February may have turned into April overnight (44F? Weather gods, what is going on??), but there’s still enough of a chill in the air to warrant baking muffins. Especially whole-grain muffins with a jammy surprise inside. I opted for locally made, naturally sweetened blackberry jam for this batch; next time I might go for raspberry [...]
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 [...]
Nothing adds an easy touch of elegance to holiday desserts like freshly whipped cream. (Skip the aerosol can!) Be sure to chill your beaters and bowl before whipping away, either by putting them in the fridge for a good 30 minutes or by popping them into the freezer for a quick 10. I like to [...]
I don’t have many fancy gadgets in the kitchen — sous-vide cooking and flavored foams just seem like too much work to me — but I consider my ice cream maker to be an indispensable culinary aid. Ditto for my blender. If you have those two kitchen helpers, making ice cream becomes ridiculously easy. Not [...]
I was lucky — as a kid, I had the pleasure of visiting a local ice cream shop that made (and still makes, as far as I know) its own ice cream. It was creamier and tastier than anything you could buy in a store. Although all of their flavors were fantastic, my far-and-away favorite [...]
Two observations that would seem to be quite unrelated: chestnuts are in season again (!), and wow, food processors sure are handy! One dish that makes the two connect: flourless chestnut chocolate cake made in a food processor. Ridiculously easy, ridiculously tasty — using steamed chestnuts instead of flour gives the cake a dense, fudgy [...]
Continue reading about Having Your Chestnuts and Your Cake, Too
Even with plug-in ice cream makers that churn the mix all on their own — as opposed to the old-fashioned, human-powered crank models — making ice cream can still be a challenge, especially if you’re not adding heaps of sugar and fillers. (Both of which lower the freezing point and keep the ice cream scoopable [...]
First it was omega-3s, then it was antioxidants; now, the food rage is probiotics. (Mind you, these have all been mainstay elements of whole, unprocessed foods for millennia, long before food scientists and genetic engineers and corporate interests got involved in our food chain. Thankfully, we’re now “discovering” that traditional cuisines contain plenty of foods [...]
Who doesn’t like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? Peanut butter and chocolate just go together. But I guarantee that once you make your own PB&C in solid form or smoothie/shake form, you won’t ever want to go back to the prepackaged kind. The homemade variety tastes better, it’s a whole lot better for your health, [...]
There’s a time for crusts and ends and corners, but that time isn’t all the time. Sometimes you just want what’s in the middle without having to bother with anything else. If you’re a big pumpkin fan like I am, you might prefer no-holds-barred, maximum pumpkin, especially at this time of the year when it’s [...]
