easy dessert – In Good Taste

Olive Oil Lemon Cake

Maris Callahan — Sun, 08 May 2011 18:44:40 +0000

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I don’t know exactly who “they” are and I certainly don’t have a thousand words to say about this picture. What the pictures in this post do say is that a) olive oil lemon cake is a highly underrated cake and b) I had a difficult time removing this cake from it springform pan. Don’t judge. Normally when I see the words “springform pan” in a recipe I assume it’s a complicated one. I’m not sure why I infer that – maybe because growing up, the only thing I knew that you could make in a springform pan was my grandmother’s cheesecake recipe, which has about nine pounds of cream cheese in it and takes several days to make. No, I never exaggerate, why do you ask? Ever since I posted about pantry basics, I’ve been thinking about making this cake. I actually had it saved on my bookmarks bar and attempted to make it on three different occasions. On one of those occasions I was in the kitchen lining up my ingredients when I realized I was out of lemons. I have hard, hard life. What I’m getting at here, in a […]

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Peach Crumb Bars

Maris Callahan — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:18:29 +0000

Everywhere you look, from the candy aisle at CVS to…well, anything else that tends to overtly display seasonal affection in a commercial manner, you’ll see Fall, Fall and more Fall. Now, this bodes well for me. I like to sleep with my windows open and I glean just enough joy out of a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks for it to be an appropriate small delight as opposed to a pathetic fixation. This also bodes well for the farmers markets and pumpkin farms – everyone is all about apples, squash and gourds from now until Thanksgiving. Finally, it also bodes well for the dental industry (because between caramel apples, maple-flavored everything and pumpkin spice donuts…stop looking at me like that…sweets are abundant and good dental hygiene? Priceless this time of year). I digress. What a season change does not bode well for is summer fruit. While I’m truly not a fan of humidity and triple-digit heat index, I am a fan of fresh berries, stone fruit and melon. Despite the fact that closet is ready for sweaters and I purchased my first squash of the season this Sunday, I’m not quite ready to let go of juicy, slightly overripe summer […]

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Raspberry Breakfast Cake

Maris Callahan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since I started blogging, my mother has taken an invested interest in the Internet. Even though computers have been around for quite some time, I’m sure I’m not the only person from my generation whose parents are…well, how should I say this, less than tech-savvy? In high school, I taught my parents how to text message shortly after I started driving because it was an easier way to communicate. Instead enduring the humiliation of calling after school to say I’d be late, I could send a text, easy-breezy. It was shortly after the Text Message 101 that I started receiving texts such as: “Dear Maris, How are you? Love Dad.” When I went to college I taught my mother how to instant message, a tool she primarily used on Saturday and Sunday mornings when I would get a phone call: “Where are you? How come you haven’t changed your away message since last night?” Now, my mother is on Facebook and knows what it means to follow someone on Twitter. Of course, I still get the occasional can-you-post-these-pictures-to-my-Facebook-wall-because-I-don’t-know-how phone call, but hey, she’s learning. She even reads blogs. Not only does she read blogs, but she spends a significant […]

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A Thanksgiving Tradition: Pumpkin Cranberry Bars

Maris Callahan — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:00:00 +0000

When I was in first grade my class had a “Thanksgiving” celebration in class. Someone brought stuffing, someone brought mashed potatoes and someone brought sliced deli turkey breast for sandwiches. My big contribution was cranberry bread, my earliest baking endeavor and my first addition to the Thanksgiving menu in my house. Every year, I made cranberry bread for Thankgiving, until college, when I started experimenting with recipes like Cranberry Orange Bread (not my exact recipe, but very close) and Harvest Pumpkin Apple Bread. Since Thanksgiving is still months away and I had a can of pumpkin puree sitting in my cabinet mocking me, I decided to try a recipe for Pumpkin Cranberry Bars. They turned out perfect – very moist, thanks to a little extra pumpkin that I added. Since I didn’t have any pumpkin pie spice in the house, I experimented with a little extra nutmeg and freshly ground cinnamon to compensate. I also added about 1/3 cup more cranberries than the recipe called for. I figured, it couldn’t hurt. Save Print Pumpkin Cranberry Bars Author: Maris Callahan Recipe type: Sweet Treats, Holiday Recipes Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 25 mins Total time: 35 mins Serves: 12-16 bars Ingredients Pumpkin […]

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