Posted in Baked goods, Dessert, Holiday dishes, tagged cream cheese frosting, cupcakes, food, gingerbread, Holiday recipes, peppermint frosting on December 16, 2011| 9 Comments »
Things are definitely looking cheery and sparkly and sugary these days. Thanksgiving may be all about gratitude and huge, heaping platefuls of food, but food traditions around Christmas tend to have more ethereal qualities like imagination and hope and wonder.
Posted in Dessert, tagged dessert, granita, Italian ice, recipe on July 29, 2011| 6 Comments »
Last week we had a heat wave. Rows of 100s marched down the East Coast on the weather map. I swam outside as much as possible. And ice. I ate lots of ice.
Not ice cubes, but delicious and refreshing granita – Italian ice that you can make so easily in your own freezer. Granita is simply combining water, sugar, and fruit flavorings and then freezing it. It’s like a fancy slushy for grownups.
Posted in Dessert, Eating in season, tagged currants, dessert, eating in season, food, pie, recipes on July 18, 2011| 75 Comments »
I vote to change the spelling of July. Let’s spell it “Jewel-eye.”
“Jeweled” describes the color of the sky that was Saturday morning – deep, deep blue with tiny clouds that posed no threat to the early light. These kinds of days last just a few weeks in New England and I always walk around pinching myself a bit when I realize that, for once, the weather has been tamed into something lovely.
After a swim across Walden Pond that morning, I stopped by Allendale Farm searching for a breakfast scone. I feel incredibly fortunate to live in the heart of one of Boston’s neighborhoods and still have access to a farm stand just a few minutes from my house with its own locally grown produce.
That’s when these beauties caught my eye: pink and red currants.
The pinks glowed like pearls and the reds were so bright they looked dangerous. Most people know currants as tiny dried fruit that resemble raisins used in baked goods or salads. Tangy and tart, fresh currants are usually part of a garnish, topping a sorbet-filled melon, for instance, or in a sauce to complement a roasted meat. But I wanted my currants to star in the center ring.
Posted in Dessert, Holiday dishes, tagged baked goods, Christmas, cupcakes, snowmen on December 5, 2010| 18 Comments »
Since I’ve started this little food blog and especially since I started producing Stir It Up! on CSMonitor.com I find that a lot of people share their food-related thoughts with me and sometimes ask me questions. Sometimes I have an answer or an idea, and sometimes I do not. Here are for-real questions that I’ve received in the past two weeks:
“Do you know how to de-bone a duck?”
“I’m throwing an Inuit-themed dinner party for my wife’s birthday. Have you come across any good northern recipes that maybe Eskimos would serve?”
“I’m going to a Christmas cookie party that is actually quite competitive. Do you have any good ideas for what I could bring?”
The first two drew blank stares from me. For the third question I decided to fake it (I love a good challenge). “Sure,” I replied, “I think you should take snowman cupcakes.”
What? Where did that come from? I’ve never seen or made snowman cupcakes. (more…)
Posted in Baked goods, Dessert, tagged baked goods, cookies, dessert, Thanksgiving on November 20, 2010| 3 Comments »
These cookies are a riff on the recipe found inside the lid of the Quaker Oats canister. They use less butter and have some of the best flavors of Thanksgiving: cranberry, pumpkin, and cinnamon. I find them to be a great treat to make a day or two after the holiday meal as friends and family still linger on the sofa and the leftovers start to ebb. (more…)
Posted in Baked goods, Dessert, Holiday dishes, tagged baked goods, cookies, dessert on October 31, 2010| 11 Comments »
This weekend felt like fall’s grand finale. The temperature dropped and dry leaves skittered through the air like colorful confetti. It was, in a word, magnificent.
There was this other event going on, too, called Halloween. But for me the real costume parade was happening overhead. (more…)
Posted in Baked goods, Cookbooks, Dessert, Recipes, tagged cookies, dessert, jam sandwich cookies, picnic on August 12, 2010| 3 Comments »
‘Tis the season for lounging about on the grass. There’s nothing like getting down low on a blanket under a leafy canopy, or a starry sky, or an illuminated cityscape and just … being. It’s even better if food is within lazy reach.
Last weekend I did some serious lollygagging. I can justify this because there was some serious high-minded expression of artistic talent going on not too far away. (more…)
Posted in Dessert, Recipes, tagged cake disasters, dessert, icebox cake on August 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »
I was cruising around the Web the other day, following the endless trail of food blogs when an accident happened. (more…)
Posted in Baked goods, Dessert on February 7, 2010| 6 Comments »
It’s Superbowl Sunday and I’m tasked with bringing the brownies to the party. Usually I rip the top off a cardboard box and mix the contents for a chocolate win. But this year I made a little extra effort.
Fair Trade Brownies
For Christmas gifts I gave fair trade chocolate from Taza Chocolate, and having a few bars left I thought I’d try their brownie recipe. Taza is a small company just over in Somerville, Mass. I toured their factory before the holidays with my friend Jessica. It was no Willy Wonka experience. It was crowded and the highlight was watching an old Italian-made cacao bean grinder painted fire engine red do its work.
But what makes fair trade special is all the stuff you can’t see. Taza’s beans are grown in the Dominican Republic by local growers organized into cooperatives. The business is financially and environmentally stable and community-oriented. Basically, no mean people or practices are involved. It’s stone-ground chocolate that has a heart. (more…)
Posted in Dessert, Holiday dishes, Main dish on December 29, 2009| 2 Comments »
When everything ’70s came back in style about 15 years ago, the words “lava lamps” and “fondue parties” became part of hipster lingo once again. I understood the ironic fashion of lava lamps, but fondue? The communal dish had never gone out of style in my world. My family has circled round the cheese fondue pot every Christmas Eve since, well, the early 1970s. This year when we descended upon our cousin’s family in Washington, D.C., for Christmas we made sure we loaded up the fondue pots before making the drive from New England (we asked first, of course).
Table set for holiday fondue.
Few of our holiday traditions have persisted year to year, but a bubbling mass of Swiss cheese has held its steady place. If there is a fireplace or a wood stove, the logs get stoked and stirred as we assemble the small plates, the fondue forks, flour the cheese, and fill a large bowl with crusty French bread. We slice oranges to help everything slide down and maybe nibble on a pickle or two. (more…)
Kitchen Report 