Archive for the 'recipes' Category
Cooking with Ben
March 11th, 2010by Caroline
I love Pete Wells’ Cooking with Dexter column, and this week’s installment spoke to me particularly. Wells, apparently, is a perfectionist, and his occasional cooking missteps make him storm and stomp – unless his five year-old son is around. Then, because like any parent Wells likes to model more constructive behavior, he checks his [...]
Pasta with Beets for Valentine’s Day
February 14th, 2010by Caroline
There was a time when Valentine’s Day had me making heart-shaped chocolate sandwich cookies, or even, just a few weeks before Ben was born, brownie ice cream sandwiches (I’ll never forget the lady who saw me standing in the ice cream aisle — I was looking for flavor inspiration — and commented, “It’s a [...]
Classic Oatmeal Cookies
February 9th, 2010by Caroline
There is nothing remarkable about this cookie recipe except, perhaps, that I have been following it faithfully for over 35 years, and if you read this blog periodically or know me at all, you know that I am always tweaking recipes for baked goods. But why mess with a classic? This is the recipe [...]
Pear Bread
February 7th, 2010by Caroline
The other day I saw a bus ad quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson’s line, “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” I was so surprised to see Emerson’s words on the side of a bus that it took a while before I stopped to think [...]
Chard & Walnut Lasagna
February 1st, 2010by Caroline
It seems amazing to me that three and a half years ago, I began a blog post, “Ben’s not a picky eater…” What happened?! One day he was eating toasts spread with goat cheese and eggplant caviar and then, one by one, foods started to leave his diet. I wonder sometimes about the impact [...]
Weekend Waffles
January 18th, 2010by Lisa
birthday flowers, whipped cream, maple syrup, blueberries…
Generally speaking, I’m not in charge of breakfast, and I prefer pancakes to waffles. This is not so true of my husband, who loves waffles, and who counted a waffle maker among the very few kitchen machines in his bachelor home. He made waffles pretty regularly (from [...]
A Good Way to Start the Week
January 11th, 2010I will stop with all the cookie recipes soon, I promise, and get on to other topics, but I couldn’t resist writing about this one which I first spotted on my friend (and Mama, PhD contributor) Sheila’s blog: Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies.
Now, normally I am a big fan of flour in baked goods. You can [...]
Hickory Puffs
December 30th, 2009My dad and sons added a new cookie to their repertoire this year, one I grew up with thanks to the nut-gathering efforts of my dad: hickory puffs. Now, most Californians don’t know about hickory nuts; the trees grow in New England and Wisconsin, and the nut shells are so hard and the nutmeat so [...]
Cooking with Granddad
December 30th, 2009by Caroline
We don’t have quite as many holiday food traditions as Lisa’s family — the meals always vary depending on whether we stay in California or travel east to my parents’ home — but one tradition that reaches back generations is, as in many families, cookie baking. My grandmother and mother kept tallies of [...]
Christmas Cookies: Pistachio-Cranberry Icebox Cookies
December 17th, 2009by Caroline
This is the third Christmas for this cookie recipe, which I found in Gourmet and love for all the reasons I love making candy: it’s quick, beautiful, and makes a lot.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar (did you [...]