Category: Recipes

Sesame-Ginger Salmon With a Double-Duty Sauce

This quick sesame-ginger salmon recipe uses the sauce for both glazing the salmon and tossing with the broccoli. Serve over rice noodles or brown rice tossed with sesame oil and scallions. Ginger-Roasted Salmon and Broccoli Active Time: 25 minutes Total Time: 25 minutes Serves 4 1 1/2 tablespoons toasted dark sesame oil 1 1/2 tablespoons…


Cozy Food Alla Norma

Pasta alla Norma is a classic and timeless Italian dish, hailing from the Sicilian city of Catania. It features eggplant—lots of it—in a simple marinara-style tomato sauce. While the ingredients technically qualify it as a late summer dish, it can be prepared year-round, which is good news for us. For something so simple, the flavors…


Vanillekipferl (Vanilla Crescents)

Vanillekipferl originate from Vienna in Austria, but versions of them are loved and baked throughout Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Switzerland, too. They are a non-negotiable must during Advent for me, and I regularly eat one with the first coffee of the day while it’s still pitch black outside—there’s something most satisfying about eating a moon-shaped…


Devil’s Thumbprints

I’m often asked if I ever make a mistake in a recipe and end up with something good. These cookies were that kind of a lucky accident. I must not have paid attention while I was mixing the dough, because I put in too much chocolate and got cookies as dark and rich as devil’s…


Pistachio-Matcha Financiers

Financiers are cake-like cookies, usually made with hazelnut or almond flour. Named for the stockbrokers, financiers, of Paris and originally shaped like gold ingots, they were meant to be a rich treat for the rich men. My rendition—a treat for everyone—is made with ground pistachios, has matcha and whole wheat flour, and is baked in…


Samoa Bars

In the UK, we’re not lucky enough to have access to American Girl Scout cookies, and that’s a big problem, at least for me. My yearly cravings for thin mint and Samoa cookies remains unfulfilled. Thankfully, both are relatively easy to replicate at home. These simple bars are my vegan take on the classic Samoa…


Goong Goong’s Almond Cookies

These cookies are soft in the center, crisp around the edges, and perfectly sweet, with just enough almond flavor to fill your kitchen with the intoxicating scent of buttery almonds. Better yet, they have the seal of approval from my mom and the rest of my family, which is all I really needed. I hope…


Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies

I rarely try to make my holiday cookies in red and green colors, but every once in a while I submit to tradition. These cookies are actually a shade of burgundy (how I like my red velvet to be), but you can add extra red food coloring if you want them to be more vibrant….


Spiced Honey Rum Balls

This version of old-school rum balls amps up the flavor with a few clever ingredient swaps, like graham crackers instead of traditional wafer cookies, honey to replace corn syrup, and warm spiced rum for white rum. A pinch of cinnamon brings out the rum’s spices, while a toss in coarse sugar adds sparkle and crunch….


Giving Biscotti a 2nd Chance

I first tasted biscotti long ago, when I was a cookie-loving child. I wondered how anyone could like such hard, dry, and boring so-called “cookies.” Years later, my sister-in-law tucked some homemade biscotti into my Christmas cookie box. To my surprise, they were delicious. By then, I had grown up and become an avid baker,…