Can a person be in love with a cake? I think I am in love with the Dobos Torte - a rich, multi-layer stack of brandy-drizzled almond cake filled with chocolate buttercream and topped with distinctive caramel wedges. Dobos Torte (or "Dobos Torta") and I have a long relationship. I have made it for my birthday ...
Patricia Rain is The Vanilla Queen, and her title is not in dispute. She is the author of Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World’s Favorite Flavor and Fragrance among other books and publications. An anthropologist with a keen sense of social justice, she brings the world's awareness to issues of sustainability in vanilla's tropical growing ...
One thing to remember when you visit Canada or New England: March is a winter month. March is not spring. March is nothing even close to spring. It is ice-locked and raw blue-white. Still deep and silent inside the trees are the seeds and sap of hope. Eventually, they will bubble up. The harvest begins ...
The University of Southern California's president, C. L. Max Nikias, recently addressed the rising cost of education. His defense included the increased market demand that universities function like the city-states of ancient Athens and Rome with infrastructure, housing, dining, myriad services, ethics, technology, independence and, for us, round-the-clock coffee shops. Oh yeah, and curriculum, too. ...
So early in the season to get the good stuff. Yet, I feel the promise. California farmers' markets are 3-4 months ahead of other regions in the USA. So we forgive a few white-shouldered strawberries knowing that next week, and the week after that and the week after that...we are on planet strawberry.
Just a few miles from Hollywood's red carpet bonanza is the other side: my neighborhood of Silver Lake where you can eat fried food, wear shorts and be certain that no one cares about taking your photograph. Is it a beautiful city, this Hollywood - east side or west? Nope. But it has pockets of ...
Just like the first bite of pizza from the box is always the best, the last ski run of the day is always the worst. Little brain voice warned me: "You are tired and you are really not that much of a badass." Instead I heard my vocal voice answer Sam, my 22-year-old, rocket-skiier ...
Toy soldiers, trains, presents, chocolate, bows - all fine stuff of childhood. Mass-marketers understand this and often sell us charmingly quaint packaging with nothing but chalk-like chocolate inside. In Quebec, roadsigns led me up a steep hill to a mini-chocolate factory guarded by this guy: I feared the worst. Chunky sentry like these are cherished by ...
Good to stroll down a long row of books on my way to that vacant solo cubicle by the window. A little whiff of virtue accompanied me (YES I'm going to get so much work done this afternoon!) followed by, now, knots of shame in my shoulders (reading emails and cruising social media are neither ...
This little white cake and its chocolate cousins helped me out at photo shoot in NYC www.rosalieoconnor.com @swmssweets
Vienna is on the list for the dessert tour in June. We're looking for kaffeehauses, Linzertorte, gugelhupf & Sachertorte. Yes, it is a pilgrimage.
This is one of my favorite photos from my first cookbook Chocolate Bliss. I arrived at photographer @jennifermartine's San Francisco studio after a hectic food convention with only a few chocolates left, and here they are - dinged and bruised - yet they convey forgiven beauty of the dark and imperfect. Can we talk about the ...