Semolina dough crust with chili, garlic and rapini and percorino Toscano

The sun came streaming in through the patio this morning which brought to attention to the fine powdery layer of flour haze that has settled on everything including the screen on my laptop. My little workhorse of a kitchen has been functioning primarily as a bakeshop as I work on developing recipes for a new local project. Pizza doughs, burger buns, and cookies among other sweet and savory baked goods are taking up every precious square inch of limited counter, table and refrigerator space  – both the one inside as well as out in the garage.

The beginning of sourdough starter – not looking quite as vital per this writing. Live, little starter, live!

Of course, all of these carb-laden goodies needed to be tasted and critiqued with others as I’m not going down alone.  A fridge filled with three types of pizza dough and the makings of toppings prompted an impromptu evening of pizza crust comparison and wine with the girlfriends. Had a wrecking styling crew come by to stage my little soiree a la a chi chi cheffy Food & Wine spread, there might have been pictures of us all very smartly dressed while standing around enjoying refined nibbles of this and that. No, this gathering was tres ca-su-al. Sometime into her second glass of wine, bff Karen pointed at me and blurted, “I just LOVE that. THAT. How you’re all covered in flour.” I shot her only a tiny lip curl since she had brought the wine. Additional eager, thoughtful and opinionated pizza commentary was provided from two of our young teen girls who just LOVED being included.

A ‘just had to bake it because it sounded so darn good’ representation of Flo Brakers breakfast focaccia from her BAKING FOR ALL OCCASIONS book. It was. So darn good.  The focaccia was promptly wrapped and dispatched to friend and neighbor, Abbie, who can recklessly enjoy carbs without gaining an ounce. I suppose if I was inclined to run marathons the way she does, I could also polish off two 12″ pizzas and one 10″ x 15″ almond struesel-covered foccacia in two days time with impunity.

I can assure you this recipe from Garret McCord produces peerless coconut cupcakes. Last week a clients daughter requested coconut cupcakes which gave me the excuse I needed to whip these up and put to great use the leftover coconut milk  I made for the batch of kaya.

Okay, time to get the dust rag out while the sun is shining…yeah, right.