First Repair!

The Royal drew first blood, but in the end, I was victorious.

This little rubber thingie (technical term) and its brother were the culprits.

Almond-Cherry Loaf Cake

This recipe is based on one of Nigella Lawson's.  The main difference being that it uses fresh cherries. You can find the recipe here at the Paris Pastry blog (which has a ton of really tasty-looking recipes). 

Cherries are awesome.

The recipe told me to roll the cherries in flour before adding them to the dough.  I'm not
sure why.  Maybe to make sure they kept most of their juices?

Brown Sugar Meringue

After poking around on the internet a bit, I found out that you're not even supposed to attempt making meringue on a humid day (or if you've recently boiled water or run the dishwater or laundry).  So maybe I was wrong to blame the sogginess on the ganache.  A good excuse to try this again!

Some people are intimidated by ganache, but it's nothing more than chocolate and warm cream.

To make the base of the meringue, all I did was whisk the egg whites until they formed soft mounds then
slowly added one cup of brown sugar.  This only took about three minutes in total, but some of the brown
sugar didn't entirely dissolve, so the uncooked mixture piped onto the baking sheets a bit unevenly.

Poached Rhubarb with Elderflower Sabayon

I tweaked this dessert a bit, but it's based on a recipe you can find here.  The sabayon is quite an interesting element; it seems like it would be nice paired with other fruits or even drizzled over a simple cake.  Its warm, whisked, egg yolk foundation stikes me as a pretty versatile base for any number of other flavored accompaniments.

Poaching fruit is a little tricky because it's so easy to overcook.

I have really bad luck with custards, so I was a little wary about attempting a sabayon,
but it ended up being pretty easy.  I just whisked four egg yolks, two tablespoons of sugar, and three
 tablespoons of St. Germain over a water bath until it tripled in size.  I bet this rich, foamy topping
would be really nice over fresh berries.

As far as floral liqueurs go, St. Germain is quite a stately one.

Vintage Royal Century

This case is in fantastic condition, looks really cool, and snaps right over the typewriter.

These keys appear to be plastic. Typing on them is much easier than typing on my older manuals