Tag: baking
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Cinderella Almond Pear Tart
This weekend I got to enjoy a glorious event that only happens once in a blue moon: my parents drove over to New York to visit me. This was a perfect occasion to seek out the imaginary pear tart that has been haunting me. I exploited my imagination and several cook books at once, and…
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Butter Cookies
These cookies definitely belong to sinful food. Not your everyday food, as Julia Child would say. So if you are scared that your arteries will be suddenly clogged with fats, and your waist will expand unexpectedly, please don’t bother to read the recipe. But those of you who sometimes give in and let your desires rule…
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Mazurka – Dried Fruit Cake
No, I am not talking about a Polish folk dance. Mazurka is a sweet quick bread made with a lot of nuts and dried fruit. The nuts and fruit constitute as much as half of the dough. Mazurka is astonishingly easy to make, and is not meant to be a sophisticated cake. The bread consistency…
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Apple Turnovers
Apple season is almost over, but one can still buy fresh apples, just from a tree. Those apples are quite different from what you will buy in a store in winter. Juicy, crunchy, and I would say live. Even preserves and pie fillings are tastier if made from those fresh apples. I had another opportunity…
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The Best Biscotti
Everybody who has been to a cafe in North America knows biscotti. Dating back to the ancient Rome, where they were used as a non-perishable food carried by travelers, these crunchy dry cookies have since become widespread in Italy and throughout the world. In fact, the British biscuits take their name from Italian biscotti. Italians…
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Sugar Cheese Cookies
As the cool fall weather is setting in, I’m beginning to feel like baking. In need of some “warming up” before heavy baking in winter, I decided to make some improvisational cakes. One, the fruit and nut cake, was not so good though men of the household said it was. OK, that’s their opinion, so not…
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Savory Zucchini Muffins
Remember my recipe for Squash Pancakes? I love these pancakes, but striving to live a healthier lifestyle, I always think about less harmful ways of cooking. So the idea of baking instead of frying those pancakes has been brewing in my mind for quite a while, and only negative influence of my very conservative other half was preventing…
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Poppy and Pear Lemon Cake
My grandmother, mother’s mother, was famous in the large circle of her friends and relatives for her cakes. Cakes that were sheer perfection, a hard-to-come-by luxury that made one forget, I suppose, about the meagerness of one’s world, about supermarkets, laundry, quarrelsome neighbors, broken water pipes, small children unwilling to do homework, grown-up children with no apartment…
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One Very Nutty Coffee Cake
Finally I have broken my hiatus from cooking, which had begun to extend dangerously. It’s fascinating what a staggering effect failure has on motivation (and I did have a few cooking failures recently, mostly gelatin-related). But when is it ever easy? Nothing will come out right, if you quit after the first few stumbles. It…
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Fresh Berry Tart
Today’s recipe was not composed by me, but it comes from a book that I gave my mom for Christmas this winter: The Tassajara Bread Bookby Edward Brown. I have not tried many recipes from it, but I did cook this Fresh Berry Tart from it before I actually gave the book to my mom…
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Buttermilk Cookies
Time for baking! This is one of kitchen activities that is relaxing, comforting and satisfying for me (grandfather’s genes, maybe). I love to knead, to pat and touch dough, especially yeast dough, when you can feel how the dough is alive and growing under your fingers. But today’s recipe is another type of dough that uses…
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