Category

dessert

  • French Apple Tart

    French Apple Tart

    If you told me twenty years ago, when I first started cooking, that one day I would be able to spontaneously whip up a French apple tart, I would have balked. “What am I? A French grandmother?” But that was before I knew how to pinch together a pie dough in a matter of minutes,…

  • Mixed Berry Pie

    Mixed Berry Pie

    Generally I try to avoid neighborhood message boards / Facebook Groups because half the time people post things like “there’s a man with a machete standing outside the bodega” or “packs of wild dogs are roaming the streets.” Occasionally, though, someone will post something that’s not terrifying. Such was the case the other day when…

  • Banana Upside-Down Cake

    Banana Upside-Down Cake

    Most cakes tell you what they’re going to look like before you put them in the oven. If you make a flourless chocolate cake, it’s going to be the same color going in as it is coming out. Same for an almond cake, a coconut cake (pre-icing), a hummingbird cake, etc. Upside-down cakes are different.…

  • Flourless Chocolate Cake

    Flourless Chocolate Cake

    There are certain recipes that stay with you. They follow you throughout your life and when you return to them, it’s like visiting an old friend. That’s how it is with this flourless chocolate cake that I first made for my playwriting thesis class (taught by Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman) at NYU’s Tisch School of…

  • Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

    Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

    Bundt cakes often look better than they taste. That’s because, at the end of the day, you’re dumping a bunch of cake batter into a big heavy mold that needs to cook for a while to have stability, but also (very often) dries the cake out in the process. So how do you make a…

  • Dirty Chai Earthquake Cookies

    Dirty Chai Earthquake Cookies

    I have a vivid memory of being in Venice with my parents in the early 2000s (it’s documented here) when my brother and I decided to freak out our mother by drinking espresso after dinner. We were actually always a coffee-after-dinner family but the coffee was always decaf. To this day, my parents still order…

  • Peach Ice Cream

    Peach Ice Cream

    Romeo asked, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.” The same can be said of ice cream flavors. If we didn’t call Cookies & Cream “Cookies & Cream,” would it still taste like Cookies & Cream? Ice cream is an arena where names seem to matter. We…

  • Grapefruit, Blood Orange, Campari Sorbet

    Grapefruit, Blood Orange, Campari Sorbet

    I once wrote a post on here called Ten Things You Should Never Serve At A Dinner Party that was mildly controversial. Craig’s sister Kristin was offended that I included “boneless, skinless chicken breasts,” so on my next visit to Washington State, she cooked up a Chicken Piccata that really put in me in place.…

  • Vanilla Bean Brown Butter Nectarine Blackberry Crisp

    Vanilla Bean Brown Butter Nectarine Blackberry Crisp

    Wow, that’s a mouthful, but you have to admit it sounds good. I got the idea from the New York Times Cooking newsletter; Kim Severson was guest writing it for the day and she mentioned a trick she learned from our mutual friend Bill Addison who learned it from Nancy Silverton (how’s that for a…

  • Tangerine Sour Cream Pound Cake

    Tangerine Sour Cream Pound Cake

    I have a theory that Starbucks has heightened our tolerance for bad, sad pastries. There’ve been moments in my life, at an airport, at a rest stop, where I break down and order a slice of a Starbucks lemon pound cake to go with my coffee. It tastes fine. It’s not bad. It’s sweet, cakey,…