Baking and Cooking Blog – Evil Shenanigans

Toasted Coconut Pound Cake with Lime Curd

It’s April Fool’s Day … but I am not fooling around when I tell you that this pound cake is about the best I have ever had.  I had half a bag of coconut sitting in my pantry since I made my Carrot Coconut Cupcakes and I didn’t know what to do with it.  For [...]

Chicken Tikka Masala

  I have been craving Indian food lately and it has been an excellent opportunity to try out some new recipes and dig out some old favorites.  It has been an adventure, trying different blends of spices, different cooking techniques, and working out what I like and what needs tweaking. Chicken tikka masala is one [...]

Spiced Dark Chocolate Pudding

When I was in culinary school we made cardamom tea cookies which we dipped in bittersweet chocolate.  I was certain it would be awful but I tried them and discovered that the pungent cardamom accented the rich dark chocolate very well.  From that day forward I have been playing around with cardamom and chocolate.  My latest [...]

Bacon Cheddar Cheese Bread

 When I was in England last Fall I fell in love.    Not with a person, or even the land or the culture, however fantastic they all are.  No, I fell in love with the bacon.  In England they serve, almost exclusively, back bacon.  If you have never had this kind of bacon before it is a  [...]

Chocolate Glazed Chocolate Tart

A few nights ago my husband and I had the opportunity to have dinner with a very old friend.  We had not seen him in a very long time and during our time apart he had gotten married to a lovely doctor who brought to the marriage her beautiful daughter.  A year and a half ago they [...]

Mango Avocado Salsa

Something fun to start today … Dan Lepard at The Guardian listed my White Chocolate Lime Cookies as one of the Highlights from the Blogs This Week!!  See the mention here, and thank you to Dan Lepard!! When I have steak tacos, and I am feeling summery, I make mango avocado salsa to go on [...]

Stove-top Macaroni and Cheese

Forget the boxes, the mixes, and don’t even think of waiting an hour for macaroni and cheese on a week night.   I have the super-fast solution for homemade macaroni and cheese, and it is SO good. I have something of an addiction to macaroni and cheese.   When I was a child I ate mac & cheese from the [...]

Carrot Coconut Cupcakes

I had a craving for carrot cake the other day.  It was one of those cravings you try to ignore, but in the end you submit because, like it or not, you did not try all that hard to avoid it in the first place. Submitting to my desire also gave me the opportunity to [...]

White Chocolate Lime Cookies

This recipe was listed on the Guardian.co.uk as a Highlight of the Week by Dan Lepard!  See the mention here! Have you ever craved something, let’s say a cookie, and could not find a recipe that looked like it would be any good?        That is the predicimate I found myself in when I came up with this [...]

Aloo Paratha

When I was taking my Breads & Rolls class last year in culinary school we made an Indian bread called Aloo Paratha. It is a wheat bread dough that is filled with a curried potato mixture, rolled flat and cooked on a hot griddle. They were, in a word, delicious!     I have thought of them fondly, [...]