Lots of people make some version of a sweet or spicy roasted nut during the holidays; this is what Tony makes every year. We give bags to all our teachers and then snack on them all season long.

1 pound nuts
¼ cup maple syrup
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except for the nuts. Add the nuts and toss until well coated. Pour into a large roasting pan and spread into a single layer. Bake for 8-12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are golden and filling the kitchen with a delicious maple scent. Let cool in the pan, so that the glaze hardens into a crispy shell on the nuts, before serving or storing.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that today is St. Lucy’s Day.  And that it is also my daughter’s half-birthday. And that her still-beloved American Girl doll, Kirsten, hails from Sweden, where St. Lucy is pretty much the only saint honored. If you’ve read my book, you also might know that we nearly named Ella “Lucy”, after my paternal grandmother.

For a few years, Ella has been lobbying to celebrate her half-birthday/Swedish saint day in a traditional way: with St. Lucia buns, brought by the eldest daughter, at the crack of dawn, to the other members of the household. Usually, this daughter wears a crown of candles.  Historically, December 13 would have been the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year, and thus the tradition of the eldest daughter bringing light and sweets.

Last night at dinner, Ella reminded me about St. Lucy’s Day and told me exactly where to find the recipe, and at 6:30 pm, I agreed and set to work making St. Lucia Buns for the morning. I didn’t have saffron or raisins, which means ours were not exactly authentic, but they were good enough.  They’re a sweet, yeast bread and easy to make.

This morning, at about 6:45 am, it was still dark, and Finn came into our room, announcing, “Stay in bed!” Not long after that, Ella arrived (sans scary candle crown) with a breakfast tray bearing two cups of coffee and 4 St. Lucia buns, plated and garnished with candied walnuts, which she’d added in place of the missing raisins.

It was lovely to have a break from the regular routine, to forget about making lunches and emptying the dishwasher and making beds.  We all piled onto our bed, and had a calm, sweet breakfast as the sun came up.

St. Lucia Buns

from Kirsten’s Cookbook

• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup lukewarm water
• 1 package yest
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon saffron
• 2 3/4 cups flour
• 1 T cooking oil
• 1 egg + 1 T water
• 24 raisins

1. Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water. Set aside for 5 minutes until  bubbly and smooth.
2. Warm the milk and butter over low heat until butter is just melted.
3. Add the milk and butter to the yeast.
4. Stir in sugar, egg, salt, and saffron.
5. Add 1 1/2 cups flour and stir until smooth.
6. Add enough of the remaining flour so that you can shape the dough into a ball.
7. Put dough on floured cutting board & knead, adding flour as dough becomes sticky.
8. When dough is smooth and  springy (about 5-10 minutes) cover with a towel and wash & dry mixing bowl.
9. Measure cooking oil into bowl, add dough, turn to coat, cover with a towel and set in warm place to rise, 45 minutes, or until doubled in size.
10. Punch down the dough, then divide into 6 sections.  Take one section and divide in half. Roll each half into and 8-inch rope. Cross the 2 ropes in the middle then coil the ends into tight circles. Repeat w/remaining 5 buns.
11. Place buns on greased cookie sheet, 2 inches apart. Let rise until doubled, 30-45 minutes.
12. While buns are rising, preheat oven to 350 degrees.
13. Beat egg and water and brush lightly over the top of each bun before baking. Decorate with raisins.
14. Bake buns 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.
15. Cool on cooling rack.

I spent all week at home with a feverish kid, and while it was sweet to slow down, to lie on the couch reading picture books and drifting into short naps, after a while the confinement began to wear on me. When he finally got better, I was out-of-proportion grateful, and excited to resume our regular life which included, this weekend, an invitation to a potluck. I knew exactly what to make for my week’s first trip out of the house: a coconut cake from Emily Dickinson.

