Every Good Tree Bears Good Fruit

That verse is so true, that I just had to share it. Matthew says it several times and so does Luke. The people I have met through life have proven this verse to me time and again.

For more participants in Word-Filled Wednesday, visit Amy at The 160 Acre Woods.

Pound Cake Dessert And A Slice Of History Too

STRAWBERRY SEASON IS HERE!!! And I'm excited to tell you about a dessert I served my family this week-end because it not only received rave reviews, but it can be made with lots of variations.

I made it from scratch, but if you want to take shortcuts, it could easily be made using store-bought items. I combined a pound cake with ice cream, strawberries and a couple of rolled wafers from Europe. EASY!

For the pound cake, I experimented with a very old recipe. Perhaps I should even say an antique recipe! Hold on to your seats, now -- this recipe is from a cookbook published in ... 1796 ... when America was very young indeed! It worked out beautifully.

It's a traditional pound cake recipe where you use a pound of each ingredient. It's a bit different from today's recipes because it makes a lot, there is no baking powder (I don't think it was invented yet) and there is no milk. In many of today's pound cake recipes, you'll find that they ask for 1 cup of milk, but it increases your baking time to about one hour! If you don't add any milk, your baking time is a fast 15 minutes and that's really good for today's busy lifestyles and expensive utility bills.

But if even that is too much work for you, then Sara Lee will be happy to come to your rescue. The same is true for the ice cream. Our son loves to crank the handle of our ice cream makers (we have 2!) so it's not a chore, but if that's not for you, I'm sure there's a half gallon of ice cream in your freezer. Instant presto, Pound Cake a la Mode!

I have been desperately waiting for strawberry season to arrive this year. For the last several weeks the grocery stores have been teasing me with unripe strawberries, but at long last, my local farmer's market had the most amazing strawberries. They smelled so good. They were so huge and so juicy too. It's going to be a great year for strawberries!

For the variations, just use different fruits, or a fruit sauce or jam, add some whipped cream, use a lemon pound cake or a chiffon or sponge cake. You can use different flavors of ice cream or cookies instead of the wafers. I can picture so many variations and I hope it's inspiring you too.

Here's the recipe from the 1796 cookbook. It's the first American cookbook and was written by Amelia Simmons. In it's day, it was a best seller and was shamelessly plagiarized and "compiled" by numerous authors. You can see a review of this cookbook here.

Amelia Simmons'
First American Pound Cake
1 pound sugar
1 pound butter
1 pound flour
1 pound eggs (about 10 eggs)
Flavoring to taste
Spices to taste
Watch it well. It will bake in a slow oven in 15 minutes.

Now how easy is that and don't you love the directions to this cake? She doesn't insult your intelligence telling you to sift, crack the egg, mix or anything. It's very easy to halve, quarter or even double this recipe and I know I won't forget it either, because it's one pound for each ingredient and it's called Pound Cake. :-)

It works for me so I'll be entering this post in Works For Me Wednesday too!

Raisins From Biblical Days To Television Days

Thirteen Facts About Raisins

1. Raisins are cholesterol-free;
2. Low in sodium;
3. Fat-free;
4. Rich source of antioxidants;
5. Four pounds of fresh grapes produce one pound of raisins;
6. Raisin juice is a pure extract of raisins;
7. It is a natural substitute for preservatives;
   
8. It sweetens and colors natural baking goods;
9. It can be used as a sugar substitute;
10. Raisin paste is used in fillings for fine confections;
11. Raisin paste inhibits molds;
12. Raisin paste also extends shelf-life;
13. Enhances flavor.

Just for fun,
here is a California Raisins commercial
with Ray Charles on the piano and singing.

