Pictured above: marble pound cake (from Mark Bittman's excellent How to Cook Everything), circa March 2010

I have baker's block. Actually, it's not that I can't think of things I'd like to bake -- I just can't bring myself to do it.

Who's (or what's) to blame? Perhaps it's because I really don't need to add any additional calories to my 8+ month pregnant frame that seems to fill out more and more every day without any help from baked goods. Or maybe it's because I know my time should be spent on greater priorities: prenatal exercises, reading some Dr. Spock, checking off the remaining items on my pre-baby-arrival to do list, etc. Or the culprit could be the speed bumps that seem to have been thrown my way lately, many for which I have to assume complete responsibility -- for example, most of today has been spent treating stains on brand new mom and baby clothes (who knew one small, black, unremoved sales tag could shred into a billion bits in the washing machine and proceed to stain an entire load of pastel laundry?). 

Maybe once the little one arrives I will snap out of it, or maybe I'll have to rename my blog Nursing, Laundering, Sleep Deprivation, Couture & Cie...

 

I haven't posted in a while, so hopefully this VERY LONG post will compensate...

We have the good fortune to live a "hop, skip and a jump" away (by plane) from the French Riviera. Nearly every summer since I moved to France 6 years ago, we've spent at least an extended summer weekend there, normally around Bastille Day. We stay in Roquebrune-Cap Martin, which is one of the areas that has resisted the overdevelopment you see in much of the South of France.

View of Roquebrune-Cap Martin from our balcony

This year, we had some unused vacation time saved up and, since I am due in mid-August, we decided that if we were going to take one last vacation before the baby arrives it would have to be in April / May at the latest. I had originally planned a road trip through Eastern France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, but we ultimately decided that given my condition, it would be too ambitious to do all of those countries in 10 days and that I may be too uncomfortable spending so much time in a car.

So, we decided to return to the French Riviera, since we knew we would not be able to go there this summer and, to be honest, there are few other places in France that we find more enjoyable and relaxing. It was also nice to visit in mid-Spring instead of the Summer when the weather can get quite hot and the traffic is bumper-to-bumper in some places. Our timing was perfect because the following week the region experienced some pretty destructive weather.

Here are some photos we took over the course of our stay.

More balcony views in Roquebrune-Cap Martin

Monaco - Monte Carlo

Given its proximity to where we stay, it's very common for us to visit Monaco several times during the course of a visit, especially at night when the sportscars are on parade.

View of the port, La Condamine -- you can see some of the stands that had been set up for the annual Formula One Monaco Grand Prix  

Prince's Palace 

On the road to the Saint Nicolas Cathedral (rendez-vous 9 July 2011 for the nuptuals of Albert and Charlene!!!)

Monte Carlo Casino

Hotel de Paris 

Vintage Mercedes with the Café de Paris in the background

Some shots of the marine life at the Oceanographic Museum

Eze

One of the French Riviera's most well-known perched villages...I wish I had taken more photos because these do not do it justice.

Grasse

AKA the world's perfume capital. If you're interested in perfume and the industry in general, there are several museums / factory tours to take in Grasse. We went to a Provence costume exhibition sponsored by Fragonard and strolled the city.

Nice

On my first visit to France when I was in high school, we spent one week in this bustling city. This trip, we spent most of our time in the old town.

The flower market at the Cours Saleya

Place Rosetti

I love this next picture of the two men talking, I don't know why...

Beachside... 

Ventimiglia, Italy

We didn't spend too much time in this French-Italian border town, but at least the beach had the merit of not being overcrowded.

Peillon

Last year we visited several perched villages and really enjoyed it. On the lookout for new ones to discover, we found Peillon just outside of Nice.

Now, I ask you, how exactly would one go about getting a couch delivered and through the door in a town like this?

Awww, look, it's Simon's scruffier (and undoubtedly street-smarter) doppelgänger 

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat & Beaulieu-sur-Mer

We made a couple of day trips to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and neighboring Beaulieu-sur-Mer to visit the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and the Villa Kérylos.

