caramel cake because I didn’t feel like it had enough caramel flavor, so having caramel buttercream definitely helped. I really liked how the different color layers worked out – maybe it looks like something you might find at a circus that mysteriously appears in your town, is only open after sunset, and is filled with marvels you thought only existed in your imagination?

So the recipe looks really long, but it’s really nothing trickier than baking three different cake flavors and assembling them. I didn’t add in the part about the white chocolate plaques, but if you want to add them, you just have to temper some white chocolate, pour it out on some food-grade acetate, and score it into thin strips as it’s setting. Maybe if I made this cake again I’d string some lights around it as well for that extra magical glow.

Well, with Thanksgiving this week, the holidays are just about upon us, so it’s about time to start feeling magical. Hopefully the cake (or the book) will help you make a start!