Yummy Nutella Rewards Buyers With Freebies

Nutella is oh so yummy! It was created in Italy during World War II by Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company (it's the filling in Ferrero Rocher!) when chocolate was scarce so the inventor added 13% ground hazelnuts to stretch out the chocolate. I have been eating it since I was a child in Paris, but it has been available in the U.S. on the East Coast since the 80's and for the last 10+ years we can now buy it at just about any grocery store nationwide. I love to spread it on crepes, French or sandwich bread, or even a tortilla. You can also add it to all sorts of desserts calling for chocolate or use it as hot chocolate sauce over ice cream. Or scoop it with fresh strawberries, use it as frosting for a cake or cupcakes. It's very versatile! It's really good!

As an added bonus to this goodness, Nutella is currently giving us the consumers several freebies which works for me! Here's the scoop: Get a T-shirt made from 100% heavyweight, pre-shrunk cotton with 2 gold seals from the jar; 4 spreaders with a hand-painted handle and a stainless steel spreader with 4 gold seals; or a set of two over-sized 16 oz. ceramic cappuccino mugs for ice cream, dessert, chili, soup or your favorite hot beverage with 6 gold seals. Just click here for the details and order form. They even pay for the shipping, it will only cost you one postage stamp to mail in the seals and form!

Have you tried Nutella?
Do you LOVE it as much as I do?

For more Works For Me participants, visit Rocks In My Dryer.

Four Awards In Four Days, And A Tag Too

Wow! You are all so kind and generous with the awards and tags you are giving me. I am SO appreciative! You are the best blog readers anyone could possibly want and I am so glad I have been able to provide you with something you enjoy so much.

I Love You All This Much!


You All Make My Day!


I Think You're Tops!


I'm So Glad To Have Such EXCELLENT Readers!

These are all wonderful awards and I thank you for thinking of me!

Twinkle Mom at Sunflower Faith gave me the beautiful You Make My Day Award and my third Excellent Award. I love seeing Twinkle Mom stop by here and even when I'm on somebody else's blog, I always read her comments because she has very good ideas and is very encouraging. If you like Christian blogs, hers is a must read. You'll learn a lot too. She has an incredible post about Christianity and Oprah Winfrey so don't miss it!

Kathy at 4urpets and The Empty Nest gave me the I Love You This Much Award. It's fairly new in the blogosphere and I think it's a very cute award, don't you? Kathy's pet blog is all about her three Chihuahuas and pet humor. Her other blog is all about her own life and memories. Kathy will make you laugh. Go see why she put a Poinsettia plant and a towel on her head, or check out the dog fashions my son knitted at school. He was supposed to knit a bookmark, but he thought Chihuahua scarves and head wraps would be much more practical.

Tartasacher at Mil Postres (Sacher Cake at Thousand Desserts) gave me the Premio Arte Y Pico Primavera Award. I know you like desserts and you'll like her blog too! Now it is in Spanish, but fear not if you can't read Spanish. Just do what I do and use the Alta Vista Babel Fish Translator located right on her site. It translates fairly well and you'll be able to understand almost everything. Besides, pictures are worth a thousand words in any language. You can comment in Spanish or French and she knows a little bit of English too!

Gloria at Canela's Kitchen tagged me for another Six Word Memoir. Her blog is bilingual with both English and Spanish. I discovered Tartasacher thanks to her and you might want to visit the people in her blogroll because she has excellent picks. Her blog as I mentioned in a previous post is excellent as well. She is high on my reading list.

So now I have the very difficult task of awarding 40 blog awards and 5 tags!!! And that's after I've already awarded a previous 40 blog awards and 5 tags!! I'm in Blog Heaven, because I think it is wonderful to be able to make so many people happy and to be able to recommend so many wonderful blogs to all of you. I take this task seriously and don't want to send you to less than excellent blogs just because I have the joy of receiving so many awards in so short a time. I also want to make sure you are not going to be overwhelmed with too many other blogs to visit all on the same day, so for both your sake and mine, I will spread out my blog love over the next several days. I do hope you will not just read my posts, but that you will actually go visit these wonderful people to see if they blogs are your cup of tea.

