The dog days of summer are here, folks, and as much as I dread the hot and sticky season for its extreme hot and stickiness, I love what it means for family time. We just returned from a nearly five-week trek around the Midwest, two kids and a puppy in tow, and my heart is…
Dessert Fix: 20-Minute Apple Turnovers
Some days are just ho hum, and you need a pick-me-up to turn things around. That, my friends, is when you must head to the kitchen. No, I’m not encouraging you to eat your feelings (though a once-in-a-while ice-cream binge never really hurt anyone, right?). But I am encouraging you to pour those feelings into…
Tarts are for dreamers: Blueberry nectarine tarts
I think most people, buried in the to-do lists of their day-to-day lives, probably have some sort of pipe dream, an “I’ll do this someday when life slows down and the timing is right” sort of thing, that they keep coming back to when day jobs get too busy, overwhelming or stressful, and they just…
Once-a-year twice-baked cherry pie
Second only to the just-add-water blueberry muffins that I proudly baked during my earliest days of kitchen duty, cherry pie spent a good many years atop my menu of signature dishes. Of course, this was cherry pie by way of an 8-year-old chef in the mid-’90s, which basically meant a skillful combination of two newly…
Strawberry tarts forever
Our farmers market basket overfloweth! It’s a happy problem indeed, though it’s one that necessitates a rather concentrated effort to cook, bake and nibble our way through the abundance of produce as fast as our tummies can take us. Our kitchen always feels more creative in the warmer months because we tend to do a…
Simplicity and flavor: Tiny maple cream tarts
Often when I’m baking, I catch myself wondering how something with so few ingredients can possibly turn into a dish worth sharing. Then, nearly as soon as I finish the thought, the oven timer dings and I open the door to a find a lovely reminder of how amazing a few simple ingredients can, in…
French apple tartlettes? Bon appétit!
It feels like it’s been forever since I baked from a good old-fashioned, paper-bound cookbook, and I forgot how much I missed the feel of those pages. Unless you’re unreasonably careful, cookbooks always share reminders of their use, and all those drips of batter and smears of butter across flour-speckled pages remind the book that…
Easy (and lovely!) Asparagus Gruyere Tart
Although I will always and forever be a winter girl at heart (hence the yearly stream of holiday tunes and bi-weekly watching of Christmas movies), there are plenty of things to love about springtime. After all, if the outside can’t be covered in snow, it might as well be green and leafy and flowery and…
Go ahead, bake some love
I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus as of late. And no, this wasn’t the kick-up-your-heels, toes-in-the-sand, relaxy-taxi kind of hiatus. Rather, it was the holy-moly-I-have-so-much-to-do-my-brain-will-surely-explode-if-I-add-one-more-thing-to-my-to-do-list kind of hiatus. You know the kind, right? It’s when you go to bed around midnight and say to yourself, “That’s all I can do today. I’ll…
The best things in life are sweet
Ah, dessert. Whether it’s icy cold outside, you’ve had a rough day, you’re feeling under the weather or you’re incredibly sleep-deprived, sometimes all you need is a little something sweet to make all seem right in the world. The older I get (yes, it’s all relative, I know), the more I’ve come to appreciate the…