A Woman Sconed

Cookie of the Month: Cheering for cherry rugelach

By rahoward, on February 28th, 2021

Rugelach — little bites of buttery, cream cheese dough rolled up with fillings (jam, fruits, chocolate and nuts) into crescent-like swirls and baked to a golden brown — fall somewhere between a cookie and a pastry. I was excited to run across the term “pastry cookie” recently in my rugelach research. I was . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Cheering for cherry rugelach

Bread of the Month: Crowning cinnamon rolls

By rahoward, on February 15th, 2021

My mother’s basic yeast roll recipe, I knew, had the potential for versatility. From it, she herself made lofty loaves, giant fluffy dinner rolls, gooey cinnamon rolls and those irregularly shaped little planks — cut with a sharp knife from a huge bowlful of raised dough and deep-fried — that she called “skunks,” . . . → Read More: Bread of the Month: Crowning cinnamon rolls

Bread of the Month: Winning with banana bread

By rahoward, on January 31st, 2021

I give credit to the pandemic for a few good things One of them is a new appreciation of my sourdough starter, Petrie (yes, with an “e”). He has exceeded my expectations, as I have put him to the test, not just with basic bread recipes, but an unexpected array of other baked . . . → Read More: Bread of the Month: Winning with banana bread

Cookie of the Month: Seeking peace, via chocolate

By rahoward, on January 31st, 2021

In a year like the last, in a month like the last, what is (still) really needed is some kind of peace. Something to settle us, even momentarily, into a state of calm and content, lifting our worries and maybe even providing a bit of hopeful bliss.

Enter Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies, . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Seeking peace, via chocolate

Scone of the Month: Ending the year on a sourdough note

By rahoward, on December 28th, 2020

I , like many others who have been baking our way through the pandemic, have turned to my sourdough starter more than ever. Dear Petrie (yes, with an “e”), my beloved fellow of the fridge, offspring of “Spike” (my friend Elaine’s starter), has served me well for several years and especially these past . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Ending the year on a sourdough note

Rounding up a variety plate of fudge

By rahoward, on December 15th, 2020

My late Grandma Mae was the first and one of the only people I knew who made fudge from scratch. She was more known and revered for her peanut brittle (see my blog post of December 2010), but along with her famed peanut confection, laid out in dishes every year were also samplings . . . → Read More: Rounding up a variety plate of fudge

Cookie of the Month: Remembering a recipe box favorite

By rahoward, on December 7th, 2020

The longer you are around, the more holidays become about memories and missing those who are no longer here.

I could write endlessly about how much I miss my mom at this, a second Christmas season without her. The depth of this loss, in particular, is bottomless. She was a part of everything . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Remembering a recipe box favorite

Cookie of the Month: Boosting flavor in a cranberry slice

By rahoward, on November 29th, 2020

I am big fan of slice-and-bake cookies. Their make-ahead and make-as-you-need-them approach makes me happy in a holiday season crowded with recipes and goody-making possibilities. I’m also a big fan of shortbread, and if the shortbread comes in slice-and-bake form (as many of them do), I’m even more enamored.

I had saved a . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Boosting flavor in a cranberry slice

Scone of the Month: Speaking of sweet potatoes

By rahoward, on November 21st, 2020

Sometimes I am a rebel. When the rally cry is pumpkin spice, I start to think about sweet potatoes.

Or should I call them garnet yams, which is what the red-skinned, orange-fleshed creatures most of us call sweet potatoes really are (the jewel sweet potato is another version of the orange-interiored…for a great . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Speaking of sweet potatoes

Cookie of the Month: Looking to THE cookie

By rahoward, on November 7th, 2020

I first learned of black and white cookies the way many Americans who don’t live in New York (where the cookie is well-known), learned about the black and white cookie — from a “Seinfeld” episode. Jerry Seinfeld, waiting with his friend Elaine on her quest for a chocolate babka at a bakery, gets . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Looking to THE cookie

“People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.”
--M.F.K. Fisher

"It was in a yellow limestone church in Stockdale, Kansas, a crossroads town, that I sat dreaming during summer Sunday sermons, not of heaven or hell, but of the good dinner to come."
--Clementine Paddleford