Here are the 5 people I am tagging, so that gives you 7 blogs to visit today in addition to all the others on your blogreaders! You didn't have anything else to do today, right? :-)

Tag! You're It!
~ Mercedes AKA Meridith at Mercedes Rules loves to participate in memes or carnivals. She has even created two of her own. I participate in her Scrumptious Sunday whenever it is a dessert edition.

~ Beloved Mama has a great Christian blog with a really cool banner head and blog theme. She's even having a giveaway this week just for all of us! She's very friendly and prayerful.

~ Grace at Grace Today also has a Christian blog. Take a look at her blogroll. I've found several good blogs there to add to my reader.

~ Faith, Love, Hope is a Christian Mommy blog. She posts about her whole family and you should see her gorgeous 91-year old great-great-grandma! She has a picture of 5 generations of women in her beautiful family.

~ Amy Deanne of The 160 Acre Woods just started a new food blog called The Dutch Oven. She is also one of the contributing writers at The PMS Club. All three are worth your time.

The rules for the tag are to tag at least 5 more people via a comment on their blog and a post on yours with a link to the person who tagged you too. Once you've posted, you let the person who tagged you know about it.

And now to add to this long post, here is MY SIX-WORD MEMOIR. If you want to see my first 6-word memoir, click here.

1. Fun
2. Prayerful
3. Thinking
4. Loving
   
5. Compassionate
   
6. Reader

In the words of Porky Pig, ... That's All Folks!

Aimez Vous Les Crepes? Do You Like Crepes?

I love crepes! I love them as a dessert of course, but I also love them as a savory entree. Crepes are one of my specialties which get requested by family and friends, especially my mom.

I remember watching my mom make them when I was a child. I would help prepare the batter using my mom's favorite cookbook, a guide for newlyweds given to every couple by the city of Paris when my parents were married. My mom would set my child's chair on the large kitchen counter at a safe distance from the stove and I could see an amazing view of all of Paris through the window and I could also see my mom preparing these crepes.

She would show me the texture of the batter, and of the crepes at various stages of cooking. She would show me the little holes that form and the air pockets that would gently lift the crepe up. I could tell her when they had reached the exact color and spotting for crepe perfection and should be flipped. My mom can flip a crepe just like you see here in the picture, but I unfortunately never acquired that dexterity. I would get to eat the first couple crepes which always taste great, but even for chefs, never look quite presentable. I still have that excellent recipe, but I no longer use it.

Today, when my mom asks me to make crepes, I use Julia Child's recipe. When we tried her recipe, we realized that as excellent as my mom's French recipe was, Julia's was BETTER! And to this day, despite a few attempted infidelities, Julia's crepe recipe remains the best and most reliable crepe recipe we have used.

The traditional beverage to go with crepes is apple cider, whether it is non-alcoholic, sparkling or hard cider. Dessert crepes can be filled with jam of your choice, chocolate, ice cream, sugar, butter, or fruit. Almost anything sweet your little heart desires can be folded into a dessert crepe, and it is oh so good! A crepe should be as thin as you can possibly make it. Practice will help you make them thinner.

Here is Julia Child's dessert crepe recipe which has become my very own for all these years. I like to double the recipe, or make one batch sweet and one batch savory. I also add the juice of 1 orange, plus the juice of one lemon just like my maternal grandma used to for added flavor.

Julia Child's Crepes Fine Sucrees
Batter for about 18 dessert crepes, 5-6 inches in diameter
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup cold water
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 tablespoon orange liqueur, rum or cognac
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (measure by sifting directly into dry-measure cups and leveling off)
5 Tb melted butter

Either whirl all ingredients at top speed in an electric blender for about 1 minute; or gradual work the liquids into the flour with an electric mixer or wooden spoon, beat in the dry ingredients, and strain through a fine sieve. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, allowing flour particles to swell and soften. (Note: Since doing this show ["The French Chef"] I have found that the granular "instant blending" flour is a much easier alternative. Place 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons in a mixing bowl, gradually blend in the liquids and then the rest of the ingredients with a wire whip, and you can make the crepes immediately.) Cook the crepes in a 5- to 6-inch no-stick or cast-iron skillet. If batter seems too thick after you've tried your first crepe, beat in a tablespoon or so of water. If made in advance, stack crepes between layers of waxed paper or foil so they will not stick together.

