dark chocolate blueberry cream cheese coffee cake.

This cake. Goes into my mental list of Things That Make Me Glad That I'm Alive. Either I've not been eating enough cake recently or this cake is just plain delicious but whichever the case, I've not been able to stop thinking about it. You know how when you bake a certain dessert and it's so good you immediately think about when you're going to make it again, how you're going to switch it up for fun and basically conjure up a whole list of variations while you're quietly nibbling on whatever it is you baked? I've been doing that. Even now as I'm enthusiastically punching the keys of the keyboard. I'm practically gushing now I'd better stop and get on with explaining what's so good about this cake.

marie helene's apple cake.

I've been loving baking with fruits very frequently as of late but I've not made apple anything yet, which is strange because there are just so many delish apple desserts out there. Apple pie, apple strudel, caramel apples (ohhhhhmygosh)... you get the idea. So when I found this recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Around my French Table I knew that I had to get some apples and get cracking.

earl grey ferrero rocher cake.

Confession: My fridge is overflowing with chocolate. And more than 50% of the chocolates are ferrero rochers. They arrived in one of those square plastic boxes that contain around 50? 100? 39473? of them and as much as the family loves ferrero rochers, there are just way too many of them.

orange-almond tart.

I found it! Dorie Greenspan's Around my French Table! I wasn't expecting to chance upon it at the library so it was a pleasant surprise. The savory recipes look so tantalizing but alas, the only ones I really feel like trying are the desserts. And there are so many delicious-sounding ones I just didn't know where to start! Marie-Helene's apple cake, sugar-crusted french toast, coupetade (french toast pudding!!), double chocolate banana tart... This book is nuts!

chaos and carbs.

Hola! I don't have a new recipe today but I just wanted to update the blog. Well actually I just brought the blog back from a state of chaos and destruction and I feel so relieved that I just felt like posting something. I don't think I managed to make my point but in essence, I'm o v e r j o y e d ! Argh never will I attempt to play around with the blog template again, no matter how bored I am. If you saw the mess the blog was in when I was formatting it I'm so sorry it will never happen again!! *traumatized for life* Essentially there were duplicates of the blog header and posts and there was no "remove" option in the layout (faints). There were a few widgets that were all over the place as well. I'm not sure how it happened but I think loading in a new template must have modified the basic layout somehow. Anyway, I managed to get everything back to normal (after 2 hours) and I'm so happy to have my plain old blog back again *tears of joy* Looks like I'm doomed to be a techno-idiot for life.

So on to some interesting content that doesn't make me sound like an incapable fool.

Here is a tart that I've not blogged about, an orange custard almond tart. The tart shell and custard recipe is the same as the blueberry custard tart's.

kinako banana chiffon cake sandwiches ／きな粉バナナシフォンサンド

Taking a short break from tarts! To be honest I could eat them every week for the rest of my life but I'm getting tired of making them. Good thing that I only bought two new tart pans. So until my interest in baking tarts is revived - I did promise myself that I would bake the whole book - I'll probably be churning out a few types of chiffon cake sandwiches (which I would likely tire of in three weeks hah). I've been wanting to make more of them ever since I made these matcha adzuki chiffon cake sandwiches because they allow so much room for creativity, not to mention are fun to assemble!