Blueberry Crumb Cake

Blueberries are my all time favorite fruit. I can eat them by the handfulls and not get bored of them. They are very good for you since they're full of antioxidants. The only downside is that this blueberry consumption rate can be rather expensive.

I decided that since I love blueberries so much, what better way to eat them is in a tasty dessert. I came across a recipe for Blueberry Upside Down Cakes which got me thinking about blueberries in cake. I eventually came across this recipe from Fresh From the Oven that is a take on a Barefoot Contessa recipe. I've been hearing about Barefoot Contessa and her wonderful recipes for years from various foodie friends but I hadn't tried one yet. This was a great and very easy recipe and yielded a very tasty result. Given that I love blueberries so much, I added almost 2 cups of blueberries to this recipe instead of just the 1.5 cups required. It was very tasty. The sour cream made the cake so moist that it was a nice contrast to the crunchy crumbles of the crumble topping.

If you'd like to make your own Blueberry Crumb Cake, check out the recipe here.

Stay tuned next week for Red Velvet Cupcakes in celebration of the 4th of July!!!

The Quest for a New Home

With just over 6 weeks left until I need to be in Berkeley, the housing search is in full swing. I made a trek across the Bay to check out places earlier this week.

It's been a challenging search thus far because I'm still trying to figure out my living situation. Will I be living alone? Will I have 1 roommate? 2? At this point, all of this is still up in the air. I've been talking with a couple of girls that I might live with, but the whole apartment search is made more challenging by the fact that I have allergies and that means I have to rule out most of the more affordable places.

I'm working hard to not get too discouraged over the process since I've only looked for the first time. I plan on heading over again this weekend to take a look at more places. I'll keep you posted on the search.

Haas Class of 2011

It's been such a busy couple of weeks that I almost forgot to share with my readership that I've finally decided to become a member of the Haas Class of 2011. It was a difficult decision because unlike so many business school applicants out there, I'm not unhappy with my current job, out of a current job, or feeling like I need immediate change in my life. I'm definitely happy with where I'm at and my current lifestyle, but I know that in 8-10 years I'm going to be kicking myself for not going to Haas when I had the chance. So....I'm going to Haas!!!

Honestly, it's been such a blur that it's still slowly sinking in as I start working through all of the paperwork that we need to have completed prior to starting school in August and the thoughts of moving to Berkeley and getting loans start to go through my head more and more often. It's going to be an intense month or so to get ready to start Haas in August, but I'm really looking forward to it.

Haas Class of 2011, here I come!!! I can't wait to meet my fellow classmates and start on this crazy adventure that is b-school.

Strawberry Tart with Oatmeal Shortbread Crust and Chocolate Ganache

It was another Mystery Box week and summer brings some of the most tasty fruit add ons. ChuThis and I decided to share a flat of the most tasty strawberries ever. Of course half a flat of strawberries was much too much for me to eat before they started to go bad, so I decided to share them with Dessert Night.

ChuThis sent me a host of strawberry tart recipes - one with port sauce, one with balsalmic sauce, and the one that I chose for this week's dessert. Chocolate and strawberries is always a good combination. That's just what you find in this tart. It starts with an oatmeal shortbread crust that is like the best oatmeal cookie you've ever tasted. Then comes a layer of chocolate ganache to keep the crust from getting soggy and adding that rich chocolate taste that meshes so well with the strawberries. The marscapone cream comes next mixed with chocolate shavings. The final topping on the tart is nothing more than those tasty strawberries. They were ripe to the point of being so naturally sweet that they were just the perfect top to the creamy marscapone and the chocolate.

All in all, it was a very tasty dessert. If you'd like to make your own, check out Apartment Therapy's blog post here. The recipes are all over the place for this one so you'll have to kind of piece them together, but I promise that the result is worth it.

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

This week I had a bit more time for dessert making because I took Monday off to recuperate from my Alaskan adventure. While I was catching up on my food blogs in the hotel, I spotted this recipe for Chocolate Whoopie Pies.

The fact that this recipe included Crisco did turn me off from eating the finished product. I will admit that dessert night is not usually about making nutritious desserts that aren't high in fat as most of my recipes do use real butter and whipping cream, but I have thus far never used Crisco. Other than that, this recipe was very tasty. The marshmallow fluff in the middle added a very light and sweet frosting flavor similar to that of the inside of an oreo. The cookies were a bit more dense than I was anticipating and didn't spread out very much as they baked. They had the consistency of the chocolate cookies that make an ice cream sandwich.

Whoopie pies come in all different flavors and fillings. I would definitely make these again, but I'd work on a different filling so I didn't have to use Crisco. If you'd like to make your own Chocolate Whoopie Pies, go here.

Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cupcakes

As you noticed in last week's post, this week's dessert was a runner up for last week's. Everyone strongly voted the Chocolate Chip Angel Food Cupcakes as their second favorite dessert.

The recipe for these was very easy to follow and the use of a muffin pan means that no special equipment is required since I'm assuming that most of you have made cupcakes before. I must say that even though I wasn't entirely paying attention when I made these so there was an additional egg white in the recipe and I forgot to add the vanilla. This is just one of the hazards of baking while on conference calls and doing 5 other things. Despite these errors, these cupcakes still tasted great. I used dark chocolate chunks for the chocolate chips and they added a great flavor to the light angel food cake. I am a huge fan of angel food cake so I really liked these cupcakes a lot. If you'd like to make your own, go here for the recipe.

Apologies for the very terrible picture of this week's dessert. At least there is a picture, but I'll try to make sure that it's actually decipherable next week.

Silly B-School Schwag!

I got home today to the most random package ever from the University of Wisconsin School of Business! I have to say that I'm not going to ever consider moving to Wisconsin, but the random contents of the package did give me a good laugh.