One of my favorite parts of December this year has been the honor of being able to try out four different reader-submitted recipes—one for each week. I have often said that I think sharing food—whether in physical or recipe form—is a kind of love we show to each other. I think that’s especially true of …
Continue reading “Be a chip off the old block and bake a family pie”
It turns out, chocolate chip cookies are a much newer invention than I would have thought. An article on the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library website notes that the famous cookies were first invented in 1938 by Ruth Wakefield. Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth, ran the Toll House Restaurant in Massachusetts, hence the enduring “Toll House Chocolate …
“Well, these are a disaster,” I told Joey, pulling my baking sheet out of the oven. “I guess they won’t be going in the column.” Earlier in the week, I was excited to try a recipe I ran across that used soy sauce in chocolate chip cookies. It sounded just weird enough that I had …
Continue reading “‘Soy’ vey: These cookies were quite the weird experiment”
The names people choose for recipes often crack me up. There’s the embarrassing-to-talk-about “better than sex” or “sex in a pan” variety of dishes, followed by “blue-ribbon” and “award-winning” options, and of course, there are a million recipes purporting to be “Mom’s” or “Grandma’s,” although few identify which matriarch those actually belong to. So you’ll …
We had an early Christmas celebration this past week, and of course, I volunteered to make dessert. I knew I wanted to make a cranberry orange tart that I first tried last Christmas (check out my website for that one), since I had a full bag of cranberries in my crisper drawer, but I was …
Continue reading “You’ll be ready to poke into this chocolate-filled cake”
I learned something new this week that totally blew my mind: how to create muffins with perfectly domed tops. It’s been a mystery for me for a long time how bakeries and other super bakers manage to get their muffins to rise so tall, puffing perfectly over the edges of their cupcake liners. This week’s …
Continue reading “New baking technique delivers ‘dome sweet dome’ for muffins”
When I was little, my dad would wake up early every morning, pack his lunchbox and head out for work. I probably wouldn’t have cared at all about what was in that black plastic box if it weren’t for the Tupperware bowl of sandwich cookies in the pantry. Dad would normally toss a couple into …
Continue reading “‘Micro’save yourself some time baking fresh cookies”
This weekend, I stumbled on an article by Gabrielle Drolet called, “In Defence of Garlic in a Jar: How Food Snobs Almost Ruined My Love of Cooking.” It’s a long read, but Drolet makes the point that cooking shortcuts are a great way to make the kitchen more accessible to people who have disabilities. She …
Continue reading “Make ’em go ‘coco’nuts for fudgy, layered brownies”
I am and always have been a rule follower. I rarely if ever got in trouble in school, and I still read instructions before completing a form or assembling a piece of furniture. For years, I was that way with recipes, too. I followed the directions to the letter. But I have had the good …
Continue reading “You’re fine ‘pudding’ whatever you want in these cookies”
I don’t get a chance to listen to the radio much on the weekends, but when I do, I try to catch the public radio show “The Splendid Table.” It’s a fun listen, if you’ve never heard it. The show isn’t just about sharing recipes. They tend to jump into all aspects of food—the culture, …
Continue reading “Pastries are dish worth ‘scone’ing on about”
