I’m so happy to say that. You may have thought that I had given up the goat, abandoned this little blog and buried it in the snow of this long, deep winter. But the truth is I just, quite simply, haven’t had the time or creative energy to handle it these last couple of months. Between the final events push of the fall semester at Duke, co-hosting a holiday party, moving out of my sublet, traveling for the holidays, camping on a friend’s couch for two weeks, saying goodbye to Durham, moving to Columbus, unpacking, organizing, starting a new job, visiting old friends, re-organizing, visiting more friends, and enjoying the company of Brad again, my camera has sat dormant for just over two months.

This move was a toughie. I started my new job almost immediately  upon my arrival in Columbus, and the cold weather provided me with little incentive to do much more than curl up in blankets when I got home each night. It’s taken several weeks to get used to my new kitchen. I’ve spent several evenings lamenting the fate of meals I nearly burned to death as I try to get used to cooking on a glass-top stove. I keep reaching for things where they used to be in my old kitchen. The pantry, still, is a total nightmare, as I have yet to find several hours to sit down and really consider where everything should go (doesn’t everyone do that?)

But finally, the time came this weekend for me to break out a recipe I’ve wanted to share with you since I started this blog. I must say, glass stove and messy pantry aside, I can’t deny that my current kitchen is far more equipped for blogging than my last, primarily due to one giant feature.

Light, glorious light! Flooding in to every corner of our apartment, these gaping sunny windows line the southern and western walls of our new home. They overlook a park and a river and trees and some sort of weird oyster-and-pearl sculpture. Admittedly, also a freeway, but I confess it is somewhat fascinating to watch the sludge of evening traffic heading north after Brad and I have already arrived home.

The point, here, is that not only did I shoot one recipe this weekend, I shot three! Complete with the natural, angular light that I love to shoot in. No more toting cutting boards topped with carefully balanced ingredients to the office!

Let’s get started, shall we Three years ago, about two weeks BEFORE I decided to start a food blog, I made these compact cheesecake bars to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Thinner than normal cheesecake, they can easily be eaten without a fork and can be made in any shape you so desire.

Like most decent cheesecakes, this one starts off with a pile of graham crackers. Now yes, I know you can buy graham cracker crumbs, but I always feel like they taste stale and are far to fine-grain for my liking, so I prefer to buy graham crackers whole and then grind them up to my liking in a food processor. You can also put them in a zippered bag and snack them repeatedly with a meat tenderizer or rolling pin, which may not give you as even a consistency, but is certainly more fun.

Combined with butter and a bit of sugar, the crumbs are pressed into the bottom of a spring form pan. Don’t have one You could also use a pie plate, so the side will be sloped and you won’t have quite the same effect. I picked up a set of three spring form pans for less than $15 I think, so if cheesecake is your thing, I recommend the investment.

Next! While the crust hardens up a bit in the oven, the luscious cheesecake itself can commence. The ingredients themselves are fairly simple: cream cheese (obviously), eggs, sugar and four, lemon juice and vanilla. And sour cream, which in my opinion is the most important element of making this cheesecake tangy and tart.

Though this is delicious enough to eat immediately (raw eggs or not) it needs almost an hour in the oven. After which you’ll be glad you cooked it!

While the cheesecake cools to room temperature, you can cook the berry topping. Now honestly, I tend to prefer cheesecake plain in most instances, but I really love the way these bars taste and look with a ruby red layer of fruit atop the creamy filling. Three layers are so pretty!

Our mission with these berries is to create a quick jam. And that is exactly what it sounds like. Berries + a bit of sugar + heat + time = jam. With such a small quantity, it doesn’t take more than about 10 minutes to get a berry topping that will hold its shape on the cheesecakes.

Once the cheesecake and the jam have cooled to room temperature, it’s time to make bars! For this particular set, I used a heart-shaped cookie cutter, but you could also just as easily slice them into narrow wedges, squares, rectangles, whatever shape you like. Using a cookie cutter requires a bit more time as you have to carefully ease the cheesecake out of said cookie cutter. I also rinsed mine after every cut to make the cuts smoother.

Once the cheesecakes are cut, it’s topping time! Again, this takes a little finesse so that your topping doesn’t become siding, but it’s nothing a small cake knife can’t handle.

I love raspberries above all other fruit toppings, but you could easily swap them out for strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries. Or further still! You could top these with chocolate, caramel, whipped cream… if you can imagine it tasting good on a cheesecake, you can use it.

And the best part Once your showy little hearts are ready to go, you still have allllll theeeeese leftovers.

