This is a family holiday tradition food gift.  You can freeze the cake and serve it on Christmas but it is hard to resist for that long.  I baked the one in the photograph in a Bundt cake pan with no middle section out of it.  It baked at 325F for about 50 minutes instead of an hour.  It came out perfectly!  The versions below are some we’ve made in the past with regular Bundt cake pans.

Bacardi Rum Cake Recipe

Cake:

• 1 cup chopped, pecans or walnuts, toasted
• 1 18-1/2 ounce yellow cake mix
• 1 1-3/4 ounce (4-serving size) instant vanilla pudding mix
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 cup cold milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup Dark Rum

Glaze:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup Dark Rum

Preparation:

Cake: Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.  Grease and flour pan 12-cup Bundt pan. Sprinkle nuts on bottom of pan. Combine all cake ingredients. Beat for 2 minutes on high with electric mixer. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool in pan. Invert on serving plate. Prick top with fork. Drizzle glaze over top of Bacardi Rum Cake. Use brush or spoon to put extra dripping back on cake.

Glaze: Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in water and sugar. Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in rum. Note: The rum will cause steam. Be careful not to burn yourself.

There is an art to planning a menu for a great dinner party.  It can be more doable when each guest is given a recipe to make and bring to share.  Of course, these have to be good friends in order for you to feel alright about assigning them a recipe versus telling them to bring a salad so this is more of a Gourmet club style dinner.  This Rustic Italian menu was very well planned not only because each recipe fit well with the theme but because each recipe was recommended fairly well by online reviews.  One of our friends even made his dish the week before to test it out. Then he perfected the dish he made for our dinner night, seriously impressive!

We made the Rustic Nectarine and Blackberry Crostata with Cornmeal Crust and we served it with ice cream and apple brandy (as an after dinner drink).  This is a great dessert and we non-bakers even pulled it off!

Rustic Italian Dinner Party Menu:

Appetizer: Olives & Classic Tuscan Flatbread w/ Olive Oil & Balsamic

• Brussels Sprout-Leaf Salad Recipe
  

• Classic Tuscan Flatbread Recipe
  

• Northern Italian Caponata with Potatoes Recipe (This was one of my favorite dishes of the evening – some said it was a bit spicy)
  

• Penne with Cauliflower: Penne con Cavolofiore Recipe (Try using Canned Tomatoes instead of fresh for a little more flavor)
  

• Oven-Braised Lamb with Greens: Cutturiedde Recipe
  

• Rustic Nectarine and Blackberry Crostata with Cornmeal Crust Recipe
  

• Gayle’s Princess Cake Three layers of vanilla genoise cake ~ layers of pastry cream, raspberry jam & whipped cream inside ~ pastel marzipan shell outside ~ sprinkled with powdered sugar ~ topped with a fresh rose.

• Get Creative: Garnish is just a sliver of carrot with parsley as the carrot top.

• Make this recipe into cupcakes for Easter! That is what I am going to do along with a Create-your-Own Deviled Egg Bar for guests to make their own.

This is an impressive recipe because of the combination of the lime flavor and the moist carrot cake.  Either I dined with polite folks or they really liked this cake and wanted the recipe.  This sparked a conversation about cooks who don’t like to share their recipes.  I told them it was fine with me to share this carrot cake recipe because Jamie Oliver had shared it with me!

Jamie Oliver and Sunset Magazine are two that I trust for solid recipes that will succeed on the first try!

Carrot Cake with Lime Mascarpone Icing Recipe from Jamie Oliver

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups light brown soft sugar
• 5 large free-range or organic eggs, separated
• zest and juice of 1 orange
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 1 1/2 cups self-rising flour, sifted
• 1 slightly heaped teaspoon baking powder
• 4oz shelled walnuts, chopped, plus a handful for serving
• 1 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon
• a pinch of ground cloves
• a pinch of ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 10oz carrots, peeled and coarsely grated sea salt

For the lime mascarpone icing:

• 4oz mascarpone cheese
• 8oz full-fat cream cheese
• 1 scant cup powdered sugar, sifted
• zest and juice of 2 limes

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and line a 9 inch square cake pan or a round equivalent with wax paper. Beat the butter and sugar together by hand or in a food processor until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one by one, and add the orange zest and juice. Stir in the sifted flour and baking powder, and add the ground almonds, walnuts, spices and grated carrot and mix together well.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff, then gently fold them into the cake mix. Scoop the batter into the prepared cake and cook in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes until golden and risen. You can check to see if the cake is cooked by poking a toothpick into it. Remove it after 5 seconds and if it comes out clean the cake is cooked; if slightly sticky it needs a bit longer, so put it back in the oven. Leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out on to a rack and leave for at least an hour.

