For some reason, I don’t think about making upside down cakes too often. It seems to occur to me more just to mix-in whatever fruit I’m thinking about pairing with the cake. But upside down cakes are easy to make and have a lot going for them. They tend to be moist and they really put the fruit flavors front and center in the cake. On top of that - literally! - the cakes never need any frosting because they come out of the oven with their topping all ready to go!

These are mini blueberry upside down cakes, baked in a muffin pan for single-serving portions of cake. I like them because they look cute and they take very little time to bake. They actually look like muffins as they are cooking, with tops rising up above the pan into a nice dome, but they flatten out a bit into more of a cake-like look once they cool down. They also don’t taste quite like muffins, as they are much more cake-like. The cakes are soft and fluffy, more tender and light than a muffin might be. They are not too sweet at all and with a mild flavor of butter and brown sugar. It was nice to have that brown sugar to give the cake a little more depth than a plain white cake would have.

These unmolded easily, and the berries did not stick to the pan. This is another advantage of doing mini cakes because, even though the berries turn out to be sweet and jammy, they didn’t turn into a stick-to-the-pan caramel. These can be served served slightly warm or at room temperature, and are delicious with a dusting of powdered sugar if you want to dress them up a bit.
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The best thing about baking a batch of cookies with macadamia nuts in them, like White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies or Macadamia Oatmeal Lace Cookies, is that you’re left with a bunch of macadamia nuts to use up in other recipes. Macadamia nuts can be kind of pricey, so they’re not necessarily something I keep on hand all the time, but their buttery flavor and crunch go so well with so many dishes, I really enjoy having them around the kitchen to use here and there.

Sometimes I use chopped macadamia nuts as an ice cream topping, standing in for the peanuts often used in a hot fudge sundae, and here I used them to finish off some strawberries I dipped in milk chocolate.

You don’t really need a recipe to make these, especially if you don’t mind having some extra strawberries, chocolate and macadamia nuts around. You can just eyeball it (or look below for some estimates). Melt some chocolate, dip as many berries as you can, then sprinkle the berries with (or dip them into) coarsely chopped nuts. The flavor of the macadamias goes very well with the milk chocolate and really makes the otherwise simple treat into something a little bit more special.

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Poached fruit is another easy dessert to make year-round. Fruit is cooked in some sort of flavored liquid until it is tender, then the liquid is reduced until it is syrupy and very sweet. The fruit and sauce can be refrigerated for a few days before serving and can also be served right away. If you chop up your fruit, it will poach pretty quickly, which is a nice trick to keep in mind, but I don’t think that you can make a better or more dramatic looking poached fruit dessert than a whole poached pear. Firm pears, like bosc (I used firm Anjou pears today), hold their shape very well during cooking, so they can stand dramatically upright on a serving plate when it is time to eat.

There are lots of options for flavoring the poaching liquid. You can add spices, like cinnamon sticks, and sweeteners from honey to sugar. I like to keep things simple and just added some rum to this batch. The flavor of the rum really mellows out during the cooking and creates a sauce with a wonderfully honey-like flavor, where you can’t really taste the rum at all. You can, however, taste a bit of rum in the pears, but nothing that you could catch a buzz from. The recipe probably requires more rum than a couple of daiquiris, so I wouldn’t use anything too expensive for it.

Make sure to start with firm pears. They’ll be easy to peel and are sturdy enough to hold up to poaching. Softer/riper pears may break down a bit during cooking, and can be difficult to remove from the liquid intact, even with a slotted spoon. The finished pears are tender and very juicy, with an nectar-like sweetness to them. It takes a long time for the cooking liquid to reduce into a light amber sauce, but the wait is well worth it, as it is the perfect thing to bring out all the floral, fruity, caramel, rum and vanilla notes in the pears.

