Nepenthe's Three Berry Pie

This picture is from recipezaar.com, the next time I make this I will put up one of my own pictures.

This is one of my Favorite recipes from one of my Favorite restaurants. Every time I eat at Napenthe I order a piece of this pie. It's not overly sweet and goes perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The nut crumb topping is also delicious.


Here is the link for Nepenthe's Three Berry Pie
You'll find it under Nepenthe restaurant, click Favorite recipes


If you decide to make this recipe make sure to use frozen, not fresh, berries. You need the frozen ones so you can drain away their juices. I learned the hard way and had a runny pie, but I thought it was still every bit as tasty.

Berries & Cream

Well it's actually not berries & cream, thats just what I entitled this recipe when I emailed it to my sister. It's actually berries layered with pastry cream that is lightened with whipped cream. Don't let the simplicity fool you. This is a spectacular dessert that (for me) rivals ice cream and I'm a big fan of ice cream.

My sister is a nurse and works all the time, consequently she has no time or energy to cook. I sent her this recipe because it's something she could make the night before (or further ahead) and quickly assemble when she needed to; mainly if she had company over. If you were going to make and eat this the same day you just need to allow time for the pastry cream to cool before adding the whipped cream.

I used a bag of frozen mixed berries that I thawed in the refrigerator. My favorite is one from Trader Joe's that contains cherries. You could use fresh, I'm just a fan of the juice that is in the frozen bags that contains no added sugar. In my opinion you need the tartness the berries bring to balance out the sweetness of the pastry cream. The juice also has a nice contrast with the pastry cream.

This dessert looks beautiful in a wine glass or any clear container. I use a set of cut crystal glasses that I received from my parents.

I will post the recipe just as soon as I am back at my computer (where the recipe is saved) and not the laptop.

Vanilla cake with Chocolate frosting

My niece’s birthday was last week and I volunteered to make her a cake. She requested a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. My husband's warning/advice of "make something simple a kid would like" kinda took the fun out of it, he knows me too well, but i was still excited to be creating a cake.

I immediately pulled all my cookbooks and recipes out and started sorting through them, trying to find a cake that would be suitable for a 10 yr old. My eyes kept catching on intricate recipes that were far from a plain vanilla cake with chocolate frosting.

I had to control myself and stick to something simple. Meaning no variations like chocolate coffee truffle filling or a caramel chocolate frosting or a raspberry jam layer. Just simple, plain American homemade cake. I can do that…

So I finally decided on Dorie Greenspan’s Perfect party cake, a Creamy chocolate frosting recipe from The Baker’s Dozen cookbook and a chocolate truffle frosting from Sherry Yard’s cookbook Desserts by the Yard.

 For the Vanilla 'Perfect Party Cake' I excluded the lemon zest, used whole milk and replaced the lemon extract with vanilla. I will definitely be making this cake again and will be following Dorie’s recipe with her frosting. It looks so “perfect”.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the chocolate frosting, but lately I can’t stand frosting that is made up of confectioners’ sugar. I prefer French butter cream or ganache or whipped cream frosting, but I was trying to stick with something a 10 yr old would like.

I had my doubts about the filling because it was only butter and chocolate, but when you whip the butter and add the cooled melted chocolate something magical happens. It turns into a creamy fluffy chocolate frosting that no one would guess contained only butter and chocolate. I will definitely be making this again.

I also made some kahlua truffles (I know, not plain) to decorate the cake with. I ended up making two recipes. The first was a Godiva recipe. Everything was going fine... until I over whipped the ganache. I piped them out, cooled them and rolled them in cocoa powder. They looked pretty and tasted alright but it wasn’t what I was going for. So I called them fluffy truffles and gave them to the neighbors.

The second recipe was from Sherry Yard’s cookbook Dessert’s by the Yard. This is now my go-to truffle recipe. They turned out perfect, but instead of piping I rolled them into balls and covered them in melted chocolate and cocoa powder. Next time I would make them smaller and make sure I have enough melted chocolate on each one. If there isn’t, the truffles will be darker in those spots. I ended up repeatedly rolling them in the cocoa powder. But I really thought this recipe was great.

So here is the cake:

The swirls and base piping are made from the chocolate truffle frosting. I had quite a bit left over since I just used it for the filling.

Everyone really enjoyed it and they thought the truffle frosting was excellent.