Category: Recipes

Dreamy Meringue Cookies for Your Christmas Platter

These light, airy, and slightly chewy meringue cookies are like chocolatey clouds studded with mini chocolate chips. They’re flavored with a touch of almond extract and dusted with freeze-dried strawberry powder (easily made by whizzing up strawberries in a spice grinder) for a subtle tartness to counteract the sweetness. But they’re highly adaptable. If you’re…


Cornbread Gets Dressed Up for the Holidays

Cornbread gets a festive makeover in this recipe with the addition of fresh and dried cranberries. If you like your cornbread on the sweeter side, increase the honey to 1/2 cup. Cranberry Cornbread Active Time: 15 minutes Total Time: 45 minutes Serves 10 2 cups fine whole-grain cornmeal 3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour or white…


French Onion Soup Is Just the Beginning

French onion soup is the world’s most elegant dish. Not the kind of elegance you’d find on a white tablecloth with extra silverware, but elegant in the sense that scientists use the word. Like when a simple equation can express the relationship between matter and energy with as few ingredients as a pot of French…


Poires Belle Hélène: An Elegant French Dessert to Steal the Show

A classic of French bistro menus, poires belle Hélène is a dessert of sweet and gently spiced poached pears served with vanilla ice cream and draped under a glossy sheet of warm chocolate sauce. It plays the part of an elegant and indulgent dessert, yet it’s incredibly simple to make. The invention of the dessert…


Panettone Pudding Is the Perfect Christmas Brunch

It’s rich, it’s festive, and it’s perfect for holiday brunches. Whether you call this oven-baked French toast or bread pudding, the method is still the same: Dried-out bread is soaked in custard and then baked. Panettone is a tall, domed shape bread that is studded with candied fruits. This soft, sweet bread hails from Northern…


These Fluffy Dinner Rolls Really Rise to the Occasion

The fancy French word for dough shaped in a ball is boule. Bread makers use the same technique to form a tight ball of dough for a large loaf of bread and for small individual dough balls such as these fluffy dinner rolls. While it takes two hands to form a large loaf into a…


Make Sun-Dried Tomato Butter for a Summery Steak Any Time of Year

No matter what time of year it is, I am always up for a grilled steak. If it’s too cold outdoors, you can use a seasoned iron skillet on high heat for a successful result. For years, I’ve used seasoned compound butters to add loads of flavor to many dishes. What is a compound butter?…


The Family Table: Christmas Cookie Edition

We asked readers to share their best holiday cookie recipes and the stories behind them. After sifting through dozens of sweet (and buttery) submissions, here are a few that touched us most. A Spoonful of Love from Grandma’s Kitchen Submitted by Kim Sutter, Owasso, Oklahoma I have lovely memories of my grandmother Helen. She was…


Easy, No-bake Haystacks Are the Ultimate Holiday Crowd-Pleaser

Want a crowd-pleasing cookie that has just five ingredients and doesn’t even require turning on the oven? Say hello to the haystack cookie! Grab the kiddos and let’s get cooking: You’ll have a big batch of haystacks in under an hour. What Are Haystacks Made of? Haystacks are no-bake cookies that consist of fried chow…


Good Creamed Spinach Is a Revelation

There are two types of people in the world: people who love creamed spinach and people who haven’t had good creamed spinach yet. Fortunately, I fall into the former and plan to convert everyone into the latter. That’s because good creamed spinach is nothing like the spinach you find wilting in a buffet tray. Good…