I’d first read about the recipe this fall, in contributor Jeff Gordinier’s piece for The New York Times. A recent exhibit of Emily Dickinson’s manuscripts, letters, and other papers from her daily life, included, perhaps surprisingly, her recipe for coconut cake. As Gordinier writes, “Somehow it’s hard to envision her even eating a meal, let alone taking delectable pleasure from it.” And yet, here is the recipe, in her beautiful, slant handwriting, and I knew I had to make it. The fact that it’s just a list of ingredients didn’t put me off; it read like pound cake to me, and so that’s how I approached it. I took it to Saturday’s potluck, where it was a hit. It’s not too sweet and just subtly coconut-y; it’d be a great vehicle for a fruit compote or a drizzle of chocolate sauce, but I like it best just plain.

Here’s how I did it:
Preheat the oven to 350. Line a standard loaf pan with parchment.

Whisk together in a medium bowl:
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

In a large bowl, beat together
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter

Continue beating until light. Add, one at a time and beating after each addition:
2 eggs

Now add:
1/2 cup milk

Stir the flour mixture into the butter and then add
1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut

Spoon the batter into the loaf pan and bake until golden brown and a tester comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Remove the cake from the pan and let cool on a rack.

by Caroline

Glaze. Glaze is one of those words that makes me try a recipe, and the combination here of “caramel” + “glaze” got me, even though it is really just one small component of that recipe. But this glaze is so good I might just start making it to spread on things other than cake.

This recipe is from Merrill Stubbs, at the fabulous Food52, and I didn’t change a thing.

Applesauce Cake
Serves 10

For the cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups unsweetened (preferably homemade) applesauce
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla

For the caramel glaze:
4 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 to 1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and butter and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, pepper and spices and set aside. In a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a standing mixer, beat the eggs with both sugars until light. Mix in the applesauce, oil and vanilla until smooth.

Using a spatula, fold in the dry ingredients, being careful not to over-mix. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 45 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool the cake for 10 minutes in the pan on a rack before turning it out and cooling completely on the rack — make sure the cake is not at all warm before you make the glaze.

TheRunawaySpoon wisely advises that you put a piece of foil or paper under the cooling rack to catch any drips before you start the glaze. Put the butter in a medium saucepan with the brown sugar, cream and salt and set over medium heat. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil for one minute exactly, and then pull it off the heat.

Leave the pan to cool for a couple of minutes, and then gradually whisk in the powdered sugar until you have a thick, but pourable consistency (you may not need all the sugar). If the mixture seems too thick, just add a splash of cream to thin it out a little. Immediately pour the glaze over the cake, moving slowly and evenly to cover as much surface area as possible. Let the glaze set before serving the cake.

A friend of mine reviews reviews for websites; you read that right: if you write a product review of an item you buy online, chances are she or one of her colleagues will vet your review before it is published, checking for inappropriate language, slander, and other no-no’s. But even acceptable reviews are often riddled with punctuation and grammar errors, and I often think of my friend, waging a lonely, one-woman battle against misplaced modifiers and comma splices. The excerpts she posts on Facebook every day — especially the ones with grammatical errors that introduce unintentionally hilarious meanings (think, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”) — make my day.

But it’s got me thinking about recipe-writing and reviewing. I use recipe websites all the time, and often use the reviews to guide my choices, but I’m always amazed (and kind of amused) at the reviews that say something like “This cake was terrible!! I cut the sugar by 50%, replaced the butter with pureed prunes, and used wheat germ and ground flax instead of white flour; it was so dry! it wasn’t nearly sweet enough! I won’t ever make this again!!” (Online reviewers always use multiple exclamation points). Yes, well, serves you right, I think.

I adapt recipes, and I do often cut sugar or replace shortening with ground flaxseed meal, but usually not until the second time around. It doesn’t seem right to tinker until I really understand what the recipe’s doing. And when I tinker, I’ll let you know so that you can make your own decisions about the changes.

The chocolate zucchini cake recipe I made this week from Epicurious has a raft of reviews and for some reason this time they really drew me in. As usual, a number of reviewers simply praised the recipe; others (helpfully) explained changes they made and their result; others criticized the recipe after make unsuccessful changes; and then — my favorite — others told off the critics who had made ill-advised substitutions:

“Yep, if you start making substitutions, don’t blame the recipe.”

