Liz Denys

Creamsicles were one of my favorite desserts as a child. Whenever my family went to the pool, I would absolutely dread the 15 minutes every hour that I couldn't stay in the pool known as adult swim - until I headed over to the pool's snack shop and grabbed a creamsicle.

Unfortunately, as I grew older, I became less fond of ice creams (really, I don't know why, but frozen cream just doesn't do it for me anymore), but I still longed for the marriage of flavors between crisp oranges and sweet cream. So now I make panna cotta.

Panna cotta, or "cooked cream," is actually one of the simplest desserts to make (well, now that you can use gelatin instead of fish bones). It takes trivially more effort than jello (you have to measure out ingredients instead of just pouring out of a box) and the end result has a dramatically more elegant silky texture. Below is my recipe to satisfy my desires for a warmer creamsicle, clementine panna cotta, but if you replace the zest and vanilla extract with half a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste, you end up with a traditional vanilla panna cotta. But you can experiment with the flavors using the rest of the recipe as a base.

Clementine panna cotta

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin (packets of gelatin usually contain 1 tablespoon)
• 9 ounces milk
• 24 ounces heavy cream
• 7.5 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon clementine (or orange) zest
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 6 clementine (or orange) slices for topping
• Honey for topping

Preparation:

1. Combine the gelatin and 4 ounces of the milk in a small bowl. Leave to absorb for about 10 minutes.
2. Combine the remaining milk, cream, sugar, and clementine zest in a heavy-based saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. Remove from the heat, and add to the gelatin mixture. Also add the vanilla extract. Whisk until completely dissolved.
4. Cool to room temperature. Strain, if desired (this will prevent zest from accumulating at the bottom of the bowl but is purely a matter of taste and presentation preferences), and pour into six 1-cup bowls or glasses. Cover and refrigerate for 5 hours. Turn out of bowls if desired for serving.

Makes 6 individual panna cottas.

Earlier this week, I made bacon cheddar scallion biscuits because I had been craving an especially savory breakfast bread option for those mornings that you wake up a little bit later than you'd like. Nothing too fancy, just fifteen traditional country biscuits except that I replaced some of the butter with bacon fat and added bacon, scallions, and a lot of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

But then late Friday night rolled around: I had already eaten dinner, but wanted just a tiny bit more food. Naturally, I was craving a burger, but knew that I couldn't handle a full portion. I had almost resigned myself to making myself a miniature burger with all the fixings but without a bun, but glanced over towards the toaster oven and noticed eight perfectly sized bacony, cheddary, buttery biscuits - practically waiting to become burger buns.

Putting caramelized onions, bacon, and cheddar on the burger along with the already flavor-packed biscuit felt like overkill, so instead, I left the bacon to the biscuit and put very finely diced onions along with slightly more grated extra sharp cheddar cheese in the burger patty itself. Well, that's a bit of a lie, a tablespoon or so more of grated cheddar ended up on top of the burger patty because cheese is kind of just that good. When the burgers seemed about done, I very, very lightly toasted (they had a lot of cheese in them) the bacon cheddar scallion biscuits.

All in all, these sliders were quite rich, but hardly overbearingly so. And quite delicious. I woke up the next day wanting them again (or maybe I just really have immense, insatiable burger cravings), so I made them for brunch the next day, too.

It's beginning to feel a lot like fall: the weather is finally cooling down, leaves are browning, and pumpkin spice lattes are abundant.

Being a coffee fan, I caved about a year ago and bought pumpkin spice latte syrup. It made for a delicious replica of the coffee shop classic, but wouldn't it just be so much better with pumpkin pulp and spices instead of a sugary syrup?

After a little over twenty minutes in front of a stove and a couple of minutes with a hand mixer, cream, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar, we got to enjoy these:

The pumpkin puree made them thicker than your average pumpkin spice latte, so they didn't froth as well as the average latte. However, they were earthier, while still sweet, and I'd say more delicious than any pumpkin spice latte I've ever gotten in a coffee shop and certainly more delicious than any I've made at home with a syrup before.

I made twice the recipe below so that I could put the glass bottle full of extra latte in the fridge. They were also delicious cold the next day.

Pumpkin spice latte

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk (preferably whole or 2%)
• 4 tablespoons pureed pumpkin
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon a combination of ground ginger, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon (if you don't know how much to use of each, use equal parts)
• 3 shots espresso

Preparation:

1. Combine milk, pumpkin, and brown sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until steaming.
2. Remove from heat. Add in vanilla and the various spices. Blend until foamy. (An immersion blender is easiest, but you can transfer to a regular, counter-top blender as well.) If you don't mind the pumpkin being a bit thicker, you can also simply whisk the mixture together until well combined.
3. Pour mixture over espresso and serve.

Yields two servings.

Every time I come across this photograph on my computer, I am impressed by how simultaneously dull and sharp the sky was that day in San Francisco. When editing this photograph I took now about three and a half years ago, I only flattened the sky slightly and didn't touch up the trees or recolor the rest of the frame at all.

It remains my favorite photograph that I have taken to date.

When I had come across an article on "sneaking" citrus almond poundcake out of a food processor in Mark Bittman's column, I realized that it had been too long since I had even eaten poundcake. Further, this one was flavored like oranges and marzipan - two of my favorite flavors - so I had to make it.

I couldn't find 7-ounce tubes of almond paste in any of the grocery stores near me and ended up increasing the recipe to use up all of the 10-ounce can I was able to find. I think that next time I will freeze about half of the cakes as having that much of such a dense cake around is fairly overwhelming - even with the help of friends.

Their original recipe also called for a citrus soak made by dissolving sugar into lemon and orange juices. I found adding this to the cakes made them sweeter than I really wanted. I suppose I don't have as much of a sweet tooth as most because others commented that they would have preferred a glaze to the soak. I have omitted the soak from the recipe below, but doubled the amount of citrus zests because that worked well when I made this poundcake.

Citrus almond poundcake

Adapted from Grandaisy Bakery via Mark Bittman

Ingredients:

• 16 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cubed, plus more for pans
• Flour (or Baker's Joy) for pans
• 1/3 cups fresh lemon juice
• 3/4 cups fresh orange juice
• 3 cups granulated sugar
• 10 ounces almond paste
• 10 large eggs
• 6 teaspoons lemon zest
• 6 teaspoons orange zest
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups cake flour
• 1 1/8 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon and a pinch of salt

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour (or spray one of my favorite tricks, Baker's Joy, on) an 8-cup bundt pan as well as a 9" by 5" loaf pan.
2. Put almond paste and sugar in a stand mixer (or food processor if you do not have one) and process until well combined.
3. Add the butter and continue processing until light and fluffy.
4. With the machine running, add eggs one at a time along with the zest and vanilla, and continue to mix (or process) until smooth.
5. Stop the machine, add the flour, baking powder and salt, and pulse a few times - just until the dry ingredients are integrated (be careful not to over process, or the cake will become tough).
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until golden, about 1 hour and 10 minutes. When a skewer or thin-bladed knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, remove the cake from the oven and let cool slightly. Let the cake cool, then cut into slices.

Yields 13 to 16 servings.