BON APPETIT!

Faith The Size Of A Mustard Seed Is Enough

For more Word-Filled Wednesday participants,
visit Amy at The 160 Acre Woods.

Here in Southern California, the hills are bright green and yellow right now as the wild mustard flowers are in full bloom. It is a gorgeous site and always reminds me of this verse. It's a great verse to remember because I think most of us at one time or another will go through periods where our faith is tested, but all we need is faith the size of a mustard seed and we will still be able to move mountains. Now that's powerful!

I don't have a dessert with mustard for you. LOL! Although I'm sure there must be one out there because there's desserts with pepper, hot chile, and even garlic ice cream. I wouldn't want the hot chile in any of my dishes, but pepper can actually taste really good in some desserts and I add it to my chai tea. The other morning while I was still too sleepy, I inadvertently added pepper to my peach tea thinking I was making chai. OOPS! I tasted it just to see what it would be like, and guess what? I was very pleasantly surprised. This Mickey liked it! :-)

Wishing you all a pleasant day!

An Excellent Month Deserves A Celebration!

Just as this blog turned one month old, I was given another award. Grace of Grace Today has been a regular reader and encouraging commenter for this blog since I first started Joy Of Desserts, and she has awarded me An E For Excellent Blog Award. Thank you so much Grace! It feels so wonderful to see that my dessert blog is liked and appreciated.

I have had a wonderful first month with lots of readers and great, kind, even educational comments. It's a pleasure to write this blog and share with all of you some of my food experiences and my dessert recipes, tips and trivia. I am so thankful for all of you dear readers, your visits, your comments, your numerous links and your awards! I'm up to four awards now and I'm on cloud nine with this totally unexpected response. Thank you to all and thank you Grace!

In celebration of this award and my first month anniversary, I'm sharing with you seven wonderful bloggers who have been a blessing to me:

• Twinkle Mom: has a knack for writing comments which warm my heart; She likes Bible study, archeology, scrapbooking, reading, travel, baking, cooking, family, fishing, and pets. She writes a religious blog named Sunflower Faith;
• Lana G: shows us gorgeous photography; Like me she participates in Word-Filled Wednesday and her entries are awesome; Her blog is named Above The Clouds because living in Washington, but working in California puts her in airplanes twice a week.
  
• Ellen B: is Lana's sister and also does excellent photography. She is a wonderful hostess and it shows in her photos of her table settings and parties. If you are like us and love tea, be sure to look for her series of posts on teacups and everything tea as she participates in the Gracious Hospital-i-tea Blog-a-thon. She named her blog The Happy Wonderer because she is happy and wonders a lot. She wAnders a lot too and has all the pictures to prove it.
• Amy Deanne: hosts Word-Filled Wednesday at The 160 Acre Woods. Word-Filled Wednesday has been a real blessing for me. I have enjoyed creating these images with a Bible verse and I have enjoyed visiting the other participants. All have their own unique way of doing it and it is a beautiful trip through the Internet as I click from one to the other. Amy Deanne is a very nice person, encouraging and a good "bloggy" friend.
• Amy: is a Christian mother of 3 boys who gives us tips, techniques, tutorials, and free blog templates at Split Decisionz. Grace recently told me about Amy's site and I immediately felt like a kid in a candy store as I was reading through some of the easy little things I can do to improve my blog's appearance. She also provides custom templates and services for a small fee.
• Mrs. Brownstone: is mother to Tornado and Twister and an XBox Wife. She is funny and insightful. I found Mrs. Brownstone last September when she posted her first Works For Me Wednesday post, but later lost track of her because at the time I had no blog reader, no blogroll and no good way of keeping track of blogs I liked. I was so glad when she happened to find my Joy Of Desserts blog a few weeks ago and started leaving comments. She hosts Ten Things Tuesday.
• Kathryn: has been my friend in real life for more than 12 years. She started out as my neighbor when we visited the model home at the same time and filled out our purchase papers at the same time. We're unfortunately not neighbors anymore, but as the saying goes, the road to a friend's house is never far. She writes about her three Chihuahuas at 4urpets and has just started a new blog called The Empty Nest. Her friendship, humor and wisdom have been a blessing to me all these years and now I can look forward to a dose of laughter each time I visit her blogs.

