I’ve toured enough strawberry fields and interviewed enough growers in my lifetime to realize this: sometimes strawberries blow your mind and sometimes strawberries leave you with that “meh” feeling. And the difference isn’t something you spot visually – sometimes even the most anemic-looking berries can pack a flavor punch while large beautiful red ones can leave you wanting more.

While it’s true that strawberries can grow year round here in California it doesn’t always mean they taste great. For the record I’m not a snob and will buy berries all year long if needed but it doesn’t always make me happy. But you know what makes me happy? When things are in season, when berries taste like berries and not flavored lipstick, and just a simple preparation is enough to seal the deal.

Strawberry Shortcake is one of my favorite desserts. It’s perfect really. A small cake or biscuit, strawberries, some syrup and whipped cream. What is not to love? But like most desserts the quality of the ingredients is paramount. No amount of perfect strawberries can save a hockey puck and why go through the trouble of creating a perfect biscuit if you only top it with substandard berries? It’s just not worth it.

My friend Elise wrote about this recipe a few years ago and we only recently tried it. One dessert became two. Two became three. Three became four and over this past weekend I was appalled that my diet consisted of a few pounds of strawberries from the farmers’ market and these biscuits with slightly-sweetened whipped cream. I couldn’t help myself, really. Perfect biscuits, slightly sweetened with a scone-like density, did me in. Or was it the strawberries, perfectly sweet with the right about of tart zing? Wait, it could have been the whipped cream, something I’m a sucker for on just about anything. Whatever it was, this dessert is now officially my most.favorite.thing.ever because it’s not too sweet and it’s just right.

Strawberry Shortcake

Kindly reprinted from Simply Recipes (and adapted from Fine Cooking) because I begged Elise if I could once I tried it. Make this and you’ll understand why.

For the strawberries and the whipping cream

3 baskets of fresh strawberries. Make sure they are the best you can use!
1/2 cup sugar
Whipping cream
Vanilla

Remove the stems from the strawberries. Slice into thin (1/4″ to 1/8″) slices. Put into a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of sugar (depending on how sweet the strawberries are to begin with) and mix into the strawberries. Set aside at room temperature to macerate. After 20 minutes, gently mash the strawberries with a potato masher.  Go easy, you only want to bring out the juices and not crush the berries.

Whip the cream, adding a drop or two of vanilla and a teaspoon of sugar.

To serve, break one biscuit into big pieces and ladle strawberries on top. Add a dollop of whipped cream and a drizzle of the strawberry liquid if desired.

For the biscuits

3 cups all purpose flour
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
12 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl. Toss with a fork to combine. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or a fork until the largest pieces of butter are the size of peas. (Or pulse several times in a food processor.) Combine the cream and vanilla in a liquid measure. Make a well in the center of the flour and and pour the cream mixture into the well. Mix with a fork until the dough is evenly moistened and just combined; it should look shaggy and still feel a little dry. Gently knead by hand five or six times to create a loose ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat it into an 8-inch square, 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Transfer the dough to a baking sheet lined with parchment or silpat, cover with plastic and chill for 20 minutes in the refrigerator. Heat the oven to 425ºF. Remove the dough from refrigerator. Cut the dough into 9 even squares and spread them about 2 inches apart from each other on the baking sheet. Bake until the biscuits are medium golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes.

Makes 9 biscuits. (Adapted from Fine Cooking Magazine, July 2003)

Oh Chocotorta, how I love you!

I learned of Chocotortas during our last visit to Buenos Aires from Maricela from Pip In The City. I met her through blogging and we immediately fell in love with her gracious hospitality. We had brunch at Olsen, walked around Buenos Aires, and invited her over to our room at Home Hotel for a small party. She brought a chocotorta, a very simple no-bake layered “cake” consisting of chocolate cookies, dulce de leche and cream cheese. Did you get that folks? Cookies, dulce de leche and cream cheese? Needless to say this cake––a favorite of kids and mothers-who-cannot-bake––disappeared in a matter of minutes. Scratch that. Seconds.

“It’s the recipe moms make when they can’t bake. You cannot mess it up” she told me.

Now that really sounds like my kind of dessert. Excluding my adapted alfajores which I have mastered and a few cakes and cookies, I’m still trying to understand baking. When a cake recipe doesn’t require an oven you better believe I’m gonna try that first. Or at least nudge the hubby to try it.

Ok, so here’s the deal. I didn’t seek out to adultify this Argentine dessert. I’m not one of those people who needs to dress something up and make it cute. Nor did I mean to defile or fancy something that was just fine as it was. Because it’s delicious and fun and quick and easy. But after a few emails with Marcela to double check some chocotorta facts it became clear that some macgyvering would be required on my end. I had most of the ingredients for the chocotorta on hand as we stocked up at the supermercado in Buenos Aires but realized I’d be missing one of the filling ingredients. She recommended adapting the recipe and after a quick consultation with my food-styling better half we decided on adding cream to the mixture; it’d be too thick otherwise.

