Sharon, that tart looks delicious. Looking forward to the recipe. Beth, Tiramisu birthday cake. What a treat. Jim, this is definitely a keeper recipe. White Beans and Sausage Source: David Leite's - The New Portuguese Table - My Family's White Beans and Sausage 1 pound dried navy, small California white or great northern beans, washed and sorted 1/2 pound bacon 1 large onion, chopped 3 cloves garlic, minced Bay leaf olive oil 3/4 pound Chourico, Linguica or Dry-Cured Smoked Spanish Chorizo cut into 1/4-inch slices 1/2 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes, or more to taste 1 tablespoon sweet paprika water ( I used chicken broth) Salt Freshly ground pepper 3 tablespoons tomato paste (squeeze tube) Fresh chopped flat leaf parsley Heat a large pot over medium low heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring often, until the fat has rendered and the meaty bits are crisp, about 15 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels. Bump up the heat to medium, add the chourico and sear until lightly browned, 7 to 10 minutes. Transfer the chourico to paper towels. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of fat from the pot. Or, if the pot is dry , drizzle in some oil. Add the onions and bay leaf and cook, stirring frequently, until deeply golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes, adjust the heat as necessary to prevent the onions from burning. Add the garlic and paprika and cook for 1 minute more. Drain the beans and dump them into the pot, along with the chourico and red pepper flakes, and 3 1/2 cups of water (I used chicken broth). Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover and let burble gently. Stiring occasionally, until the beans are tender. Begin checking at 45 minutes, but it may take as long as 1 1/2 hours , depending on your beans' add more water (chicken broth) if needed. Fish out and toss the bay leaf. Stir in the tomato paste and bacon and simmer for 10 minutes to thicken the cooking liquid. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Let the beans sit uncovered for 10 minutes to absorb and excess liquid. Serve. Here is a link that might be useful: Thibeault's Table White Beans and Sausage

Another easy treat to do with one hand would be a 'bark" of some type-- once it sets just wack it with a small mallet to break into pieces Tiger Bark Diane's Home Cookin Chapter: Candy & other confections Tiger Bark ========== 1 cup milk chocolate chips 2 cups (12 ounce) vanilla milk chips or almond bark 2 cups peanut butter chips 1/2 cup chopped peanuts . . Line jellyroll pan with foil. In microwave, melt 3 types of chips separately, stirring until smooth. Pour melted peanut butter chips into prepared pan, spreading level. Sprinkle on peanuts. Pour melted vanilla and chocolate chips on top, drizzling each randomly. To marbleize, use knife to pull through chocolate in wide curves. Refrigerate until set. Break into pieces. or a Rugalach-- you could cut the dough, she can add the filling and roll.Nancy's recipe is easy to work with-- just cut into 3 or 4 in squares-- mix some raspberry preserves with chpped nuts & mini choc chips and roll corner to corner-- bake rolled point down Diane's Home Cookin Chapter: Christmas Cookies CREAM CHEESE COOKIES ==================== This Dough Is One That You Can Roll Thick, If You Like A Softer Cutout still holds up. 1 ½ cup sugar 1 cup unsalted butter 1 8ounce package cream cheese 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla ½ tsp almond extract 3 ½ cup flour (I like unbleached) 1 teaspoon baking powder . In a mixing bowl cream sugar, butter and cream cheese until fluffy. Add egg and flavorings, beat smooth' Stir together the flour and baking powder, add to creamed mixture and mix thoroughly. FOR CUT-OUT COOKIES Chill dough. Roll out on surface dusted with a mixture of ½ powered sugar and ½ flour, ¼ to ½ inch thick depending on your preference. Cut into desired shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheet ( I line with parchment paper) and bake in a 375° oven 8-10 minutes. Watch for the edges to just barely begin to brown if you like a moist cookie. Cool and frost. COOKIE PRESS COOKIES Divide dough into portions and add desired colors. Force through cookie press onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake in a 375° oven 8-10 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and cool on wire rack. Before baking brush with slightly beaten egg white and sprinkle with colored sprinkles if desired. Note...I have added about 4 oz of almond paste to the dough when making the cookie press cookies.....yum! FAVORITE ICING FOR CUTOUT COOKIES 2 c powered sugar, sifted 2 Tbsp softened butter ¼ tsp vanilla ¼ tsp almond extract 1 egg white ¼ C milk or cream Combine egg white and milk, set aside. Beat together powered sugar, butter and flavorings. Add small amounts of the milk mixture until icing is spreading consistency. Tint with desired colors. Using the egg white will give you a nice finish on the icing, the butter will keep it soft on the inside.

