Lisa on January 20th, 2012

Peanuts make my favorite butter and almonds and chestnuts make my favorite flours, but macadamias make my favorite nuts + chocolate combination. In this case, the final result was muffins. (Or — if you frost the muffins with melted chocolate and butter and pop them into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to harden your [...]

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Lisa on December 5th, 2011

‘Tis the season to take a little extra time with your baked goods. Not that biscotti takes a ridiculously long time to make, but the title alone — “twice-baked” in Italian — does set the stage for a few more moments to be spent rearranging baking sheets and dealing with dough. Think of biscotti as [...]

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Lisa on November 2nd, 2011

Imagine chocolate crinkle cookies. Now think about Russian teacakes — you know, those cute little balls covered with powdered sugar that are the mainstay of holiday cookie swaps. Then let your mind flit over to oatmeal-raisin cookies. What do you get when you put them all together? Chocolate, Cherry & Oat Balls. Or, if you [...]

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Lisa on September 19th, 2011

Today’s post is more of an ideas post than an actual recipe, but it’s an idea that you can take in uncountable directions, be that sweet or savory or as a main dish or a dessert. Another neat thing about this culinary concept is that you get to play the part of a pastry chef [...]

Continue reading about Crepes: So Much Easier Than You Think

Lisa on August 26th, 2011

Mesquite: it’s for more than just burning. And providing shade if you’re in the Arizona desert. Turns out that the pods the tree bears are edible (just as the wood is burnable), so if you let the pods dry out and grind them up, you have flour. A fragrant, fine flour that will make you [...]

Continue reading about Cookies Do Too Grow On Trees!

Lisa on July 22nd, 2011

It is riDICulously hot! Unless perhaps you’re reading this in Antarctica, in which case I’m a bit jealous. (Although I admit I’d rather be grumping about heat than cold.) Then again, a happy consequence of the heat is that ice cream keeps sounding better and better! Especially when you’re talking cream from pastured cows, tastily [...]

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Lisa on April 25th, 2011

This may look like a Danish pastry, but it isn’t a pastry and doesn’t taste anything like one.  I’d be willing to bet, in fact, that this concoction doesn’t taste like anything you’ve had before: the saltiness of the sharp cheese, the sweet smokiness of the roasted pepper, and the rich depth of the dark [...]

Continue reading about The Marriage of the Millenium: Cheese & Chocolate

Lisa on February 11th, 2011

There are many ways to make a cookie great: use a natural sweetener like sucanat that contributes flavor as well as sweetness to your cookie, use a variety of whole-grain/whole-food flours like sorghum flour or teff flour or peanut flour that will likewise add dimension of their own to your cookie, and use a rich-tasting, [...]

Continue reading about Making Cookies Crunchier…and Chocolaty-er!

Lisa on December 13th, 2010

Not that you ever need an excuse to enjoy some good-quality chocolate, but now that the holidays are here, what better time to make your own truffles?  And this version is much, much quicker to make than the traditional version, because instead of slowly heating cream and chocolate and then using molds to get a [...]

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Lisa on December 2nd, 2010

I admit it: I’m on a chocolate-cake-made-in-a-food-processor kick.  It’s just so easy to toss everything into a processor, blend it, pour it into a pan, and bake it!  And nuts and dates just seem to lend themselves to being blended, poured, and baked.  I have a feeling the chestnut cake I made recently is just [...]

Continue reading about Sweet Chocolate Velvet Dreams!