“I have another idea as well. Let’s add booze,” Adam said. In an effort to include more alcoholic beverages to my diet I agreed. Before long Adam was reaching for Kahlua, hazelnuts and a baking sheet and I knew he’d be adding his own touch to the cake. I moved over. I was not about to stand in his way.

Rather than build the chocotorta in a loaf pan Adam worked his food styling magic by creating little individual stacks of kahlua-soaked cookies layered with the cream cheese and dulce de leche spread. They were topped with an impromptu hazelnut brittle and before long these individual chocotortas were gone. And when I say gone I mean that I ate them all. And I’m not even really a sweetfreak. Or so I think.

Maybe it was the booze?

Chocotorta a la Adam
1 can of dulce de leche
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 package (8 oz) cream cheese
chocolate cookies, see note
1/2 cup Kahlua coffee liqueur

For The Brittle
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon water
squeeze of lemon juice
1/2 cup hazelnuts, whole

About the Cookies: We used a brand we brought back from Argentina that are thin, square and not overly sweet. You could use just about any cookie provided it’s the biscuit type and not a big honkin’ sweet one.

Dulce de leche filling:
Beat the cream until soft peaks form. Add cream cheese, dulce de leche and whisk until smooth. You want a very light consistency, quite different from the super thick viscosity of regular dulce de leche.

Hazelnut Brittle:
Grease a cookie sheet. In a skillet cook the sugar, water and lemon juice on high heat until amber in color, remove from the heat and mix in the hazelnuts. Pour the hazelnut mixture onto greased cookie sheets to cool, making sure to spread out the nuts to create individually coated nuts that you can use as garnish. Crumble a few of them to top the chocotorta.

Assembly:
Dunk the cookies in the coffee liqueur, and dunk liberally!  Once soaked pipe the filling in between the cookie layers. You don’t have to do beautiful baby dollops like the photo, you can just use a plastic baggie with the corner cut off to pipe the filling on top. Kind of like a s’more. Once layered repeat until you have a nice little stack. Give them a little time to set as this allows the cookie to become even softer from the Kahlua which makes it a bit easier to eat. Top with crumbled candied hazelnuts.

Because this is a no-bake recipe you don’t need to be exact. Taste along the way, just be careful with the brittle part of the recipe. I have no idea how many this yields because I was too busy eating along the way. And if by chance you oversoak and your cookies become mush (which did not happen to me but I suppose it could), well, tough. It’s still gonna taste good.

I find it difficult to believe that it’s been exactly one year to the day that I appeared on the Martha Stewart Show. I made my version of alfajores with her, a recipe I make well and still get asked about regularly. In the past twelve months I’ve done some pretty groovy stuff and even headed back to Argentina where I got lost in the Dulce De Leche aisle of various supermarkets. But you know what I haven’t done much of in a year?

Bake.

And that makes me sad. But I only have myself to blame.

I’ve made tons of jokes about my lack of baking skills. Don’t get me wrong, I know my way around the kitchen and cook regularly and I can eat sweets and pastries with the best of ‘em. But when one of your sexiest, speedo-wearing pals is an accomplished baker and writer, well, you tend not to tread into that area much. And I find it’s much easier to blame him than own up to the fact that I am an impatient baker, an inexact baker, a sloppy baker, all the qualities you mustn’t have when baking.

Another reason is that my husband, a man so particular and exact, wears the baking hat in our family. When you are paid to make food look its best for others you tend to pay attention to minute details, another quality a baker must possess.  Me? If I can’t see it and keep an eye on it I forget about it. There are plenty of burnt muffins and cookies in my past to prove my point. Conversely, I can show you some amazing sauces, grilled items and sautés made under my watch, thankyouverymuch.

I’ve made a promise to myself to bake more, to rely less on instinct and more on precision. I aspire to be like my girl Kristina who actually sets Saturdays and Sundays aside to bake, when she’s not traveling or offering me advice. I want to be like my friend Jerri back in Austin (Wade, Bobby, remember her?) who never showed up without a tray of something she baked with pounds and pounds of love. I want to be like my friends who toss around baking measurements and terms with the greatest of ease during a casual conversation.

I simply must bake more.

A few days ago I decided to force myself away from the computer and into the kitchen to make something, anything. I remembered a  simple slice of olive oil cake I had a few years ago, quite humble in its sweetness and free from all the fuss of layers and toppings. The memory stayed with me for a long time as it reminded me of the pan dulce I grew up eating. Pan dulce, or Mexican sweet breads, are the various pastries and cakes you see in Panaderias. They’re not very sweet, a fact that I can appreciate as an adult but something I absolutely detested as a child. Funny how things change over time, no?

I settled on a recipe from Saveur. Their version, inspired by a visit to the Valpolicella region of Italy, would be my selection. I was thiiiiis close to trying Mark Bittman’s recipe but felt like being lazy and wanted to skip the glazing step and go for a light sprinkle of powered sugar. That’ll be my next try as I promise to bake more, follow directions and take time to pay attention to the rules and measurements. Life isn’t always about guesswork. I guess.

Olive Oil Cake from Saveur Magazine

The fine folks at Saveur suggest using a cake pan and ramekin combo to bake in; I skipped the extra step and just went with a bundt pan. Worked for me.

