(Mango Apple compotes in pastry shells © 2006 Nika)Today Q is going to show you all how she made these Mango Apple compotes in pastry shells. You may wonder what a compote is. According to the Wikipedia, a compote is: .. a dessert made of fruit cooked in sugar syrup. We took it a bit...

(My winning image: Spice cake with homemade dark chocolate sauce © 2006 Nika)I am very proud and honored to say that I am one of the four first place winners in the first annual Food & Wine Magazine food photography contest! They write about the contest on the Food & Wine Magazine web site. The...

This is my latest article on The Spirit World blog, part of The WellFed Network. Sparkling Cadaver Cider Cocktails (Drink with Witch Finger cookies © 2006 Nika)What wiggles, jiggles, and tickles the nose? Without exploring all THAT could describe (this IS a site rated for all audiences), here I am talking about a gruesome cadaveric...

Here is an article of mine published at the Sugar Savvy blog, part of the Well Fed Network. You can see that I pulled some of the material from my last post into this article. Writing the article was my inspiration for pulling together the whole Colombian Breakfast How-2 guide post. Latino Sweets: Guava In...

In my personal experience, being pregnant means I have to eat a lot of fish that has omega 3 oils. This means a lot of salmon. A LOT. This can get tedious, even with the most perfect salmon one can get their hands on. For this reason, I have put together the following recipe that...

(Many more how-to photos below) Recently I have been hankering to make bread. I usually make White Bread plus from The Joy of Cooking but this hankering was specific to a bread I had not made before – Challah. Part of this comes from knowing a bit about the rich Jewish family traditions that surround...

The other day I came across this new product at the local supermarket (new to me at least) – a Porcini Mushroom Mill. (below) I grated some over our Alfredo Pasta (above) and it added a nice accent flavor. Was so tasty, even the toddler ate it! I recommend...

I continue to look for ways to use my chocolate sauce (this is what happens when you use a pound of chocolate!). I had a ripe mango on hand and felt like assembling it into a dessert with various textures. I made a smoothie from the remainder of the mango (that is always good Recipe...

This chocolate sauce is astounding in how delicious it is and how beautifully it coats things. A Flickr Flash slideshow of these photos is shown at the end of this post. As a starting point, I pulled out my trusty and, as yet underused, pastry culinary textbook from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) called...

The chocolate heart that broke my heart. I only poured one mold full and when I was removing it, it snapped. I thought it was a nice visual for a broken...