My dad's birthday was a few weeks ago, and, as I do for everyone in my family, I make them a birthday cake.  In the case of my dad, I always make his favorite cake - my signature pistachio-cardamom cake with rosewater frosting - but even though I love it, too, I was starting to get a little tired of it.  I considered making a mango kulfi cake, but that's my mom's birthday cake, and I was also just not in the mood to make a cake this year (I blame it on the interminable stretch of damp grey days).


A few weeks ago, I had spent some time conjuring up a short menu of simple spring desserts (for a now-defunct project), one of which was a meyer lemon pudding with brown sugar-sesame seed tuiles.  For whatever reason, that one had really stuck in my head, so I ran with the idea of pudding and decided to make it mango.

Here’s another one from the archives.



I made this for a co-worker’s going away party…which was before Labor Day… Anyhow, I wanted to try something new, and had seen a few recipes for mojito cakes but liked none of them. I concocted this recipe and figured that even if it didn’t come out right, there was enough mint, lime, rum, and frosting going on in this cake to conceal any minor problems.

Here it is – my mom’s birthday cake, which is based on my mango kulfi cupcakes but has been spruced up with the addition of saffron to the cake batter and pistachios between the layers and on top of the cake to make it taste even more like real mango kulfi.



Some of these photos are of the original cake, and some are of the corrected version that I made on Monday (the new cake has three rows of piped stars on the border as opposed to the one row of big stars on the original cake). I wish you could taste this – I am not a big dessert person but I absolutely love this cake and have to restrain myself from devouring the leftovers that are in my fridge.

I'm not really sure where the inspiration for this came from; all I know is that the words coconut and coriander popped into my head when I was thinking about what to add to the rice that was going along with the rest of this tropical-ish dinner, so I decided to run with it. It worked out perfectly: the coconut milk lent a silky quality and subtle perfume and flavor of coconut to the rice, and the coriander was just the right foil - smoky and earthy - to the sweetness of the coconut.

Last week, I went all out and made a snazzy tropical-ish dinner, complete with pre-dinner cocktail, three sides, and dessert. Every day this week I'll be posting each of the items from that menu. With the exception of the dessert, everything is really easy to make. And everything is absolutely delicious - I have to say that I was really surprised at how great everything came out!