Use your Instant Pot to make this to-die-for malva pudding, a dense, spongy, caramelized cake of South African origin served with a brown sugar cream sauce. The name is weird. There is no denying it. Malva pudding. Is it named after a person, like pavlova? Or does it refer to the dessert's unique spongy texture? A South African dessert of ...
Key Lime Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust
A smooth-as-silk Key lime cheesecake with a crust made of crushed gingersnaps for a hint of spice! A perfect addition to your Shavuot celebration. The next Jewish holiday after Passover is Shavuot, which commerates when Moses received the Torah on Mount Sinai. This year Shavuot begins at sundown on May 19. It is a very happy occasion, as you ...
Flourless Mexican Chocolate Cake
Whether it is Passover or you avoid gluten all year long, this flourless chocolate cake with Mexican spices is the perfect special occasion gluten-free dessert. Is it still Passover? Don't we deserve a treat for making it this far into an eight-day-long holiday? How about a kosher-for-Passover flourless chocolate cake? That will make up for ...
Blueberry Rhubarb Pie for Pi Day
I'm pretending it's summer with a blueberry rhubarb pie made with all frozen fruit! Just in time for March 14 or Pi Day! I'm so happy it's finally March and the end of winter is in sight. I'm fast-forwarding to summer in my kitchen, however, with this blueberry rhubarb (or bluebarb) pie. I made it using local fruit from last summer that I ...
Hot Cocoa Cookies
One of my family's all-time favorite recipes, hot cocoa cookies taste like a mug of hot chocolate in cookie form. Leave some for Santa this Christmas Eve! I have probably made this recipe three times just in the past week. At this time of year, when my children want me to make cookies for a party, to give to teachers, or just to snack on, ...
Easy Homemade Naan
Thanks to Gourmia for sponsoring this post about how easy it is to make piping hot naan and other global flatbreads at home with the Gourmia Electric Flatbread, Pita and Tortilla Maker. Flatbreads are a staple in so many global cuisines whether they are leavened or unleavened; thin and plain or stuffed with meat and cheese. Think of the ...
Easy Mashed Potato Bread
Leftover mashed potatoes? Turn them into an easy, soda-risen, mashed potato bread perfect for a weekend-after-Thanksgiving breakfast. It's the Friday after Thanksgiving. You have leftover mashed potatoes sitting in your fridge. Don’t try to deny it. I am sure that those mashed potatoes were absolutely delicious at your Thanksgiving dinner. I ...
Pear Tart with Pecan Streusel
Not feeling pie for Thanksgiving dinner? This Pear Tart with Pecan Streusel is elegant, easy-to-make and a fresh twist on dessert for the biggest meal of the year. I think pears are overlooked as a fruit for Thanksgiving. Everyone, including me, automatically thinks about apples and pumpkins and perhaps sweet potatoes. But pears are just as ...
Halloween Cheesecake Brownies
My family's favorite: cream cheese brownies dressed up for Halloween! Zuzu was all set to go to a Halloween party this weekend - her first high school party -- and it got canceled at the last minute because the host was sick. With tears in her eyes, Zuzu asked if she could have a few friends over to our house to salvage the night. What was ...
Red Lentil Banana Bread
Sweet, moist banana bread with a secret ingredient for added nutrition and protein: mashed red lentils. Four kid taste-testers all loved it! Here is what I have learned recently: Teenagers don't like to eat breakfast. But they do like banana bread. Since she started high school, it has been well near impossible to get Zuzu to eat in the ...
How to Make Pumpkin Pie with Fresh Pumpkin
Curious about making pumpkin pie, a fall favorite, with fresh pumpkin instead of canned? It's easy and worth the extra effort! It's October, so we can talk about pumpkin pie, right? I didn't want to jump the gun, but once October hits, I think that all things fall are fair game. Thankfully, the unseasonal heat wave Chicago experienced at the ...
Break the Fast with a Semolina Cake
Break your Yom Kippur fast with basbousa, a simple, elegant semolina cake soaked in a sweet syrup, a tradtional favorite of Egyptian Jews. Yom Kippur begins this Friday at sundown. The most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur is marked by fasting, prayer and contemplation. At the end of the long day, during which observant Jews ...
