Almond biscotti

This morning I watched the teaser trailer for “Skyfall” and I really liked what I saw: not only the movie has a kick-ass director – I love Sam Mendes! – but Ralph Fiennes is in the movie, too. I mean, Ralph Fiennes and Daniel Craig together, with Judy Dench to boot. As if “The Dark Knight Rises” and “The Hobbit” weren’t making me anxious enough. :)

And since my latest and very expected

Rocky road brownies

I bought a bag of mini marshmallows last week with these cookies in mind – I found the recipe going through my folder of torn magazine pages and thought it would be great to use whole wheat flour in my baking (haven’t done that in a while now). But the reviews discouraged me to make the cookies. :(

Luckily, Alice Medrich – a.k.a. the Chocolate Queen – came to my rescue and I ended up with

Dulce de leche pound cake

As I was updating my list of books – a couple of new additions as I told you a while ago – I kept thinking of ways to make it more functional and interesting: therefore, I’ve changed it a bit. I hope you all like it.

Oh, aside from books, there is cake here today, too – and it is absolutely divine. :)

Dulce de leche pound cake
slightly adapted from O, The Oprah Magazine

1 ½ cups (340g/3

Coconut chews - delicious and very easy to make

I have never baked nor cooked any of Paula Deen’s recipes – and that is something I deeply regret after surfing her website – but I have heard of her before, dozens of times, and every time I see her name I think of a lot of butter and cream and sugar. And fried food. Yum. I should give this woman’s recipes a try. Soon. :D

While going through the beautiful Loveless Cafe cookbook and deciding

Elvis Presley’s favorite pound cake + my role choices if I were an actress

I don’t have any talent for acting but if I’d become an actress I would be interested in complex roles, characters full of layers; I would not want to play the girl next door – no, sir; I would like to be Alex Forrest, Isabelle de Merteuil, Patricia Hewes (yes, I love Glenn Close), Ada McGrath, Marla Singer, Mary Magdalene, Sarah Pierce; Sister Aloysius Beauvier, Nina Sayers, Lisbeth Salander –

Nutella swirl pound cake

So apparently many of you have been making croûtons using a frying pan and I was the last one to jump on the bandwagon... OK, no problem. :) Now tell me: what about a marble cake made with Nutella? Have you guys tried it? Because I’d never seen it before buying this book and now I want to bake it every weekend. :D



Nutella swirl pound cake
slightly adapted from Cake Keeper Cakes: 100 Simple

Caramel crumb bars and recipes perfect for sharing

Every time I want to bake something for my coworkers I look for recipes that yield a lot – I want them to eat and have seconds if they feel like it (the sweet tooth in me finds that kind of thing important). :D
Therefore cakes, bars and brownies baked in a 13x9in pan are perfect – like these delicious caramel bars that so far have been the quickest baked goods to disappear at the office (

Chocolate cake with cocoa glaze

One look at the list of cakes I’ve posted so far and you will see that chocolate cakes are not very popular around here (and we’re talking almost 5 years of blogging, people); lemon (surprise!), apple and banana are the usual suspects. But the photo of this cake on Rose's book made me really curious about it: the shiny, dark glaze looked so beautiful. Almost supernatural. I had to make it

Blackberry jam crumb cake

Not one to be afraid of massive amounts of ingredients – I have made this cake, after all – I must confess that I almost gave up baking the cake on the photo. Almost. Reading the recipe with a calculator on hand I shrieked at the idea of using nearly 400g of butter, 500g of sugar and – my goodness – over 700g of flour in one single cake; a recipe that would pretty much empty my entire pantry. :

Chocolate chip cookie cake + classics, destroyed or revamped

One of my all time favorite songs is New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”; my reaction to Frente!’s version for the song was sort of like “Stop! Stop! You’re ruining a classic!” – as much as I hate to admit it I can be pretty conservative sometimes. If you’re going to revamp with a classic, do it right, ok? Go ask Fine Young Cannibals for advice or something. :)

Unlike Frente!, Flo Braker has

Blueberry muffins with doughnut topping and Indiana Jones

Despite being responsible for bringing Ralph into my life I don’t like Steven Spielberg as a director; I find that most of his movies are immersed in a squishy atmosphere, it’s just not my cup of tea. But I have to say that I adore the Indiana Jones trilogy, each and every movie, the first being my favorite.