And even better:
“Did anybody actually make THIS cake???? By the time you make all the substitutions and revisions, it’s not the same cake. Who gives a rat’s behind about what everyone did to alter the cake, just RATE THE DAMN THING! Whooo, now that i got that off my chest, yes, I do feel better. Incidentally, the cake I made using THIS recipe, was fabulous.”

I have to agree. I made this cake and it is good.

Whenever members of my family get together, we eat, and if we’re going to be visiting each other for a few days, we count up the meals in advance and start planning what we’ll cook and eat together (we have already, despite having more important things to do, begun emailing a little bit about Thanksgiving).

My Dad doesn’t do too much cooking, but when we gather at my parents’ home, he plays an important role in our food conversation by telling us what’s coming from the garden or what he’s got stocked in the freezer, also letting us know when some food is producing at oppressive levels (at the moment, ripening peaches cover every flat surface in the kitchen, the wood stove, and one spare bed) or whether we need to clear out last year’s frozen whatever-vegetable to make room for this year’s crop. It’s kind of like walking into an episode of Iron Chef, the one-ingredient cooking challenge, except I get lots of ingredients, and no stop clock. It’s great.

At my parents’ last week, one of the products to use was rhubarb, and my Mom had already emailed me a recipe from the New York Times in anticipation of my visit. I am a big fan of upside-down cakes, as you might have noticed; I’ve posted recipes for ones with cherries and pears (with a terrible picture), though I think my favorite is still this apricot upside-down cake, which I picture here. They are usually pretty easy, always moist, and have that great caramelized sugar-crust edge. I have to admit, this one is a bit fussier than what I would make just for my own family, but for my Mom — who taught me how to bake — anything. And besides, it’s completely delicious.

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature, more to grease pans
1 1/2 pounds rhubarb, rinsed and sliced into 1/2-inch cubes (about 4 cups)
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar 1/2 cup light brown sugar
2 cups cake flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
Zest of 1 lemon, grated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1/3 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons lemon juice.

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan with parchment paper. Butter the paper and sides of the pan. Wrap two layers of foil under the pan, and place it on a buttered baking sheet.
2. In a medium bowl, mix rhubarb, cornstarch and 1/2 cup granulated sugar.
3. Mix the brown sugar and 1/2 stick butter in a pan over medium heat. Whisk until smooth and bubbling, about 2 minutes. Sift together the cake flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Whip 2 sticks butter in a mixer with a paddle attachment for 2 minutes. With your fingers, blend the remaining 1 cup sugar with lemon zest until the mixture is uniform in color. Cream together with the butter at medium-high speed until it is light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, stopping to scrape down the bowl halfway through. Add the vanilla and mix well. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the sour cream, then the lemon juice. (It’s O.K. if the mixture looks curdled.) With the mixer set to low speed, add the flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time, until well combined. Scrape down the mixer bowl in between the additions.
5. Pour the brown-sugar mixture into the cake pan, then spoon in the rhubarb and its juices. Spoon in the batter so it covers all of the rhubarb. Smooth out the top.
6. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until the top of the cake is firm to touch and a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out without any large, moist crumbs.
7. Place the pan on a wire rack, and cool for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the cake, place a plate on top of the pan and turn it upside-down. Release the cake from the pan while still warm or else it will stick.
Yield: 8 servings.

We’ve been feeling pretty celebratory around here since learning the terrific news that Shambhala Publications/Roost Books will publish our anthology, The Dish: Making the Meals that Make Your Family. It seems an appropriate time to give you a big cake bonanza: three recipes! all for chocolate cake! I hesitated briefly because I don’t have pictures of any of the cakes in question, they all went so fast. But you won’t need pictures if you make them yourself, will you?

