I love carrot cake. Of all the non-chocolate cakes, it's probably my favorite one. When Hungry Bear gave me the choice between carrot cake and chocolate turtle cake, I still chose the carrot cake. I wanted to keep it uncomplicated this past Sunday night, and what's better than a simple carrot cake with cream cheese frosting?

Hungry Bear used a recipe from an old roommate, Roz. You know, the kind of recipe that's written on an index card and handed down. The cake contains pineapples and coconut flakes, which we both enjoy in our carrot cake. Hungry Bear mentioned Cook's Illustrated (CI) pooh poohed the use of canned crushed pineapples, toasted coconut and wheat germ in The New Best Recipes. In fact, they were "unanimously voted out", but CI approved raisins and nuts as options... um, no thanks. I love Cook's Illustrated, but sometimes their decisions seem completely arbitrary. With all due respect to CI, Hungry Bear and I unanimously voted pineapples and coconut flakes back in!

Hungry Bear has been craving a tart, lemony dessert for awhile, so we made a lemon olive oil cake this past Sunday night. I love olive oil, but in a cake... hmm? I had my doubts about the cake, but Hungry Bear had it on her list of things to make, so we gave it a try. Much to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed this light, airy cake.

Depending on how prominent an olive taste you want, extra virgin or regular olive oil can be used in the recipe. We had a nice bottle of extra virgin olive oil sitting around and used it in the cake for the added fruitiness. The cake had an interesting aroma. It smelled savory to me, but tasted like a light pound cake or a denser sponge cake. I was all confused as my nose and taste buds were sending mixed messages.

Once I got over my sensory confusion, I really enjoyed the cake. On its own, the cake was very light and not too sweet. It had subtle flavors of lemon and olive oil... obviously. To keep it light, it's best served with fresh berries and a dollop of whipped cream. For a richer dessert, serve it with a fruit compote and maybe a drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar.

The first time I was offered a tofu chocolate chip cookie, I made a funny face, probably the same look that some of you are giving me right now. With a little hesitation, I took a bite and much to my surprise, the tofu cookie was really good. Ever since then, I've always looked forward to eating the cookies made by our friend, Jeanne. In fact, I like them so much, I've made football game bets with Jeanne, pitting her tofu cookies against my chewy chocolate chunk cookies.

The recipe was created by Jeanne's friend, a certified nutritionist, who wanted to make a healthy alternative to traditional chocolate chip cookies. Butter is not used in the recipe and is replaced with peanut butter and cream cheese. In addition to the soy protein from the tofu, the cookies are made with high-protein egg whites and the aforementioned peanut butter. Lower glycemic index (GI) oat flour is used instead of all-purpose flour. The oat flour is also higher in protein and is gluten-free.

We made the tofu cookies for the first time last week and used white whole wheat flour instead of oat flour, which we couldn't find at the local supermarkets. We thought about using all-purpose flour, but decided to stay true to the healthy intent of the recipe and went with the whole wheat. The tofu cookies were good with predominant flavors from the whole wheat, peanut butter and Valrhona 61% chocolate chunks. I don't think anyone would be able to tell that the cookies contained tofu.

Last August, my parents came out to visit me in San Francisco. One of our excursions was to the Serramonte Farmer's Market, our favorite farmers' market for fresh fruit. My mom was very excited when she saw the fabulous blueberry vendor. She immediately bought a couple of quarts of blueberries and made three blueberry kuchens for us and friends.

The kuchen was simple to make and it was absolutely delicious. Hungry Bear got the recipe from my mom, but sadly, we didn't make a kuchen before blueberry season ended. We thought we'd have to wait until summer before finding high quality, reasonably priced blueberries again.

A few days ago, we were trying to survive the craziness at Costco and stumbled upon big packages of fresh blueberries. Hungry Bear declared that we should buy some blueberries and make a kuchen! It turns out the blueberries are from Chile and the growing season down south is November to March. So much for eating local, as the blueberries looked too good to turn down, and we needed a blueberry fix badly!

I never use nuts in my chocolate desserts. I wouldn't dare put them in our chewy chocolate chunk cookies or in our brownies. Call me nutty, but I like to keep our chocolate desserts pure and simple.

The one nut I'll make an exception for is the macadamia nut. I love the richness and creaminess of this nut. As I was flipping through some cookbooks, I stumbled upon Jamie Oliver's two-nuts chocolate torte recipe, which uses almonds and walnuts.

The recipe looked simple enough, so I used it with a few changes. The first modification was substituting macadamia nuts for the almonds and walnuts. When I walked to the local supermarket, the only macadamia nuts available were roasted and salted nuts. I figured it would be okay, since most cake recipes ask for around a teaspoon of salt. Since macadamia nuts are higher in fat content than almonds and walnuts, I cut the amount of butter. The final change was the addition of vanilla extract to enhance the chocolate flavor.