We also took some time to scope out housing for when we retire. Right now this property is in the lead:

With this one running a close second:

More seriously, according to a security guard at the Villa Ephrussi, the above property is reputedly being built for a certain former Russian president...

Here are some photos of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild + gardens + some magnificent views from the estate.

And here are some photos of the Villa Kérylos located in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, just across the bay from the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. 

The ancient Greek equivalent of today's living room. Authentic, yes; comfortable, not sure about that...

Wouldn't you just die to have a bathroom like this? Mine is the only room left in our apartment that needs to be renovated, and it looks like an Eastern Bloc torture chamber compared to this. 

That's all for this year! 

I had to put my granny square blanket project on hold for a while since I ran out of one color of yarn entirely and realized that I would need several more skeins of the other colors to complete the project (no surprise, since when I bought the yarn I had no concrete idea in mind of what I would actually do with it).

I found a new project idea on the purl bee blog for yet another baby blanket, this time in a lincoln log pattern. I have some more colorful yarn in my small stash and decided that this could be the perfect use for it. Above is what I have been able to complete so far.

I ended up having to order the extra skeins needed for the granny square blanket online -- unfortunately, they are no longer in stock at the store where I bought them well over one year ago. They've just arrived, which means that I can start alternating between both projects. This should keep things interesting since both projects use entirely different techniques. I have another knitting project in the works but am not going to post about it until it is DONE.

I made these combination brownie-cookies a couple of months ago. I have to admit that it was the name of the recipe that initially caught my eye -- I'm known as "Brookie" to some of my friends / family. When I saw that it combined brownies and chocolate chip cookies -- two of my favorites that are becoming more and more ubiquitous here in France, even if they don't taste quite the same as they do Stateside -- I decided I had to try it out.

This recipe is from Brooklyn's Baked bakery and can be found on the Martha Stewart website. I don't own any mini pie tins (though I wish I did!) so I used a mini muffin mold instead. If you compare, you can see that the cookie part of my brookies "migrated" a bit. Luckily this had no effect on the taste -- they were a hit.

In our house, when the bananas get too ripe to eat, we cut them up, freeze them and use them to make smoothies. But recently I’ve been struck by a few decidedly unhealthier cravings, including banana bread. So when we had four bananas just a few days away from smelling chemical, I used them to make Dorie Greenspan’s classic banana bundt cake.

Not only did this cake curb my craving, but making it also provided me with the perfect opportunity to use a cookbook I received from my mother last Christmas (Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours) and a kugelhopf bundform pan I bought during a visit to Frankfurt the December before that (for reasons even I don’t understand, I’m a bit obsessed with kugelhopf molds – just ask my husband or select family members who’ve had the pleasure of accompanying me on one of my wild goose chases for them). We ate the cake plain, but I bet it would be great with coconut ice cream.

I'm expecting my first child in August and have decided to crochet a baby blanket for her using the granny square technique. Above are some of the squares I've already completed, waiting for their ends to be sewed in.

The only question is, as the world's slowest knitter / crocheter / general needleworker, will I finish on time or will I still be granny-squaring away between contractions at the hospital?

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

A croquembouche is the dessert traditionally served at French wedding receptions. We had planned to serve a croquembouche along with the classic American tiered cake at our wedding, but unfortunately the bakery was unreliable and pulled out at the last minute. We were pretty upset, since this was one of the ways we tried to incorporate French tradition into our wedding, which took place in the US. Though I must say that this is one tradition that is not always kept over here -- out of all of the weddings we've attended, a croquembouche was served at only one of them. Normally there is an elaborate cake, or several smaller ones. A wedding we attended earlier this month featured this amazing dessert bar: tiny pastries (tarte tatins, opéras, fruit tarts, etc.), mini crème brulées and mousses au chocolat, ice cream, macarons, fruit salad, and small crepes and waffle "popsicles" with every topping you can think of: chocolate, caramel, diced and pureed fruit, raw sugar...I'm getting off track, back to the croquembouche.