Chocolate Carrot Cake is dense and moist, my favorite layer cake. It improves after a day or two, so it’s great to make ahead, and you can glaze it with chocolate or (my preference) make a triple batch of cream cheese frosting and use that as filling and frosting. The cake is not too sweet and it’s perfectly chocolately. Plus, the carrots make it healthy (or so I tell myself). My friend Liz (who has contributed an essay about frosting and farmer’s markets to this collection) gave me the recipe, which originally comes from a Martha’s Vineyard cafe. It is my go-to celebration cake and is also, in fact, the one Tony baked last week to celebrate my birthday.

Crazy Cake, also known as cockeyed cake or 6-minute cake, is lighter, but just as moist and chocolatey (especially if you make it with coffee, which brings out the chocolate flavor). It comes together in five minutes and happens to be vegan, which is occasionally useful. Kids like to stir it together because the vinegar and baking soda make a satisfying chemistry lab reaction, so we make this batter into cupcakes for all the kids’ birthday parties.

And finally, Smitten Kitchen’s Everyday Chocolate Cake is this summer’s happy new cake discovery. It is a perfect one-bowl, dark and satisfying chocolate cake. Making it in a loaf pan gives it a simple and sturdy everyday look, though I suppose there’s nothing stopping you from doubling the recipe, putting it in round cake pans, and frosting it. But try it as written, because who doesn’t need chocolate cake every day?

If you have these recipes in your repertoire, you will need no others.

I may never bake another brownie again. Oh, I will certainly make brownies, but now I’ve found a recipe that rivals even the one I discovered in Kate Moses’ gorgeous memoir-with-recipes, Cakewalk, the brownie recipe I said — oh, less than two months ago — was the last brownie recipe you would ever need.

Well. If you want brownies without turning the oven on (which is useful in the summer) keep this recipe handy.

The irony here is that I did have to turn the oven on. Lacking the chocolate wafer cookies that are a key ingredient, and with my local market out of stock, I baked them myself rather than drive around to other markets looking for them. My recipe comes from Alice Medrich’s glorious Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies but you can find a very similar version of the recipe at Smitten Kitchen.

And yes, I did put up with a fair amount of teasing for baking cookies to grind up to put in my no-bake brownies. Those folks would be eating their words if their mouths weren’t so full of brownies right now.

Here’s what you need:

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cups evaporated milk (from one 12-ounce can)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 cups finely ground chocolate wafer cookies (from two 9-ounce packages; if you bake these yourself from the recipe linked above, you’ll have plenty for the brownies plus a dozen or so leftover. Do not share them with anyone who teases you about baking cookies to put into no-bake brownies.)
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sweetened shredded coconut
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons salted cocktail peanuts
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
Salt

Here’s what you do:

Line a 9-inch square baking pan with plastic wrap, leaving a 1-inch overhang on all sides.

Heat chocolate and evaporated milk in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring, until chocolate melts and is smooth. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla. Set aside 1/3 cup.*

Combine cookies, 2 cups coconut, 1 cup peanuts, the sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a bowl. Pour in chocolate mixture; stir until combined.

Spread mixture evenly into prepared pan. Spread reserved 1/3 cup chocolate over top. Finely chop remaining 2 tablespoons coconut and 2 tablespoons peanuts; sprinkle evenly over chocolate.* Refrigerate until set, about 2 hours. Remove brownies from pan by lifting plastic wrap. Remove plastic, and cut into 24 brownies.

Keep refrigerated (or even frozen). These would be excellent broken up and stirred into ice cream.

* I didn’t read the recipe very carefully (typical) and forgot to reserve chocolate/peanuts/coconut for the topping, but of course the brownies taste just as good with all those ingredients inside rather than on top.

This past year, my 6 year-old got out of school an hour earlier than my 9 year-old, and we spent that hour in the school library or, on sunny days, in the park across the street. Once spring came, an ice cream truck parked at the entrance and as we crossed the street into the park every day, Eli would ask, automatically, “Can I have an ice cream?” And I’d say, just as automatically, “Nope,” and list the snacks I’d brought in my purse. It was a routine that caused no particular stress or bother; we didn’t need any legislation to ban the ice cream trucks, we just went on our way.

