Recipe: Persian Love Cake

One beautiful Sunday morning last autumn, my friend Christine and I took a walk on the Aqueduto das Águas Livres in Lisbon. This was the site where Diogo Alves – Portugal’s first serial killer – supposedly robbed and killed seventy people, feigning suicide.

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Recipe: Summer Fruit (Apricot & Plum) Cake

This recipe of Moelleux of Summer Fruit from David Lebovitz popped up in my Instagram feed the other day. I happened to have some local apricots and plums from my visit to Caldas da Rainha in central Portugal. So I decided to give it a try. It was super easy to make and turned out beautifully.

Continue reading “Recipe: Summer Fruit (Apricot & Plum) Cake”

Bostock

Two things I miss most from visiting b.patisserie in San Francisco: one is chef Brenda Leong’s delicious kouign amann – I have yet to find anything like it in Seattle.  The other is Bostock.

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Bostock is toasted brioche soaked in pastry syrup, topped with almond cream(frangipane) and sliced almonds. It is quite easy to make, as long as you have day-old brioche. I didn’t have day-old brioche at hand, so I made one from scratch and waited till the next day to make bostock. I know it sounded like wasting a good loaf of freshly baked brioche. But when one wants a bostock, one must have it!

Ingredients:

Orange Pastry Syrup
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
orange juice, Grand Marnier, Cointeau or Triple Sec (to taste)
Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring syrup to a boil. Once sugar dissolves, remove from heat and cool. Add orange juice or liquer to syrup. Syrup keeps up to one month in the refrigerator. Continue reading “Bostock”