One year after his graduation from high school, this blog post is for my son Ethan. I wanted to choose a dessert recipe to go with it, something sweet, because that’s how he is. I chose my recipe for lemon mousse tart, a light dessert I’m sure you will love as much as we do at home.
Another birthday, yay! I’ve learned to embrace them, feeling blessed to be counting one more (thank you, Byron!). Because what’s better than adding one more year of experience to your biography? Spending one more year with your loved ones? Live life fully no matter what your age? So happy birthday to me, and to everyone who can count one more. To celebrate it, a super special cake: lemon layer cake with lemon curd buttercream and ginger cookies.
Flan, or flan caramel, is one of those desserts I, and everyone my age, grew up with. Actually, it could be the dessert we grew up with. Every mom, every household, would make it, with just slight variations in the recipe. And not only at home, but every restaurant menu would have it, together with peach or pineapple “en almíbar”, in syrup, and different flavors of ice cream, most often chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. When I say this, I don’t mean that flan is an “old” dessert, made long ago, and that has been replaced by others in the 21st-century. Not at all! In fact, flan is a classic that never goes out of style, and shares restaurant menus with many other newer, fancy desserts.
Lavender fields in Brihuega, Spain
I am drawn to lavender. If I have to choose between scents, that will be the one I choose, whether it be hand soap or dish soap, laundry detergent or air freshener, lavender is my scent. I don’t know why, I think it is its freshness, but it could be its color, too (you just have to have a look at my closet!). But most of all, (more…)
It has been raining for a few days, the temperatures have dropped, and I feel under the weather, so what better time to post a recipe for ice cream than now, ha ha! When I was preparing this recipe for the blog, a few days ago, the temperatures were in the 90’s Fahrenheit, 30’s Celsius. The landscape workers that were trimming our bushes and pulling out all my lavender (sniff) had to leave early because the heat was unbearable. I was happily making my husband’s favorite ice cream, in granita form, leche merengada (loosely translated to whipped cinnamon milk granita), and we still managed to enjoy it during those high temperatures.
It has been a while. I purposely intended to take a little break, enjoy the events that were happening in my life at a leisurely pace, then come back with new recipes. But the break kept getting longer, and longer, and even though I kept up with Instagram posts, the blog, and the recipes, (more…)
The origin of tarta de Santiago, or rather, why the famous Spanish almond tart is named after the apostle Saint James, patron saint of Spain, is unknown. But for centuries, the cake has been adorned with the cross of the knights of Saint James in confectioners sugar, and visitors to the city of Santiago de Compostela, where the apostle is believed to be buried, buy it as a souvenir of their visit to the pilgrims’ city, or arrival through the Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James.
I’m finding it very hard these days not to long for what was. And this blood orange puff pastry tart was. It was (more…)
And with this one, I reached 100 posts. 100 recipes! I find it hard to believe, it has been such a joy to write all these posts and recipes, cooking and baking and enjoying every dish. A cake was in order for such milestone, and I chose this Blueberry and Meyer Lemon Cake.
Madalenas caseras, classic madeleines, are very popular in Spain, and even though they might look like muffins, they have one major difference, they use olive oil instead of butter. And here I am, watching the news while sipping an espresso and having a madalena, a madeleine, savoring the sweet and lemony treat, and thinking about what to write about for this week’s post, when it suddenly hits me. Sometimes I have a preconceived subject I want to write about, but for the most part, my post is usually about “that thing that won’t leave my mind”. And today, that thing is women.
It wasn’t until March 9, 2018 that I came to realize what March 8 represented. For years I felt International Women’s Day was a celebration (more…)
