We were planning on posting about an 11 layer lasagna that's relatively easy to make, but the Daring Bakers' challenge this month was lasagne. As you've probably seen, the food blogosphere has been inundated with DB pasta. Instead, we present to you a mango and coconut flognarde that Hungry Bear saw on flagrantedelicia. We always enjoy looking at the beautiful photography and desserts on Leonor's site.

We were supposed to make this flognarde for Sunday nite dinner last week, but ran out of energy to make dessert (we had a pre-dinner yoga session with a one of the SNDsters). A friend brought over ice cream cookie sandwiches from Trader Joe's instead. They were super delicious and a dangerous new TJ find.

Since then, we've had some ripe mangos sitting in the fridge, so Hungry Bear finally made the flognarde today. It turned out really well and we enjoyed this fruity, custardy dessert. It's easy to make and a nice light dessert to accompany a heavy, rich meal. We will definitely make it again and try different types of fruit.

Head on over to flagrantedelicia for the mango and coconut flognarde recipe.

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A few months ago, Hungry Bear favorited this cinnamon-apple cake on foodgawker and she finally made it for our Lunar New Year celebration this year. It's not Chinese or Vietnamese in any way, but Hungry Bear didn't want to make anything too elaborate and we had two apples to use up. So that's how a cinnamon-apple cake got served at a New Year's party with Chinese hot pot.

I was working that day when Hungry Bear was baking the cake and I wasn't paying much attention. She told me that it was a Cooking Light recipe, but she was making it full-fat because she hates margarine and fat-free cream cheese. I honestly wasn't very excited about the cake. I don't get too excited unless there's chocolate involved.

I don't think anyone at dinner knew how damn good this cake was going to be. Then everyone wanted seconds. It's a light, moist cake with the perfect amount of sweetness from the cinnamon-sugar topping. Hungry Bear thinks it tastes like coffee cake and she'd happily eat it for breakfast.

Our friend, Deb, made it for a family gathering the next day. And I asked Hungry Bear to bake it again a few days later so we could document it for SND. It's probably my favorite non-chocolate dessert at the moment!

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We've been chocolate blackout cake obsessed since the first time we made it. The cake and pudding are fantastic on their own, but combine the two and you have the best chocolate cake ever!

The last few times we've made this dessert we skipped the icing because it's very temperamental. Instead, we doubled the pudding and used all four layers of cake. Who's not going to like twice as much homemade chocolate pudding?

To prove how good this cake is, all you need to do is take a look at the last picture in the slideshow. That's our friend, Jane, having a piece while in early labor. I'm not kidding! We planned on cooking for Jane and Mark back in September. But, she started having contractions early in the morning so we figured dinner was off. Hungry Bear and I decided to make dinner anyway since we had already gone shopping.

Then, Jane called in the evening telling us that she was coming over for cake. We thought she was just joking, but Jane and Mark soon showed up at our door (the hospital is only a few blocks away). I told her she was welcome to have some dessert, but if her water broke she had to clean it up.

Luckily for us, there were no accidents. Jane enjoyed her cake while Mark was timing her contractions. It was one of the more entertaining Sunday nite dinners we've had in awhile. We sent Jane and Mark to the hospital with a good portion of the cake and Jane delivered a healthy baby boy, Dylan. When we visited Jane and the baby in hospital, she also declared it the best chocolate cake she's ever had!

P.S. We promise a savory dish in our next post. And I also promise to deliver it in less than a week.

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It's been way too long since our last post. Over the last month, I've been distracted by foodgawker, the election (I'm supporting "that one") and Penn State Football. I've spent entirely too much time in front of the computer, mostly with foodgawker, making it hard to crank out a post. We've been cooking regularly, but I've been too tired/lazy to pull out the camera and tripod to document our meals.

Hungry Bear has constantly reminded me that I'm neglecting SND. To appease her and some of our loyal readers (I hope you are still out there), we present to you look-we-still-love-you-and-SND everything cookies. As someone who loves to eat anything and everything, this cookie has it all... chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, raisins, nuts, granola and rolled oats.

It's a great recipe that Hungry Bear got from a friend over a decade ago. As the name implies, the cookie has everything you'd want... soft, crunchy, chewy, chocolaty, fruity and peanut buttery. I like to think that they're sort of healthy with the low-fat granola and rolled oats. It lessens the guilt after you inhale half a dozen cookies in five minutes!

