Welcome back! I hope that everyone had a really fantastic holiday season and New Year.  I just got back from an eye-opening culinary adventure in Turkey – exploring everything from traditional bread baking in a tandoor to how to make luscious strained Turkish yogurt to watching a woman in a village create her signature bergamot and mandarin preserves.  I’ll be posting more about Turkey in the coming weeks, but I did put a ton of pictures on Facebook if you want to check them out.

On to the usual…Sweet bread is one of those universal foods.  A quick google will generate recipes anywhere from a Romanian version to Italian panettone to Portuguese sweet bread or even our all-American banana bread.  Some include yeast and others are more of a quick bread, much like one I did a few months back.

This version is a West Indian tradition and is like a cross between a fruit cake and a bread loaf.  I’ve also seen it called coconut bread, and, although it pops up a lot around the holidays, it’s an all-occasion treat.  I love to make it for breakfast on a Sunday – a nice buttered slice of this loaf with hot coffee and fresh fruit is the perfect light meal.

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I love this recipe.  This is surprisingly easy and straight forward to make, and mango cheesecake is one of those sleeper hits.  People who “don’t like cheesecake” will even love it.  And what I love is that it’s a fantastic do-ahead dessert for parties.  It’s always better to make this the night before, so it has a full 8 hours to cool.

I actually made it for my holiday party on Friday night but shrunk it down to miniature version.  It was the perfect poppable dessert – a creamy mango cheesecake in 1.5” pastry shell with a bit of glaze and a sweet raspberry on top.  These were inhaled – always estimate a 3-4x multiple of the number of party attendees!

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Whenever I head down to visit my parents in Florida, my mom bakes this incredible apple loaf cake.  Moist, cinnamon-ey, bursting with soft, baked chunks of apple.  Warmed up with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (um, on the couch in some sweats…) – it is pure, luxurious comfort.

I thought I’d recreate a version of this loaf cake using delicious, seasonal winter pears instead of apples.  Returning from Goa, I brought back a ton of spices – turmeric, massive cinnamon sticks, woodsy black cardamom, and some beautiful anise seed.  The anise struck me as an ideal compliment to sweet, ripened pears, AND I’ve been looking for an excuse to use that Pernod liqueur that’s been sitting on the shelf for who knows how long.

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