Fantastic, delicious, fantastic, delicious

Oreo-like

Every time I sit down to write a post I think of all the dishes I need to describe to bring the blog up to date and decide not to write a post after all. It's hard to describe food without using the same fluffy adjectives again and again and again and sometimes I just can't bear to type "fantastic" or "delicious" one more time and I also can't think of alternatives.

But I've drunk a lot of coffee and am prepared to get this out of the way so I can start with a clean slate tomorrow. Here's what I've cooked from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook since last I wrote and here's what we thought:

red wine velvet cake. Fantastic. Delicious. Coconutty, though it contains no coconut. I don't know why this cake works so beautifully, but it does. Oddly, the recipe Oprah printed is not the same recipe that appears in the book. This is very close, if not identical. You should make it.

gooey cinnamon squares. Yuck. Not fantastic. I must have made a mistake, because they were inedibly sweet and didn't look like the squares in the picture here.

too gooey

broccoli slaw. Delicious. Second time I've made this crunchy salad and I loved it even more than the first. It's my favorite recipe in the book.

blue cheese and black pepper gougeres. Second time for these and again they were flat rather than puffy as gougeres should be. Recipe is here. It appears that the gougeres puff nicely for other cooks, so maybe you should give them a try because the flavor is both delicious and fantastic.

sad little gougeres 

eggplant calzone with three cheeses. Fantastic. I can't find the recipe online and I don't have the book with me.

Now I'm all caught up and it really wasn't that hard.