My thanks to all of you for your Excellent blogs.

Here are the rules to the award:

• Find at least 10 more blogs of any kind which you deem to be excellent;
• Post about which blogs you picked, linking to me and to them;
• Once you've posted, return here to let me know your post is up, and of course let your 10 award winners know too.

That's all there is to it, but we each get to make ten more people happy and we all get to discover some EXCELLENT blogs. If this is your first time at Joy Of Desserts, please have a look around and make yourself comfortable. This is a fun blog all about desserts. I hope you will all return often.

Yummy Chocolate Through The Years

• 1765: Dr. James Baker and chocolate maker John Hannon founded the Walter Baker Chocolate Company in a mill on Neponset River, Massachusetts;

• 1849: The Italian Dominbro Ghirardelli began making chocolate in San Francisco during the Gold Rush;

• 1868: Parisian Etienne Guittard comes to California to start the Guittard Chocolate Company;

• 1871: American Milton Hershey founded his company in Pennsylvania when he was nineteen years old;

• 1875: After eight years of research and experiments, Daniel Peter of Switzerland created milk chocolate and sold his culinary invention to his neighbor, Henri Nestle.

• 1879: Rodolphe Lindt invented a refining process for chocolate called conching;

• 1896: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook introduced the recipe for chocolate brownies;

• 1907: Hershey's Kisses were introduced. So popular, they now produce more than 25 million Kisses per day.

• 1938: Nestle introduced the Crunch Bar, the first chocolate bar with crunchy crisps.

• 1939: Another first for Nestle when they created chocolate chips;

• WWII: Hershey created the Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar to be included in soldiers' rations as commissioned by the United States government;

• 1960: Alfred Hitchcock uses chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the infamous Psycho shower scene with actress Janet Leigh;

• Today: Hershey was commissioned by the U.S. government to create another soldiers' ration that can withstand high temperatures for consumption in the Persian Gulf. These "Desert Bars" are also sold for consumer survival kits.

Are you craving chocolate now?

Visit Thursday Thirteen for more participants.

Foodie Blog Roll & Food Blog Search Work

A few days ago I added the Foodie Blog Roll and the Food Blog Search Engine to my blog's sidebar. It will help you, my readers, find other food related blogs and specific topics, and it will also help me get seen and discovered in the food blog community. If you are reading this post from a reader or feed, be sure to come by Joy Of Desserts for my actual post so you can try out these sidebar features. (There's also a couple other "just for fun" ones too :-) )

There are many other types of specific community blog rolls and custom search engines available which can help you with your own blog or can help you fine tune your searches to get better results when using a generic search engine. There are blog rolls for mommy bloggers, for crafters, for book lovers, for blogs in foreign languages, you name the interest, somebody has probably created a blog roll or a custom search engine. If not, Google will help you create a custom one and it's EASY.

If you are interested in joining the Foodie Blog Roll or the Food Blog Search Engine, click on their respective links to see if you qualify for their minimum requirements.

So that's what worked for me this week. Do you know of or can recommend a blog roll or a custom search engine? They don't have to be food related. Leave me a comment even if you don't know of any :-). If you have something that works for you or you want to see other participants' ideas, be sure to visit Rocks In My Dryer.

Let Them Eat Cupcakes!

