I’ve mentioned before that one cornerstone food from my childhood was peanut butter. And what goes better with peanut butter than a good old reliable saltine cracker, another touchstone food of youth. In my early childhood, when our house was free of junk food like chips, Cheetos and Doritos, saltine […]
I have been lucky enough to be in proximity to some amazing places. Some are majestic, like the Golden Gate Bridge and the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco; others encompass the beautiful landscape of Sonoma and Napa valleys, where all sorts of treasures can be discovered. One lucky […]
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 “eâ€), my beloved fellow of the fridge, offspring of “Spike†(my friend Elaine’s starter), has served me well for several years and […]
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 […]
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 […]
Summer crawled along this year, dimmed by our lengthy pandemic status and an early wildfire season. By the time my birthday — as well as that of my blog’s — rolled around, celebrating — as it has felt for much of the last year — seemed a bit ridiculous. The […]
I’d read the recipes, been intrigued by the videos and even heard out the positive proclamations by a co-worker, but there was still no real way I could be sure that any avocado, of any kind, could be turned into chocolate pudding. A chocolate-y paste maybe, but certainly nothing to […]
I’m pretty sure my baking life began with chocolate chip cookies. They (and their M&M variation) are the first I remember my mom making, my sister and I lying on the kitchen linoleum to take in that distinctive warm, vanilla-toffee aroma as my mother fanned the giant cookie sheet back […]
The holidays are over, and yet I hang onto them. I always reluctantly enter the Christmas season, but by the time it comes then goes, I’m so overtaken and in love with the holidays that I mourn hard when that time is over. I even love the stress of the […]
Fusion baking has become popular — taking two favorite baked goods and making one new hybrid, aka, the “scuffin,†cro-puff,†“cronut,†“pretzel challah.†Cookies have been turned into pizzas, and pies have been enlarged into sheet cake-sized “slabs.†Versatile and sturdy scones lend themselves very easily to some hybridized new […]