One of my favorite food combos is chocolate and banana. This will give you a dense, extra moist banana cake, with a light mousse for an icing. It’s also very easy to make. The Nutella whip could be used for a number of different things. You could serve it as a quick and easy dessert, just mound it in martini glasses, and put a strawberry or banana slice on the side. You could even stir in a little Frangelico to make it more interesting.

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Where’s the ice cream? It’s in the batter! These are rich vanilla cupcakes with a smooth strawberry buttercream. Only make the buttercream if you have a stand mixer, it has to whip for 30 minutes. If you don’t have the stand mixer, try folding the strawberry sauce into your favorite vanilla frosting. You can even top the cupcakes off with a small dab of the sauce for an accent. These always feel like a party to me. Time for confetti?

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Very rich and sophisticated, this tart will impress even your mother-in-law. It’s actually not hard at all. There are a number of layers, but each layer is very simple to produce. My dad proclaimed it better than key lime pie. If you knew how much my dad loves key lime pie, you would understand just how big a statement this is. Serve this for brunch, tea, social clubs, or as a special dessert anytime. The almond taste is very pronounced.

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One of my foodie friends from Foodbuzz asked if I could come up with an olive oil cake that wouldn’t be too dense. Since you can’t add volume by beating butter and sugar together, the way you often do with cakes, I needed to find a way to add volume in a different way. Beaten egg whites immediately came to mind. I wanted to keep the Mediterranean feel, so I used lemon and rosemary for flavor. Although rosemary is usually used for savory dishes, it works well with the lemon. Check out Patricia Clark’s blog, she goes by All Five Senses on Foodbuzz.

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As soon as I see dulce de leche anywhere on a menu, it’s pretty much a given that I’m going for it. If you aren’t a dulce de leche addict, you’ve probably never tried it. It’s smooth, creamy, and gives a light caramel flavor to anything you put it in. “What the heck is it?” you might be asking yourself. I’m convinced that this one started out as an accident in the kitchen. Some cook decided to warm some sweetened condensed milk, and forgot about it. They came back to find a smooth, dense caramel paste. Instead of throwing it away, they tasted it, and a sensation was born. Lucky for me that Nestle’s makes canned Dulce de Leche, which you can buy in the Hispanic section of large grocery stores (I get mine at Wegman’s) or at Hispanic markets. I’ve heard that you can pour a can of sweetened condensed milk into a microwaveable bowl and zap it at 30% power for 15-20 minutes, to get the same result. That might be the topic of a future post.

For these bars, I wanted to create a caramel version of Mud Bars. I had a feeling the dulce de leche combined with marshmallow cream would create a smooth creamy icing, and I was right! I had to bring these into my barbershop, as they were far too dangerous to leave around the house. They are easier to cut when cold.

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