I’ll give you one guess as to what happened with those.

So Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Let’s eat cheesecake together to celebrate!

Raspberry Cheesecake Bars
Adapted generously from The Pampered Chef

Makes one 10″ cheesecake, which can be sliced or cookie-cuttered into about twelve bars

For the Crust
1 c graham cracker crumbs (one package from a box of graham crackers)
4 T unsalted butter
1 T white sugar

Preheat oven to 300°F. Crush or grind the graham crackers into fine crumbs. In a medium bowl, melt the butter until liquid. Add the graham cracker crumbs and the sugar and mix with a fork. Press the crumb mixture evenly into the bottom of a 10″ spring form pan with a fork, keeping the mixture on the bottom and not spreading it up the sides. Bake for 10 minutes and remove to a cooling rack while you prepare the filling.

For the Filling
16 oz cream cheese (2 packages) at room temperature
2/3 c white sugar
1/8 c all-purpose flour
2 eggs at room temperature
scant 1/2 c sour cream
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla

Beat cream cheese, sugar, and flour for several minutes until fluffy, scraping down the bowl with a spatula once or twice. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well between each one. Add sour cream, lemon juice, and vanilla and beat on medium for about five more minutes, scraping down the bowl a couple of times throughout.

Pour filling into the crust and spread evenly with a spatula. or knife, all the way to the edges. Bake for 45-50 minutes until the center of the cheesecake is not jiggling. Remove to a cooling rack and run a knife around the edges of the pan. The cheesecake will deflate as it cools. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate.

For the Topping
6 oz fresh or frozen raspberries, thoroughly rinsed
1/4 c granulated sugar

Combine berries and sugar in a small sauce pan over medium-high heat. Stir often, breaking down the berries as they heat up. Once the mixture begins to boil lightly, stir more frequently and cook for 8-10 minutes. The mixture should thicken slightly until it slowly runs off the spoon. Remove from the heat and pour into a small bowl and set aside to cool.

Assembly
Carefully remove the ring from the spring form pan and set aside. Gently slide the cheesecake off the bottom of the pan onto a cutting board, using a flat spatula or knife if needed. For shaped bars, use a cookie cutter (as deep as you can find!) to press all the way through the cheesecake. You may need to use a knife or flat spatula to get the cheesecake out of the cookie cutter. If you don’t want to hassle with a cookie cutter, slice the cheesecake into rectangles, triangles, or wedges.

Carefully spread a layer of the raspberry topping over each bar, about a quarter of an inch thick.

Refrigerate for at least four hours or until ready to serve.

And even I have this conflict. The desire both for thick, warm soups that shut out the cold of January but also for light, fresh meals that taste like the spring and summer to come.

Plus, Santa brought me an immersion blender for Christmas, and what better way to break it in than by crushing the heck out of some frozen raspberries?

This is a little smoothie. I can never get through a full-size smoothie, so this recipe is for about a half-pint. You can easily double it if you are full-size smoothie drinker.

I like using frozen fruit in smoothies rather than fresh fruit and ice. It makes for a nice, thick smoothie that doesn’t dilute and is bursting with fruity flavor.

The sweetness of the raspberries is complimented nicely by the acidic orange juice and the tart punch of the lime sherbet. It’s thick and filling but still light and fresh.

And it perfectly appeases one half of my confused January appetite.

Raspberry Orange Smoothie

1/2 c orange juice
1/4 c plain yogurt
1/4 c lime sherbet
1/2 c frozen raspberries

Combine all ingredients, starting with the orange juice, in a blender or the cup of an immersion blender. Blend until smoothe. Serve immediately.

July and August in my childhood meant lots of raspberries. Produce in general, really: my grandparents planted each year a massive garden, and I strongly correlate the start of the school year with boxes of produce on the floor next to the fridge, pan fried okra at dinner almost daily, and raspberries.

Though I love most berries, the raspberry is by far my favorite. Sure, strawberries get a lot of credit as the first fruit of the spring, blueberries sustain me, strong and steady, through the heat of the summer, and blackberries dress up desserts with a splash of deep, fruity decadence. But raspberries, so fragile when picked ripe yet bursting with sweet and tart flavor, will never fade for me.

In Durham, raspberries don’t seem to be a popular cultivar. I’m not sure if it’s the climate or what, but I have only ever seen one, maybe two vendors at the farmers market here with these tiny red berries, and when they do it’s usually just a few pints at a time. So each week of the brief raspberry season in this city, I try to take full advantage. This week, I paired them up with a few luscious peaches for some hand pies!

