Triple Chocolate Trifle With Raspberries

Comfort in Layers of Chocolate
By MELISSA CLARK

MY parents love to tell the story of me and the bowl of schlag (whipped cream) at Demel coffeehouse in Vienna. I was a toddler, the tale goes, held in my mother’s arms in front of the pastry counter, when I pitched myself forward, diving into a bowl of said schlag. I made it up to my wrists before being caught, but after licking the white fluff from my fingers, I apparently spent the rest of the day ecstatic.

I can’t say I remember it. Though, given my predilection for anything creamy, it seems likely that it happened. And it might explain why giant bowls of whipped cream — preferably hiding a layer of rich pudding underneath — still make me weak in the knees.

Of the multitude of possibilities involving pudding topped with whipped cream, the queen of them all is trifle. With its layers of cake, sherry, custard and whipped cream, trifle is more than just pudding. It’s a grand dessert, a celebration unto itself in a cut crystal bowl. A genuine crowd-pleaser, it can be assembled days in advance, making it an ideal dessert for a holiday party. More

Recipe: Triple Chocolate Trifle With Raspberries

( Read more... )

Fruitcake Takes a Caribbean Holiday

Fruitcake Takes a Caribbean Holiday
By JULIA MOSKIN

WHEN a man in a hairnet beckons, who can resist?

“Come in back — we can’t talk here,” said Steve Cabral, a baker at Taste the Tropics in Brooklyn, rolling his eyes at two customers innocently eating currant rolls. “All these ladies will want to say their thing.”

I had wandered into the Flatbush bakery in search of black cake, a spicy, fragrant fruitcake steeped in dark rum and tradition that is a Christmas classic throughout the English-speaking Caribbean.

Rivalries among the islands are not always friendly, especially when it comes to cricket and music, but the question of who makes the best black cake is resolved in time-honored fashion.

“One from Grenada, she say one way, one from St. Lucia, she say another way,” Mr. Cabral said in the cadences of his native St. Vincent. “Let me tell you how my mother do it — the culture culture culture way.”

In New York at Christmastime, black cake is everywhere, but don’t look for it at Dean & DeLuca or Payard Pâtisserie. The Jamaican Dutchy food truck on West 51st Street, which normally traffics in jerk chicken for Midtown office workers, is taking orders for it; the clerk at the store where I bought Passover wine and dark rum immediately guessed what I was baking and advised the addition of cranberries; an off-duty Metropolitan Transportation Authority employee overheard me discussing the fine points on the subway, and chimed in with his mother’s advice on cooking the fruit to tenderize it.

Although black cake is descended from the British plum pudding, for Caribbean-born New Yorkers and their children, who number more than half a million, it evokes nostalgia for the islands, where the baking was a solemnly observed annual ritual. More

Recipe: Black Cake

Appetizers?

101 Simple Appetizers in 20 Minutes or Less
By MARK BITTMAN

YOU want good food at a holiday cocktail party and you want to impress people? You don’t want a caterer, you refuse to heat up frozen food, and you want to show that your expertise extends beyond buying perfectly ripe hunks of cheese and juicy olives? Then think about doing some cooking.

Here is a collection of party foods that are as easy to eat as they are to make. Each can be produced in 20 minutes or less. Many can be served at room temperature. And none require a plate. (Few people can juggle plate, wineglass and fork successfully, let alone gracefully.)

Most of these recipes are beyond minimalist: they never do in two steps what can be done in one, and they need no embellishment. As you scan these recipes for ideas, mostly think this: The ones you find most appealing are the ones your guests will like. Choose a few, spend an hour or two in the kitchen, and you’ll be in great shape. More

In the Kitchen of Long Ago, With Grandma

In the Kitchen of Long Ago, With Grandma
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

THE daughter of an interfaith marriage, I chose Judaism, but Christmas cookies chose me.

Every season I plow through cooking magazines, quiz friends about their baking plans and frantically upend a greasy manila recipe folder for the instructions for the chocolate gingersnaps that require more chopping than the average mirepoix.

This year I reconsidered the cookies of my youth, baked each Christmas by my grandmother. I had neglected those recipes in recent years, just as I had tossed aside her copper Jell-O molds and recipes for hot chicken salad. I had become the sort of person who puts curry paste in the Thanksgiving sweet potatoes.

But Isabelle Steinhauer set the standard for holiday cookies. For decades, she turned out between 15 and 20 varieties each season: cream cheese wreaths shot from a cookie press; papery wafers carefully dipped in colored sugar; elaborate cutout cookies of nursery rhyme characters, their eyes fashioned from metallic dragées that the F.D.A. has written off as inedible; all manner of confections with nuts. More

Recipe: Gingerbread Boys
Recipe: White Bark Balls
Recipe: Royal Fans

Cheney's Tail?

Did it slip out and start the fire or did they get a new missal from their overlords in Hell?

On the Repugs we got

I am in favor of returning in kind to the Republicans the exactmeasure of civility that was shown the Democrats for the first six years of the Bush administration. I shall pop corn and enjoy the spectacle as they whine like little bitches. They simply must be punished - severely - for their obstructionist ways that serve no purpose save willful obstreperousness and the indulgence of an innate,congenital meanness.

Do you really think these jackals would have dared be such feckless fucks if Nixon had done some time in prison? Time to reset the law & order pins. More

Feckless Fucks -- Yes, it speaks to me...

Through the Looking Glass

But recovering clear thought is easy. Just remember: whatever the conservatives tell you about any issue, they are telling you -- in the most literal and concrete way possible --something essential about themselves. And you can take that information as gospel. After all, nobody knows them like they do. Here's how this works:

When conservatives tell us that we need constant surveillance to make us secure, what they're telling us is that they themselves are prone to criminal behavior if they think nobody else is watching. The fear of exposure is the only force keeping them on the right side of the law -- and that's why it's the only form of "security" they understand. Bear this in mind if you decide to do business with them.

When they tell us that our future depends on supporting a military that's bigger than the rest of the world's fighting forces combined, what they're telling us is that they can't handle chaos, complexity, change, or being out of control. The whole world is a threat; the only solution is a bigger gun. Bear this in mind if you find yourself in conflict with them.

When they tell us diplomacy isn't an option, they're telling us that it's not an option they understand. Words, agreements, treaties, and contracts mean nothing to them. Brute force is the only option they comprehend...or are likely to respond to themselves. Bear this in mind before you negotiate with them.

When they tell us that homosexuality is a threat to American families, what they're telling us is that homosexuality is a threat to their families. As in: if they ever dared to admit their own sexual interest in other men, their wives would leave them, and take the kids. Bear this in mind when they hold themselves up as moral paragons.

When they tell us the Islamofascists are a threat to our way of life, they are quite correctly pointing out that there are fascists threatening our way of life. They're just deflecting their own intentions on to brown people far away. Bear this in mind before assuming they share your belief in constitutional democracy.

When they accuse reality-based folks of promoting "junk science," they're telling us they basically think all science is junk. Bear this in mind before attempting to present them with convincing evidence of anything.

When they tell us to support the troops, what they're really saying is: You better, because we won't. Bear this in mind when you evaluate the real costs of the war.

When they tell us the government can't be trusted, they're telling us they can't be trusted to govern. Bear this in mind every time you step into a voting booth. Sara

Stolen from davidschroth and madtruk.