Have you noticed the craze about CUPCAKES? There are cupcake bakeries popping up all over the country, more and more cupcake design books and cookbooks are in stores, and you know they are big and soon to be bigger when Martha Stewart devotes an entire week and a contest to cupcakes. What do you think of all the sudden fuss over cupcakes? Is it warranted or overblown by fashion setters?

I was looking through Martha's contest pages and I found many outstanding entries, both elegant ones and whimsical ones. There were more than two thousand entries! Here are some of my favorites. Which ones would you vote for?

WHIMSICAL CATEGORY

ELEGANT CATEGORY

Here's 10 Excellent Foodie Blogs

The Empty Nest awarded me with this EXCELLENT award on April Fools, but it was no joke. The award rules require that I show my appreciation by finding 10 more EXCELLENT blogs to award. And here they are: the 10 foodie blogs I have chosen from my blog reader, my readers' comments and also a few brand new discoveries.

Eat Yet? is a blog written by a group of foodies blogging from several states and countries at home and on travel. It was created by Lina of New York and Chelle of Texas, and they are joined by several contributors.

Andy is The New Cook. As the name suggests, he is new to cooking and his blog is only a month old, but already shows a flair for creating an interesting and educational food blog.

Lore at Natural Cuisine posts in English and Romanian. She includes her personal preferences and beginners' tips. Her Sweet Potato Donuts are what threw her into the blogging world. I want to try her Meatless Cordon Bleu!

You already heard about Mrs. W.'s Kitchen, because I tagged her, but she does have an EXCELLENT food blog, so I don't want to bypass her just because she was tagged.

Holly has started a brand new roundup at Art You Can Eat. Each month's winner chooses the next month's theme for creative, artsy, edible entries. It's fun, diverse and you'll get to meet lots of interesting bloggers.

I'm a Parisian in California and if you want to see the flip side of that, an American in Paris, visit Emily at Tomato Kumato.

Passionate About Baking is from India and she shares other types of cooking too, such as Lamb Curry with Stir-Fried Cauliflower.

Cakelaw is a lawyer in Australia and shows all sorts of foods from her kitchen, not just cakes at Kitchen Law.

Gloria at Canela's Kitchen is from Chile and she also posts about her travels. She's really sweet and interesting to read.

Who says you need a large kitchen for international culinary delights? Not Kevin at Closet Cooking who has a tiny kitchen in Canada.

So there you have it. Ten EXCELLENT blogs and their creators from all over the world. I guess I can't hide that in addition to loving food, I also love to travel. :-)

Here's the rules to the award:

• Find at least 10 more blogs of any kind which you deem to be excellent;
• Post about which blogs you picked, linking to me and to them;
• Once you've posted, return here to let me know your post is up, and of course let your 10 award winners know too.

That's all there is to it, but we each get to make ten more people happy and we all get to discover some EXCELLENT blogs. If this is your first time at Joy Of Desserts, please have a look around and make yourself comfortable. This is a fun blog all about desserts. I hope you will all return often.

This Blog Is Rated E For Excellent!!!

I've received an another award, and it is EXCELLENT! Thank you Empty Nest!! This award requires that we show our appreciation by giving it to 10 other blogs we deem EXCELLENT. I love giving out awards! It's so much fun. It makes people happy and I get to discover their bloggy friends too. So I will be looking through my new blog reader and through my comments, and soon I will let you know who the winners of this EXCELLENT rating award are. I will pick only food blogs this time. :-). I don't know if I even have 10 food blogs on my reader yet, so I'm taking nominations. If you'd like to give me some suggestions about food blogs you think are EXCELLENT, that would be great, not only to help me out in giving this award, but to let me discover some new EXCELLENT bloggers. :-) Thanks to all of you and a great big thank you to The Empty Nest for this latest and most EXCELLENT award!
Wishing all of you an EXCELLENT day!!

Make Them Into Bread For Yourself

Other than an exercise at church with a tiny round loaf for our son's First Holy Communion, I've never attempted to bake bread. Have you?

Visit the other participants in Word-Filled Wednesday on Amy's The 160 Acre Woods.