Another Year, Another Birthday: Mango Passion Fruit Cake

Another Year, Another Birthday: Mango Passion Fruit Cake
A Request for My Readers {Updated}

A Request for My Readers {Updated}
{Sonoma} A Trip Down the Wine Road

{Sonoma} A Trip Down the Wine Road
{SF} {Palo Alto} Chantal Guillon’s New Store

{SF} {Palo Alto} Chantal Guillon’s New Store
Olallieberries and Shortcake

Olallieberries and Shortcake
Driscoll’s and Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream

Driscoll’s and Roasted Strawberry Ice Cream

San Francisco Blogger Bake Sale This Saturday!

May 9th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Personal, San Francisco, SF Events

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I ‘m so excited that the bake sale I’ve been organizing with several other bloggers is this Saturday – less than a week away! Planning has been going extremely well – we now have two locations and almost 50 volunteer bakers!

If you are in San Francisco this Saturday, please come by and support us! The two locations are:

18 Reasons

593 Guerrero Street

San Francisco, CA 94110

10 AM to 6 PM

and

Kiehl’s

2360 Fillmore

San Francisco, CA 94110

12 PM to 4 PM

Please see the official blog for full directions. I will likely be going between the two locations during the day, so I hope to see you there!

If you don’t live in the Bay Area, might I direct you to the front page of our blog where you can make a direct donation? Share Our Strength is a tremendously worthy cause and I’m proud that the food blogger community has embraced it wholeheartedly. 100% of the proceeds from this bake sale will go towards funding programs across the nation to feed hungry children. If you have a moment, you can watch this official Share Our Strength video which describes the goals and various activities of the organization including the national bake sale.

Now, on to other business. I’m sure you’re all waiting to hear the winner of the Le Creuset braiser giveaway. Thanks so much for all your kind birthday wishes – I had a wonderful day and it was great to get so many comments. Now go comment on my last post on eggettes, please!;)

The winner of the Le Creuset braiser is:

creusetwinner

Reader 116, sydney85! Congratulations and thanks again to all who entered!

Some other site housekeeping updates:

- I have now updated the conversions page with information on common weight-to-volume conversions. I know there are many international readers to this blog, and I often get comments about converting my recipes to metric, or vice versa. I’m slowly working on standardizing all the recipes on this site, but in the meantime check out the page for some quick conversions you can use yourself.

- For those of you that subscribe to my rss feed, it was created from my old Typepad blog and I have created a new one for this site. Could I ask, if you are a subscriber, to subscribe to my new feed? (the subscribe button is to the right in the sidebar). I’m keeping up both feeds for now but I’d like to eventually discontinue the old one, and I don’t want to lose all you subscribers! Thanks!

Stay tuned for Thursday where I’ll give an update on what I’m making for the bake sale!

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Hong Kong Eggettes (Daan Jai) for Mother’s Day

May 8th, 2011 · 27 Comments · Pastry, Personal, Recipes, Reviews, Tools

Eggettes (Daan Jai) trio

My first trip to Hong Kong that I remember happened when I was in fourth grade. (My very first time to Hong Kong, I was only a few months old, and therefore have no memories of that trip – a shame, as my maternal grandmother passed away shortly afterwards). When I went again as a fourth-grader, my mother took my sister and I down to the twisty streets of Yau Ma Tei and stopped at a streetside cart where a elderly man was spooning batter into what looked like a handheld waffle maker held over a charcoal grill. In a few seconds he turned out a golden, bubbly sheet into a paper cone and handed it to me.

Plain Eggettes

This was my introduction to eggettes, a classic Hong Kong street food. Like most street food, they taste best seconds after they’ve been handed to you by the vendor. Crisp on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside, it’s like bubble wrap made of cake, and pulling off the individual “eggs” affords a satisfaction akin to popping the little bubbles on bubble wrap. The Chinese name, daan jai or gai daan jai, literally translates to “little eggs”, which is what the treat resembles, although somewhere along the way someone came up with the much catchier name “eggettes.” Eggettes became one of my and my sisters’ favorite things to eat in Hong Kong, and every time we’ve returned, we keep one eye open for a eggette stall every time we step outside.

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It’s My Birthday – And I’m Doing A Giveaway!

May 4th, 2011 · 200 Comments · Giveaways, Personal, Tools

The giveaway is now closed. Thanks for visiting!

