Dessert First

While she was the pastry chef at The French Laundry, Claire Clark wrote Indulge in 2007; now released in paperback, the book remains a must-have. Although it isn’t aimed at complete novices, new bakers will find its calm instructions to be just enough—and just reassuring enough—to make baking beautiful desserts enjoyable. This is a book [...]

In the competitive world that is kids’ birthday parties, Liv and Kaye Hansen can help any mom stand tall. Their Westchester, N.Y., bakery, Riviera Bakehouse, boasts boldly colored (surely an understatement), topsy-turvy cakes, many of which are easy enough for home bakers to attempt. Some of those cakes were showcased in their first book, The [...]

Can a cook’s shelves hold too many ice cream books? Not with summer looming, and not if there’s still space for The Ciao Bella Book. Fans of Ciao Bella, which sells gelato and sorbetto in groceries across the county and has shops in California and Manhattan, will find about 100 recipes based on those offerings [...]

Would you like some sugar with your sugar? If so, Dulce is the book for you. This is a book that more than lives up to its name. Written by the pastry chef for two of Douglas Rodriguez’s restaurants, Dulce: Desserts in the Latin-American Tradition (Rizzoli, May 2010)  gives bakers classic Latin-American desserts and interesting [...]

We can only hope that the bacon craze, now a bit revolting in its ever-so-American excesses, has passed its peak. Left standing after it’s gone, though, should be James Villas’ tribute to classic Southern pork recipes in Pig (John Wiley & Sons, April 2010). Villas, who has written other books on Southern food traditions, provides [...]

Bakers who already own Room for Dessert and Ripe for Dessert know they can trust pastry chef and cookbook author David Lebovitz to provide reliable, delicious recipes. Those books, though, went out of print, so Lebovitz has combined them in Ready for Dessert (Ten Speed Press, April 2010) and added 12 recipes. Those who own [...]

For any cookbook author, figuring out your audience can be tricky. When you’re writing a book of restaurant recipes, you may assume the audience is people who love your food – but what can you tell about how well they can cook? This seems to be one of the dilemmas for the authors of Bromberg [...]

Take a quick skim through Supper for a Song, by Tamasin Day-Lewis (Rizzoli, March 2010), and your first thought may be, “Wow, songs sure must cost more in Britain.” This book will pull readers in with its attractive layout and photos, then push them away as a closer read reveals a book that borders on [...]

Nothing rescues dinner like dessert. No matter how terrible that which came before, dessert has the power to make my guests leave happy. I’m always surprised how baking terrifies people who consider themselves good cooks. And for new cooks, choosing a dessert seems overwhelming. If it’s easy, it’s probably not fancy enough. But fancy’s frightening, [...]

As our lives get ever more surrounded—even overtaken—by machines, it’s easy to succumb to the nostalgia of a life lived without plug-ins. Ah, for the simple days survived by the power of our own hands, without fear that we’ve lost the knowledge to do easy tasks on our own. That’s the appeal of Baking Unplugged [...]

Little Miss Muffet has nothing on my family lately. She just sat around on her tuffet; we race around the kitchen, trying to outrun the buckets of whey that keep pushing open the fridge doors and threatening to leap out. Why so much whey? Well, when you’re the child of a baker, it’s a good [...]

Two days after Thanksgiving, I gazed at my Christmas tree with the sweet satisfaction of domestic competence. Fully lit and decorated, we’d accomplished the set-up with ease this year. The glow lasted about 5 minutes. When I looked at the calendar, Christmas loomed in, it seemed, about 5 days. I went fast from bliss to [...]

No one would ever accuse me of being trendy, but every once in a while, I get lucky. Whoopie, it’s my lucky day! Epicurious has posted its foodie predictions for 2010, and I, my friends, have been long ahead of this curve. The top dessert trend for 2010? Mini whoopie pies! Now I have to [...]

I like to work with my hands — sometimes. I love to knead dough, and I preach its importance to the bread classes I’ve taught: There’s no better way to approach bread happiness, fast, than learning through touch. But, as I’ve noted before, I’m very fond of electricity. I got to thinking about this again [...]

For me, happiness really is as easy as pie. Few desserts please me as much as a well-made slice, though these are devilishly hard to find these days. As I’ve written on Sweet Memories, I’m aiming for the title of Pie Mom, a high honor. While I do find pie easy, I know the fear [...]

