Fall Dishes Part Two The Sweet Side

 One of the best parts of fall is getting back into the baking groove.The cooler air draws us inside to the warmth of a cozy kitchen.We feel more energized too , ready to rake on rolling out dough and whipping up batters and  frostings>Luckily The New York Times has included some yummy dessert recipes in their fall guide. I'ts time to get baking.

Yesterday we covered the savory side of fall cooking, Now here's the treat  - the sweet side that would make the perfect after for those lush and ribsticking meals. These are perfect for ending a Sunday dinner or on a holiday dessert board. Times regular contributor Tejal Rao adapted  San Francisco chef's Elizabeth Prueitt's sweet potato tea cake with a meringue topping. Serve this instead of the usual sweet potato pie at your Thanksgiving dinner. The cake is made like a spice cake with the sweet potatoes married to a blend of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Brown sugar gives the cake a mellow flavor. wile the addition of orange juice gives it some zing. The meringue is the traditional recipe made with egg white, granulated sugar and vanilla.You could sub in aqua faba or chickpea water for the egg white.Another treat to make that requires no baking is apple jelly.Yewande Komolafe contributed this recipe perfect for the apple picking days ahead. Use Granny Smith, Pink Lady, Jonagold, Braeburn or Honey crisp for this. Lemon and sea salt are added to blnce the sweetness. Homemade croissants or brioches would be perfect for this for breakfast or an afternoon snack.

If you want true decadence then go for Samantha Seneviratne's Mississippi Mud pie. This is a toothsome layering of a buttery graham cracker crust topped with a brownie cake rich with cocoa, , dark chocolate , eggs and more butter. a rich chocolate custard tops this. This is an old fashioned custard made with cornstarch and egg yolks. Processed Dutch cocoa and bittersweet chocolate intensify the flavor.Keep in mind that this is a labor intensive pie. The brownie layers requires whisking the yolks and the eggs separately and melting the butter and dark chocolate in a bowl over a pot of barely similar water.It's baked until the crust is set and the middle is fudgy and moist. You can top this treat with freshly whipped cream for more decadence.Even though it's a savory recipe, Julia Moskin's pretzel recipe  adapted from one from Ann Arbor Michigan's Zingerman Bakehouse could easily be served slathered with jam or honey butter for a dessert.These are laugenbrezeln with lard added to the recipe along with barley malt syrup. If you can';t find the syrup use brown sugar instead. You'll also need food grade dipping lye for the initial dipping before baking,Rubber gloves are also needed for this and you'll need plenty of table space for rolling out the unformed pretzels.

Fall will be here and it's time to get baking. Try a decadent pie or cake or just have a warm pretzel with apple jelly to satisfy your sweet tooth. Any of these are perfect for the cool days ahead.

Heating Up With The Summer Issue

Summer's here and that means one thing: fun food and treats! The New York Times Food section know this and today's issue was dedicated solely to all those summer pleasures. Find out about hot dogs and ice cream sandwiches, pot lucks and picnics. There's also a piece about an night market , full of tasty treats. This is summer at its' delicious best.

Everyone contributed to this keeper issue. Sam Sifton, Melissa Clark and Julia Moskin weighed in bout the best and worst hot dogs, participating in a taste test  to determine what's hot and what's not. This is a boon for hot dog lovers and grillers. The best are the all beef ones, namely Wellshire Farms Premium All Natural Uncured Beef franks and Hebrew National Beef. They also have a guide to label terms to help home chefs navigate towards the best grillers. They explain the difference between cured and uncured, along with the different types of casing. The trio also debunk the phrases old fashioned , premium, signature and classic - all marketing ploys. Ms. Clark also has her column about pot lucks too, perfect go withs for hot dogs. She offers a tomato and zucchini casserole with crisp cheddar topping. This dish will definitely take advantage of  a garden's bounty along with a plethora of such herbs such as mint and marjoram. There also is the extra recipe of pickled deviled eggs, always a fun summer treat. The dinner could end with Samantha Seneviratne's recipe for ice cream sandwiches made with homemade chocolate cake and good quality vanilla ice cream.

New York is known for summery nights and picnics in the park and there are articles on these as well. Tejal Rao goes on a picnic with Marisol and Angel Morales  They're not famous chefs but avid picnickers who love to go to their nearby park, Coffey Park for some tasty eating. Theirs is a mix of restaurant made grilled  chicken served with Ms. Morales  arroz con grandules. Ms. Rao also talked with Marnie Hanel who wrote the book "The Picnic: Recipes And Inspiration From Basket To Blanket . She suggests improvising. No cooler?No problem. Fill a  plastic wagon with ice to keep bottles cool. There's also a recipe for fried chicken  biscuits with hot honey butter.for an outdoor lunch or dinner. New York is also a city that never sleeps during the summer months.  This is true of the Queens Night Market, located where the 1964 World' Fair was held.It's where all sorts of tasty street food is sold. Here visitors can sip chicha morada , the Peruvian drink made form purple corn, pineapple peels, cinnamon and, cloves.  It's  definitely would soothe the heat of fuschka, an Indian semolina shell lined with a mash of yellow peas and chiles, splashed with tamarind..These are from the stand called Jhal NYC. Korean and Bolivian food are also there along with Indonesian  cakes of coconut and rice.Nigerian and Persian food is also represented too.

Summer is here. Enjoy the bounty of the season, whether at a picnic or all night fair. Take advantage of it and enjoy .

