Chocolate Bat Cookies (Halloween Breakfast Recipe)

Halloween is a few days away and I've been preparing little sweet treats in anticipation of the event. For breakfast, I baked bat-shaped chocolate wafers that I paired with sweetened yogurt and fresh figs from our garden. The result is divine; the crunch from the cookies balances out the smooth texture of the yogurt, and chocolate and figs work beautifully together.

I'm going to be baking a lot more scary-looking pastries until Halloween, including my witch's fingers, funny-looking sunny side up eggs and ghost-shaped pancakes. If you have other suggestions, feel free to send me a message!

Banana and Fig Crepe Cake Recipe

Since I'm in Paris, I’ve been spoiling my little 2-year-old nephew Paul and 4-year-old niece Elise with sweets. It’s a great way to bond with them in a short period of time. Crêpes are always fun, so I made a pile for all of us to share, along with various jams, Nutella, honey and powdered sugar. In addition to the individual crêpes, I made mini crêpe cakes, filled with fig and banana jam. To repeat the flavors in the dessert, I topped the cake with freeze-dried banana chips and roasted figs.

The most fun part of the assembly was watching Elise and Paul eating the crêpes as I was making them. Lucky me, I still had enough crêpe batter to finish the dessert. I absolutely adore them! 

Saffron Fig Tart Recipe

This dessert combines figs and saffron, two of my favorite ingredients. There is just something so sinfully luxurious about the color, flavor and texture of both items, that when combined, you just know you're in for something really special.

To make the dessert, I pre-baked a homemade tart shell and filled it with saffron-flavored custard. Over the custard I layered freshly picked and sliced figs from our garden. Fruit preserves gave the tart a nice gloss, and for an extra pop of color and texture, I added a thin layer of crumbled pistachios. As elegant and sophisticated as this tart may look, it's actually pretty easy to put together, assuming you know the basics of making tart shells and custards. It can be easily modified to work with your favorite ingredients, so learn the basics, experiment and have fun!

Smoked Duck and Fig Tartine Recipe

“Tartine” is just a fancy word for an open-faced sandwich, using a single slice of bread with several ingredients on top. Growing up, my favorite was a tartine au Nutella, which as the name implies is a slice of bread slathered with the famous hazelnut chocolate spread.

Tartines can of course be savory, and today’s recipe combines, some of my favorite and most decadent ingredients. Fresh figs and red onions from our garden, sinful brie cheese, smoked duck, homemade mayonnaise and pistachios are all irresistible in their own right, and when layered together over a toasted naan, turn any meal into an unforgettable memory. This tartine hits every note; it's sweet, smoky and extraordinarily succulent.

This may be too expensive to be worth serving at a large party. So if you plan to make these appetizers for a group, you might want to substitute another kind of meat in place of the smoked duck. 

Goat Cheese and Fig Crostini Recipe

We were lucky enough to be able to pick a lot of figs in our garden this year. We had so many, I made several kinds of fig preserves. One of my favorite ways to use fig preserves is to pair it with goat cheese and it just so happened that I received delicious goat cheese from Cypress Grove Chevre today. I spread the two ingredients on crostini for a nice contrast of texture and flavor. I grilled day-old baguette and smeared a layer of goat cheese. The warmth from the bread let the goat cheese ooze and become creamier. The last layer was the fig preserves. I have to admit this easy appetizer is my favorite snack. I love them and could eat a ton!

I have a little story that might sound silly to you but Cypress Grove Chevre goat cheese is very dear to my heart. I remember when I first got married, my husband Lulu surprised me and took me on the 17-mile drive in Carmel, which I had never seen before. I remember he prepared the most romantic picnic on the beach and fed me wonderful Cypress Grove chevre. I had never heard of the company before that picnic but the cute packaging and beautiful scenery has since made it unforgettable to me. The cheese is rich and creamy and absolutely captures what I love about French chevre. It is one of the few American-made cheeses I’ve had that rival its French counterparts.

Cypress Grove Chevre will be a part of our December giveaways, so be sure to check back for your chance to win. Doesn't that sound awesome?