Oatmeal sandwich bread

While organizing my books on the new bookshelf I grabbed "Good to the Grain" and stared at its beautiful cover (those delicious rhubarb tarts!) for a few seconds... Then it suddenly hit me: I hadn’t used that book in ages; it’s one of my favorite books and that makes me wonder about the poor books I seldom or never use. Well, that’s just me. So I decided to make something – anything – from the

Wholemeal apple and marmalade cake

Back in 2009 my dear friend Valentina introduced me to Nigel Slater – it was love at first sight. His delicious recipes, beautiful garden and passionate way of speaking about food – clear without being patronizing – were a perfect combination.

I really do not know why it took me so long to buy one of his books, but I certainly started with a wonderful one. This cake is absurdly tender –

Cinnamon choc chip swirl bread

After cookies and cakes, Susan and I decided it was time to play around with yeast – we both wanted to bake from John Barricelli’s beautiful book and the cinnamon swirl bread caught our eyes (and our stomachs). :)

The bread is tender and delicious; the dough is easy to work with – not sticky! – but my idea of using chocolate chips instead of raisins turned out to be less than genius: I used

Ginger peach muffins

When it comes to Eddie Murphy’s movies there are only two I like, but the first bite into one of these muffins and “The Heat is On” popped in my head. :)

The ginger adds a fresh, delicious kick to these muffins and I was amazed by how well the flavor goes with peaches.



Ginger peach muffins
from Good to the Grain

Topping:
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2-3 small peaches,

Nibby whole wheat sablés

I’ve been having lots of fun with this beautiful book lately – Anh, Ana Elisa and I will probably start a fan club for Alice Medrich any day now. :D

Besides being a terrific baker, Ms. Medrich has a great sense of humor: it’s written on her recipe that these (delicious) cookies can be stored for 1 month – like they are going to last that long. :D



Nibby whole wheat sablés
from Pure Dessert

Wheat and chocolate pound cake

Doesn’t this cake look good? It tasted great, too, I can assure you. :) But the funny thing about this recipe is that preparing it made me think of my grandma – and no, she doesn’t like chocolate. It’s just that I was not in the mood for extra washing up and decided to grate the chocolate with a box grater, instead of grabbing the food processor. What a bad decision it was: it took me FOREVER

Whole wheat chocolate chip cookies

A couple of days ago I was discussing Oscar injustices with the lovely @liliantrigo – it all started with this post – and we came to the conclusion that the year of 1994 was a disaster in the male categories: Ralph Fiennes, magnificent (for a change) in “Schindler’s List” lost to Tommy Lee Jones – just typing this makes me mad already. And Tom Hanks got the award for “Philadelphia” (what a bad