I (lissa) thoroughly enjoy baked goods. It may very well be because I lived in France and had amazing boulangeries at every corner, which I miss immensely. The point is I love to eat a small amount of a baked dessert after my meals (okay not always small!). So when an amazing looking bundt cake recipe was delivered into my inbox, I had to make it! It was pretty dang amazing and gave us a reason to buy blackberries from the farmers’ market.

Two Notes:
#1 – If you don’t know already, Ghirardelli boxed brownies are the best you’ll find.
#2 – I subscribe to TastingTable and get daily emails with recipes and restaurants recommendations from around the country.

Blackberry Buttermilk Bundt with Orange Glaze
Recipe adapted from The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion by Bill Yosses and Melissa Clark (W.W. Norton & Company)
Makes 1 Bundt cake (8 to 10 servings)

Cake
• 2⅔ cups a#-purpose flour%
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, so)ened, plus additional for the pan
• 1¾ cups sugar
• 4 large e+s, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vani#a extract
• ½ cup buttermilk
• 2 pints blackberries (about 1 pound), rinsed and dried

Orange Glaze
• ½ cup ,esh orange juice (,om about 1 medium orange)
• ½ cup confectioners’ sugar

1. Make the cake: Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease a 2-quart nonstick Bundt pan with butter, then spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a small bowl, whisk the flour with the baking powder, salt and baking soda. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar at medium-high speed until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and mix in half of the flour mixture. Mix in the buttermilk, then the remaining flour mixture. Gently fold in the blackberries with a wooden spoon.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan. Bake until golden brown and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a serving platter.
4. Make the orange glaze: In a small saucepan, whisk the orange juice with the sugar and simmer over low heat until the sugar dissolves.
5. Using a skewer or long, thin knife, prick deep holes all over the surface of the cake. Slowly spoon half of the glaze over the cake, letting it seep into the holes. Let the cake cool for 20 minutes longer. Spoon the remaining glaze over the cake and let set for 10 minutes. Slice and serve.

First, I would like to say sorry that we haven’t updated in forever…we were in the land of the Yankee for a few weeks 🙂

This is a recipe that my (Lissa) mom made often growing up. It was one of my favorites and I fell back on its simplicity when I was living in Rennes, France. There isn’t really a recipe that I follow, but if you are in the mood for creamy mustardy yumminess over rice this is perfect!

1. Saute pieces of chicken breast in olive oil until slightly cooked.
2. Add sliced onions and cook until just tender.
3. Add dijon mustard and cream to taste*. In France I used creme fraiche, but since that is hard to get here (and expensive!) we use a combination of sour cream and heavy whipping cream. Cook until heated through and serve over rice with a French baguette and some French cheese (brie or camembert are perfect). Enjoy!

*My mom also adds white pepper.

That title is a mouthful (hah!) and a pain in the behind to type.

Anyway…

My love for chicken wings has really blossomed in the south, so I decided to try my hand at making them. I wasn’t sure how to do them exactly, and I didn’t really follow a specific recipe – just a bunch of different ones. Most of them give the following guidelines for making chicken wings:

1. Season with salt and pepper before putting them on the grill.
2. Heat grill to medium, high heat will cause flame-ups.
3. DO NOT marinate! Toss in sauce immediately after cooking.

Because I have some sort of sauce ADD (I HAVE to have multiple sauces, I can’t focus on one) I used a homemade ketchup-based BBQ and a true mustard-based BBQ sauce and tossed about half in each one. They were delicious.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Lissa was busy making the crostini. I’ll admit, I had my doubts at first, but it turned out to be super good. You can find the recipe here.

Suggested changes and additions:

* Go lighter on the garlic for the Crostini. (I never thought I’d say go light on garlic!)

* Flip often with the wings, and make sure your grill is oiled/sprayed so they don’t stick

* Find a recipe for your OWN ketchup-based BBQ sauce, it’s totally worth it.

I promise you, this tastes WAY better than it sounds.

We’re on a Rachel Ray binge lately, scouring her website and old issues of her magazine for recipes that use produce that’s in season. That’s how we found this one. It gets a 3/5 peppers on my heat scale.

The best way I can describe this is that it’s like a healthy chili-taco with a hollowed out zucchini as a shell. It’s a very effective way at sneaking in another serving of veggies and it still tastes phenomenal.

Suggested changes and additions:

* Figure out what size zucchini you want before you buy them. Bigger ones allow more filling, smaller ones allow easier portions for fewer people.

* Substitute fresh jalapenos if you want more heat. Canned ones are good, but the fresher they are the hotter. Leaving seeds in will increase the heat as well, so judge accordingly.

* We love cheese, so we piled it on. It’s the most unhealthy thing in this meal, so we figured that’s OK.

* This is a good candidate for lean beef. I’ll try to remember to blog about that sometime soon.

This idea started where many good recipes start: the sales “rack” at the grocery store. After we bought the snow crab legs we heard about grilling them from a family member and decided to try it. The result? Deliciousness. Grilling foods adds a flavor you can’t get anywhere else, and when you pair that with a food that’s not traditionally grilled you either have a wonderful new taste or a complete failure. Luckily for us it was the former and not the latter 🙂

Recipe (if you can call it that):
* Keep the crab legs frozen until you put them on the grill.
* Heat grill to medium heat and add crab legs
* Flip every 5 minutes or so until the white parts of the crab have turned yellow/brown (about 10-15 minutes for snow crab, 15-20 for king crab)
* Melt butter, enjoy!

Lissa and I have talked a lot about creating this blog, and now that summer is here we’re finally going to do it. Dinner tonight is on the right: chicken-fajita burgers with Black Bean Smash. It gets a 3.5/5 peppers on my very own heat-scale. Made my lips tingle but didn’t burn my mouth. You can find the recipe here.

Suggested changes/additions:
* Pepperjack Cheese (for added heat)
* Use good buns and toast them a bit before adding the toppings

Black Bean Smash was good too. We didn’t put it on our burgers, but it was a fantastic appetizer with chips!