Pumpkin Challah with Cinnamon Honey Butter
Saffron-colored pumpkin challah with sweet cinnamon honey butter will be the hit of your Rosh Hashanah celebration! Fall is pumpkin season and Rosh Hashanah is a fall holiday. So pumpkin dishes on a Rosh Hashanah menu is a no-brainer. Indeed, pumpkin is a traditional food for Rosh Hashanah, especially among Sephardic Jews, but not only ...
Fig Honey Galette
Fresh figs are such a gift! Here I place black and green figs atop a honey-sweetened mascarpone filling and fold them into a flaky galette. Perfect for early fall parties or Rosh Hashanah dinner! Every year, I feel a little giddy when I spy fresh figs in the grocery store because they are such a short-lived, seasonal treat. Did you know that ...
Stone Fruit Blueberry Pie
The perfect end-of-summer mashup pie: stone fruit mixed with berries. Don't let summer end without making this! I really love to make pie. My love for making pie probably exceeds my family's love for eating pie. My husband is all about a good fruit dessert, but given a choice between pie and cobbler, he will take the cobbler every time. He ...
Great British Baking Show Victoria Sandwich
Make a classic British dessert from "The Great British Baking Show:" a Victoria Sandwich! Sponge cake sandwiched around layers of raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream. Do you love "The Great British Baking Show" as much as I do? Talented home bakers creating classic British desserts, expert assessment from the regal Mary Berry and the ...
Naked Peach Cake
Make the most of stone fruit season with a tender peach cake covered in peach buttercream. My daughter returned home from four weeks of overnight camp this weekend. Our little family of four has barely been all together all summer, so I wanted to celebrate. I prepared a meal of my daughter's favorite summer foods: gazpacho to start, grilled ...
Strawberry Cupcakes
It's strawberry season! These luscious cupcakes have fresh strawberry purée in the cake and in the icing for tons of strawberry flavor. I have a long history of buying too many strawberries at the farmers market. I used to do a series of posts every year with recipes for how to use a flat of strawberries in five days. Last year, I skipped ...
Orange Cardamom Braid with Orange Honey Compound Butter
Breakfast is a special occasion with this Orange Cardamom braided challah served with a sweet Orange Honey Compound Butter. Get your citrus fix before the season ends! As citrus season winds down, I am trying to get my fix of Meyer lemons, blood oranges and all my favorite sunny, wintertime Vitamin C powerhouses before they go away. Recently ...
Queen Esther’s Poppyseed Cake with Meyer Lemon Glaze
A delicate, tender poppy seed cake drizzled with a tart lemon glaze. Perfect for serving with coffee or afternoon tea. A fitting dessert for the Jewish festival of Purim. This poppy seed cake comes to me from my mother. I cannot tell you how many times she served this cake when I was growing up. So many that when I asked her for the recipe, ...
Chocolate Orange Bread Pudding
My husband's birthday is this week and among his all-time favorite desserts is bread pudding, so that is what I will make. Although you wouldn't know it from the mild temperatures we had all weekend, it's still winter, and to me, winter means citrus. So this bread pudding is flavored with chocolate and orange. And just to make sure my birthday boy ...
Valentine’s Day Linzer Cookies
More homemade Valentine's Day love, today in the form of a heart-shaped Linzer cookie filled with scarlet-hued raspberry jam. I'd been meaning to make this traditional Linzer cookie recipe since before Christmas, but I ran out of time amidst all the holiday craziness. Luckily, by making my cut-out design a heart, these Linzer cookies work just as ...
Garam Masala Yogurt Pound Cake
This post is sponsored by Stonyfield Organic and Simply Organic. As always, all opinions are my own. An old-fashioned sour cream pound cake with a tender crumb and a slight tang is one of my favorite things to bake. So when Stonyfield Organic offered me the chance to try its new Double Cream yogurt, which acts as a lighter substitute for ...
Herb Sourdough Crackers
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single cook in possession of a sourdough starter, must be in want of a recipe. (With apologies to Jane Austen.) Part of maintaining a sourdough starter is discarding a portion of it every time you feed it. That waste, even it is just of flour and water, can be painful for fastidious cooks. I know it ...
Malted Chocolate Chip and Reverse Chip Cookies from Marbled, Swirled & Layered
Why make regular old chocolate chip cookies when you can make dazzling, flavorful harlequin-checked Malted Chocolate Chip and Reverse Chip Cookies with only a little extra effort? Turning classic desserts into dazzling, Instagram-worthy confections with only a leetle extra effort is the theme of my friend and fellow food blogger Irvin Lin's new ...