I Love Burgers, Pie and my Friends

It's been awhile since I've made a pie, so I ignored Raoul's suggestion that I bring cookies to our rooftop dinner with friends (I know you liked this better anyway, love). He made one of the best burgers I've ever had and Paul brought a fruit tray that included a fruit which none of us could identify. After much sniffing, poking and unhygienic inspection, Amanda and Google helped us figure out that it was...some kind of passion fruit.
I tried a new crust recipe this time, it was supposed to be very flaky (mmm!). It was delicious, but ridiculously difficult to roll out. In fact, the top crust was really patchy b/c everytime I tried to lift it off the counter, it broke so I gave up, threw it over the filling and placed extra pieces over the holes. The filling was mostly blueberry (my favorite!) with some peaches tossed in as well. At the end I decided to add a layer of candied pecans on top of the pie. I just wanted an extra delicious touch, but it masked the lumpy-ness of the crust as well (which was made worse by the fact that I made an amateur mistake and completely forgot to cut slits in the top to vent the pie). This pie really survived a lot...including my knocking it off the bench where I was sitting, after a few too many drinks!





Just look at these beautiful, natural-hair-color people!

Chewy Toffee Pecan Cookies

Ok, these don't look like much, but I'm proud of them b/c they are deliciously addicting and I came up with the recipe myself. The name pretty much tells you all you need to know! I'll definitely make these again (soon).

An Experiment in Tarts

My cousin had a day-after-a-holiday party last night. She put together a fantastic spread of delicious food:





I offered to bring dessert (obviously). I made a chocolate ganache and caramel-hazelnut tart and a berry tart. Both of these were on my list of dishes to try so I got to knock off two in one shot. I didn't love the chocolate tart because the chocolate was really bitter, although it was good if you got some of the caramel-hazelnut filling on your fork at the same time. The berry tart turned out very well and was really easy to make.

My office loves cake :)

I've mentioned before that I wanted to make a chocolate hazelnut cake and I finally had the chance to do so for our receptionist's birthday last week. Nothing difficult, I added a little bit of hazelnut extract to the cake batter, but made the frosting much more hazelnut-y! It was really good-there is some espresso powder in the cake batter as well, so it was like a delicious hazelnut mocha...or something. I really hope there are still leftovers when I go to work tomorrow!