Treat of the Week: Chicken and Dumplings and a Whipped Cream Pound Cake

Chicken and dumplings was just the key to making this past gloomy, sticky weekend into a real delight. When most people think of chicken and dumplings, they imagine a pot-pie like concoction topped with dense balls of thick dough. But, that’s not the way my mother makes it. My mom’s chicken and dumplings is light, fresh and bursting with flavor. Not mired in the heavy gravy one usually thinks of, this dish features delightfully tender chunks of chicken swimming in a light, herb-filled sauce in which potatoes, peas and carrots pop fresh flavor into each bite. The crowning glory is the dumplings—airy, fluffy dumplings adorned throughout with herbs. Served with a cool salad and delightful homemade cornbread (which I very much enjoyed), this dinner chased all the cobwebs out of my head.

And, of course, being a cake enthusiast, I was thrilled to see a gorgeous pound cake baked in a blossom-shaped pan.  Beneath a gorgeous glaze, this whipped cream pound cake was marbled with luscious chocolate.  Dense and moist, the cake could have been sliced so thin you could have read your iPad through it.  But, why would you want to do that?  Not only would it make your iPad all cake-y; nobody wants a thin piece of this cake!