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When summer comes around, I start looking for quick and easy desserts to make. One of my favorite things to put together is a fruit galette. It’s a rustic looking tart made with a pie crust or piece of puff pastry that is rolled out onto a baking sheet, topped with fresh fruit, and baked. The sides of the pie crust are folded up slightly around the fruit, giving the tart its signature rustic appearance (rustic as opposed to the fluted crusts found with tarts baked in a regular tart pan). My favorite thing about this type of tart is that you can use just about any kind of fruit in it - berries, apples, plums, nectarines, pears, grapes, etc. I just use whatever is ripe and/or in season. It is so versatile, that there is no need to rely on frozen fruit as an alternative to fresh. This one happens to be made with fresh peaches (white and yellow-skinned).

I rarely need to use an actual “recipe” for a tart like this one, since there are really only two main ingredients: fruit and a pie crust/puff pastry sheet. Once the tart has been assembled, all you really need to do is put it in the oven and bake until it is golden brown. You can use a homemade pie crust, a storebought pie crust or a sheet of puff pastry. Puff pastry is definitely the most convenient and it keeps for a very long time in the freezer, so I fall back on it a lot for a quick dessert like this one.

The only real caveat is that this type of dessert is definitely best served shortly after it is made. It is delicious when served warm with some vanilla ice cream, and is still good at room temperature up to a few hours later. Beyond that point, the tart will still taste good, but it will lose some of its crispness. Fortunately, there is little prep work to be done to make this galette, so you don’t really need to worry about needing time to make it in advance. That said, you can certainly chop up your fruit and store it in a bowl, in the fridge, until you’re ready to bake.

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I am flush with strawberries right now. It’s still relatively early in strawberry season, which generally runs from late spring through summer, but the berries I’ve picked up this week have all been sweet and full of flavor. The only problem with having so many strawberries around is that they start to go bad rather quickly, so I try to use them up by adding them to cereal, yogurt and pancakes for breakfast, making smoothies and loading them into desserts. One of my favorites is strawberry shortcake, a dessert that is always easy to put together and a great way to showcase fresh, ripe berries.

I like to think of these as fancy strawberry shortcakes. They’re cream puffs that are filled with a fluffy mascarpone cream and chopped, fresh strawberries. The choux pastry that makes the cream puffs is lightweight and soft, so these are much lighter and less filling than regular shortcakes. Each one is about 3 bites of creamy, strawberry goodness.

These cream puffs look very elegant but are relatively easy to make. The filling can be made in advance and chilled in the refrigerator. The puffs are best the same day that they are made, but are still very good the next day if they’re cooled completely and stored in an airtight container. The filling should only be added to the puffs right before serving. I like to leave the strawberries in medium-sized chunks to get a lot of flavor, but this also means that I usually have to cut open the cream puffs and add the filling with a knife or a spoon. If you want to pipe it into the puffs and don’t want berries stuck in a pastry bag, chop them up finely.
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It’s always nice to be able to cook and eat a hot breakfast, but sometimes I just want something very quick and easy to start my day. This simple yogurt parfait is one that I come back to again and again. It’s easy to make, subject to all kinds of variations and is perfect for a single serving, although it can be made for a larger group and spooned out of a big dish, as well. It’s so easy that I hesitate to call it a recipe, in fact. I rarely measure anything that goes into it and, instead, just wing it as I go.

The recipe uses plain or vanilla yogurt and frozen berries. I will use fresh berries when I have them, but frozen berries are available all year round and still deliver great flavor. In fact, they actually meld into the yogurt a bit better as they defrost, giving the parfait a more uniform texture. The interesting thing about this parfait is the brulee topping. Much like a creme brulee, the finial layer of yogurt is topped of with a generous coating of sugar that is caramelized using a kitchen torch. The crispy topping adds a nice texture, and the sugar adds a hint of caramel flavor to the whole dish. Plus, it gives me an extra excuse to use my kitchen torch!

The parfaits can be made in advance and refrigerated before serving, if necessary, but the topping is best when it is fresh so be sure to save the sugar for serving.

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