And we can’t have hand pies without pie crust, of course. Until recently, I was very intimidated by pie crusts. But no more! With a recipe I originally adapted from Smitten Kitchen when taking my first stab at a full-blown pie, I now feel ready to take on any pie project that comes my way!

Before I learned to make this crust, I had almost convinced myself to get rid of these wide, low mixing bowls. Brad gave me a snazzy clear glass set for Christmas that doesn’t splatter and doubles easily as a set of serving bowls, and I was trying to think like an efficient non-hoarder.

But here’s the thing: pie crust NEEDS a wide, low mixing bowl. Trust me, I tried my first batch in the tall, skinny bowl, and it was way hard to cut the cold butter into the flour. Way hard. So these bowls can breathe a sigh of relief: no trip to the thrift store any time soon.

Once the dough is mixed, into the fridge it goes. For at least two hours. Don’t skimp on this. Just use it as an excuse to make yourself breakfast, and later, your pie filling. What starts as sticky, still somewhat disparate globs of butter and flour spends two hours in the fridges and emerges as a cohesive, easily rolled pie dough. So let it do its thing.

While it is, you can address those gorgeous fruits.

I was ready to abandon my hand pie project and just eat this as a simple fruit salad. This pie filling is as easy as it gets: raw peaches, raw raspberries, a bit of sugar and almond extract, and some instant tapioca to help the juices gel during baking. The peaches were perfect, and the raspberries were so ripe they nearly burst at the first touch of sugar.

We got pie dough! We got filling! Time to put ’em together in a bunch of tiny pies!

You can use any round cutting device that you want. I happen to have this handy little guy (the silver guy in the front) that cuts the original shape and later seals the pies with a handy built-in press. I’ve used it to make large raviolis, primarily, but it’s perfect for hand pies as well. But for once, the internet failed me: I could not find a link for one to share with you. Mostly because I can’t figure out what the hell to call it (biscuit sealer cutter wasn’t doing the trick). Points to anyone who can find this little treasure online!

A quick brush of egg wash to give us a nice golden crust, a sprinkle of sugar to make ’em purty, and about 30 minutes in the oven are the only steps left!

Some of your pies will leak. A little, or a lot. It’s okay! They’ll still taste awesome.

These little pies are a lovely way to show off some of the beautiful fruit that summer has to offer, and are delicious all on their own. They’d also be equally at  home snuggled underneath a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

But come to think of it, can you think of a pie that’s not?

Raspberry Peach Hand Pies

Makes 18-22 three-inch hand pies

1 batch pie dough
1 pint fresh raspberries
2 medium-sized yellow peaches, peeled and chopped
1/4 c sugar
1 tsp almond extract
1 1/2 T instant tapioca
1 egg yolk
1 T water
sanding sugar (for decoration)

Prepare the pie dough and allow to chill for two hours in the fridge wrapped in plastic wrap.

After the dough has chilled, preheat the oven to 375 °F. Place raspberries in a medium bowl and set aside. To easily peel the peaches, bring a small pot of water to a boil. Gently place the peaches in the boiling water for 30 seconds or so and then remove them with a slotted spoon. Place the peaches into a dish of cold water or run under cold water until the peaches are no longer warm. Halve the peaches to remove the pit, then slice into 1/2″ pieces and add to the bowl of raspberries. Add sugar, almond extract, and tapioca and mix well. The raspberries will begin to break down and release their juices almost immediately. Set the bowl aside.

Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper. Dust a clean surface with flour and roll out one disc of your pie dough until it is about 1/8″ thick. Be generous with the flour to prevent the dough from sticking to the counter. Using a large biscuit cutter or other circular cutter about 3″ in diameter, cut out an even number of circles, using as much of the dough as possible. Remove scraps from around circles and press them back together in a ball and return it to the fridge.

For half of the circles, carefully spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling onto the center of each circle. Take the remaining circles and stretch them out slightly so they will completely cover the circles with the filling. Drape this stretched circle over the filling and press the edges down all the way around the circle. If your cutter has a sealing edge, press down firmly to ensure a seal is made. If not, press the tines of a fork around the edge of the circle to ensure the dough seals shut. Repeat until all pies have been sealed and place pies on the cookie sheet about 1/2″ apart. Use the tip of a knife to make a small slit in the top of each pie to allow for venting. Place the cookie sheet in the fridge while you build the rest of the pies.

Roll out the second disc of dough and repeat the pie-building process. Continue to recombine your scraps and re-roll them to maximize the number of pies you can complete.

