Cakes, Pies, Cookies and Pastry
Because sometimes people are quite suddenly coming for tea or whatever in less than an hour and there’s nothing nifty in the freezer and you deeply don’t want to go to the store and also must do something about the books and papers currently covering every flat surface in the house.
Aha, I thought, time for Lightening Cookies, aka Split Seconds, an American home cooking classic. The ingredients are always on hand; only 1 mixing bowl is needed, shaping is extremely swift and you can bake the whole batch at once.
Fifty two butter cookies - apple blackberry in back, apricot up front
Read More…
Ok, not the original, but the traditional until recently and when you stop to think about the custom of saving the top layer to eat on your first anniversary, fruitcake does sound like the best bet, especially in the days before freezers.
Bleeding heart and hosta; no flowers necessary
The picture is to say Spring is Coming. It has nothing to do with wedding cake but I don’t have any of the fruitcake; I don’t know anybody who’s getting married and I owe Colleen the recipe, having promised it to her over three months ago. If you don’t have a wedding on tap either, there’s always the bookmark option. If spring is coming, can Christmas be far behind? Read More…
Politics got you down? Dispirited by a landscape of straw, grey brown, dull green and dirty snow? Feeling slightly guilty because you didn’t happen to make your sweetie a chocolate cream pie for Valentine’s Day?
Time for a batch of rugelach, one of the world’s more wonderful cookies – being as they are right next door to pie while being a great deal easier to make ( and a great deal more durable since they never get soggy).
plum, chocolate and apricot rugelach
Read More…
In most cases homemade chocolates lack the suave texture and slick appearance of deluxe commercial versions, even though they’re just as flavorful. But chocolate bark – which is nothing more than melted chocolate mixed with tasty lumps and spread thin – is an exception. It’s every bit as glossy as boughten (on one side, anyway), and it’s usually even better because you have no reason to be stingy with the lumps.
white chocolate bark, lumpy and smooth sides
‘Nough said. Valentine’s day is roaring at us at an unseemly pace and if you have to order the chocolate, for instance from chocosphere, it would be best to get going.
Singapore Bark – white chocolate with ginger and pistachios
Read More…
Clockwise from upper left: spritz, pfeffernüsse, sugar cookies, gingerbread springerle, more sugar cookies, fruit/nut/chocolate jumbles.
This post is appearing because the cookie recipe roundup (12/12) made me fear you might be thinking I don’t bake cookies very often or very many or very anything.
Very shaming and not very accurate, especially at the turn of the year when there’s no WAY I’m not crankin’ ’em out, though I don’t pretend to be in the same league as those indefatigable ladies who make hundreds of dozens and pride themselves – secretly or not – on the length of the recipient list. Read More…
Ok, team, time to get shopping. As mentioned last year on the way to the big chunky apple cake, even diehard farmstands will be shutting down soon, and it won’t be long before specialty groceries revert to the same yawnworthy array, much of it much travelled, offered by supermarkets.
Makes me sad just to think of it, or would if we hadn’t been apple hunting for months, munching, baking and – three cheers for an old fashioned farmhouse with side porches! – stocking up. Some of what’s currently stashed in a small space we try to keep right above freezing (heirlooms with approximate intro date):
Left to right: Wolf River (1875), Cameo, Winesap (1817), Northern Spy (1800), Pink Lady, Stayman (1895), Zabergau Reinette (1885), Tolman Sweet (pre-1822), Golden Russet (pre-1845)
Apple collecting tips and pie recipe after the jump
Read More…
I was supposed to be planting the new peonies… and unpacking about 2000 files. But I wanted to experiment with the heirloom apples – Tolman Sweet and Zabergau Reinette – from MOFGA‘s Great Maine Apple Day. And when I got down to the Hudson Valley the fruit bowl was filled with quinces from Karen, she of the splendid strawberries.” We can get more if you’d like to use these to make a pie,” Bill said hopefully.
Usually, I’d just make apple quince, but as Bill had also rather overbought in the pear department it seemed sensible and perhaps interesting fill a pie with 3 parts apple, 2 parts pear and one of quince. Did not add spices on account of not wanting to obscure any nuances from the unusual apples. Did add a little rosewater, in the spirit of the more the merrier.
Roses and apples – and pears and quinces – are all in the family Rosaceae, a relationship you can read all about here, if you have a mind. But you might be better employed making pie. Quince season is short.
The pink dice are the quince pieces
recipe after the jump Read More…
This post is coming to you because reader Lennie recently asked for the caponata recipe from Good Food, a syndicated column I wrote in a former life (from 1976 to 1994). Hadn’t used the recipe in years. Had to go back and look though hard copy. While looking came across a column that’s scarily relevant – and the cookies are delicious.
Excerpted from Goodies to Win or Lose By, Good Food, October 29th, 1980
“ I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” – Jonathan Swift.
…Watching TV is notorious for inclining one to munch, and there is something about a quadrennial spectacle based simultaneously on inanity and calamity that just about forces the more nervous among us to eat. Something, anything – fingernails even, all else failing. But more often something fattening.
With Gingerfingers , you can have both. (Plus Halloween is coming. Giving homemade treats seems to be out, but kids do have fun making these….)
walnut gingerbread finger cookies
Read More…
What’s to say? Leigh asked for my chocolate chip cookie recipe, so here it is: my personal no compromises not suitable for publication in general interest magazines favorite soft center or crisp or both
Extremely High End Chocolate Chip Cookies
Read More…
is the one making its debut in today’s New York Times , according to David Leite, who is responsible for it. Well, maybe. Although I prefer my own ( which include roasted cacao nibs), there is much baking wisdom in Leite’s story, including the use of high quality couverture chocolate disks, which really ARE the consummate chocolate chips.
Roasted cacao nibs, couverture chocolates from El Rey (round) and Valrhona (oval). The dusty coating on the nibs is just a bit of cocoa butter that rose to the surface in storage. Read More…