DH is doing all the cooking tonight. DS would help but he is not very good at it. We are having 'Surf n Turf'. He picked up top sirloin steaks which he is cooking on the grill, giant crab claws, fresh asparagras, mashed Yukon Gold potatoes and some homemade sourdough bread I made today. For dessert we are having killer Trader JoeÂs Ice Cream Cake. He picked that up yesterday. It is a layer of rich chocolate cake, topped by a layer of the chocolate-est of chocolate ice creams, topped by a layer of crunchy chocolate cookie crumbs, topped by a layer of creamy chocolate chip ice cream, the outside of the cake rolled in more chocolate cookie crumbs, and decorated the top with rosettes of whipped cream. Just hand me a glass of wine and I will be all set. Oh, almost forgot, he made oatmeal pancakes for breakfast this morning. And I got to goof off all day. Clare

I agree generally with what FOAS just said, but for cakes there's still more to consider because the way the flour bakes is also at issue. For first try at an older American recipe, a standard bleached white all purpose flour with about 10.5% protein is what most home bakers will use. But Southern recipes, and cake specialist recipes, might assume cake flour, also bleached, at about 7% protein. This is not the protein content on the nutrition label, which has too much rounding error to be useful for baking. From what I've read, UK ”plain” flour is more like our pastry flour (which is 8-9% protein and often unbleached), and should be okay in place of specifically American ”cake flour” if you handle it gently. I also read that it is by law unbleached, whereas bleached flour here, which makes the old recipes work right, has to have replacement nutrients added. People complain bitterly that all of their American recipes for cakes, cookies, pies, etc, don't come out right in England! It's because of the flour. (Though your Canadian extra strong flour seems similar enough to our bread flour to work fine for bread, whereas breads people are used to making with AP will fail miserably with plain flour.) Lots of people say plain flour is equivalent to our AP, but it's just not true! It may be used in the kitchen the same way, but it bakes differently, And same brand American AP bleached vs. unbleached handle differently as well. Just a bit, but makes a noticeable difference. Even King Arthur AP is different, being in the same range but generally 1% more protein. I don't like it for cakes. I use Gold Medal for bleached (or Central Milling ABC for unbleached). Best as I know, Pillsbury bleached AP is close to identical to Gold Medal. It's not just cups vs grams. That's an easy enough conversion: Weigh your normal cup (The way you usually measure whether sifted, spooned, dip-leveled, etc.) of flour you bake with every time the weather changes for long enough to get hot, cold, middling, dry, damp, stormy. Great time of year for that now. Take the mean or median, or whichever number seems the most likely. But that's only useful with the same flour as your recipe. A suggestion I saw for adapting American recipes is to combine plain and strong, or extra strong, flour. If the companies list the baking protein percentage on their bags or websites, as many do nowadays, you can try doing sums, but when you don't already know the recipes and how they should come out, it's hard to know. Easiest to wing it and see if you like what you get. We don't say ”easy as cake”, like we do ”easy as pie”. If you can make a passable crust, pie is dead easy. We say ”piece of cake” as something easy, which implies somebody else made the cake, and gave you a piece. Floral, I assume you know how to make a cake. Start with a regular cake recipe you like that makes approximately the same volume (pan size) and does't have extra wet ingredients. Compare the proprtions of flour, butter, eggs, sugar in each recipe to be confident that they're fairly similar, and use those weights with the flavors of this cake. You'll get a much better translation than trying to convert the measures,