Category

Desserts

  • Chocolate Cranberry Oat Cookies So Good They’ll Stop Your Kid From Crying

    Chocolate Cranberry Oat Cookies So Good They’ll Stop Your Kid From Crying

    Parents of three year-olds, I salute you! We have house guests this week, our friend Celia and her three year old daughter, Johanna. And while I’d been told that the terrible twos are nothing compared to the terrible threes, that really had no significance for me since I don’t have children, I just have a…

  • Date and Coffee Sponge Cake With A Coffee Glaze

    Date and Coffee Sponge Cake With A Coffee Glaze

    Speaking of British food people, did you know that Daniel Day-Lewis’s sister is a cookbook writer over there? Her name is Tamasin Day-Lewis and hey, look, she’s on Twitter. I picked up her book Supper For A Song when I visited Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York; I’ve really enjoyed flipping through it, so…

  • Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

    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…

  • The Best Brownies of Your Life

    The Best Brownies of Your Life

    Here they are, the brownies I’ve always wanted and never found. I didn’t know my brownie life was lacking; for years, I’d been melting chocolate in a double boiler along with some butter to make the Martha Stewart version. Those were always good. So were all the other brownie recipes I attempted with a similar…

  • Cocoa Puffed Chocolate Mousse

    Cocoa Puffed Chocolate Mousse

    In my first book, I told the story of the chocolate rose. In case you missed it: my mom once gave me a chocolate rose to give the girl across the street for Valentine’s Day. I nervously carried it over, rang the doorbell, and ended up giving the rose to her sister to pass on…

  • Brittany Cake Aux Pruneaux

    Brittany Cake Aux Pruneaux

    The Neverending Story was one of my favorite childhood movies. I loved the back and forth between Sebastian eating his peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the attic of his school and young Atreyu on his white horse (well, not for long…Artax!) journeying to kill The Nothing. Mostly, though, I loved the idea of this…

  • Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

    Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

    The other night I was very cold so I made a hot chocolate. My method for a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants hot chocolate is pretty simple: I warm milk, whisk in unsweetened cocoa powder and a bit of sugar. I taste and allow it to thicken a bit at a simmer. Then, at the last minute, I add…

  • Sam Sifton’s Thanksgiving Pear Cobbler

    Sam Sifton’s Thanksgiving Pear Cobbler

    Talk about waiting until the last minute… Most food blogs and websites have inundated you with Thanksgiving recipes for WEEKS and here I am, the day before Thanksgiving, offering you up a recipe for cobbler. But maybe you’re still figuring out dessert? And maybe you haven’t heard about Sam Sifton’s Thanksgiving book yet? If the…

  • Drunk Blondies

    Drunk Blondies

    Repeat after me: Butter. Chocolate. Pecans. Coconut. Bourbon. Again: Butter. Chocolate. Pecans. Coconut. Bourbon. On Saturday night, we joined our friends Brendan and Danny for a screening of “Sunset Blvd.” at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. (You can read all about that in this week’s newsletter.) I was assigned the task of bringing a salad and…

  • Blackberry Buttermilk Snacking Cake

    Blackberry Buttermilk Snacking Cake

    Here in L.A. it’s harder to get in touch with my old New York self, the self who used to make an afternoon snacking cake. If you say the words “afternoon snacking cake” here in L.A. you will be shot by the body police, buried in a mountain of silicone, and never heard from again.…