I attempted some baking the other day with this chocolate raspberry tart. I had some raspberries from the farmer's market, and I intended to use them. I can't count how many berries I've thrown out because, no matter how good they are, they go bad before I can eat an entire pint. So this raspberry tart recipe looked pretty easy, except for the conversion from english measurements.

I'm not going to list the ingredient measurements or do the conversions for you. I may have mentioned this before - I cook, I don't really bake, so I don't feel comfortable having anyone trust my instructions, measurements, or my math. I will say that I followed the above linked recipe and things turned out fine. Except for my first attempt I tried blind baking the shell in too shallow a pan, which I decided would cause a disaster so I did a second one in a regular pie pan.

For the decorating sauce, I pureed and strained a few raspberries, and mixed with some cream and sugar. Very pretty and tasty, but I don't think anyone should follow my example and make this sauce without some sort of modification since it had the exact hue of Pepto-Bismol. Perhaps a higher pureed raspberry ratio, or the additon of raspberry syrup and/or chocolate drizzled on the plate with it will lessen the recognizability of the unfortunate pinkness.

I've been neglecting things around here, and so I have a random list of things happening in the food blog world:

j3s is back from Ghana, we can't wait for her pictures and food stories.

Julie from the Julie/Julia Project has landed a book deal. "A really obscene book deal." She certainly deserves it. Now somebody give me one.

Gaper's Block has started a food feature thing, and recent articles include Blueberries and the End of Summer and One Good Meal: The Finest in Fake Meats, which includes a simple recipe for making seitan and a few restaurants in Chicago that serve it, and some markets that sell it.