Though this dessert seems daunting, it is actually quite manageable when you break it into its component parts: cream puffs, pastry cream and glaze. First off, the cream puffs are easier to make than you might think. Though the recipe provided for the challenge worked well, my go-to recipe for cream puffs is from Dorie Greenspan -- see this blog posting. I've made the savory version for gougères to go with before-dinner drinks and used the basic cream puffs to make profiteroles for dessert. They always turn out perfectly and go over really well.

The pastry cream can be made in no time at all, but the glaze is a different story. I found this to be the most difficult recipe to get right, and it took me four tries and a sugar burn before I was able to achieve the appropriate texture / color. Unfortunately, the sugar hardened too quickly (you have to cool it down in an ice-water bath to stop the sugar from cooking any further, but I found that this is what led to the hardening) and would have taken several more batches to cover my modest croquembouche. This explains why I've posted only the "before glaze" photo above -- what I managed to glaze was just too sad to show. But I did manage to make this cute little bow from an overcooked batch: 

As for decoration, I decided to leave my croquembouche plain since I think they are prettiest without the Jordan almonds, dragées, ribbons, fake birds (yes, fake birds!) that you can sometimes find on them. With fantasies of an enourmous chouquette mountain floating in my head, I was tempted to sprinkle on some pearl sugar before the glaze hardened, but I decided that would be sugar overkill and left it at is.

I made this pie last weekend when we had my in-laws over. The crust and the crumble use the same recipe, which is a big time-saver. It was impossible for me to cut neat slices that did not fall apart, so mine ended up more crumble-esque than pie-esque. The Granny Smith apples that I used held up really well in the oven and remained crisp and just sweet enough.

The recipe I used is from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook; here is the closest recipe I could find on the MS website, though the one from the book uses ground almonds as well as flour in the crust / crumble.

Today this little guy celebrates his first year of life on planet Earth, most of it spent sleeping. 

While reading the New York Times this morning, I stumbled across this recipe and accompanying article about the White House pastry chef Bill Yosses. Per the article, this is one of several recipes that have been developed to transition from the "bottomless cookie plate" of past administrations (though that doesn't sound too bad to me...). I've been wanting to try a homemade granola bar recipe ever since reading this posting on the Smitten Kitchen blog, and since I was put on early maternity leave last week yet am not confined to bed rest, I've recently found myself with a little extra time on my hands to do just that.

Granola bars -- especially the not-so-good-for-you, chocolate-coated ones -- were one of the few things I could stomach eating during my first trimester, when the mere thought of many foods triggered my gag reflex (potatoes au gratin, hot sauce, almost anything spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.). I've yet to send my husband on a late-night ice cream run, but for a few months I was very particular about our granola bar stock...

These bars are much healthier than what you might find in a store and can be infinitely tweaked to suit your tastes and / or what's currently in your pantry. Next time I'm going to try a variation using a bag of German muesli that I have on hand but don't care for with just milk or yogurt. They also smell great while cooking / cooling.

White House Fruit and Oat Bars

Adapted from The New York Times, 11 May 2010

The original recipe calls for seeds (sesame, sunflower,...), but I didn't have any on hand so I used slivered almonds instead. For the dried fruit, I used a mixture of golden and black raisins, cranberries, cherries and strawberries.

Yield: 1-2 dozen bars, depending on the size you cut

6 tablespoons grapeseed oil, plus extra for brushing pan

2 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1/2 cup honey

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1/3 cup maple syrup

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 cups mixed dried fruit

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Line a 9-inch-square baking pan with parchment paper or foil, letting a few inches hang over side of pan. Brush with oil.

2. Spread oats and seeds on another baking pan and toast in oven just until golden and fragrant, 6 to 8 minutes, shaking pan once.

3. In a mixing bowl, toss together toasted oats and almonds, dried fruit and cinnamon. Set aside.

4. In a saucepan, combine oil, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup and salt. Stir over medium heat until smooth and hot. Pour hot sugar mixture over oat / almond / dried fruit mixture and stir until well combined.

5. While mixture is warm, transfer to prepared pan, pressing into pan evenly with an offset spatula.

6. Bake until brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer pan to a rack and let cool completely. Using the overhanging foil or paper, lift out of pan and place on a work surface. Cut into bars, about 1 1/2 inches by 3 inches.