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I was talking to my sister last week ago and she was reminding me to get a Mother’s Day card for our mom. I replied, “Well, we don’t need to worry about so soon, Mother’s Day is after my birthday and my birthday isn’t for a while…ohhh.”

So how did it become May already? I love having a May birthday – all that spring sunshine – and I love looking forward to it. However, the last few years I seem to get really busy in April so my birthday jumps out at me like an exam I haven’t studied for. (Another thing about a May birthday? Remember AP exams in high school? I had one on my birthday one year. That was great too).

What’s to prepare for a birthday, you say? Well, I usually try to make my own birthday cake. And post about it. Thanks to my sister’s oh-so-timely reminder, I scrambled to pull my myriad ideas together. However, when I went into the kitchen last night I was told by the Husband that it was going to be occupied for a while, so maybe I could entertain myself in the meantime? Ohhh…birthday surprise! (Yes, I am also getting slower in my old age.)

Did I mention how lucky I am to have such a great hubby? So, I guess I’m going to have to hold off on a birthday cake post until maybe next week. While I’m making myself conveniently scarce, I’m going to invite you all to help me celebrate by holding another giveaway! I told you I had a lot of stuff to get out of my place:)

Walk into any cooking store or get a cooking catalog and chances are you’ll see Le Creuset proudly displayed like works of art in a museum. I was quite excited to be offered a Le Creuset braiser in their new fennel color for review. By the way, this is my first Le Creuset piece! Woohoo! I guess that counts as a pretty awesome birthday gift!

lecreuset35braiser

This cast iron braiser is great for searing off foods quickly at high temperatures and then braising them slowly and evenly. The enamelled interior makes cleanup a breeze; we’ve used it several times already and it cleans up like new. It also works great for poaching, marinating, or browning – the wide bottom lets you fit in lots of pieces without crowding. The website also says it’s works for baking, although I haven’t figured out what to bake in it yet! Something for fall, it feels like…at least I have several months to mull it over!

The Husband broke in the braiser by making some short ribs with polenta and we were extremely happy with the results – like eating the leftovers for several days straight happy.

I’m giving away a 3.5 quart Le Creuset braiser to one Dessert First reader. Just visit the Le Creuset website and comment below on what your favorite piece is. I’ll run the contest through May 8 and announce the winner on May 9.

Sorry there’s no birthday cake recipe! But I’ll have the Pebble Beach Food and Wine full recap up in another day, with recipes from Yigit Pura and Daniel Boulud!

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Welcome to the New Dessert First!

April 21st, 2011 · 177 Comments · Giveaways, Personal

The giveaway is now closed. Thanks for visiting!

newdessertfirst

To all my dear readers,

I’m so very excited to unveil what I’ve been working on for the last couple of months – my revamped and redesigned home for Dessert First! This update has been a long time coming: I knew I’d outgrown my old setup a while back, but I didn’t have the time, technical know-how, or temerity to make my dreams materialize. After much encouragement from friends and fellow food bloggers, though, I made it a New Year’s resolution, and here we are!

Many of the changes are designed to better organize the content I’ve created in the last few years of blogging and make it easier for you to find your way around. I’ve finally gotten with the times and have a navigation bar at the top! The recipe index has been updated and my recipes properly categorized. I’ve also created separate sections for San Francisco Bay Area-related items (so those of you coming to SF can find recommendations for sweet spots) and for reviews of cookbooks and baking-related items. This is both a response to my obsessive desire to organize (I always thought I’d have made a great librarian) and reader requests.

There’s still some work left to be done – the conversions page, another reader request, isn’t finished yet. I’m also in the process of implementing a recipe print function so that you easily print any of my recipes. And there’s still other things on my wish list. But since the site has basically gone live (and quite a few of you have made your way here already), I’d like to officially open my doors and welcome you in. Pardon any of the still-settling dust! A huge thank you to the talented folks at Foliovision for helping make this new site a reality. They’ve been fantastic in making the move from Typepad to WordPress a seamless one.

I’m really, really thrilled to have this new sandbox to play in and I hope you’ll all continue to join me here as I bake and eat my way through everything sweet. I apologize that my posting has dropped off while I was making this transition – I know there’s been a dearth of recipes. I started out this site as a way to document my experiments in the kitchen. Along the way, I stumbled into food as a career of sorts: I wrote two cookbooks, did freelance food photography and writing, went to professional food events, and met all manner of amazing and talented people in the food industry. My hope is that this new Dessert First will reflect this expanded universe that baking opened up for me.

