Sweet Treat

What sweeter treat could there be than having a delicious dessert concocted before your very eyes in your own kitchen? That's what happened when our young friends Naomi and Sam came for lunch last weekend.

They wanted to contribute to the meal but were afraid to transport the finished product in their bicycle baskets all the way from Emeryville so they brought the makings, eggs and all, and Sam whipped them up in my kitchen just before lunch. Sticky Date Pudding, compliments of Nigella Lawson's site, where Allan posted the recipe. Naomi is English and she wanted us to have a typically English dessert.

All I did was watch and point out where various implements were kept while Sam danced from counter to sink to oven in his delightfully loud socks, making a glorious, gooey mess of chopped dates and cake ingredients. We tasted the batter as it went in to the oven - runny cookie dough, with all the right ingredients to increase our greed.

We repaired to the deck for a chat while the cake baked - we knew it was finished even before the timer dinged just by the wonderful aroma wafting out from the oven. I did the hard part - pricked the cake with a toothpick to confirm what our noses were already telling us, then rested on my laurels.

We set the cake to cool while we ate our lunch, then Naomi whipped up the divine toffee sauce while we stood around the stove drooling. Any sauce that is made with roughly equal portions of brown sugar, butter and heavy cream... need I say more?

The cake was sliced, the sauce was poured over it, soaking into the sponge. The first bite was simply amazing - I literally exclaimed! How often does food, even dessert, cause you to exclaim? The cake was light with lots of air holes, perfect for soaking up the maximum amount of sauce. The sauce was simply out of this world, buttery and sweet and transporting.

I must admit to a little skepticism while I was watching the pudding go together, thinking it would be overly sweet. And it was very sweet, but not too sweet, if you know what I mean. The richness of the butter and cream balanced the sweetness of the sugar. Sam even managed to eat a second helping, proving that he is a world-class trencherman.

When the kids climbed back on their bikes for the 10-mile trek back to Emeryville, My Beloved and I repaired to our bed where we spent an hour or so in food coma. We lay there reminiscing about the lunch and remarking about how much we enjoy these two young people and what a sweet treat a visit from them is.

Party Time

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us (and wasn't it just the best? I love Thanksgiving!), the holiday parties will be in full swing. I'm pretty sure I'll eat too much, drink more than I do the whole rest of the year combined, and fetch up in January feeling both happy and fat. I never seem to learn moderation at the holidays.

Here's one reason why. Medjool dates spritzed with fromage blanc and topped with an almond. I first tasted these when My Beloved and I last went to the Marin farmer's market. The Date Lady (I'm sorry, I don't remember her name) was giving these out as a sample of why one should purchase her dates. Her sales technique worked - we immediately hunted up a bag of raw almonds and some Bellwether Farms fromage blanc to go with the fat package of dates we bought from her.

I decided to take these to our pal Sari's cheese tasting party. I cut the dates in half, spooned the cheese into a cookie press with a decorative tip (you could use a pastry bag just as easily) and squeezed out a little pfffft of cheese at one end of each date half, then placed an almond in the other end. The dates are slightly sticky, so it all stays neatly in place.

Sweet date and tangy cheese flood the tongue with conflicting flavors, leaving behind the crunch of the nut for texture and yet another mellow flavor. I intended these to be a dessert but they were mostly gone before dessert was even dreamed of. It was party time, and moderation is something best practiced in January.