Once all pies are ready and on the cookie sheets, combine the egg yolk and water in a small bowl and beat until mixture is slightly foamy. Brush over the top of each pie. Finally, sprinkle sanding sugar over all of the pies. The sugar won’t melt during baking, so use as much or as little as you like.

Bake pies at 375 °F for 25-35 minutes or until crusts are golden brown. Pies without a strong seal may leak slightly. Remove pies to a cooling rack and allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Pies can be served warm or cool. Serve them by themselves, with vanilla ice cream, vanilla pudding, whipped cream, or whatever makes you happiest. Pies can be stored at room temperature for 3-4 days in an airtight container.

Here’s the thing.

Most of my choices of meals to make revolve around what I want for dinner, what features a local ingredient at the peak of its season, or what has been leering at me the strongest from my list of recipes to try.

But sometimes I just want to make cake. Unnecessary, frivolous, decadent, indulgent, cake.

I don’t often make desserts, partially because we rarely have more than the two of us at dinner. But when I threw my pizza party a couple weeks ago, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make something fancy.

Both the recipes and the inspiration for this cake came from a blog I recently stumbled across (and have subsequently become obsessed with) called Sweetapolita. These cakes are something. else. Miracles of butter and sugar. They are simple yet stunning, classic yet unique.

And the best part This particular chocolate cake recipe is, hands down, the easiest cake recipe I have ever made. Many cakes recipes have intricate patterns of adding dry ingredients, folding in damp ones, carefully mixing until consistency is just so… not this one.

First the dry ingredients are sifted together…

…then the wet ingredients are added…

…and then the whole mess is poured into a pan. Presto!

But first.

Before any of that, actually, one key to making presentation cakes such as this one is to have a really, really reliable way to get that cake out of the pan in one piece.

I’ve been using the same recipe for pan coating since I began learning to decorate cakes as a nine-year-old, and I have yet to find a method that is both as reliable and as simple as this one. Composed of ingredients that I typically have on hand anyway, I always keep a batch mixed up.

Also, these old strips of tea towels (which are moistened and wrapped around the pan while the cake bakes) keep the outer edges of the cake from cooking faster than the center, allowing the cake to bake more evenly and preventing a dome in the middle. These old tricks help to produce a flat-topped, easily removable cake every single time.

So the cake Easy peasy.

The buttercream is a slightly more complicated matter.

This was my first attempt at Swiss Meringue Buttercream, a mountain I’ve been hoping to summit for some time now. Though it’s not the easiest icing to work with and take a bit of time to prepare, I was pleased with the final result both in look and flavor.

Swiss Meringue buttercream is essentially sugar, egg white, and butter.

Lots. And lots. Of butter. Try not to think about it too much, it’s for the best.

Since I also needed the whites of 10 eggs, I opted to buy a bottle of egg whites rather than figure out what to do with 10 yolks. I know, I know there are loads of things I could do with them, but since I had just swallowed the fact that I was using two pounds of butter for this icing, I decided I didn’t need a yolk-rich recipe anytime in the future.

Swiss Meringue buttercream starts over the stove. Egg whites and sugar are heated before being whipped into a silky meringue. Meringue is one thing I almost can’t imagine making without a stand mixer. It’s lovely to blast that thing up to medium-high, do a batch of dishes, and come back to a bowl of thick, fluffy meringue without an arm of jelly.

Once the meringue holds stiff peaks, the butter is added, slowly but surely, to create the final product. It’s sort of miraculous, really, that the icing ever comes to fruition. The addition of butter to the meringue created a gross, curdled mess, but just a few more minutes of mixing and suddenly, the smoothest silkiest icing I’ve every created was sitting before my eyes.

Buttercream!

And last but not least, the ganache.

Ganache is fairly simple, and quite versatile. All it takes is a yummy dark chocolate and cream.

Once you have cake and icing and ganache, it’s assembly time.

Big flat sheet cake suddenly becomes four narrow cakelets! But not without measuring. Are you mad?

Prizes if you recognize this tape measure.

Yes, there is more to the assembly than just the stacking. But there’s only so many pictures you can take when trying to spread buttercream over an 8″ tall cake.

But finally, finally, after all the hard work and the many ingredients, a pretty final product is ready to serve.

The chocolate cake is moist, flavorful, and tender. The icing is smooth, not overly sweet, and tangy.

If I dreamed in cakes (a likely possibility), this would be a cake dream come true.