I don’t have a single good reason for my school year, week day ice cream ban (which is really too strong a word for this routine), and probably if Eli had lobbied harder I would have caved. But he didn’t, so I didn’t. We would play in the park for an hour, he would munch on an apple and a muffin and maybe some peanut butter crackers or a MoJo bar, and then we would pick up Ben and snack some more. I don’t think either of them feels at all deprived of sweets, and if you have read this blog any length of time, you also know they are not — it’s just that most of the time, I like to make them at home.

But when summer vacation comes, I feel like celebrating. Even though the weather in San Francisco isn’t so summery, I embrace the season with sandals and bright pink nail polish and home made ice cream and field trips with the kids to the latest ice cream and donut shops:

the menu at Dynamo Donuts

My friends tease me about my summer food enthusiasms, but my family is certainly not complaining. And when we travel, as we have been this last week (and as Lisa has written along the same lines) I am just a little sweeter, and even more inclined to say yes to treats. They are morale and energy boosters, they are a way to sample the local food culture, they are a break in a busy day of walking from one science museum to the next. On the ferry to San Juan Island last week, which seemed in some ways so foreign, the boys were delighted to find their favorite ballpark treat:

And after a surprisingly good lunch from the snack bar at one of Vancouver’s amazing public pools today, Eli chose from the standard ice cream menu:

While Ben bypassed that for a less typical post-swim snack:

This afternoon, flagging after a long walk from the planetarium to the Granville Public Market, we stopped for donuts, and we’re already looking forward to fudge tomorrow at the Capilano Suspension bridge, because apparently fudge is one of the things one buys to survive a walk across a sky-high suspension bridge, and because we are on vacation, and because it is fun to say yes.

After making the honey ice cream the other day, I had 6 egg whites left over. I could have made an egg white omelette, I suppose, but that’s not really my style.

This is more my style:

This recipe is similar — in look and execution — to Lisa’s chocolate roulade, though her cake is quite a bit richer. The recipe I followed is for a simple chocolate angel food sheet cake, straight from The Joy of Cooking:

Grease an 11″x17″ jelly-roll pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Sift together three times:
1/4 c cake flour
1/4 c cocoa
1/4 c plus 2 T granulated sugar
1/4 t salt

Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat on low speed for one minute:
6 large egg whites
1 1/2 t water
1 1/2 t fresh lemon juice
1/2 t cream of tartar
1/2 t vanilla

Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat until the mixture increases in volume 4-5 times and resembles a bowl of soft, almost translucent foam composed of tiny bubbles (this takes 2-3 minutes). The foam will hold a very moist shape when the beaters are lifted. Beat in very gradually (on medium speed), one tablespoon at a time:

1/4 c plus 2 T granulated sugar

When all the sugar has been added, the foam will be creamy white and hold soft, moist, glossy peaks that bend over at the points; do not beat until stiff.

Sift a fine layer of the flour mixture evenly over the surface of the egg mixture and fold gently with a rubber spatula only until the flour is almost incorporated. Do not stir or mix. Repeat 7 or 8 more times, until the flour mixture is all incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake until the top springs back when lightly pressed, about 15 minutes. Let the cake cool completely in the pan.

Invert the cooled cake onto a sheet of wax paper and remove the baking pan and peel off the parchment paper. Now lift the wax paper and turn the cake right side up on to a sheet of aluminum foil. Peel off the wax paper (a thin top layer of cake may come off; that’s fine).

Now make the filling; I used lightly-sweetened whipped cream, beat stiffer than usual: 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar, beaten until stiff. Spread over the cooled cake and then roll up the cake starting at one end: fold and press an inch or so of the cake firmly up over the filling at one end to get started. Even if the cake cracks at first, keep your first turns especially tight; the cracking will diminish as the roll gets bigger (also, you can cover cracks later with whipped cream, frosting or a sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar; also, no one will care what the cake looks like). Once the cake is rolled, wrap tightly with foil and refrigerate to firm the cake before serving.

Serve with honey ice cream, extra whipped cream, and/or berries.