Every year, as the holidays approach, I study countless cookbooks and recipes that share cookie traditions from other places, and for awhile, I’m overwhelmed in trying to choose which cookies I’m going to make. At a certain point, it gets to be too much — I get behind, and I […]
I love the tastes of eggnog…in more than just egg nog. That quintessential combination of cream meeting nutmeg and spice with a bottom note of rum (extract), is appealing to me in any number of things — cookies, truffles and other candies, and in the traditional holiday drink itself. So, […]
[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 […]
[I] was but a wee lass when I started making toffee. My sister, about five years older than I, was in her early days of home ec class (do kids still take home ec class?) and came home one day with some stapled sheets filled with all sorts of candy […]
[I]n the 1990s, I had the pleasure of frequenting an Italian restaurant in the community where I lived in Southern California. It was a smallish, but lively place near a golf course, with most of its seating in a walled-in, covered patio that stayed comfortable all year long. It was […]
[E]very year I try to try out at least one new pie recipe at Thanksgiving. Despite all our warm weather fresh ripe fruits and berries really laying the groundwork for summer to be the season of pie, it is the Thanksgiving holiday, like no other, where pies are the star […]
[F]or those of us with limited experience — eating or baking — whoopie pies, we may wonder what all the fuss is about. Sure, they look terribly inviting — plump-soft cookie-cakes sealed together with a creamy filling…a whole lot to love. I had perhaps resisted in making them because they […]
[I] made the Vanilla Bean Caramel Apples from the Baked Sunday Mornings recipe roster a little ahead of schedule. It was mid-October, and I was in full fall-enthusiasm mode. It had been many years since I had made caramel apples, and I was itching to get to it! And here’s […]
[W]e can make fun of the whole pumpkin spice thing endlessly (and we do), but, when we are honest, we really love those tastes of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. It’s just been done to death. There is a time and place and goodie for it, though, and one way to […]
[T]he first food gift I remember was wrapped in aluminum foil and topped with an adhesive-backed bow. Cinnamon rolls…jillions of them, all over the countertops in their silver packets, awaiting Christmastime delivery to family, friends, neighbors. My mom got up in the wee hours of the morning to do this, […]