With rhubarb’s glorious reign quickly coming to a close, I wanted to give it one last hurrah, before it is replaced in the fruit bowl with stone fruit of a multitude of dizzying hues. I made this rhubarb vanilla ice cream with (generous) dark chocolate chunks to bring to dinner with friends recently, and was… Continue reading Vanilla Rhubarb Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream
Category: Sweets
Great Aunt Margaret’s Chocolate Frosting
Aunt Margaret (right) and my great grandmother, on my mother’s graduation day from kindergarten. Their three vastly different expressions are curious, and priceless. My son just celebrated his very first birthday. I was naturally flooded with an enormous range of huge emotions. But, instead of being very weepy and nostalgic for the entire month prior,… Continue reading Great Aunt Margaret’s Chocolate Frosting
Cantaloupe and Lime Granita
My grandfather loves cantaloupe. At least I assume he does, as he has eaten a half cantaloupe filled with cottage cheese for lunch almost every day that I have known him. I vividly remember him coming home for lunch (coming home for lunch!) when I was visiting them in my childhood, and my grandmother having… Continue reading Cantaloupe and Lime Granita
Rhubarb and White Cherry Ice Pop
I’m back. My hands have been very, delightfully full these last many months, but I feel like we are all finally starting to figure out a good rhythm together. And being a mom is, well, utterly remarkable, and it is hard to not devour every minute. Even with our full hands, we did manage to… Continue reading Rhubarb and White Cherry Ice Pop
Pitchfork Diaries is part of the Foodie.com 100!
Last month I was asked to be one of the Foodie 100 on the new Foodie.com beta site. It is a very pretty, very full, social network-y site with, among others, 100 great food writers and bloggers as contributors. I have three recipes on the site now, that I created just for them. Check… Continue reading Pitchfork Diaries is part of the Foodie.com 100!
Pumpkin Seed Brittle
If you are going to rot your teeth out with sweets on this Halloween, why not do it with a sweet, savory, nutty, homemade confection, that also makes use of the often discarded remnants of jack-o-lantern carving?? There are many recipes for pumpkin seed brittle out there, but most use the raw, hulled seeds (or… Continue reading Pumpkin Seed Brittle
Sweet Corn Crème Caramel
Corn this time of year is so sweet and full of natural sugar, that it lends itself to both sweet and savory preparations. (They don’t call it “Butter and Sugar” for nothing.) This recipe is part homage to Meredith Kurtzman, the pastry chef and queen of all things gelato, at New York City’s Otto.… Continue reading Sweet Corn Crème Caramel
Peach and Custard Pie
This is a peach pie my grandmother has made for years. I adore the visual of the entire peach halves, that always elicits at least one gasp of admiration when set down on the table. With peaches stunningly sweet this time in the season, I also really appreciate the addition of the custard-like filling,… Continue reading Peach and Custard Pie
Raspberry Clafouti
There are few things that could get me to turn on the oven in the middle of this oppressive heat wave. However, much to the dismay of my panting dog, clafouti is one of them. Unlike almost everyone else in the country right now, the red and golden raspberries in our garden are adoring the… Continue reading Raspberry Clafouti
Lemon Verbena and Thyme Soda Syrup, and Sorbet too!
Our herb garden is growing like weeds. Well, truth be told, the weeds are also growing like weeds. But between the weeds are fragrant, mystical herbs, that are spicing up meals and will also shortly be hoarded away in ziplocks in the freezer for less bountiful months. My favorite herb is lemon verbena. It… Continue reading Lemon Verbena and Thyme Soda Syrup, and Sorbet too!
Fresh Strawberry Pie
So here is another recipe handed down from Catherine the Great. No, not the Empress of Russia, but my maternal grandmother–one of my first cooking influences, and for whom I am named. I make this pie at least once a year. I can’t keep myself from it as soon as I see quarts of local… Continue reading Fresh Strawberry Pie
Rhubarb Rosemary “Affogato”
Now I know my Italian affogato-loving purists will find the title of my recipe sacrilegious. Affogato means “drowned” in Italian, and the classic Affogato dessert is really named affogato al cafe or “drowned in coffee”. It is a shot of hot espresso poured over a scoop of vanilla ice cream. When I first had it,… Continue reading Rhubarb Rosemary “Affogato”
Blog-y’s first birthday!
