Writing about food since 2004.
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Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake
The question often comes up: “Do you like baking more than savory cooking? Or the other way around?” I always give a thoughtful, complicated answer but there’s a much easier way to address the question: look to your right, scroll down. See where it says Recipes By Category? Look at the numbers. 36 salads. 22…
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Pineapple Upside-Down Cake with Toasted Coconut Ice Cream
If you’ve ever seen “Fiddler On The Roof,” you probably know the term “yenta.” A yenta, in Yiddish, is a busybody, a meddler; in “Fiddler,” though, she’s a specific person, a matchmaker. My whole life, I’ve always been something of a yenta. I love to get involved with people’s life decisions, telling people where to…
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Chocolate Guinness Cake
Here’s how you know I’m the real deal: whereas most food publications will cram an upcoming holiday down your throat in hopes that you’ll link to their page as you plan your holiday meal, I’m not so clever or strategic. I wait until the holiday’s over, when the post will no longer be relevant, and…
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Melissa Clark’s Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread
You may be wondering about a post that was on my blog on Friday wherein I made Melissa Clark’s Sticky Cranberry Gingerbread live on webcam (using LiveStream) and then interviewed Melissa Clark on my cellphone afterwards. Many of you attended, though you missed the ending when the cake came out of the oven because LiveStream…
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Is “The Best Chocolate Cake In The World” The Best Chocolate Cake In The World?
About a year ago, a place opened up in SoHo/Nolita called “The Best Chocolate Cake in The World.” A tongue-in-cheek act of hubris, sort of like the novel “Winner of the National Book Award,” foodies were skeptical. Many who went there dismissed it as overrated. Me? I forgot about it. But last week, after having…
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It’s Apple Season, So Here Are Three Desserts You Can Make with Apples (Baked Apples, Apple Cake & Apple Cobbler)
Peter Meehan recently ranted about hectoring food snobs, the ones who make you feel bad for putting milk in your coffee (something he witnessed at an elite coffee shop) or who mock you for not knowing your various kinds of meat (hogget, anyone?) It’s with a sense of subtle restraint, then, that I gently prod…
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Melissa Clark’s Chocolate Chip Pecan Loaf Cake
[A note on the above photo: that was taken by my friend & neighbor Rob Meyer who came over for cake and let me tinker with his SLR because I’m thinking of getting one. Has the time come? What kind should I get?] The idea of a snack cake really appeals to me because, for…
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St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake
Sometimes a recipe is so intriguing, so mysteriously alluring, so strange that there’s nothing you can do but make it to see what it tastes like. That’s precisely what happened when I saw this St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake on what’s becoming my #1 favorite internet recipe resource, Smitten Kitchen. I’m friends with Deb–we ate…
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Caramelized-Apple Skillet Cake
I had the apples, I had the butter, I had the sugar, the vanilla extract, and even the cornmeal. Jimmy was coming to dinner (see here) and, with only an hour or two to prep, I knew there had to be dessert. So I yanked down Karen DeMasco’s newest book, The Craft of Baking, and…
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Gina DePalma’s Zucchini Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Crunch Glaze
There’s a transitional moment that comes every year when zucchini goes from being a summer ingredient to being a fall ingredient. It’s still growing — it just arrived in my CSA and it’s October — and the question is: what can you do with it that doesn’t feel too summery? Enter the late, great Gina…
