October means two things to me: pumpkin and apple. Luckily, those ingredients actually go together! Like in this Pumpkin Apple Bread. You use canned pumpkin in the batter -- although have you seen those articles that say that canned pumpkin is really squash? The horror! -- and then fold in chunks of delicious, diced apple right before baking. I ...
Red Velvet Whoopie Pies for Valentine’s Day
My Valentine, I love you. I really do. And to prove it, I have made you these red velvet whoopie pies. Chocolate cakes filled with a marshmallow buttercream and decorated with Valentine's sprinkles. A perfectly contained little delight to slip into your beloved's hand with an affectionate squeeze. Is there a better way to someone's heart? If so, ...
Meyer Lemon Recipe Round-Up
It's specialty citrus season! Exotic varieties of citrus are one of the few culinary highlights in the otherwise bleak Chicago winter. Like an antidote to the winter doldrums, a new kind of citrus fruit arrives in the stores every week during the winter months. Pomelos, tangelos, blood oranges, Key limes and Meyer lemons are just some of the ...
Iced Gingersnaps
Every year at this time of year, my mother bakes dozens and dozens of Swedish gingersnaps, called pepparkakor, to give to family and friends. The recipe came from my grandmother, whose parents were Swedish, and it calls for chopped slivered almonds in the dense, spicy dough. I grew up eating these cookies by the pound as a child and they are a ...
Chocolate Bar Skillet Cookie
Let me take a break from our regularly scheduled recipe post to let you all know that my first cookbook, Food Swap, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Yes, it won't actually be released until May, which seems like ages from now, but will be here before we know it! The book is partly a guide for anyone interested in joining the national ...
End of Summer Peach Pie
It's hard to deny that summer is over and fall is upon us. The kids have all gone back to school. The pool is closed for another year. In some places, the warm weather lingers, but it is no longer welcome. Sweaters and boots, that's what we want now as September settles in and August is dismissed. But here in Illinois, the farmers market ...
Rosh Hashanah Recipes: Round Challah
As I mentioned earlier this week, the Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah, is right around the corner. The holiday, which lasts two days, begins at sundown on September 13. Rosh Hashanah is a festive occasion, as most New Year celebrations tend to be. Many Jews will mark the occasion with a holiday dinner for friends and family. I explained ...
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Chocolate zucchini cake may sound weird, but it is delicious and fun way to eat your vegetables! It is so zucchini season, is it not? Whether you are a gardener overrun with the stuff or a savvy farmers' market shopper buying 6 zucchini for $4, these green squash are everywhere. In fact, I'm going to be on WGN's Midday News Lunch Break ...
Victoria Sponge with Gooseberry Compote
My corner of the Chicago area is small, but surprisingly international. So it was the other day that I found myself in a conversation with four other people at a cocktail party none of whom had been born in the United States. There were two Brits, a Canadian, a Swede and boring old me. The conversation turned to food. Okay, I steered the ...
Whole Wheat Savory Galette: Butternut Squash and Kale
A lot of us try to eat as much locally grown food as possible. I know I do. Why? Well, often because it tastes better. Give me luscious cherries and blueberries from nearby Michigan please. I'll skip the ones flown in from halfway around the world. I like my corn on the cob picked that morning, thank you very much. I'll wait until Illinois corn is ...
Chocolate-Orange Cream Pie
One of the features of my upcoming book on food swapping are profiles of nineteen food swap groups around North America and Great Britain. I love this aspect of the book and thoroughly enjoyed interviewing all the different food swap organizers. But when it came time to write the profiles, I struggled. I was not certain how to approach it. Should I ...
How to Make Hamantaschen
In the interest of keeping it real, I will confess that I tried very hard this week to create a recipe for salted caramel Hamantaschen. Doesn't that sound amazing? Well, don't get too attached because I never managed to make it work. First, the caramel leaked out. Then my attempt to make empty Hamantaschen shells that I could fill with caramel ...
Earl Grey Shortbread with Truvia and Bigelow Tea
This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SweetWarmUp #CollectiveBias Have you tried baking with the natural sweetener Truvia? I enjoy Truvia as a sweetener in my morning Bigelow tea but had not tried baking with it until recently. Truvia Baking Blend bakes like sugar but with ...
