I woke up this morning with a craving for breakfast. Now, I love breakfast. It is definitely one of my favorite meals. But when I saw this recipe for Puffed Apple Pancake in the March issue of Delicious, I just could not resist. These pancakes go by a lot of different names: dutch baby, dutch apple pancake, baked apple pancake. They all mean caramelized apples with batter poured over them and baked in the oven. This is Bill Granger’s recipe, and it did not need much fiddling. I cut it in half to serve 2. You can easily double it and use a larger pan.

This comes together fairly quickly, so I recommend that you have everything ready before you start.

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A few weeks ago, one of my blogger friends sent me a message encouraging me to go to foodiefights.com. This is a battlefield for competitive bloggers. I don’t like to think of myself as competitive, but who am I kidding? I’m a surgeon. We were born competitive. We dream competitive. I had to do it.

Previous battles have been lemon and potatoes, and rhubarb and coriander. These do not sound so difficult to me. Unfortunately, they asked me, when I signed up for this month’s battle, what food would I throw into the ring. Cauliflower?! I had so much of it in the refrigerator I did not know what to do with it. I belong to an organic food club, and cauliflower and apples have been heavily featured lately. Someone else came up with the raspberries, trust me. What a combination. It set me quite a challenge.

I thought about it a lot. I knew I could easily make a cauliflower slaw with raspberry dressing and be done with it. But, well, did I mention that I’m a surgeon? I can’t just take the easy way out. I needed to come up with something creative, different, unexpected. I hashed over ideas. Could I make cauliflower into a dessert? How about gnocchi, ravioli, a souffle? Ice cream? I’m sure any of these would have worked out. But could I get anyone to eat cauliflower ice cream with raspberry sauce?

On Saturday, inspiration hit. I had been wanting one of those mini cheesecake pans for weeks now. I looked for it at Sur la Table, Target, the King Arthur website. No luck. Even Williams-Sonoma’s website no longer had it. So I went to the Williams-Sonoma in Coral Gables this weekend, to see if they still had one. And they did! And that’s when it came to me – cheesecake! Cauliflower cheesecake. Not sweet. Not heavy. Mini ricotta-cauliflower cheesecakes. But how to include the raspberries? A sauce would be possible, but, well, lame. And how could I be sure it would go well. Be truly delicious. I was not seeking to just meet the criteria, but to create a dish worth eating and enjoying.

So, here it is: a triple-layer ricotta cauliflower mini cheesecake. And believe me, it was delicious. The flavors went well together. It was pretty. It smelled amazing while it was baking.

I made home-made ricotta, because I had been dying to try it since the Daring Cooks challenge made ricotta gnocchi (no, I did not participate this time around, but expect upcoming participation!) You don’t have to. I feel certain grocery store ricotta would be fine. But, really, it was so easy, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. In fact, the next time I make gnudi, I will definitely make it.

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Here in Miami, we try not to make food that requires the kitchen to be cool and dry. My kitchen usually runs about 80℉ all year round, even when the air conditioning is on. Turn on the oven or open the window and it may get closer to 90℉. So when I decided to make homemade puff pastry, I knew I would have my hands full. I would be lucky to get one turn at a time before the dough needed to be returned to the refrigerator.

However, when @LifebyChocolate challenged me to do it, I figured I had to try. I had certainly made it before, when I lived in New England. As long as it is not raining, you can almost always make puff pastry in New England. In accepting the challenge, I also wanted to keep my puff pastry real. No hydrogenated oils, no crisco, no margarine. I found Italian butter at Whole Foods, and I had a little prairie-raised, grass-fed butter still in the refrigerator. I used organic flour.

I found a recipe in “The Art and Soul of Baking” for a Quick Puff Pastry that only requires 3 turns. Let me tell you, this was no inferior cheat. This looked like and tasted like the real thing.

By the time I finished this project, the kitchen had gone from 81 to 90℉. I could barely get a full turn done before the butter melted.

Then I made the Fresh Tomato Ricotta Tart I posted earlier this week using this pastry. I still have about a pound of puff pastry in the freezer, so be on the lookout for what I do next.

This is my entry for Fight Back Fridays.

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I cannot believe it has been almost 2 weeks since I posted. I have never gone that long. To say that the last two weeks have been stressful is an understatement. But I have survived, and I have returned. This week’s recipe is worth the wait.

Recently I was invited to a Saturday night cocktail party. I had been to the farmer’s market that day, and had come home with heirloom tomatoes, green onions, and fresh ricotta. I had frozen puff pastry that I had made previously (and will post this week). I did a quick Google search and came up with this recipe from the Washington Post for Fresh tomato and ricotta tart. I thawed out the puff pastry and set to work mixing ricotta and slicing tomatoes. I had a large yellow and a large red tomato. They were both a little on the wet side. I laid them out on paper towels to dry a little while I rolled out the puff pastry and mixed the cheese.

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