Dreaming of fantasy

This recipe comes from editor of the Guardian’s Cook magazine and author of The World on a Plate, Mina Holland.

"This is based on *the* pudding of my childhood, a golden fixture of my early years. We always had it with tart plums and almond frangipane, but at the time of cooking for The Curious Pear, plums were not yet in season, so I gave this combination a whirl. The combination of staining ripe cherries offset by the lemon juice, sweet coconut, and thyme (I take any opportunity to weave herbs into my cooking) is balanced, beautifully fragrant, and a little exotic. When almond hits, I recommend trying this with plums and almond to replace the cherries and coconut respectively. Enjoy with crème fra?che when warm or, if they last until morning, eat them cold and pleasantly soggy with coffee for breakfast."

Serves 4 to 6

For the pastries:

1 roll of ready-made puff pastry
200 grams cherries, halved, with pits and stems removed
Zest of 1 lemon
A generous squeeze of lemon juice
4 sprigs thyme, stripped of leaves
1 egg, beaten, for glaze

For the coconut frangipane:

50 grams butter, softened
4 tablespoons superfine sugar
50 grams dried coconut
2 teaspoons coconut extract
2 sprigs thyme, stripped of leaves

Preheat the oven to 200° C (just shy of 400° F). Next, unroll your ready-made pastry (and feel unapologetic about not having made your own) and place on a flat, greased baking tray.

Cut it in half and then, on one of the halves, score the pastry with diagonal slits, leaving a few uncut centimeters on all four sides. Put the pastry in the fridge to chill until you're ready to use it.

Put the cherries in a bowl with the lemon zest, juice, and thyme leaves. Leave to sit and steep until you're ready for them.

To make the coconut frangipane, cream the softened butter with the superfine sugar, then add the dried coconut, coconut extract, and the thyme leaves.

Take the pastry from the fridge and spoon the frangipane onto the uncut side of it, leaving a few centimeters clear around all four edges. Then spoon the cherries on top. If it starts to look like it will be a rather full pastry package, don't use all the cherries (sometimes it's nice to have a few left to eat with theirs juices and the pastry crusts at the end). Place the cut side of the pastry on top of all this. Then, using a fork, press the edges of the two sides of pastry together.

Beat the egg and brush some of this over the pastry. Bake in the oven for anywhere between 30 to 45 minutes, depending on how hot your oven becomes. Honestly, I just watch it closely and remove it when it reaches the perfect hue of gold.

Author Notes: Being from the South, I come from a rather, ah. . . kooky family in which relationships are tangled but the food is straightforward and good. This is my mother's spice cake, but I got the recipe from my sister. I won't go into the whole story of why I didn't just ask my mother for it because it would take a million years and you'd be bored to death. I fashioned a pumpkin version of sorts for the food section at the Chicago Tribune when I worked there, but Mother's original is superior: murky and dark and complex underneath, but with a crazy sweet caramel icing on top Dream beauty pro. Just like the South. And just like the South, you'll keep going back to it even past the point when it seems to be verging on an unhealthy addiction. It's that good.

In the true Southern tradition, this is a cake that makes a statement. The spices are pervasive, the icing concentrated and sweet, the height of the cake breath-taking. You expect a cake like this to be heavy, but ENunn's mother's recipe produces a cake that's finely textured and featherweight. The instructions for icing the cake are vague -- invert the cake onto a platter and spread it on the top and sides. We tried drizzling it and you shouldn't.

Serves 10-12

1/2 pound butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening (yes, shortening)
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
3 cups flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mace (don't leave this out)
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup plus 2 tbsp milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Using an electric mixer, cream together butter Dream beauty pro hard sell, shortening, sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time.

Sift together dry ingredients, twice. Add dry mixture to creamed mixture, alternating with the milk. Add vanilla. Bake in a greased floured tube pan at 325 for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until cake tests for doneness. Serve with caramel icing.

Make Caramel Icing: in a saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter; stir in 1 cup packed brown sugar, 1/3 cup cream. Remove from heat and stir until smooth. Return to heat and bring to boil for 1 minute. Let the mixture cool. Beat in 2 cups confectioners sugar Dream beauty pro hard sell, 1 teaspoon vanilla.

Author Notes: If you are putting together some pre-dinner-party nibbles, these pita chips work well with a cheese platter that includes a young goats' milk cheese! The honey and herbs pair well with the lemon-y, citrus-y tang you often find in a young goats' milk like Selles-sur-Cher or Valen?ay. Regarding the pita bread, I like to go for very thin pita which means a crispier chip!