Spins On Classic Cakes

Classics are always in need of updating.This applies to almost everything, from main meals to sides to desserts, especially the last.Sometimes it takes a little tweak here and there as seen with snack cakes. Sometimes it takes a complete makeover like turning crepes into cakes.

These two updates were written in yesterday's New York Times Food section.Melissa  Clark wrote about sprucing up the classic snack cake in her A Good Appetite column.. We've all eaten them, whether from Tastikake, Entemann's or home baked.. She creates a more lux one, thanks to the inclusion of pears and a brown butter glaze.It has a moist tender crumb, not unlike banana and pumpkin breads.Instead of baking it in a loaf pan , it's baked in a cake pan, easy for cutting squares. What is great about this recipe is that it can be baked in muffin tins and given extra spice with nutmeg and clove. The icing is optional  if home bakers decide on this. Yet the cake is a  perfect treat, even as a dessert.  What gives it flavor and moisture are the pears.This is the season for them.Use the bigger Anjou kind. Don';t get the  smaller Forell or Seckell pears, These are two small and more intense in flavor than the delicate Anjou. Not only is there flour but also  three quarters of a cup of rolled oats,Toasted walnuts or pecans are also tossed in for crunch although these are optional. Four large eggs are used for body because there's no liquid in it, hence the dense texture. The glaze  is equally mouth watering.It's a marriage of butter and brown sugar combined with heavy cream that creates a kind of caramel. The cake would be perfect at any Sunday dinner or holiday table.

Another classic that's been updated is the crepe.They are good on their own, whether as a savory, filled with chicken or ratatouille or sweet with a filling of ice cream or with butter and sugar. Another regular contributor to the Food section,Samantha Seneviratne creates a chocolate hazelnut  crepe cake. She takes the basic crepe recipe and adds a cup of hazelnut meal. It is richer than a cake  thanks to the inclusion of egg yolks, whole milk and heavy cream. It does have to have body, one to withstand the intense heat of the crepe pan and two able to stand up to the cream.As with any batter it does have to be refrigerated before using, usually between two and forty-eight hours (it's actually easier to make the batter the day before  and spend the next day entirely on the cake's creation). Home bakers don't need a special crepe maker for this. A skillet will do just as well, however remember to use about three tablespoons of batter for each crepe. If there's too much , the result is thick, unwieldy layer. There should be twenty crepes. The chocolate cream is a mix of high quality chocolate (think Valrhona brand) along with good quality cocoa powder (Droste would be the best choice for this) along with milk. Brandy or coffee is added, the choice is up to what flavor is wanted.Stacking it is easy, Lay on the cream then a crepe and stack. The cake is decorated with whipped heavy cream and more hazelnuts.

Classics need to be updated every no and then. As with the snack cake and crepes, the update is a yummy new classic, full of flavor and moisture. They are so good, the original recipes will hardly be missed.

Great Desserts, So So Peaches

This has not been a great year for peaches. The perfect one is rare thanks to a February blast that killed off burgeoning buds. Luckily the fruit can be turned into wonderful creations that focus on their sweet, mellow flavor.They are even better than just the peach itself.

Samantha Seneviratne,creator of the interesting dessert blog, Cake Love, wrote about this amazing fruit in yesterday's New York Times Food section,Even though 2016 hasn't been their year, peaches can still be turned into tasty desserts.One that Ms. Seneviratne created is an ice cream cake. This is not one of the slap dash ones that is a slab of vanilla topped by crumbs and then another slab of chocolate. This actually has cake, a real butter on,e with five tablespoons of butter in the recipe. The ice cream is a no churn one which also includes peach preserves along with fresh raspberries - which are coming into their second season right now. The fresh peach is there in macerated form as it and the preserves are folded into the whipped cream. The cake assemblage is easy. First line a 9 by 5 loaf pan with Saran wrap leaving a six inch overhang all the way around. The cake is cut into thirds, making three rectangles.There is a layer of cake, then a layer of cream followed by the drained raspberries. This is repeated again for two more times and then freeze until firm for at least eight hours. It's topped with  a fruity mix of peach slices and fresh raspberries that have been sitting in sugar for ten minutes.

Another yummy dessert is Ms. Seneviratne's take on cobbler.This summer classic has been updated with a hazelnut infused crust.. She adds tiny wild blueberries which are a nice foil to the peaches' honey flavor. These can be picked if you have access to wild blueberry bushes however they can also be bought at farmer's markets and even found in the frozen food section. These frozen ones are actually beneficial because it helps the fruit mixture from overcooking and becoming mushy as the biscuits bake all the way through. You can use the big berries found in your supermarket, but Ms. Seneviratne warns that they are watery and have a weaker flavor.The topping requires hazelnut meal which can be bought in grocery stores and even on Amazon. It gives it a nice crunchy exterior  while still having a soft, pillowy middle.The crust also has a  half a cup of butter and a third of a cup of heavy cream.. it works well with the fruit mixture, also enhanced with vanilla bean seeds and sugar.The entire cobbler is baked for forty to forty-five minutes when the fruit comes bubbling from below and a toothpick inserted in the crust comes out with moist crumbs. Most cobblers are usually served with a pour of cream on them but I can see the first recipe's peach ice cream as a nice accompaniment here.

Don't despair if the year yielded up a lousy peach harvest. These recipes can show off their mellow sweetness and lush flesh. They are even more delicious in an ice cream cake or hazelnut infused cobbler.