Since moving several years ago, I’ve been without a garden, until I finally got one started this year. We built a fence, laid down good soil, and put in some little plants. My plan was to build trellises based on a design I’d read about, but I couldn’t find the right netting. Meanwhile, it rained. [...]

Before we got married, my husband and I found a prenup agreement laughable: I was a newspaper copy editor, and he was a grad student — what assets were there  to fight over? But when we prepared for a new house a few years ago, we did have a sort of pre-build: I would design [...]

My mother, sweet, dignified, full of both Southern warmth and Northern reserve, would never strike you as a woman of wild abandon. As a mother myself, I hear a voice in my head in many situations saying, “be like Mom” — as in, be gracious, firm, loving and kind. In my kids’ eyes, though, the [...]

These days, following a recipe feels like a luxury. If you read cookbooks with any regularity, you’ll get one message pounded in: Real cooks don’t follow recipes. Real cooks eat quiche they pulled out of thin air. Cookbooks promise they’ll teach you how to cook without books, how to improvise incessantly. (Although why, you should [...]

It all started with a lollipop. Driving through UNC’s campus each day to take my son to preschool, I got an eyeful of the latest in 20-something fashion. What struck me as especially weird one morning, though, wasn’t the low-rise jeans or high-cut boots. It was the fashion for baby food.. Well, maybe toddler food [...]

I am not, in the fullest sense, a Southerner. Born and raised in Raleigh, I have always considered myself Southern, but I was often irritatingly reminded that that wasn’t enough by older women who pointedly asked where I was from, noting that I didn’t sound very Southern. With a mother from Connecticut and a Nebraskan [...]

It was with no small amusement that I read recently of the drop in demand for low-carb products. If obesity weren’t such a problem in this country, it’d be comical how lemming-like people run from one diet to the next. I took my own stab at a low-carb life for a few days at the [...]

I’ve hit a new demographic, and I’m not celebrating. I’m now solidly in the over-35 category, as hit home when I bought a rowing machine. Glancing through the instructions, I came across this pearl: “Persons over 35 should consult a physician before using this machine…” I celebrated a birthday, and now I might die from [...]

Somewhere in your life, there’s probably a comfort pancake. Maybe it’s the chocolate chip pancakes your mother used to make, or your college diner’s dinner plate-size version, or a Korean scallion pancake. For me, it was eierkuchen, a 10-inch, crepe-like, eggy German pancake that my mother (and her mother) made occasionally for supper. Close behind [...]

If it’s winter, it must be time for ice cream. I remember feeling only a little surprised when Maple View Farm opened its new store and began selling ice cream in January — and was promptly packed. With so many warm winter days in North Carolina, why not eat ice cream year-round? For those of [...]

Life starts to feel complete once you’ve slept in a caboose. My wanderlust has reached a high pitch lately, with dreams of European travel coming, unbidden, at all hours. Since that’s not happening soon, given the tots in our house, my husband instead planned a quick mountain getaway recently. That was all I knew — [...]

Children’s menus have turned me into a conspiracy theorist. Never one to fall for such nonsense, I’m deeply uncomfortable about this. And yet, what else should a parent think? The Weathervane sent me over this edge to JFK land. I went to the restaurant with an older friend, thinking this would be a slightly grown-up [...]

Ordinarily, bulldozers and cement mixers don’t set my heart aflutter; I’ve always been grateful to have children who prefer the romance of trains over a truck’s brawn. With one month to go until we break ground for our new house, though, I find myself looking longingly at every digger that passes by. But then the [...]

Simple, with me, is rarely just that. Somehow, everything blossoms. A simple run at cleaning the counters turns into a full-bore kitchen renewal. Simple suppers still seem to take me 45 minutes and end up with far more dishes on the table than four people really need. And a simple search online for one spice? [...]

When I get back to teaching cooking classes, I want to teach tarts. As in pies, not strumpets. (Which leads me to thoughts of crumpets, also worth teaching.) But not pies, because too many people tremble just to read a pie recipe, especially with a double crust. Somehow, tarts just feel easier. After all, aside [...]

Grate heavens, I have had an epiphany, and its name is Microplane. If you cook much, you may be thinking about now, “Boy, is she slow on the uptake.” Yes, I know Microplanes aren’t exactly new anymore. But I resisted these graters for years. I’m a reforming gadgetholic, and after all, I had a perfectly [...]

When my agent found a publisher for my first book, it was tentatively titled “Thyme for Dessert.” Not a bad title, we thought, since it got across the point (herbs in desserts). My editor kindly but powerfully disagreed. “Too down-market,” she sniffed, and as a food writer living in Chapel Hill, the last thing I [...]