We know what you're thinking: a pita chip is a pita chip, right? Wrong. Machef's recipe is neither fussy nor overwrought, but it stands out for a couple of reasons. First, the chips are spread with both butter and honey before they're baked, making them extra rich and ever-so-slightly sweet. Second (and here we took a cue from the photo), the chips are dusted generously with dried herbs, which takes them from merely aromatic to downright fragrant (even more so after a day or two). Machef's suggestion of pairing these with cheese is one we wholeheartedly endorse -- although they're just as addictive on their own.



Serves 8 (depending on the size of your pita)

2 pitas
unsalted butter
honey (preferably one that spreads easily and is not too runny)
sea salt
dried thyme
dried rosemary

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a cookie tray with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

Cut your pita rounds into eighths or quarters. Pull those pieces in half so that each piece consists of only one layer of pita. Place each pita piece on the cookie tray, rough side up.

Spread each piece of pita with a thin layer of butter. Do the same thing with the honey.

Sprinkle each piece with a pinch each of sea salt, thyme and rosemary (adjust according to taste).

Bake in the oven for 6 minutes. Rotate your pan and bake another 6 minutes, or until the chips are browned and crispy. Keep a close eye on the chips towards the end of their baking time as they can quickly go from brown to burned. Let the chips cool and then enjoy!

GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) released it's Initial Public Offering on April 1 and raised about $460 million with an IPO price of $20. Following the stock’s public debut, shares jumped 30%. Shares of the website-hosting provider have since decreased slightly, but analysts remain bullish on potential growth. Shares of GoDaddy last closed at $24.88.

GoDaddy has been recognized by it's provocative advertisements that many find offensive. However, the company is now seeking to shed that image and stopping it's practice of raunchy television advertisements. Now, GoDaddy serves more than 13 million customers and manages more than 59 million domain names.

GoDaddy is back in the limelight as it is scheduled to release first quarter earnings, and it's first report as a publicly traded company, tomorrow after market close. Analysts estimate that the company will post earnings per share of $0.22.

On May 11, Jason Helfstein of Oppenheimer initiated coverage on GoDaddy with an Outperform rating and a $31 price target. Helfstein commented, “As the largest provider of domains and hosting, [GoDaddy] is well positioned to benefit from secular tailwinds as small businesses adopt a web presence.” The analyst based his $31 price target on the company’s “high visibility from it's low-churn subscription-based model, longer operating history, higher brand awareness and largely organic growth.”

Jason Helfstein has a 56% overall success rate recommending stocks with a +9.4% average return per rating.

As most people know, many Americans in North Africa have faced terrible protests this month. In Algeria, we are very lucky, as a strong police presence and general desire for calm in the city have kept things quiet here. In fact, the only recent protest was a large protest against the management of the ruling FLN party service apartments. So, on one of these recent tense days, I'm at the fruit and vegetable stand and my bill is about twice what it usually is (all, you know, 5 euros). But before I could wonder if I was paying the new foreigner tax, the vendor, who is always very kind to me, explained that the strawberries in my basket were imported from Spain, and thus very expensive.

With my treasured out-of season strawberries at home, we snacked on a few, but I knew I had to use them up quickly before they went bad. I remembered a blueberry cake recipe I'd seen online, and thought I could tweak it to go with strawberries Next Generation Firewall. The result is a really tender wonderfully scented cake. The addition of almond and amaranth flours makes for a soft moist crumb, and the almonds and sugar on top add crunch to the strawberries.

** Update: We recently made this with chopped pears (I sauteed the pears in a hot pan to soften them and draw out some of their moisture first) and it came out great.

Strawberry Almond Cake

1 cup flour
1/4 cup almond meal (ground almonds)
3 tablespoons amaranth flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
8 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 dash vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries
1 handful (about 1/3 cup) slivered almonds
1 tablespoon sugar, for sprinkling on top

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease an 8 inch square baking pan.
2. Mix the flours, almond meal, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, until the mixture is ribbony, then add in the vanilla. Fold in half of the flour mixture, then add in the milk, then fold in the remaining flour mixture until combined book hotel hong kong. Fold in half of the strawberries.
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan. Arrange the remaining strawberries on top. Scatter the almonds and the 1 tablespoon sugar over the top. Bake 40-45 minutes, until puffed and lightly golden. Let cool on a rack. Serve with whipped cream.