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First off, sorry for the lack of posts, but foodgawker has been "eating" up all of our time. We hope to get back on a more frequent schedule soon. Second, we had our one year blogiversary at the beginning of the month, but sadly we didn't get chance to post about it. Hungry Bear did make this incredible chocolate blackout cake to celebrate the milestone.

She used a blackout cake recipe from Sweet Stuff: Karen Barker's American Desserts, but substituted bittersweet Valrhona chocolate for the semisweet. The cake is absolutely delicious, but it's time consuming to make because of the many steps... coffee brewing, pudding creating, cake baking, cookie crumbling and icing making. We loved the pudding and the cake part. There was an extra layer of unused cake and it was fantastic by itself.

The icing tasted good, but we didn't like the hardened texture and it was difficult to work with. If we had to make it again, we would use Gale Gand's fudgy chocolate frosting instead. Or we would skip the icing, double the pudding quantity, use all four cake layers and top it with pudding.

Still, it was one of the best chocolate cakes we've made and definitely worth the effort!

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"Streusel topping, streusel topping!" exclaimed Hungry Bear as I closed the oven door, "we forgot to add the streusel topping!" Well, considering I had specifically requested the topping for the blueberry muffins, it was a big omission on our part. Luckily we remembered in time or we'd still be kicking ourselves.

We recently bought four pounds of blueberries. Almost half of them went into a blueberry kuchen that Hungry Bear can't get enough of. I made the kuchen and we devoured it in two days. With the remaining berries, she made these amazing muffins with a streusel topping.

The recipe is an adaptation of Ina Garten's blueberry coffee cake muffins with a topping added. The muffin part is delicious on its own with a moist and light cake like crumb filled with blueberries. And they aren't overly sweet, which is a big plus for us. The streusel topping makes the muffin even better by adding a nice crunchy texture and a bit of sweetness.

Just remember not to get distracted and forget to sprinkle on the streusel topping, streusel topping!

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I usually don't get too personal in my posts and just stick to the basics (good food, good photos, good recipe). For the most part, I don't think you are interested in what Hungry Bear and I do outside of our adventures in the kitchen. But, I'm making an exception with this post to fully explain why we made these decadent cocoa brownies.

I've mentioned our NYC friends, Jeff and Aimee, in the past. They organized our first cupcake tasting tour. I met Jeff in 1990 when I was a sophomore at Penn State. Despite getting off on the wrong foot (Jeff initially disliked me, imagine that?), we become very close and eventually lived together for a year and half.

I remember whipping up homemade hashbrowns with Jeff at 2:00 AM, when normal college kids would go get pizza. I was there when Jeff and Aimee started dating. They had to keep it a secret initially and it was funny how they snuck in kisses when no one else was looking. I was honored to be in their wedding party six years later. Now, they have a beautiful baby girl, Ava.

We only see each other once a year, twice if we're lucky. But, I have great memories of their visits to San Francisco and my visits to NYC, especially the meals. We've spent time on vacation together in France, Italy and Canada. Despite not living in the same city in over 15 years, we've remained extremely tight and they are still my closest friends.

Last week, Jeff and Aimee received a double dose of bad news. I was stunned and saddened. I've spent a lot of time talking on the phone with them trying to comfort them. I wish I lived in NYC because I feel so useless in San Francisco. Besides being there 24/7 whenever they needed to chat, the only other thing I could do was to make some comforting food for them.

Cookies and brownies are probably the easiest things to ship cross country. So, we planned on making cream cheese brownies. One of the first things I ever baked was cream cheese chocolate cupcakes that I made for Aimee. I actually had to make two batches of the cupcakes, because my dog, a little cock-a-poo named Champagne, ate the first batch. Never let cupcakes cool on top of a coffee table when a hungry dog is prowling!

We planned on using Alice Medrich's classic chocolate brownie recipe, modifying it slightly and adding a cream cheese filling. Then we realized that shipping cream cheese baked goods at room temperature was probably not a good idea. Instead, we settled on making Medrich's best cocoa brownies.

We used Valrhona cocoa powder and the brownies turned out great. They weren't too sweet and they had a deep, bittersweet chocolate flavor. Our only issue was the brownies were on the thin side. We would have doubled the recipe had we known. Are they the best cocoa brownies as the name suggests? Well, they're pretty damn close, but we prefer the taste and texture of the chocolate bouchons a little more.