There’s been a revolution in our house. My husband has discovered coffee. Not coffee as in ice cream. And most assuredly not Folgers. No, my husband is now on a first-name basis with the owners of our local coffeehouse, and folks, he’s drinking espresso. Yes, it has a shot (or three) of chocolate syrup and [...]

I made pad Thai the other night, and I’m still celebrating. Days later, I get a little thrill just thinking about it. And no, my life isn’t really that sad. After several years of increasingly kidded-down meals, I’d begun to despair of ever eating interesting adult food again. Then, hark! Was that really a “Mom, [...]

Good grief, it’s December already? I’m always looking longingly toward winter, ready to be done with sticky summers. But as soon as December hits, I want to put the brakes on. Especially with children, the month flies by. There’s never enough time to prepare all our special foods for Christmas and then, a few days [...]

Where’s the brass? It’s my constant refrain every year when the new symphony schedule comes out, and I was thinking it again last week at our latest concert. The pianist’s fingers flew faster than mine on deadline; I was impressed, but still, there just wasn’t enough brass. It’s always violins and piano. Violins are, well [...]

Unexpected guests, that overused topic of food and home writers, rarely present a problem for me. Either this is a sign that I don’t have enough friends, or it shows that my friends know me all too well: I am not fond of surprise knocks at the door. Nor am I fond of surprise occasions [...]

Honey! It’s drizzling! Batten down the hatches! So, we’ve braved our way through another hurricane. Frankly, despite the nonstop “news” hyping this storm and scaring everyone to bits, I just couldn’t get all worked up over Isabel. After having just one hurricane hit this area in my lifetime, I think we need to get over [...]

With our children’s birthdays 16 days apart, “Christmas in July” rings true in my house. The anticipation, especially for my now-4-year-old, builds for nearly a year; we’re almost as exciting as Santa. Last year’s party was a baseball one, and nearly as soon as it was over, my son began dreaming up themes for this [...]

Are you a recipe slave? Do you shiver in fear if you forgot to set a timer for your cookies? Do you get the heebie-jeebies from the measurement-less phrase “salt to taste?” As the hours in my days slide by lately, with a 9-month-old on my hip and a 3-year-old at my feet, I find [...]

Need a scary story for your next campout? Try this: Once upon a time, a mercifully long time ago, kitchens were horrifyingly empty. Their counters held knives, bowls, and spoons, but where were the mixers, toasters, food processors, microwaves, coffee machines? Oh, my child, it was a sad, desolate time. Today, though, there are still [...]

One of the loveliest words of the English language must be cream, and all its variations. There isn’t anything I don’t like about cream, from the real thing, to being described as a peaches-and-cream baby, to a creamy cheese, to certain nuts (especially cashews) that seem to coat the tongue with cream. Describe a wine [...]

As a former reporter and editor, I am a news junkie. So when my husband gave me the day-after-Christmas gift of time for a long bath, I grabbed all the papers from the past few days and headed for a soak. But I quickly regretted my choice of reading material. In the post-Christmas glow, the [...]

Do you Atkins? If you’re even vaguely trendy, you’ve probably been counting carbs at every meal lately, and eating bowls of plain whipped cream for dessert. New York restaurants now offer those bowls without blinking. But because God provided me with double the skeptic gene, I was naturally disbelieving when I first learned the details [...]

No one will ever mistake me for Martha Stewart or her wannabes. I ought to know how to be one, because being a food writer means keeping up with food and lifestyle magazines. But I’ve learned to stick to the food and restaurant stories. When I get to the “entertaining” ones, I just get depressed. [...]

I admit that when it comes to eating out, I can be hard to please. Not when we go to a diner, where I don’t expect too much, but when we spend more than $10 for an entree, my expectations go up with the price. And when a restaurant has been anointed — or is [...]

So you’re thinking about becoming a food writer. Did you: A) grow up on a farm, where Mama canned peaches sweet as the day is long, and where all the menfolk came in with stomachs growling for her dinnertime feast, set out on a long, rustic wooden table, of  fried chicken, country ham, collards and [...]

I miss me. Ever since my life was divided into two halves, B.B. and A.B., I miss my B.B. self. B.B.–Before Baxter–I was a happening cook. I am hip in almost no other ways, but my cooking kept up with (and sometimes preceded, in ways of which I was inordinately proud) the latest food trends. [...]