My mother and grandmother, 1951. Just a year ago today I published my first blog post. There have been a bunch of changes over the year (including the name and url), but I am so thrilled where I have landed and am so excited for all that is ahead. In the past twelve months I’ve… Continue reading Blog-y’s first birthday!
Blood Orange and Clementine Galette
Soon after I finished culinary school a wise and wonderful chef and cookbook author asked me, as I was first meeting her, what kind of food do you cook? I was a little stumped. I was just out of a year of cooking little other than classical french cuisine. And a year of cooking predetermined recipes… Continue reading Blood Orange and Clementine Galette
Chocolate week continues.
I was combing through my files and came across this incredibly decadent recipe for Dark Chocolate Dipped Shortbread that I posted just about a year ago. I wouldn’t turn down a batch of these from my valentine. Perhaps housed in this box. ♥
Bittersweet Chocolate Souffle
This little love letter in a ramekin is the perfect way to say “I love you enough to learn what stiff peaks are” on Valentine’s Day. And in actuality, the ratio of difficulty to wow-factor is absolutely in your favor. Have you had a chocolate souffle? Have you made your own chocolate souffle? Have you… Continue reading Bittersweet Chocolate Souffle
Pie Crust 101
Bleached flour, partially hydrogenated lard with BHA and BHT, wheat starch, water, xanthan gum, potassium sorbate and sodium propionate (preservatives), Yellow 5, and Red 40. Butter, Flour, Salt, Water, and sometimes an egg. The first is a list of just some of the ingredients of a popular, store-bought, ready-to-unroll, pie crust. The second is what… Continue reading Pie Crust 101
Espresso Chocolate Cookies
The Christmas season in my paternal grandparents’ house, when I was growing up, was always marked by tins of the exact same assortment of homemade cookies, painstakingly baked in legions by Grandma Baumer. There were wreath spritz cookies, apricot or mincemeat oatmeal bars, buttery vienna crescents, and then, the espresso chocolate balls. The latter were… Continue reading Espresso Chocolate Cookies
Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Pudding
With homemade vanilla extract on my mind (and growing increasingly darker on my counter), I have found myself craving homespun desserts of yore. It is certainly this time of year too; our new pine-y tree perfuming the house has me tearing through files of stained recipe cards trying to recreate tins of cookies of my… Continue reading Dark Chocolate Hazelnut Pudding
Edible Gift Series: Homemade Vanilla Extract
There is little that will get me running to the kitchen faster than reading about a new (or most of the time, quite old) culinary trick to produce a food or ingredient that I had never thought about making by hand. Food and Wine magazine has a great feature this month on the Best Handmade… Continue reading Edible Gift Series: Homemade Vanilla Extract
Baking with my dad.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my food heritage. Partly because I have cooked little other than french food for the last two years, and simultaneously have spent more time in Chinatown than ever before. And in part because as I wade deeper and deeper into a career with food, I am having strong… Continue reading Baking with my dad.
Dark Chocolate Dipped Shortbread recipe
I was asked to bring dessert to a dinner with some of my favorite girls (you know who you are…), the day after Easter. With this year’s holiday resulting in a serious lack of bunny candy (believe me, for the better) I thought about trying to come up with a grown-up easter sweet. These dark… Continue reading Dark Chocolate Dipped Shortbread recipe
Earl Grey and Lavender Granita recipe
A lovely and unexpected flavor combination, that serves as a small sweet forecast of warmer weather ahead. I saw a new stand at the market this week I hadn’t noticed previously. Lavender by the Bay is a lavender farm in East Marion, NY. They were selling a variety of dried lavender sachets and bouquets, but… Continue reading Earl Grey and Lavender Granita recipe
Baked Apple Galette
I have some Mutzu apples from a recent trip to the farmers’ market. These apples are softball-huge and bright lime green, and immediately caught my attention as I was perusing the Migliorelli Farm stand. They are such gorgeous specimens it seemed blasphemous to peel them and cut them up into chunks—or toss them with a… Continue reading Baked Apple Galette
Sweet Potato Pecan Teacakes
Yesterday I received in the mail some adorable vintage aluminum baking molds that I purchased a little while back from the great upcycle shop AntiNu on Etsy.com. I had sweet potatoes from the market, and got to work. A handful of years ago the Center for Science in the Public Interest did a study comparing… Continue reading Sweet Potato Pecan Teacakes