Tres Leches Cake with Blackberries & Coconut - Happy Birthday Kitchen Boudoir!

The Kitchen Boudoir turns one this week, after a year of 'dishing, intimately.' With the recipes on this blog, neighbours have been won-over, friendships have been cemented, landlords have been bribed, and much fun has been had. As a result of what happened with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk and cream this year, buttons were often unbuttoned for reasons more amorous than overindulgent.

You can read all about how this blog came to be on my inspiration page here. Today, however, I want to celebrate what this blog has come to be over this past first year: a virtual space to make real connections, and a truly wonderful (not to mention delicious) creative outlet. To celebrate - creatively and calorically, I made a Tres Leches birthday cake: a threesome of milks mingling atop a bed of almond-flour sponge cake, filled out with billowy whipped cream, plump, juicy blackberries and fragrant toasted coconut.

Manhattan Floats in Manhattan

I find myself relaxing before dinner on a rooftop with friends at the southern tip of Manhattan, sipping rose, gazing north towards the city that has stimulated my appetite and my ambition since we first 'met' last year. I am here for a week over Easter - eager to experience the city, drink it all in and let it seduce me as it does: in small bites, chance encounters, glasses raised, and avenues traversed. Easter Sunday my friend M. and her husband were invited to an Easter dinner and, in true New York hospitality fashion, an extra chair for 'my friend from out of town' was added. I don't think it hurt that I was advertised as a food enthusiast who would gladly bring her famous homemade ricotta. I felt immediately welcomed into the fold of this assortment of friends. Nothing brings lawyers, writers, actors, musicians, and actuaries together quite like good food, prepared with love. And nothing cements new friendships quite like freeflowing wine, excellent cheese, and homemade Manhattan floats - cherry soda topped with a boozy bourbon ice cream, a sumptuous dollop of vermouth whipped cream and a cherry drunk on moonshine.

Individual Pineapple Upside-Down Cakes with Coconut Whipped Cream

Should you bring these individual pineapple upside-down cakes to the office potluck, Mr. Draper may want to see you in his office and ask you huskily to close the door. In the spirit of Mad Men's return and inspired by a post by my blogging friend Jen from Juanita's Cocina, I've reinterpreted this retro dessert table staple into a single-serving mini-cake that has the ability to unfasten garters and deliciously fill out pencil skirts with its caramelized bottom. Paired with a  mound of coconut whipped cream, these little cakes are comfortingly dense and undeniably seductive. 

Scones for Gail Simmons

Last night I met the lovely Gail Simmons (Top Chef judge, host of Top Chef - Just Desserts and Special Projects Director at Food & Wine Magazine) - she's eloquent, she's inspiring, she's Canadian. This talented lady from Toronto started out with four simple words as inspiration for what to move towards after graduating from a degree that left her uninspired: Eat. Write. Travel. Cook. Now she does exactly that for a living and I wondered how? How does one go from career indecision to a career in delicious? I picked up a copy of her new book, "Talking with my Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater" and devoured it, hoping for an answer, and got one - hard work, humility, perseverance, a dash of good luck, and a willingness to do what is necessary. In Gail's case she earned her Top Chef judging credibility by interning at Toronto Life Magazine and writing for the National Post, attending culinary school, getting seasoned working the line in NYC kitchens (Le Cirque & Daniel), and doing countless hours of legwork researching and testing recipes as Jeffrey Steingarten's (Vogue's food critic extraordinaire) assistant - which she did despite knowing she did not care to be a chef!