Culinary Adventures with Camilla

I had some 'leftover' cooked rhubarb from when I made a batch of rhubarb syrup and decided to use that as a compote in a rhubarb dessert for our mothers' day dinner. I did some searching and came up with a layered dish with tangy-sweet rhubarb compote, fluffy whipped cream, and cookie crumbles, a fool. Why a fool? Wikipedia reports : " Foole is first mentioned as a dessert in 1598 (together with trifle), although the origins of gooseberry fool may date back to the 15th century. The earliest recipe for fruit fool dates to the mid 17th century. Why the word "fool" is used as the name of this fruit dessert is not clear. Several authors derive it from the French verb fouler meaning "to crush" or "to press" (in the context of pressing grapes for wine), but this derivation is dismissed by the Oxford English Dictionary as baseless and inconsistent with the early use of the word." So, I still don't have an answer to t...

For Dylan's birthday celebration, he originally asked for a baked alaska but I disuaded him because I didn't want to be in the kitchen making a last-minute dessert while the party was going on. He finally decided on cheesecake. It was then that, fourteen years together and two dozen cheesecakes later, the love of my life finally copped to an awful secret: he doesn't like my funky, fruit-laden cheesecakes. I had been thinking of a cranberry-lemon cheesecake ; he told me that cheesecakes should be 'plain and white.' So I took it to my facebook wall and, in horror, realized that I was in the minority. Even some of my closest friends, with what I consider sophisticated palates, agree with my husband - plain and white. Ugh. Thankfully my child doesn't agree. Dylan requested an eggnog cheesecake with a gingersnap crust. Perfect! I put his crushing skills to work and he helped pulverize the lemon-ginger cookies from Trader Joe's. CRUST 2 C crushed lemon-ginger...