Holiday Baking: Cardamom Sugar Cookies
Sometimes you just have to bake a batch of old-fashioned cut-out sugar cookies, don't you? It was a busy Saturday around here, as they all are: an indoor soccer game, a guitar lesson, errands, play dates, oh, and getting ready for the holidays. But somehow, in the afternoon, I found the time to bake and decorate these, my favorite sugar cookies ...
Cookie Exchange: Lemony Jam Thumbprints
It's holiday baking season and I am here to help with some of my best cookie recipes. This cookie came about because I wanted to showcase (read: get rid of) some of the beautiful jams that I put up this year with fruit from my beloved Oak Park farmers’ market. There is no better way to get a sense of who I am as a cook that to try some of my Black ...
Cookie Exchange: Key Lime Meltaways
I'm just back from our annual Thanksgiving jaunt to Florida, and of course, now that my beloved Oak Park Farmers Market is closed for the season, the only farmers market that I get to visit is the Saturday morning Third Street South Farmers Market in downtown Naples. My favorite stall at the Naples Farmers Market sells unusual varieties of citrus ...
Your Best Apple Pie
Are you finzlizing your Thanksgiving menu? Will you make the same foods as last year or will you try to mix it up? My mother and I love to host Thanksgiving together and we have pretty much honed our menu over past the few decades so that it is just how we want it. I did revolutionize the way we cooked the turkey about 7 years ago. (See this ...
Rhubarb Jam Bars with Ginger Crumb
It absolutely kills me that my husband doesn't like rhubarb. WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE? Rhubarb is tart -- not cloyingly sweet like strawberries can be. (Oh please, don't send me hate mail because I dared to say that strawberries are too sweet. I like strawberries just fine, but I think we've all had a few overly sweet strawberry desserts in our time. ...
National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day
Today, May 15, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. I don't usually pay attention to these made-up food holidays but I will take any excuse to write about, or make, chocolate chip cookies. I think homemade chocolate chip cookies are just about the best dessert in the world. Willpower and restraint go out the window when I am presented with a ...
Brownies with Dried Cherries and Mango Puree
Brownies happen to be my daughter Zuzu's all-time favorite dessert and she is incapable of passing one up. Two summers ago, on a family trip to Nantucket, she repeatedly shocked my mother by ordering a brownie over any one of the amazing homemade ice cream flavors on our nightly trips to The Juice Bar -- Nantucket's beloved, hole-in-the-wall ice ...
Meringue Bites with Lemon Curd and Berries
This is the dessert that I wish I had made for my Seder: bite-sized meringues shells filled with luscious lemon curd and topped with a juicy strawberry. The dessert that I actually made was kind of a flop. The idea was similar but my proportions were way off. For the Seder dessert last week, I made saucer-sized meringues filled with sliced, ...
French Patisserie Meringues
When you think about French pâtisseries, or pastry shops, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? An impossibly flaky, buttery croissant? An almost-too-beautiful-to-eat tarte aux fruits? A towering croquembouche encased in spun sugar? Rows of brightly colored macarons? Sensible choices all. But for me, the favorite French pâtisserie ...
Kid-Friendly Valentine’s Day Treat: Chocolate-Drizzled Popcorn
My daughter, Zuzu, started middle school this year and she takes her new responsibilities as a Tween very seriously. She showers in the morning and spends twenty minutes fixing her hair into the perfect messy bun. Her mission in life to collect every variety of EOS lip balm and all the Bath and Body Works shower gels. She wants to buy her clothes ...
Valentine's Day Cheesecake Brownies
In my view, the best reason to make brownies from scratch is so that you can add cheesecake to them. I'd turn down the chocolatiest, fudgiest brownie any day for a swirly, marbleized cream cheese brownie. The slight tanginess of the cream cheese is the perfect foil for the richness of the chocolate. online dissertation Better than either cheesecake ...
Key Lime Meltaways
Continuing on my theme of cooking with citrus fruits -- a perfect January theme -- today I present the Key lime. Smaller than its cousin the Persian lime, which is the variety we usually see in stores, the Key lime is particularly juicy and acidic. It has a smooth rind, a greenish-yellow color when ripe and lots of pesky seeds. Key limes also have ...