I hope you enjoy baking and eating these desserts and I would love to hear about your kitchen adventures. Please bear with me as I work on the website. Some of the recipes were developed for the site, while others were taken from various books I have written over the years or other projects that I have worked on.
This doughnut features a sticky, crunchy topping combining caramel and pecans with a nice hit of bourbon.
Usng both chocolate and Dutch-processed cocoa provide depth of color and flavor and using oil, as opposed to butter, gave the doughnut springiness.
These ridged strips are made from pate a choux (cream puff) dough, piped out of a pastry bag fitted with a star tip directly into the hot oil.
This ring-shaped yeast-raised doughnut is covered with a thick vanilla frosting
These doughnuts are yeast raised, spongy, and light, yet with a bit of substance to their texture.
Cassata is a classic Sicilian cake often combining a fairly simple sponge cake with fresh ricotta, candied orange peel, liqueur, and shavings of chocolate.
Cocoa, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, and ganache are all combined in one cake ball.
Need a chocolate cake in a hurry? No mixer is required
These are utterly exquisite, if I do say so myself. First you prepare a rich custard, as though you were making a crème brûlée. Once chilled, it is combined with white cake and rolled into balls. After chilling, the balls are dipped in a deeply golden caramelized sugar mixture. Stunning. This is what my pastry […]
This is a very easy frosting and probably the kind you loved when you were a child. It is the most commonly used in home baking and has that nostalgia factor. Confectioners’ sugar–based frostings require a bit of leeway. If the frosting is too thin, add a bit more confectioners’ sugar; if too thick, add […]
Use this white cake recipe as your foundation for any cake ball where you want to start with a tender, white cake base.
If you like chocolate and mint, you have two choices within this book. This cake ball recipe features white chocolate and red and white peppermint candy. You can adjust the strength of the mint filling easily by adding more or less of the peppermint flavoring. Makes about 48 golf ball–size balls 1/2 teaspoon peppermint flavoring, […]
Whether you call them rainbow sprinkles or jimmies (as I do here in New England), you are probably used to seeing these tiny sugar embellishments on top of ice cream cones or cupcakes as decoration. In recent years, they have become very popular baked into white cake batter to create a colorful, speckled effect. Here […]
If you are a fan of salty-sweet combinations, this is the perfect cake ball for you. The inside is moist milk chocolate brownie and milk chocolate ganache. Dip in your choice of chocolate (I use semisweet in the recipe) and then coat with a mixture of pretzels, potato chips, mini chocolate morsels, and caramel corn. […]
Bacon has found its footing in desserts recently, particularly when paired with chocolate. It seems to be part of the salty-sweet craze and works quite nicely with a hit of bourbon when combined with chocolate cake and a milk chocolate ganache. I used Four Roses Single Barrel bourbon while developing the recipe. Its long finish […]
This fine-grained cake is moist, fragrant and a great keeper.
(Image courtesy of Melissa Punch; from The Birthday Cake Book) This is a big, important cake, perfect for significant milestone birthdays. Many of the components—the cake, the buttercream, and the ganache – can be made ahead. This cake elicits “ooohhhs and aahhhs” and once guests taste it they will be clamoring for the recipe. My good friend […]
We all need a few cakes in our repertoire to rely on for special occasions and this one fits the bill. This cake was created for my cousin Rachel Jackson’s high school graduation, but it would work well for important birthdays, anniversaries and other significant times of life. It is elegant, sophisticated and actually improves […]