Mix all the icing ingredients together and spread generously over the top of the cake. Finish off with a sprinkling of chopped walnuts.

* For Cupcakes, you must seriously alter the baking time.  I did 10 minutes at 400F and then turned down the oven to 350F for about 10-12 minutes more.

After frequenting great, creative ice cream shops across the country such as Jeni’s in Columbus, OH, Sweet Action in Denver, and Humphrey Slocombe in SF we are so glad to have The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz and we look forward to evolving with them.

The Penny Ice Creamery is a great addition to the very limited Santa Cruz-specific ice cream scene.  Yes, we have Dairy Queen, Cold Stone Creamery, and numerous frozen yogurt shops (I feel embarrassed for even mentioning those at all in the same article) in SC but there is really only one other ice cream shop that is worth writing home about (there is another in downtown SC that I haven’t tried yet).  This of course is the fifty-year old landmark ice cream shop near the boardwalk known as Marianne’s (Macapuno: Creamy baby coconut ice cream is a great flavor).  The Penny is a nice contrast to the famous standard Marianne’s and is completely an artisan shop, home-made and seasonal from scratch.  They currently use about 2,000 organic eggs a week and organic milk in contrast to most ice cream base which is actually almost always purchased from an outside source (there may only be one other ice creamery in CA that makes their own base as well – Sweet rose in Brentwood – don’t quote me on that).  Their flavors are more and more intriguing to me each time I stop in the shop (5 Spice with Fried Peanuts, Banana Toffee, Kiwi Sorbet).  Flavors often incorporate other great local goods such as coffee from Verve and Santa Cruz Mountain Stout.  Online and on facebook you can check out their daily menu of flavors (a flavor is around no longer than six days but usually lasts 4 days) which means they can offer creative and new concoctions all the time and then once you find one you love … let’s hope they bring it back.  They even make their own cones!  I am looking forward to some creative sundaes in the future (such as the seasonal classic Spice Tower from Graeter’s Ice Cream).

The chef and co-owner, Kendra, has been a pastry chef for ten years and worked as a Pastry Chef at Manresa in Los Gatos and Bar Tartine in SF before opening Penny Ice Creamery last year.

In addition, The Penny owners were recently in the news for being personally invited to the White House for making a video entitled “How Recovery Act boosted small biz, an ice cream case study”:

• SJ Mercury News: “Penny Ice Creamery owners take in the State of the Union speech, in person.”

The balsamic glaze looks like chocolate syrup and the cheese is a bit disguised amongst the fruit and ice cream in this recipe.  The disguised ingredients make this dessert feel like a new discovery for the palette!

Grilled Fruit Kabobs with Balsamic Glaze and Manchego Recipe

• 1  cup  Zinfandel wine or balsamic vinegar
• 1  tablespoon  dark brown sugar
• 2  firm ripe peaches, halved and pitted
• 2  firm ripe apricots, halved and pitted
• 2  firm ripe plums, halved and pitted * we used blackberries instead of plums
• 1  tablespoon  extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste
• 1  ounce  Manchego cheese, shaved or a harder goat’s milk cheese

Soak your skewers in water first so that they do not burn when you grill the kabobs. Prep the grill and heat to medium-high.

In a saucepan combine the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar and bring to a boil then simmer for 25-30 minutes (making sure you do not burn it) or until it is reduced to 3 Tablespoons.

Slice the fruits in half and cut the cheese into decent size cubes and put one of each on a skewer.  Then brush the olive oil onto the fruit and season with salt and pepper.  Grill the kabobs for 1 minute on each side.

Serve Kabobs with vanilla ice cream with the balsamic glaze drizzled on top.

