All posts tagged: spring

a strawberry tart

baking a strawberry tart for Sarah

It was Sarah’s birthday last week and as usual, she requested a fruit tart instead of a cake. In Marin, you can find strawberries pretty much year-round. Most come from Mexico, but already this week local strawberries are starting to show up in the market, and surprisingly, they are delicious – so sweet! I wish I had bought more. It seems like every time I make a tart I don’t have enough fruit to cover all the custard, but Sarah didn’t seem to mind. Happy kid, happy mom, right? Fruit Tart Recipe Tart dough recipe slightly adapted from my favorite book: Tartine Bakery CookbookPastry cream filling Fruit(s) of choiceJam/jelly for glazing the fruit For the Tart Shell Make sure the eggs and butter are at room temperature. Combine the butter, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Use the paddle attachment and mix until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, until everything looks smooth.  Add the flour all at once to the butter mixture. Blend at slow speed until just combined. …

pork with sage and capers

We’re finally having some beautiful spring days in Marin, so this weekend we decided to go for a hike around Bon Tempe, one of the nearby lakes. “Back in the day,” as Patrick likes to say, hiking was one of our favorite weekend activities. Especially when we lived in Salt Lake City, we made an effort to hike as often as we could. The views from the top of the Wasatch Mountains were spectacular, but Marin has a lot to offer as well! I have several books with Marin trail information. I am not kidding that we could hike a different trail each weekend until we are too old to hike and never run out of options. Both Patrick and I are ready to tackle the pounds we gained last year, and hiking is the perfect way to ease back into exercising more. And with these views and weather, who can complain!? Plus, it’s fun to hike together like we used to. Today, I am sharing a recipe we cooked this week. This recipe has …

bring lemon cake to the party

I’m not sure what it is about lemons, the color, the flavor, the scent… I love it all. Things may be different now, but when I was growing up in Costa Rica, you couldn’t find lemons anywhere in San José. We had limes — tons of limes — and at our house, we drank limeade almost daily with lunch, dinner, and with pretty much everything in between. I loved that, too! It wasn’t until I lived abroad that I finally got to taste lemons — and then, quickly, I fell in love with them. For me, lemons symbolize spring and the start of warmer weather. So, as soon as spring gets near, I start to crave lemon everything (even in the color of the clothes I wear). Since the beginning of February, yellow colors are popping up everywhere: daffodils, acacia trees, spring fashion in store windows, and all sorts of lemony cravings in my head! So, when about two weekends ago, I was asked to bring some dessert to one of our family dinners, understandably, …