Every so often while flipping through a cookbook, I flag a recipe to try not because I think it sounds delicious, but rather because I’m curious and even skeptical about how it’ll turn out. This gluten-and-butter-free, almond-flour-based chocolate chip cookie from Izy Hossack’s The Savvy Cook is a prime example of that. When I first glanced at the ingredient list, I was puzzled, to say the least. Could almond butter, almond flour, honey, vanilla, baking soda, chocolate chunks, and a bit of salt combine into something that pushes the same buttons as a classic chocolate chip cookie? Or, would it bake up like a protein bar or sad diet cookie?
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dessert
Lemon Curd Thumbprint Cookies
While peak citrus season is now past us, lemon sweets always feel right to me in early spring. Berries haven’t quite hit their stride (at least, not in NYC), but warmer weather calls for something fruity. Tangy, silky-smooth, and decadent, lemon curd is one of my all-time-favorite ways to get my citrus fix. Spread on a slice of marshmallow-y angel food cake, dolloped on a scone, or used as a tart or cupcake filling, it is pretty much always a good choice in my book.
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Cherry-Almond Chocolate Bark
For as long as I’ve been writing about food, I’ve had a dessert idea jotted down; one that combines a trio of my favorite things, and yet, I just got to it this past week. This might say something about my tendencies towards procrastination, or my love of making unrealistically long lists — if only you could see my collection of epic-length Google docs — but the real reason this cherry-almond chocolate bark only now came to fruition is simpler and less personality-trait-related: namely, I hate tempering chocolate.
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Sweet Potato Pie Bars
When I learned that one of my all-time favorite cookbook authors would be writing a book all about cookies (one of my absolute favorite things to bake), I could hardly contain my excitement. Fast forward many, many months, and it’s here: Dorie’s Cookies. Since it hit shelves a few weeks back, I’ve been plowing through butter and sugar at an alarming rate, testing recipes from it, and — no shocker here — it is excellent, filled with a wide range of well-written recipes, many of which I’ve bookmarked.
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Molasses Spice Cookies
It might seem a bit premature to share a recipe for molasses spice cookies, a treat that many associate with Christmas, but I can’t wait any longer. Last winter, I set upon a quest to find the best recipes for molasses spice cookies and gingersnaps, and have been waiting to tell you all about these cookies since. I’m still on the hunt for the latter — if you have a favorite gingersnap recipe, let me know in the comments — but after testing and tasting my way through a handful of contenders, I feel pretty darn confident that these molasses spice cookies are a real winner.
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Angel Food Cake With Lemon Curd
Great angel food cake has a texture somewhere in between a cloud and a marshmallow: ethereally light, with a pleasantly-spongy bite. Lofty, and golden-brown-crusted, it’s one of my all-time favorite cakes. The problem: great angel food cake can be tricky to nail, or at least, that’s what I’m telling myself after baking not one, not two, but three failed cakes — flops, literally and figuratively — before finding success with this recipe.
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Gluten-Free Plum-Ginger Crisp
Though I don’t have any issues with gluten, I still like to have a handful of gluten-free recipes up my sleeve. When baking for friends who abstain from wheat and other glutinous grains, my typical strategy is to stick with desserts that either omit grains altogether or that contain a small amount, with the hope that it’ll be easier to substitute other ingredients. As we’re in the midst of peak berry and stone fruit season, I recently got it in my head that a crisp would be an ideal candidate for this sort of makeover.
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Flourless Chocolate Walnut Cookies
You’d think I admitted to kicking puppies given the typical reaction to the following: I’m just not that into chocolate desserts. I love a high-quality bar as much as the next person — my favorites are TCHO’s Milk Chocolate “Cacao” 53% and Theo Raspberry — and I have a borderline obsession with Peppermint Patties and other chocolate-mint sweets, but classics like chocolate cake, ice cream, and chocolate chip cookies rarely do it for me. That said, my tastebuds make an exception for super-rich brownies, fudge, and other high-intensity chocolate desserts like these brownie-like flourless chocolate cookies.
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Iced Sugar Cookie Hearts
Nowadays, most of what comes out of my kitchen are savory everyday things like bean soups and kale salads, but baking was what first piqued my interest in the culinary world. I still enjoy it — there’s something so magical about transforming butter, flour, and sugar into a treat so much greater than the sum of their parts — but it’s more of an occasional, whimsical thing. (One cannot live on sweets alone.) Cut-out sugar cookies, like these hearts, are a long-time love of mine, one of the first things I remember baking.
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Blood Orange Aperol Granita
With it’s sunny red-orange hue and gently-bittersweet flavor, Aperol might seem an amaro best suited for taking the edge off blazing-hot summer afternoons. (There’s certainly some truth to that thought; when it comes to day drinking, it’s hard to top a fizzy Aperol Spritz.) But I’d argue it’s equally appropriate during these dreary winter months.
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