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Friday, May 10, 2024

Snackables & Sweets for the Superintendents 2024

While dear friends Ebbie and Donna were here last weekend, it was a classic and perfect excuse for a snackable and a sweet. Our Friday afternoon starter was a longtime house favorite, and an embarrassingly simple one: southwestern dip, with tortilla chips. I trace that recipe's arrival in my collection at what I think of as one of the major inflection points of my culinary pursuits: accepting a position at Wake Forest University and moving into my faculty apartment as a newly-minted PhD. My dear mother was sending me all the encouragement she lovingly mustered with notable proficiency, plus resources to boot...like the grocery lane checkout recipe mags that Pillsbury and Betty Crocker used to publish. This easy dip was among the first I tried and I've never looked back!

One dessert carried us through two nights, and I could not detect that this proved troubling for anyone: tres leches cake. It turned out pretty perfect, from a recipe that I'd used only once before. In setting up the links at the bottom of this post to properly credit my sources, I found that the blogger whose recipe post was guiding me had adapted her version from a recipe that was in a 2007 Cook's Country magazine sitting in my cabinet...and I'd never marked it as an option to try out. Looking back through the blog, it's clear that my obsesson with the eggnog version has dominated the appearances of this milk-soaked delight, starting in 2015. I think I went on a tres leches cake recipe quest after Silvia Hernandez brought one to the big 2013 Halloween party here—looks like the standard option most often deployed has been Hilah Johnson's recipe for it—and this trip down memory lane also tells me I need to remember to bring back the chocolate version as well!


"Southwestern Dip," in Betty Crocker Monthly Recipes, December 2001.

"Tres Leches Cake," by Cali Rich in Cook's Country, August-September 2007, p. 26. [Online version revised in July 2021.] I also referred to an adaptation from Danae, the Busty Baker: "Tres Leches with Dulce de Leche and Whipped Cream." [Published 21 February 2009].

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