lemon « A Woman Sconed

Scone of the Month: Sweetening with fresh corn

By rahoward, on August 22nd, 2020

Come August, I almost always get a bout of “cornostalgia.” Never heard of it? I hadn’t either, since I just came up with the term that has me dreaming of rusty tassels, rustling long green leaves, shimmering gleams of blonde cornsilk covering kernels in shades of cream to gold.

I wanna make things . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Sweetening with fresh corn

Cookie of the Month: Calming up shortbread

By rahoward, on June 13th, 2020

Shortbread is pretty much my favorite cookie. Just a few ingredients (usually a basic blend of butter, sugar flour and salt), it’s easy to make and despite its simplicity, rewards with rich flavor and isn’t too terribly sweet. It’s virtually fail-proof, too. I’d say over-baking is the biggest risk to good shortbread, which . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Calming up shortbread

Scone of the Month: Sensing the way with lemons, thyme

By rahoward, on April 22nd, 2020

I wrote recently of an inspiring book documenting a year in an Irish garden. Between it, the current stay-at-home orders and my own spring fever, I’ve been spending more time out back, with my trees and plants, in a bleary-eyed, sun-induced kind of green-fogged nature dream. In my meditative times amid my plants . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Sensing the way with lemons, thyme

Scone of the Month: Stretching dough for pandowdy

By rahoward, on September 29th, 2019

Fruit desserts are among my favorite, partly because of their wholesome coziness, as well as some of their colorful names. You have fools, grunts, slumps and crisps, and even more specifically with apples, you get dumplings, brown “betties” and pandowdies.

I have yet to make all of these whimsically named creatures featuring . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Stretching dough for pandowdy

Scone of the Month: Cooling it with citrus

By rahoward, on June 30th, 2019

Certain ingredients create certain sensations, like those whose tastes create the illusion of cool, despite not actually being a lower temperature. Powdered (confectioner’s) sugar is one…a fine dusting of this soft sweetness automatically tempers any sort of sweet — even one as strongly warm-flavored as coffee or chocolate or cinnamon — and on . . . → Read More: Scone of the Month: Cooling it with citrus

Baked Sunday Mornings: Lifting the spirits with Lemon Lemon Loaf

By rahoward, on February 24th, 2019

When considering the rightness of the Universe, one can look no further than the timing of the lemon. The depth of winter — this year,= dark, cold and freezing from coast to coast — is the height of lemon season. Bright citrus of all kinds, lead by the lovely lemon, proliferate in the . . . → Read More: Baked Sunday Mornings: Lifting the spirits with Lemon Lemon Loaf

Slicing and baking through the holidays

By rahoward, on December 23rd, 2018

I’ve been pretty obsessed with slice-and-bake cookies for…awhile. Like many things I become obsessed with, I spend most of my time obsessing and not enough time doing. Every Christmas cookie season, it has been my aim to have a catalog of cookie logs in my freezer, ready to go, so that I would have . . . → Read More: Slicing and baking through the holidays

Pleasing the plum palate

By rahoward, on September 23rd, 2018

Is it possible I’ve been hypnotized by a fruit? If so, it is the plum that has seduced me, once again. Fortunately — or not, really — the season is woefully short, but during it, I find myself drawn, again and again, to the stunning array of plums, pluots and plum/cherry hybrids, gleaming like jewels . . . → Read More: Pleasing the plum palate

Hushing with a sweet Charlotte

By rahoward, on August 31st, 2018

“Curving back within myself, I create again and again.” —Bhagavad Gita

In recent years, I’ve pondered the word “faith” a lot. I think it’s a term most associated with religion, but beyond that, it is, I think, a firm, reliant belief that there is something beyond us, taking care of things or (here’s one to . . . → Read More: Hushing with a sweet Charlotte

Escaping with a fragrant, lemony ‘visiting’ cake

By rahoward, on December 20th, 2017

I’ve written here recently of the October Northern California wildfires, one of the strangest, saddest times I’ve experienced in a while. For those in the fires’ paths of destruction, it was a sheer nightmare. For those of us on the nearby periphery, it was a surreal time, holding in place under a veil of constant . . . → Read More: Escaping with a fragrant, lemony ‘visiting’ cake

“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