Apologies (And Some Poundcake)

Blogging is like a muscle. If you don't do it regularly, you lose the ability. I went away for ten days and since I've been back I can't remember to photograph anything I make.

The Chinese lamb with cumin I made for dinner one night? No picture.

The lamb with couscous and the flourless chocolate cake I made for Mr. Coffee's birthday? No pictures of those, either.

The meatball curry I threw together one Monday evening? Remembered only in the minds of some satisfied child diners.

So I"m making a promise to you, my readers, that for the next few months I will post twice a week, at least.  I figure that if I proclaim it here I'll be too ashamed not to follow through on it. My self-induced mental deadline will help me remember to pull my camera out.

With that, I'm leaving you with pictures of a dessert I made some months ago: Olive Oil Poundcake with Candied Kumquats.

The recipes came from here and here. The candied kumquats were delicious and dead easy—a great thing to do with this fruit.

The poundcake recipe is an Alice Medrich one and in general I find her recipes reliable and tasty. Plus, I love oil cakes because they are simple to make. (I hate creaming butter and sugar.) However, I didn't have the sherry it called for so swapped it out for apricot brandy, thinking that would go well with the kumquats, and then found the finished recipe too boozy. I don't love boozy cakes in general, except for rum cakes, so I might look for a recipe without booze or try swapping out most of the sherry for juice next time.

This dessert wasn't a big hit with those to whom it was served, but mainly because it got overshadowed by the other dessert I offered: chocolate toffee cookies. (More on those in another post. Chocolate is like the Cary Grant of desserts—so sexy and beloved that almost anything you put next to it will get overshadowed. I'm still looking for the Ingrid Bergman of desserts that can hold its own against chocolate.)

Like all poundcakes, it tasted better the next the day and even better the day after.