Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Here we are the October 2021 edition of the Cake Slice Bakers. For 2021; we are baking from  Little Everyday Cakes: 50+ Perfectly Proportioned Confections to Enjoy Any Day of the Week  by Candace Floyd. * I can't believe that we're already halfway through the year. In many ways 2020 dragged on as the shelter-in-place orders continued month after month; on the other hand, it was a completely blur because there weren't milestones to mark the passage of time. In this group, we are given a selection of three cake recipes. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes! Follow our  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Pinterest   pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the links below to take you to each of our cakes. If ...

Here we are at day four of one of my favorite blogging weeks of the year: Brunch Week. Each year, Terri of  Love and Confections  coordinates this multi-blogger, multi-day celebration of all things brunch. This year Christie from  A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures  is co-hosting.  Since I lean towards the savory in my brunch preferences, I wanted to share one of my favorite meaty finger foods! Lamb lollipops make any meal feel instantly fancy.  I love making different variations based on what I have on-hand. I've  made them with black garlic and shiitakes ,  grilled them with garlic salt , and  glazed them with morello cherries . Ingredients 8 French cut rack of lamb, trimmed into chops and trimmed of excess fat 1/2 C dry white wine 1/2 C apple cider vinegar 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 garlic cloves, crushed and minced 2 t ground cumin 1 t ground coriander ¾ t grated turmeric 1 t grated ginger ¼ t ground ...

The  Secret Recipe Club  has a relatively new - fifth Monday - event that blurs the lines between the groups. You can be assigned to any other participating blogger in groups A through D. Naturally, I jumped right in. Our theme this month: Holiday Treats. I was assigned to  Tara's Multicultural Table , a blog written by Tara. I was so excited to explore her blog more. We've crossed paths before. She's taken part in different recipe round-ups I've hosted. And, most recently, she organized a virtual baby shower for another blogging friend - Lauren of Sew You Think You Can Cook - and I was reminded about the warmth of the blogging community. So, into her blog I delved. Though I did get sidetracked by her recipes by location in the world, I stayed mostly in her desserts category . I considered her Vanillekipferl (Austrian Vanilla Crescent Cookies), Raivas (Portuguese Cinnamon Cookies), and  Ka’ak b’sukar (Syrian Sugar Cookies). I was more than a ...

A twist on Aldous Huxley's  Brave New World, m y planned 'Brave New Swirled Soup' - 'Pumpkin, Corn, and Lemongrass Soup with a Swirl of Crème Fraîche' became 'Pumpkin, Corn, and Lemongrass Soup with a Swirl of Plain Yogurt' after I sent the crème fraîche over to my parents with the boys a day early. The boys spread it on their bagels for lunch! Oye. The plain yogurt worked out fine...and makes for a silly story. Brave New World 's title comes from William Shakespeare's The Tempest.  In Act V, Scene I, Miranda exclaims: O wonder! How many godly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't. The irony: Miranda, who was raised on an isolated island, is praising men not  acting in godly manner at all. Huxley uses the same irony when the "savage" John refers to what he sees as a "brave new world." It's been a long time since I've picked up eit...

#PumpkinWeek is here again and we can't be more excited. Hosted by Terri from Love and Confections , nineteen bloggers will be sharing nearly seventy pumpkin-filled recipes over the course of the week. Be sure to come back every day to see all the delicious creations - from muffins to cakes, cocktails, breakfast baked goods, savory pastas and stews, and gluten-free recipes, too. You can also find these great recipes and more on Love and Confections' #PumpkinWeek Pinterest Board ! #PumpkinWeek Day 1 Recipes: Browned Butter Salty Pumpkin Sugar Cookies from The Spiffy Cookie Caramel Pumpkin Cake from Feeding Big and more Pumpkin Chai Baked Donuts from A Kitchen Hoor's Adventures Easy Pumpkin Donuts with Vanilla Cream Sauce from {i love} my disorganized life Gooey Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars from Hezzi-D's Books and Cooks Healthy Cinnamon-Apple Pumpkin Muffins from Simply Healthy Family Homemade Pumpkin and Sage Pasta from Kudos Kitchen by Renee Pu...

Okay, so Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I don't love the candy; but I love that it heralds a change in the seasons for us. And when I was prepping for our annual Halloween camping trip, I decided that I wanted to bring a new-to-us liqueur from sipping from our glass skull glasses. I stood, staring at the shelves lined with all sorts of beautifully-hued liqueurs I'd never seen. Liquore Strega is my usual Halloween go-to. But this time, as I wrote, I wanted something we'd never had before. I finally decided on this... St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram Allspice Dram is an allspice liqueur made in Jamaica. It's highly spiced and very sweet - with a potent aroma of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. It was delicious. Jake said it tasted like Christmas in a bottle. I have to agree. Maybe this will make great Christmas presents for some friends!

I decided a traditional beef pot roast dish from Terceira, one of the Portuguese-held Azores Islands, would be a great dish for Jake's real birthday dinner. Alcatra is a Portuguese recipe for a spicy piece of ass, the perfect dish for my spicy...well, you get the idea. Traditionally the alcatra beef roast is slow-roasted in a clay pot that's shaped like a flower pot with herbs and spices. The closest thing I have is a large stoneware baking bowl. Tonight was the first part of alcatra preparation: the marination. From all of my research, a few ingredients are key to the alcatra marinade - cinnamon sticks, whole allspice, onions, garlic, wine, bay leaves. So I placed all of that in the stoneware bowl with the rump roast and two nitrite-free Portuguese sausages. That will all soak overnight. Look for 'Alcatra, Part II' tomorrow night after we celebrate Jake's 36th birthday.