Rich Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Buttercream
Adapted from Sweetapolita

Rich Chocolate Cake
Makes one 1/2 sheet cake

2 3/4 c all purpose flour
2 2/3 c granulated sugar
2 3/4 tsp baking powder
2 3/4 tsp baking soda
1 c unsweetened cocoa (can be dutch-processed or not)
1 3/4 tsp salt
2/3 c canola oil
1 1/4 c buttermilk
4 large eggs
1 1/8 c hot coffee (I used Starbucks Via)
2 T vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Generously grease a half sheet pan with pan coating and set aside.

Sift all dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer or other large mixing bowl. Add all remaining ingredients and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes (use the paddle attachment if using a stand mixer). Scrape sides of bowl with a spatula and mix for 30 seconds more. Batter will be very fluid. Pour batter into greased cake pan. If using, moisten thin strips of tea towel tied together and wrap around outer wall of cake pan.

Bake for 25-35 minutes on middle oven rack or until a toothpick barely comes clean. Overbaking will cause the cake to dry out, so be sure to check often once you’ve reached 25 minutes. Remove pan to a cooling rack and let cool for 10 minutes or until sides of cake have pulled away from the cake pan. Using another cooling rack placed on top of the cake, flip the racks and pan over and press on the bottom of the cake pan to remove cake from the pan. Let cake cool to the touch and then place in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or the freezer for 30 minutes. Keep the cake cold until your icing is prepared and you are ready to begin constructing the cake.

Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream Icing
Makes about 10 cups of icing (you’ll need it all if you’re building the 4-layer rectangular cake)

10 large egg whites (about 300 grams total)
2 1/4 c granulated sugar
2 pounds (8 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature (NOT melted) and chopped into cubes
2 T vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1 c fresh raspberries, mostly dry

Lightly wipe the bowl of a stand mixer with vinegar to remove all traces of grease. Using a pot that does not allow the stand mixer bowl to touch the bottom, add 2-3 inches of water in the base of the pot. Then, place the mixer bowl in the pot and heat over medium heat. Add sugar and egg whites to the mixer bowl and simmer, stirring constantly, until temperature of the mixture reaches 140 °F.

Move bowl to mixer and use whisk attachment. Whip at medium-high speed until mixture is thick, glossy, cool to the touch and forms stiff peaks. Switch over to paddle attachment and beat on medium speed. Add 2-3 cubes of butter at a time until incorporated, never turning off the mixer. The mixture will appear to curdle, but just keep mixing! Once icing has come to a silky, smooth texture, add vanilla & salt.

Set icing aside until ready to construct and ice the cake. Then, add raspberries and mix on low. Be careful not to over-mix so that you keep the mottled, streaked effect in the icing.

Dark Chocolate Ganache
Makes about 1 cup

1/2 c heavy cream
5 oz dark chocolate, chopped into very small pieces

In a small sauce pan, bring heavy cream just to boiling and remove from heat. Add chocolate to hot cream and let rest, without stirring for 3-4 minutes. Using a rubber spatula, stir to incorporate cream into chocolate.

Assembly
Remove cake from fridge or freezer. Using a serrated bread knife, slice cake into 4 sections of equal width. To ensure they are the same width, stack sections on top of one another and make additional cuts as needed. Place one section, flat side down, on a rectangular platter or cake stand and spread icing about 1/3″ thick over the top. When spreading icing, be sure to spoon icing from main bowl onto a small plate and applying from there to avoid getting crumbs in your main icing supply. Add the remaining sections, spreading icing between each section, with the final section sitting flat side up.

Spread a very thin coat of icing over the entire cake to create a crumb coat. Chill entire cake in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to set crumb coat. This will make the application of the final layer of icing easier. While cake chills, wash icing knife to ensure that all crumbs are removed.

Once crumb coat has set, remove cake from refrigerator. Starting with the top of the cake, add a thick layer of buttercream. Work icing over the edges of the cake and ice the side. Add buttercream generously, as much of it will be scraped off as you smooth the cake. Once icing is applied, wipe edges of the plate to remove any stray icing or crumbs.

Chill cake for 15 minutes to set buttercream. Remove from refrigerator and slowly drizzle liquid (but not hot) ganache  on top of the cake. Start with just a little bit, and spread ganache gently toward the edges of the cake so that it drips down the sides and thinly coats the top of the cake.

To finish, line the base of the cake with fresh raspberries and place three raspberries on the center of the cake. Chill cake until about two hours before serving. Then, allow cake to come to room temperature before slicing.

Pan Coating (for easy cake release)

1/2 c shortening
3 T corn startch
3 T all purpose flour

Combine ingredients thoroughly. Store in an airtight container in the pantry. Coat inside of cake pan, focusing on the corners, for an easy way to ensure your cakes will come out in one piece.