You might as well be thinking: “why is she talking about Indiana Jones?” – well, after

Lemon ginger cake - a baking session inspired by The Cure

There are songs I’ve loved since I was a kid but even after learning English I still don’t understand certain parts of their lyrics – thank heavens for the Internet. :)

Last week I spent much of my lunchtime listening to some of those songs and following the lyrics online. “The Caterpillar”, one of my all time favorites – which video is great, too – was an almost complete mystery to me;

Banana, hazelnut and cinnamon cakes and the book I am currently reading

I thought I should tell you what book I’m reading right now – after all, you helped me choose it. I decided to go for a modern classic: "In Cold Blood" – I hadn’t read anything by Truman Capote and even though I’m still in the beginning of the book I’m enjoying his narrative very much.

And since I am reading a modern classic, I’ll give you today a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks:

Iced cinnamon snail rolls and when less is more

I hadn’t made cinnamon rolls in ages and this recipe, from Bill Granger’s "Sydney Food", seemed easy and quick to put together. It was – I watched TV all afternoon and yet finished baking the rolls before dinnertime.
I tried to restrain myself and not eat one of the rolls right out of the oven, but ended up giving up the fight after 5 minutes: the warm, tender rolls, deeply perfumed with

Upside down pear chocolate cake

I grew up eating my grandmother’s upside down pineapple cake, with prunes or candied cherries placed in the wholes of the pineapple slices. I even made it a couple of times when I started baking. But not until I became a food blogger did I learn that there are several other types of upside down cakes – I was amazed to know that one could bake those using different kinds of fruit! :D

I love

White chocolate cupcakes with candied kumquats and a big thank you

Thank you for your book suggestions – you guys are wonderful! I’m about to decide which book I’ll read first and thanks to you I have enough ideas to choose from now and in the months to come.

Since I’m inclined to choose a classic book, I bring you something classic, too: cupcakes. But I mean classic, not plain: the candied kumquats add not only a splash of color but also a delicious and

Pear, apple, brown sugar and maple syrup cake

People who like to cook and bake – myself included – get mad at recipes that do not work – I think it’s only natural to feel that way about something that involves time, ingredients ($$) and expectations. I get really angry sometimes, to the point of cursing like a character in a mafia movie. :D

But if the recipe works and the food tastes good, I’m OK with a couple of details that might be

Passion fruit poppy seed pound cake

I bought a bag of beautiful, fragrant passion fruit to make Tessa Kiros’s passion fruit ice cream, but since there still was some strawberry cheesecake ice cream in the freezer I had to think of another use for the fruit. I thought of my good friend Ana Elisa, who I’d discussed Tessa’s book with once: I’d told her that I’d bought the book but hadn’t cooked from it yet, and how disappointing

Tangerine chocolate marble cake with tangerine icing

I keep telling you about recipes that go wrong and how I do not give up on them. This cake is sort of an example: I made the chocolate orange marble cake from DH mag (#44) and it turned out miserable - an 8-cup capacity pan would not hold that much batter, but I insisted on trusting the recipe. I ended up tossing the whole cake. :(

I decided to make it again – I adore marble cakes – and used a

Chocolate chip peanut cookies

When I was a kid my favorite chocolate bar was one studded with peanuts – my dad would bring one from work from time to time and mom would only let me eat it after dinner (of course), when I would sit on the couch and read comic books till bed time.

Biting into one of these cookies made me instantly think of those chocolate bars – the difference was that this time I was reading a graphic novel