Roasted Lobster with Almonds

Oven-roasted lobster with almonds ("homard rôti aux amandes" in French) is Papa's (my dad's) specialty. Papa doesn't cook on a daily basis, except for Maman's birthday and special occasions such as New Year's Eve. Exactly one year ago, my husband Lulu and I were in Paris, celebrating the holiday season with my parents. And of course, Papa pleased me by cooking my favorite dish. First, the lobster is poached for a few minutes, then a drizzle of Hollandaise sauce covers the lobster meat along with a sprinkle of toasted almonds. Then, the lobster dish goes in the oven for a few minutes.

I absolutely love this seafood dish. The lobster meat turns out sweet and succulent. For obvious reasons, this luxurious dish isn't an everyday meal, but it’s a great way to make special occasions that much more special.

Ginger Lemon Cake Recipe (+Giveaway)

I tend to bake a lot more during the holidays. Unlike cooking, where recipes can be loosely interpreted and still come out great, baking is about being accurate and using the precise amount of the specific ingredients called for. That puts even more emphasis on selecting the best of the limited ingredients you have control over, whether it's flour, eggs or butter. To that end, my pantry is always stocked with various Bob's Red Mill products, and today one lucky PhamFatale reader is going to receive a $50 gift certificate from Bob!

Today I made an almond cake flavored with ginger and lemon-flavored white chocolate. The main ingredient is almond meal, which makes the dessert gluten-free. Since it's the holidays, I splurged on more decadent elements by topping the cake with a ginger lemon whipped cream and garnished it with sliced almonds as a reminder of the flavor of the cake. Who am I kidding? If you’re a regular reader you know I don’t need much of an excuse to tend towards the decadent!

Make sure you're a fan of PhamFatale Facebook fan page and Bob's Red Mill, or follow @Phamfatalecom and tweet about this giveaway. To make it easy, you can just copy and paste this tweet if you’d like: "Bob's Red Mill $50 Gift Certificate #Giveaway from @Phamfatalecom and @Bobs_Red_Mill: http://bit.ly/sp4V7y".

Almond Chocolate Cake Recipe (Moelleux au Chocolat)

Almond chocolate cake is a decadent chocolate dessert. The moist cake is made with blanched, ground almonds, semi-sweet chocolate and very little flour.

It's my best friend Alexia's favorite dessert. I remember one time visiting her in Düsseldorf, Germany, while she was finishing her masters. She picked me up at the train station and I surprised her with a still-warm almond cake. No joke, she finished the whole cake before we got back to her apartment; that's how scrumptious this cake is! Now that I'm back in Paris for the holidays, I can't wait to bake her favorite cake for her again. We haven't seen each other in almost two and a half years and she's getting married soon. While she's eating it again, I might try to embarrass her by re-telling the story to her fiancé. Am I not a wonderful friend?

Almond Pudding Recipe

Almond pudding is not your average dessert. I came up with the recipe in an effort to make good use of the Tamarin speculoos spread I recently received and some left-over almond flour I ground after making frangipane apple tartlets.

To make the dessert, I mixed black sesame powder with almond milk. I used arrowroot starch as a thickener and added speculoos spread and agave nectar as the sweeteners.  Arrowroot is a neutral ingredient and is very easy to digest.

It makes a great dessert, but my husband Lulu also loves it as breakfast (I thin it with more almond milk) or as a late-night snack. As an added bonus, this dessert is eggless, dairy fee and gluten free.

Banana Almond Butterscotch Cookies

Butterscotch, freeze-dried banana chips and sliced almonds may not be the first ingredients to come to mind when making cookies, but they work incredibly well together. The crunch of the almonds and bananas is a great foil to the soft and creamy butterscotch chips. To reinforce the flavors, I added banana extract to the brown sugar cookie dough. The cookies taste fantastic, right out of the oven.

If you have a little extra time on your hands, make an extra batch so you can freeze the cookie dough for later use. We had some surprise company for tea this weekend, so I needed to whip up a plate of cookies. I just pulled out a log from the freezer, cut it into discs and popped them in the oven. They taste so much better than store-bought cookies, and when you pull them out of the oven, ooey gooey and piping hot, you'll look like an absolute rockstar!