Anyway... Jeff, Aimee and Ava, when you receive the package, besides the original item I was sending, you'll find a little tin of brownies. I hope they are still good and fresh. And I hope you can find a little comfort in them. I love you guys!

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Over the last few weeks, Hungry Bear and I have bought a ton of strawberries from Rodriguez Farms, our favorite strawberry vendor at the Serramonte Farmers' Market. The berries were sweet, juicy and a great value, a flat (12 baskets) was only $14. And their organic berries were just a few dollars more.

Needless to say, we've eaten a lot of fresh strawberries lately and needed to make something with them. After pondering what to bake, we decided to turn our amazingly simple blueberry kuchen recipe into a strawberry kuchen. The only changes to the recipe were the substitution of lemon zest and vanilla extract for the cinnamon.

The end result was a delicious strawberry pie that was a snap to make. We love the buttery crust of this kuchen. The baked strawberries turned into a wonderful compote and the pie looked beautiful topped with the fresh berries. We served the kuchen with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and the combination was magnificent!

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Last year, we watched the Barefoot Contessa make chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter icing and thought it was a brilliant combination. We actually made them for dessert in our first post (scroll down) on the site. They were a big hit, so we made them again this past Sunday.

Although we loved Ina's union of chocolate and peanut butter, we thought her cupcake recipe had too many ingredients. I'm sure the cake part tastes great, but we would have bought sour cream and buttermilk, used half, and eventually thrown the rest away.

Instead, we turned to one of our favorite chocolate cupcake recipes by Gale Gand (BTW, her fudgy frosting is killer). We love the simplicity of the cupcake batter... no eggs, no butter, no mixer required.

For the peanut butter frosting, we reduced the sugar and butter, because we don't like overly sweet icings and there's plenty of creaminess from the peanut butter. The final change was the substitution of coconut cream for the heavy cream, since we had already opened a can of coconut milk for a morel sauce that evening.

The cupcakes were scrumptious with a moist and tender cake. The frosting had a great peanut flavor and wasn't too sweet. We had the SNDsters top their own cupcakes with cacao nibs and M&M minis. And once again, they were enjoyed by all.

As we discussed the modifications and ingredients with the SNDsters, we realized that the cupcakes were almost vegan. I believe the only thing you need to do is substitute margarine for the butter. Since the peanut butter is so creamy, I don't think anyone would miss anything. If you do make these as vegan cupcakes, let me know how they turn out.

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Carrot cake again? I know, I know, how much carrot cake can someone eat? Well, I've eaten entirely too much of it in the last two weeks. After Hungry Bear made her fantastic carrot cake, I wanted to make a light version while her normal, full-fat version was still fresh on our minds.

The light carrot cake recipe was adapted from Cook's Illustrated (CI). I used all the CI fat reducing steps...

• Reduced the amount of oil from 1 1/2 cups to 1/2 cup
• Reduced the number of eggs from 4 to 3
• Used Philadelphia Neufchatel reduced-fat cream cheese
• Lowered the sugar quantity in the frosting

Then, I kept the majority of the normal cake's other ingredients to keep the flavors similar, which means pineapples and coconut flakes were included.

Cook's Illustrated's light cream cheese frosting recipe uses 12 oz of reduced fat cream cheese and no butter. I didn't like the idea of buying two 8 oz boxes of low fat cream cheese and not use 4 oz. So, I modified the recipe to use 8 oz of cheese and added a little butter.

The light carrot cake was pretty good. We thought the cake tasted similar to the full-fat version, but Hungry Bear's cake had a superior, more tender texture. The light cake was a little too moist and dense, which was a surprise given only half a cup of oil was used. It was probably due to the moisture of the carrots (3 cups) and pineapples. I actually preferred the light cream cheese frosting over the full-fat version because it was less sweet and rich.

Here's a breakdown of calories and fat per serving for the two cakes...

As you can see, the light carrot cake is not a low fat dessert, but with half the fat of the normal recipe, it still tastes great. If someone were to serve me this cake, I wouldn't know it was a light version. If you love carrot cake, eat it regularly, and want a lighter recipe, definitely give this one a try. When I'm craving carrot cake again (it will be awhile), I'll stick with Hungry Bear's carrot cake.

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