Laura Rebecca's Kitchen

This recipe comes from the Peter Kump’s Cooking School Cake Baking Course Pack. The cakes are developed largely by Nick Malgieri. Maybe it’s my technique but every time I make one of his cakes, the texture is a bit off. The flavor is great, but the texture is not. Same problem with this cake. It’s […]

Mooncrazy from Peanut Butter Etouffee sent me this fabulous recipe, which won her first place in her pie baking contest. Not only is the tart delicious, but the caramel sauce is a perfect accompaniment. Rustic Apple Tart with Caramel Sauce(makes two 10-inch tarts) Pie Dough 2/12 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting board1 teaspoon […]

Camera phones are the best. I got a phone call yesterday from the Canandaigua BID (Business Improvement District), which ran the fruit pie baking contest. The pie I entered into the contest won third place. Whooo! (Or in l33t, w00t!) The whole thing was a bit random: I dropped the still-warm pie off just before […]

The first pie tested for the pie contest was a variation on Betty Crocker’s classic apple pie recipe. I’d been thinking that Chinese five spice powder would be a nice change for a sweet dish, and took that idea for a test drive. I also made pie dough from scratch (Martha Stewart’s “Perfect Pie Crust”), […]

Something in the air has shifted. The leaves are changing. Roadside stands are selling pumpkins and decorative corn stalks. Yellow busses are taking tiny passengers to school. Fall is here. Though my mind feels the seasonal shift seems sudden, my body fell in step easily. It gravitates toward warm sweaters in dark colors and feels […]

I have a problem with this recipe. It’s a shame too, because there are so many great things going for it. The flavor is great. There’s a lovely tang from the lemon juice and zest, providing a nice contrast to the cinnamon sugar-dusted, in-season nectarines. It’s dead easy to whip up and the recipe seems […]

Welcome to Simply Summer Week! All week long, I’ll be featuring very simple recipes taking advantage of summer’s bounty. ( God, is that marketing schmaltz, or what? Sorry.) And since it’s summer, I’ll be taking Friday off. On to the first recipe! A few years ago (actually, now that I think about it, five or […]

Armed with a loaf of stale bakery bread and a pint of beautiful blueberries that weren’t getting any younger, I came up with a recipe for Blueberry Bread Pudding. Really – I came up with it! It’s my creation! When I enrolled in my first cooking class five years ago, my ultimate goal was to […]

Photo courtesy of CookingLight.com. Our good friends Ken and Andrea invited us to dinner last night. We had grilled shrimp with a fruit salsa; Andrea had found the recipe in the June issue of Cooking Light. (Lis, I thought of you!) Andrea and I did the prep work — basically lots of chopping — and […]

Lemon blueberry bundt, with fresh bluberries and lemon zest tucked in the center. Last Friday, Carolyn invited a slew of people over for a hot dog cookout (really a weenie roast – so retro!). Armed with portable chairs, we sat in her backyard and ate, overlooking her chickens, ducks, and the wheat (?) field beyond […]