What you will need for your Cast Iron Dessert Crisp with any fruit combination:

• Cast Iron Skillet
• Any Fruit (Strawberries)
• Other pantry items: brown sugar, sugar, flour, butter, almonds (optional), lemon or orange zest (optional)

Various Seasonal Fruit Combinations:

• Strawberry-Rhubarb
• Blueberry-Nectarine
• Apple-Quince
• Plum & Peach
• Triple Berry
• Cranberry-Apple
• Blueberry-Peach
• Cranberry-Apple-Pear

Blueberry-Nectarine Crisp Recipe

Recipe from Vegetarian Fresh Food Fast Cookbook

• 4 ripe nectarines, halved, pitted, and cut into 1/2″ slices
• 1 pint blueberries
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• Finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon (if you don’t have a lemon, use orange zest)
• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Vanilla ice cream for serving

1. Set a rack in the bottom third of oven and preheat to 425F
2. In a medium bowl, toss the nectarines with the blueberries, brown sugar, and lemon zest.
3. In another medium bowl, combine the flour, butter, and sugar and with your fingers, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the flour has absorbed most of it. Stir in the almonds.
4. Transfer the fruit mixture to the large ovenproof skillet. Spread the flour mixture over the fruit. Place the skillet over high heat and cook until the fruit begins to bubble. Transfer the pan to the oven and bake until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling and tender, about 2o minutes.
5. Allow the crisp to cool slightly and serve with ice cream.

I used mangos and blueberries.  The mango flavor was very muted.

For this dessert, start at least two days before you want to server it!  AND, don’t take it to a friend’s home who has a freezer powered by solar.  You need a normal to powerful freezer to freeze the dessert properly or should I say thoroughly.   So basically, I wouldn’t recommend ice cream cake, where you make the ice cream yourself for the dessert,  without a few days to prep it to make sure it’s a “solid” dessert for the party.

This is a whammy of a labor-intensive dessert because you will be making the ice cream, with your ice cream maker, and create the cake part too. However, the flavors in this dessert are worth the work because it is a unique flavor combo!  Thanks ReadyMade magazine for your creative Spice Cream Recipes!

Tips for making Ice Cream & Ice Cream Cake:

• Freeze your ice cream maker bowl at least 24 hours beforehand, if not sooner. I’ve made this mistake too many times.
• Test your ice cream maker with a simple ice cream first.  The reason for this is that there is room for error with how well your ice cream maker operates and how frozen your ice cream bowl must be to work well.  Always store the ice cream bowl in a cool area and freeze it as it is standing right side up.
• Start the dessert even a few days (2-3 days) ahead of time and freeze the ice cream overnight and the cake for a decent amount of time as well once you have loaded it with the ice cream.

Brown Sugar & Spiced Banana Ice Cream Recipe

Sweet but mellow, bananas play well with spices. Together, they turn plain vanilla into a spice-enlightened taste adventure, particularly in this delightful variation on the classic Bananas Foster.

Makes: about 1½ quarts

1 medium ripe banana
¼ c plus 1¾ c whole milk
½ c plus ½ c firmly packed brown sugar (light or dark)
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground cardamom
1 t ground nutmeg
? t salt
4 large egg yolks
2 c whipping cream
1 t vanilla

1. Puree the banana and ¼ cup of the milk in a food processor until smooth.

2. Combine the banana puree, the remaining 1¾ cups milk, ½ cup brown sugar, the cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, and salt in a medium-size heavy saucepan. Scald the milk mixture (heat nearly to a boil) over medium-high heat, stirring often, for 5 minutes.

3. While the milk is scalding, whisk together the egg yolks in a medium mixing bowl. Add the remaining ½ cup brown sugar and whisk until the eggs are light and fluffy. Whisking constantly, add a small amount of the hot milk to the egg mixture (to temper the eggs). Gradually whisk in the remaining hot milk.

4. Return the custard mixture to the pan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring often, until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and place in a bowl of ice water to quickly cool the custard. Let the custard cool, stirring often, for 5 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, combine cream and vanilla in a medium bowl. Stir in the custard mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and press wrap directly onto the surface of the custard. Refrigerate until completely chilled, at least 4 hours or overnight. The custard may be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

6. Freeze the chilled custard mixture in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer ice cream to an airtight container and place in the freezer for 2 to 4 hours before serving.

