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 24. 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 ...
How to Bake with Yeast
Once, a dozen years ago, when I was a young bride living in a hip Chicago neighborhood -- I wasn't always west of the Loop, you know -- I tried to make challah from scratch for Shabbat dinner. The dough never rose and, when baked, my loaf was so dense that I could have hit my husband over the head with it and knocked him out cold. Scarred by ...
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. ...
Cookbook Review: Hoosier Mama Book of Pie
Some say that pie-making is a lost art. I have found, however, that there are countless men and women toiling away anonymously in their kitchen, keeping this quintessentially American art alive. I was at a party the other night and got to talking with one of my neighbors. The party was a dessert party so the subject naturally turned to our favorite ...
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 ...
Mother’s Day Brunch Ideas
I am of the firm belief that you should not go out to eat on big restaurant holidays, like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. The restaurants are extra crowded, the prices inflated and the wait staff harried. You are much more likely to have a great meal on any random Saturday night or Sunday morning when the dining room has a normal number of ...
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 ...
Hamantaschen Galette for Purim
Saturday at sundown, the Jewish festival of Purim begins. Purim commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people from an evil government minister, named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish community in ancient Persia. In essence, Purim is the Jewish "carnival" holiday -- every culture has one -- where people are encouraged to dress in ...
Make Gougeres (and Feel a Little French)
As longtime readers of West of the Loop know, I am a confirmed Francophile. There was a time in my life when I thought I might become an ex-pat and live in France when I grew up. A year of actual living in France cured me of that notion, but I still love all things Gallic, the food perhaps most of all. If you go a French person's house for ...
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 ...
Winter Fruit Pie for National Pie Day
When I learned that January 23 is National Pie Day, that was all the excuse I needed to plan to bake a pie. I am not an expert pie baker by any means. But pie appeals to me as a traditional and all-American dessert. You guys know that I am a sucker for lost arts -- hence all the canning -- and pie-making, these days, seems to fall into that ...
The Ultimate Cranberry Orange Scone Recipe
This is perhaps the third scone recipe I have published. How often can one person make scones, you may ask. Well, you see, I often have some of my girlfriends over for coffee during the week and when I do so, I like to make a special treat for them. But I have a limited time -- maybe an hour -- in which to bake something between dropping my kids at ...
Lemon-Scented Jam Thumbprint Cookies for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap
Since swapping food has become such a big part of my life, this year I decided to participate in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap is just what it sounds like: the food bloggers who participate receive the addresses of three other food bloggers. You send each of them one dozen of the same kind of cookie. You ...
Low-Fat Holiday Treat: Chocolate Mint Meringues
This is a recipe and post from a few years back, but the story is so classically me and the cookies are so tasty and seasonal, I just had to bring it up from the archives. Enjoy! It all started with the Meyer lemons. I was doing my just-buy-the-necessities-because-we-are-leaving-town shopping trip last week when a display of vibrant yellow ...
From the Archives: Five-Spice Pumpkin Apple Cake
Have I ever mentioned that I am a sucker for pumpkin-flavored baked goods? The pumpkin pie is definitely my favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner. But pumpkin-flavored treats are more versatile than we give them credit for: they work well not just for dessert but also as breakfast or brunch fare. I love how pumpkin adds sweetness but also earthiness ...
How to Make the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies (It’s the Chocolate, Stupid)
I recently visited The Chopping Block, Chicago's premier recreational cooking school, to scout the location for the November 10 Chicago Food Swap. Next to the cooking school's beautiful demonstration kitchens is a small retail shop that sells high-end cookware, hard-to-find ingredients and select cookbooks. So naturally I picked up a few odds and ...
Easiest Ever Fruit Crisp
Think you don't have time to make a delicious, old-fashioned dessert for your family tonight? Well, I think that you do. Forget about making an elaborate dough that needs to be chilled and rolled out. Forget about softening butter and getting out your stand mixer. The easiest dessert to make, by far, is a crisp: sliced, sweetened fruit dumped into ...
Coffee House Strawberry Scones
The coffee house in my town makes the best scones I have ever tasted. I am never one to waste calories on inferior pastry. For example, I make regular trips to Starbucks for a Chai Tea Latte, but I haven't eaten one of their baked goods in years. But the scones at Blue Max Coffee are worth the indulgence. Huge, flaky and studded with fruit, these ...
Healthy Snacking: Banana Yogurt Muffins
Yesterday I was working on an article about healthy snacks for the back-to-school issue of a local parenting publication. It's odd to be writing about back-to-school when my kids still have two more weeks to go in this school year, but that is how editorial calendars work. The article was a natural fit for me: I am committed to finding healthy, ...
Classic Strawberry Shortcake
This past weekend was Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer. It was a busier-than-usual weekend at my house. Saturday, my husband took our daughter to a NHL playoff game, which the Blackhawks won thankfully. My husband and I celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary on Sunday with a dinner out -- a review of that meal coming later ...
Chocolate Spice Cookies for Tasting Jerusalem
As some of you may remember, I am participating in a virtual cooking community called Tasting Jerusalem. Created by two food writers, Beth from the blog OMG! Yummy and Sarene Wallace from 805 Living magazine, Tasting Jerusalem is a community dedicated to exploring the cuisine of the Middle East using the cookbook Jerusalem as a guide. Each month, ...
Bread Machine Swedish Cinnamon Buns
One of my favorite items from May's Chicago Food Swap were Swedish Cinnamon Buns by veteran swapper Rachel. These yeasty sweet buns sprinkled with pearl sugar disappeared all too quickly the day after the swap, leaving me with nothing but crumbs and a burning desire to bake some more. If the mention of cinnamon buns conjures up images of over-sized ...