1 tablespoon butter for greasing
3 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour
4 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1/4 teaspoon lemon zest
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (use a high quality oil here, it matters!)
2/3 cup milk
3 tablespoons Grand Marnier or other citrus-flavored liqueur (Matt’s notes: with no Grand Marnier on hand I used a smaller amount of amaretto liquer. While I gave up some citrus notes it was still wonderful to have those hints of amaretto)
1 tablespoon baking powder

1. Preheat oven to 325°. Grease an 11-cup bundt pan with butter and dust with flour. Set prepared pan aside.

2. Beat eggs and sugar together in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale yellow, about 1 minute. Add remaining 3 cups flour, lemon zest, oil, milk, and liqueur and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add baking powder and stir until thoroughly combined.

3. Spoon batter into bundt pan and smooth out top with the back of the spoon. Bake until cake is deep golden brown and a wooden skewer inserted in center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Transfer cake to a wire rack to let cool completely, in its pan.

I certainly plan on making this again, I love these types of cakes. Do you have any favorite Olive Oil cake recipes I should try?  Let me know!

Even though I take all those silly self portraits of me doing absolutely nothing and blog about trips to pretty places I am not much of the relaxing type of guy. I’m actually quite the opposite and find myself nervous or antsy when I’m sitting still. The thought of midday naps freak me out and stopping to sit down for tea or coffee in the afternoon is a luxury I rarely allow myself. Even if I had the time I’d still feel like I was missing something or that something terrible would happen because I wasn’t working working working working working.

Yea, I have issues. I know this.

But I’m trying to grow and slow down just a little bit.

When I got home the other day after I was greeted by Adam clanking away in the kitchen. He had the urge to bake and it’s an urge I completely encourage. Who doesn’t like fresh baked anything the second they walk in the door? But I had a chunk of editing to do and had to submit some images to the magazine I was working for that day before running to Fed Ex to send out a package.

“Taste this,” Adam said.

“I will, but I’ve got to send some jpgs out right now and get a disk out and — ” I blurted out.

“Stop. Just stop for a moment and taste this.”

I guess I needed someone to slap me back into reality.

I took a seat and joined a small tray of cookies that appeared to be waiting for someone to eat. They were beautiful little cookies in the shape of ridged fingers with a faint glaze that was only visible when the light hit the surface at a certain angle. Next to this tray of cookies was a cup of tea, both waiting to be claimed.

I took a bite of this little crunchy fella, then a sip of tea, and then another bite. I picked up another cookie, savoring its vanillaness before moving on to a third and forth. The tea was delightful but I soon realized that for a brief moment in time I was doing nothing but enjoying a cookie and a glass of tea. In the middle of the day, no less. I felt like Divine in “Hairspray” when she said “Broad daylight and I’m sittin’ in front of a TV!” but with just a little less makeup.

I’m happy to say that unlike the cookie my day did not crumble and fall apart from taking a moment to do nothing. My images made it to the photo editor in plenty of time and next time I might just take another tea and cookie break. Why not?

Vanilla Bean Lemon Straws

Martha’s Vanilla Malted Cookies were the starting point for Adam’s cookies. He created them as a companion to a drink he was working on but graciously let me blog and photograph them. You see, if he hadn’t I would have just done the thing I always do when I want to annoy people: I begin talking. And then I talk and talk about stuff and keep going until the person gives in. I’m the most annoying person like that and legend has it that my mom used to bribe family members into taking me somewhere, anywhere, because at age 3 I was already speaking like an adult and would not shut up. I guess I had something to say. Good thing I started a blog.

COOKIES:
3 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup of sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
4 oz  cream cheese, room temperature
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons milk

GLAZE:
1 cup powered sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons water
zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 vanilla bean split and scraped
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven at 350˚ F.

With a pencil and a ruler mark out the placement of the cookies on your parchment paper. Each cookie should be about 2 inches and place 2 inches apart. Remember to turn parchment paper over with pencil markings face down before you pipe your cookies.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In a stand mixer cream butter and cream cheese together on medium, add sugar and  vanilla seeds and continue mixing till fluffy.  With mixer on low add the egg,vanilla extract and milk until combined. Remain on low speed and add the flour mixture, mix well until incorporated. This is a stiff cookie dough.

Use a heavy duty pastry bag and fit it with a 1/2-inch star tip. Fill the bag about 1/4 full, it will give you better control of the dough. Pipe the cookies onto parchment lined cookie sheets following the tracing for equally spaced cookie. Continue to fill the bag and pipe cookies.

Bake in a preheated oven 15-18 minutes until the bottoms are golden brown. You will see this on the edges first.  Remember to rotate cookie sheets halfway through. Move to wire cooling racks and cool on cookie sheets till completely cool.

For Glaze: Combine all ingredients, stirring well, glaze should be quite thin. Dunk each cookie in glaze top side down and place on cooling rack to dry.

Store covered at room temperature for about a week.

Hi! If you're here because of Martha's blogging show on today that originally aired in September than I say thank you and happy new year! If you're looking for the cookie recipe it's right here. Thanks!