That said, I’m always happy to hear from you about what you’d like to see. Please update your links to my site while you’re at it, if you have the chance (although I’ll leave my old site up and it will automatically redirect).

To celebrate the new Dessert First, I’d also like announce a giveaway for all of you: I have a $100 gift card to Williams-Sonoma lighting up my desk and I’d love to send it to one of you. This gift card was given to me courtesy of Williams-Sonoma, who is one of my site affiliates. I’ve always been a fan of Williams-Sonoma and I’m proud to have them on my site. I received a second gift card from them that I used to get a little something for myself; I’ll reveal the purchase in a future post!

wsgiftcard

Meanwhile, for your chance to win a $100 gift card to Williams-Sonoma,

1. Follow my page on Facebook  (Click the cute little “f” icon in the sidebar to the right of this post, and click “Like” to follow my page).

2. Leave a comment on this post.

That’s it! I’ll let this contest run through next Wednesday, April 27 and announce the winner on April 28th. Thanks and good luck, and let me know what you think of the new site!

love,

Anita

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Raspberry Cocoa Nib Coffee Cake

March 28th, 2011 · 17 Comments · Cakes, Personal, Recipes

Raspberrycoffeecakeslice

Thanks to everyone who entered the Daily Gourmet/NewTree giveaway! The five winners are: Michelle, Jessica, Jessicah89, Debbie, and Kristin! Congrats to you all!

We had company last week: my brother-in-law had the honor of being our first houseguest to use our (finally)properly fitted out second bedroom. (Previous guests enjoyed the luxury of our living room couch while the second bedroom served as our glorified storage closet). The organization of our place has reached a kind of halfway inertia, like the interminable midpoint of a marathon. All our public spaces are perfectly presentable – on most days, at least, while we take advantage of the doors to all our private bedrooms to hide the multitude of home-decorating failures: bare walls, still-unpacked boxes, miscellany and ephemera as yet unsorted. Another roadblock to my dream of a fully-organized home: we need more bookshelves. Currently about 60% of my book collection is homeless, meaning my floor is a constantly-morphing library as I pile and un-pile books over each other. (This is only a pseudo-complaint, though, as I really love my books too much to ever begrudge my lost square footage).

 

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National Food Blogger Bake Sale – SF 2011 Edition!

February 24th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Personal, San Francisco, SF Events

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It's been almost a year since the first San Francisco Food Bloggers Bake Sale, and the time has come to plan for the 2011 bake sale!

Last year, food bloggers across the country banded together to hold bake sales in their hometowns in support of Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger. The San Francisco bake sale was a fabulous success, raising $1650 in one day. On May 14 this year, bake sales will be again held by food bloggers everywhere, with all proceeds donated to Share Our Strength.

I'm excited to be joined this year by some other local baking bloggers, who are volunteering their time and talents to make this the most well organized bake sale ever. Irvin, Shauna, and Annelies, all participants in last year's bake sale, are now enthusiastic co-organizers. Because of that, we have set up a separate page for the San Francisco Food Blogger Bake Sale where you can sign up to participate or check for updates.

We have a new, bigger location for the bake sale this year: 18 Reasons, a local community center focused on art and food. They host a variety of classes and events celebrating food throughout the year. We're thrilled to be able to hold our bake sale in their beautiful space.

What are the San Francisco Food Blogger Bake Sale details?

When: Saturday, May 14

Where: 18 Reasons, 3674 18th Street, San Francisco, CA

How can you help?

If you live in the Bay Area and you want to participate in the bake sale, please go to the SF Bake Sale website and sign up to volunteer! It doesn't matter if you have a food blog or not, only a desire to bake! We need volunteers to help bake up goods to sell, and I would love a chance to meet all you local foodies! Bring a plate of cookies or a cake, whatever you feel like contributing!

If you aren't able to bake up something, please come by and help support us! Purchase something yummy and make a donation to Share our Strength!

If you don't live near San Francisco but would still like to participate, check Gaby's page (the national organizer) to see if there's another bake sale going on near where you live.

Here is some additional information on Share Our Strength and The Great American Bake Sale.

See my recap of last year's bake sale to see a bit of all the excitement.

I hope to see you all at the new bake sale homepage, and to see you May 14 at the bake sale!

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