I didn’t really think I was going to like these cookies. The first time I saw them was at the blog Lick the Bowl Good, as a “you might also like” at the bottom of a recipe for homemade oatmeal cream pies. The author said she’d made them for a little boy she cared…
Fluffy Biscuit-Topped Blueberry Cobbler with Pear
I didn’t really grow up with dessert. Not that my family never made sweets; the heirloom box of Grandma’s recipes is practically nothing but sweets, written in an endearing yet frustrating shorthand style with helpful instructions like “Mix. Bake.” But we certainly didn’t have dessert every night, and when cakes and cookies and butterscotch haystacks…
Cranberry Apple Gingersnap Crisp
A few weeks ago, Smitten Kitchen (by far my favorite food blog – go check it out!) posted a recipe that sounded so good I could hardly stand it: Pear, Cranberry and Gingersnap Crumble. My mouth watered just thinking about it, even more so looking at Deb Perelman’s beautiful pictures. I had to have it right…
Almond-Crusted Fig and Raspberry Tart
I don’t really consider myself a baker. Dessert is not my forte; I feel more comfortable cooking savory food. The divide between “baker” and “cook” is a commonly understood one, so much so that Top Chef: Just Desserts contestant Rebecca confessed on a recent episode, “I can’t cook.” It sounded funny, but the judges knew…
Fig Plate
Sometimes it’s all about simplicity. Sometimes, the best cooking isn’t cooking at all. There are times when the best hing you can do is step back and let the food speak for itself. It’s fig season. Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, the Co-op – all have baskets of beautiful figs begging to come home with me….
Sour Cherries in Caramel Sauce
Yes. This is as delicious as it sounds. It came about simply enough: I got a sack of precious, rare sour cherries from the CSA. I wanted to use them in something simple but glorious, something that would show off their brilliance and not cover it up. Something, since it was midsummer hot, that did…
Any-Berry Summer Pudding
Once in a while, you find you have too much of a good thing. That happened to me a couple weeks ago, with berries. The CSA gave me beautiful strawberries, Sunflower Market had blackberries and raspberries on sale and blueberries REALLY on sale, and my favorite purveyor of unusual items at the Growers’ Market was selling black…
Spiced Plum Jam
Plums are not my favorite fruit. Even the best ones, eaten out of hand, don’t do much for me; to my taste, the skin is sour and the flesh insipid. However – as I learned years ago from a recipe for plum sorbet – a little home processing brings about a marvelous change. There is…
Quick Eats: Melon and Feta Salad
Apparently it’s not so uncommon nowadays, but I first heard of melon and feta together in Nigella Lawson’s book Forever Summer – recently re-released as Nigella Fresh. (A hardback copy of the original Forever Summer is listed on Amazon.com for the unlikely price of $7,607.21.) Nigella’s version is much more complex than mine – and,…
Double-Apple Oatmeal
As anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while can tell, I love breakfast. But it’s a lot more constrained than dinner, and it’s made first thing in the morning, when I am not at my most patient or imaginative. That means it’s easy to get into a rut. About a week ago, I…