To Make: Banana Split Ice Cream Cake Recipe

Stick a fork into the rich brownie-like base of this updated take on a banana split. Yes, you can have your cake and lick it, too.

Makes: an 8-inch-square cake

6 oz semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
4 T (½ stick) unsalted butter
2 eggs
½ c sugar
1 T vanilla
¼ t salt
2 T all-purpose flour
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground coriander
3 c Brown Sugar and Spiced Banana Ice Cream (above), slightly softened

Chocolate sauce, whipped cream, candied nuts, and cherries to top

1. Preheat the oven to 300?F. Melt the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler over medium heat, stirring continually, until smooth. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Pour the melted chocolate into the egg mixture and whisk until smooth. Add the flour, cinnamon, and coriander and whisk until just combined.

2. Grease and flour an 8-inch-square baking pan. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool completely.

3. Spread the ice cream evenly over the cake. Cover the cake and freeze for at least 4 hours or overnight. Remove the cake from the freezer and cut it into squares. Serve each ice cream cake square topped with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, candied nuts, and a cherry.

This cake was moist and delicious. It was sort of a cross between pound cake and angel food cake.  We loved it and served it with a Santa Cruz classic Marianne’s Ice Cream (bittersweet chocolate ice cream) for Mother’s Day.

Portuguese Orange-Olive Oil Cake Recipe
by David Leite
from The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe’s Western Coast Cookbook
(Clarkson Potter, 2009)
Serves 10 to 12

TIPS from LeitesCulinaria.com: Make sure to use a light-colored Bundt pan. A dark one will turn out a cake that sticks and is unpleasantly brown. Since this cake only gets better with age, don’t even think about taking a bite until the day after you make it, or even the day after that.

My TIP: My mom said that when she made this recipe the cake was a dry and almost cornmeal-like cake. When I made it I cut all of the ingredient portions in half and made it with a dark-colored Bundt pan.  It turned out a bit moist. We served it with bittersweet chocolate ice cream with orange zest on top.

Ingredients

Nonstick baking spray with flour
4 to 5 large navel oranges
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 3/4 teaspoons kosher salt
5 large eggs
3 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups mild extra-virgin olive oil
Confectioners’ sugar, for sprinkling

Method
1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven, remove any racks above, and crank up the heat to 350°F (175°C). Coat a 12-cup Bundt or tube pan with baking spray and set aside.

2. Finely grate the zest of 3 of the oranges, then squeeze 4 of them. You should have 1 1/2 cups of juice; if not, squeeze the 5th orange. Set aside.

3. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and set aside.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a handheld mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs on medium-high speed until well-combined, about 1 minute. Slowly pour in the granulated sugar and continue beating until thick and pale yellow, about 3 minutes. On low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and oil, starting and ending with the flour, and beat until just a few wisps of flour remain. Pour in the orange juice and zest and whirl for a few seconds to bring the batter together.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a cake tester comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it, about 1 1/4 hours. If the top is browning too much as the cake bakes, cover lightly with foil. Transfer to a wire rack and cool for 15 minutes.

6. Turn the cake out onto the rack and cool completely, then place it in a covered cake stand and let it sit overnight. Just before serving, dust with powdered sugar.

Youtube video of this Recipe being prepared: http://leitesculinaria.com/20321/recipes-portuguese-orange-olive-oil-cake.html

A high-class pop tart from Big Sur Bakery and a local artisanal jam inspired me to try this Bon Appetit Strawberry Pop Tarts recipe!  Our uncle was working on a Northern California hand-crafted artisanal food show and picked up some great jam from Blue Chair Fruit up in the East Bay and I decided it was the perfect jam for the job.

You can use any jam for this recipe from homemade marmalade to a farmer’s market local jam favorite.  We used Blue Chair Fruit, Aprium-Orange Jam.

Everybody oohhh’d and ahhhh’d over these buttery, sinful desserts.  It made sense because they were essentially a flaky, buttery sugar cookie/biscuit recipe with sugary, fruity jam inside.

You can even see the step-by-step instructions on BonAppetit.com “How to Make a Pop Tart!”

Preparation