Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

Strawberry Blueberry Crisp. Here's a recipe I made this past August while my Sister was visiting. I had so lots of strawberries I needed to use up, so I made a Strawberry/Berry Crisp from a recipe I found online. Here it is: INGREDIENTS: Topping: 1 cup flour 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup white sugar 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1/8 teaspoon cardamom 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled Filling: 2 lbs fresh strawberries 3 tablespoons cornstarch, plus 1-2 additional teaspoons if berries are very juicy 1/3 cup sugar 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1 teaspoon vanilla Directions: 1. Preheat oven to 350F. 2. Make topping: Stir flour, both sugars, salt, cinnamon and cardamom together in medium bowl. Pour butter on top. Stir until crumble is evenly moistened. Squeeze together with fingers to form clumps. Let wait in the refrigerator. 3. Wash, quarter, and stem strawberries. Place in large mixing bowl. Add cornstarch, sugar, lemon juice and vanilla. Stir to combine. Transfer to...

Pineapple Upside Down Cake. On a recent nice summer evening my French conversation group met at our house for a Summer potluck.  This Summer has flown by, and we've hardly had a chance to host people on our patio. I tried to organize something with this group a couple of weeks ago, but had to cancel due to the weather. I rescheduled and had amazing luck with beautiful weather on the new day! I considered making eclairs, because with 12 people coming it would have been an opportunity to make a large-batch dessert and they would have enjoyed it. But ultimately, I realized I wasn't going to have time. So looking at old recipes I hadn't made in a while, I decided to try Pineapple Upside Down Cake . It's very good, summery, and an old-fashioned recipe you don't see often. I used Sally's Bake Blog  recipe . I'd used it before, and when I checked her blog it had been updated.  I went with the new version, using cake flour and egg whites only to make a less-dense ca...

 Last weekend we had a get-together with several of the ladies from my book club at a local vineyard.  We got so lucky with the weather delivering a beautiful summer evening!  There is usually a food truck at this vineyard, but as it happened not on this day.  We organized a light and casual potluck and I decided to bring a Strawberry Cornmeal Cake .   I love making this cake because it's so easy to make, looks very pretty and is so summery.  It's easy to bring to places, easy to portion. Best of all, it tastes delicious, and with half the sugar of a regular cake. Following the usual recipe, the cake needed 39-40 minutes to bake, so a bit longer than the 30-35 it calls for.  This is the first time I made it in our new oven, so that is perhaps why. I was able to cut it into 16 squares, each looking very nice with a strawberry in the middle. I sampled one piece and left one square each for R* and Bubby to enjoy. The 13 pieces left fit easily into my...

Raspberry Linzer Torte This week a friend invited me to a potluck dinner at her house. It was her turn to host a group of French speakers she belongs to. I've heard of these dinners for years and was very happy to go! I offered to bring a main course or a dessert and she opted for me to bring a dessert. That was music to my ears! I knew I wanted to make a tart and I knew I wanted it to look impressive. I thought of a fruit tart, but having to drive a half hour in a heat wave with a tart filled with creme patissiere seemed like a bad idea. So it was a perfect time to try making my first Linzer Torte ! I've been looking for an occasion for years, so this was very exciting.  I had no idea how different it would be from other tarts I've made! I looked around for a recipe that fit in a 9" tart pan and that use only almond flour. I had almond flour at hand and didn't want to have to buy pistachios or hazelnuts to grind. I finally settled on  this recipe  from the website...

Flan Parisien on heirloom cake stand Recently I was in Paris and, after seeing lots of pictures of Flan Parisien online, I really wanted to find a good one.  I tried 3 or 4 of them, I think, and none of them bowled me over. So, I decided to give it a try for my birthday.  Coming right on the heels of Bubby's birthday, and will lots of cake still left in the fridge, I knew I didn't want to make another cake.  I also, more and more, miss my mother who always used to visit us for Bubby's and my birthday, and flan was one of her specialties. So that was another reason why I wanted to make a flan, really. I looked at several recipes online and finally settled on  this one  from Cuisine Actuelle.  Most of the recipes I saw online called for both milk and heavy cream. But I wanted my flan to be a bit less rich, and I didn't want to have to buy heavy cream.   Here is the recipe I used: 1 vanilla pod 4 eggs 1 liter of milk 125 grams of sugar 85 grams of c...