dessert Archives

Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

Bundt cakes often look better than they taste. That’s because, at the end of the day, you’re dumping a bunch of cake batter into a big heavy mold that needs to cook for a while to have stability, but also (very often) dries the cake out in the process. So how do you make a big, impressive-looking bundt cake that actually tastes good? You soak it as soon as it comes out of the oven. I’ve seen recipes for lemon cakes where you cook sugar with lemon juice just until the sugar dissolves to make a lemon syrup and then pour that over the cake (see: The Barefoot Contessa); but I’ve never seen one where you mix raw lemon juice with sugar and olive oil and pour that over the cake. That was until I encountered Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake in her new cookbook What’s for Dessert?.

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Dirty Chai Earthquake Cookies

I have a vivid memory of being in Venice with my parents in the early 2000s (it’s documented here) when my brother and I decided to freak out our mother by drinking espresso after dinner. We were actually always a coffee-after-dinner family but the coffee was always decaf. To this day, my parents still order decaf if they’re in the mood for a hot beverage after a big meal. But in Italy, drinking espresso after dinner is a tradition and to quote Tevye, “Tradition!” So we drank the espresso and, as far as I can remember, we still fell asleep and all was fine. But my mother’s concern was still on my mind when I made Susan Spungen’s Dirty Chai Earthquake Cookies for a dinner party last week.

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Peach Ice Cream

Romeo asked, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The same can be said of ice cream flavors. If we didn’t call Cookies & Cream “Cookies & Cream,” would it still taste like Cookies & Cream? Ice cream is an arena where names seem to matter. We love a Jeni’s flavor called “Brambleberry Crisp” but would we love it as much if she had called it “Soggy Blackberry Mixture with Oats?” I don’t think so. Which is why, for this post, about ice cream made with the ripest, end-of-summer peaches, I’m sticking to the simple and direct: this is a post about Peach Ice Cream, plain and simple.

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Grapefruit, Blood Orange, Campari Sorbet

I once wrote a post on here called Ten Things You Should Never Serve At A Dinner Party that was mildly controversial. Craig’s sister Kristin was offended that I included “boneless, skinless chicken breasts,” so on my next visit to Washington State, she cooked up a Chicken Piccata that really put in me in place.

And now I’m about to put myself in my own place by refuting number ten on that list: sorbet. Here’s what I wrote then: “This is a dinner party, not a cleanse. If you’re feeling lazy, that’s fine, but at the very least, have the decency to serve us ice cream. But sorbet? SORBET? That’s it…I’m leaving.” Wow, I don’t even recognize the person who wrote that… especially now that I’ve made the sorbet that I’m about to tell you about. But first, the context.

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Vanilla Bean Brown Butter Nectarine Blackberry Crisp

Wow, that’s a mouthful, but you have to admit it sounds good. I got the idea from the New York Times Cooking newsletter; Kim Severson was guest writing it for the day and she mentioned a trick she learned from our mutual friend Bill Addison who learned it from Nancy Silverton (how’s that for a game of telephone?). The trick is this: when making a cobbler or a crisp, brown some butter, scrape in the seeds from a vanilla bean and then stir the whole mixture in with the fruit. As far as ideas go, this is right up there with E = mc2. (How do you get the 2 up there? Where’s Einstein when you need him?)

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Tangerine Sour Cream Pound Cake

I have a theory that Starbucks has heightened our tolerance for bad, sad pastries. There’ve been moments in my life, at an airport, at a rest stop, where I break down and order a slice of a Starbucks lemon pound cake to go with my coffee. It tastes fine. It’s not bad. It’s sweet, cakey, nicely glazed. But it’s not, by any means, good. Most people don’t know that because most people don’t take the time to make their own glazed pound cakes; but if you do take the time, yours will be light, where theirs is dense. Yours will be authentically flavored, whereas theirs tastes synthetic. Yours will be made at home with love whereas theirs is made in a warehouse. Plus, if you make your own, you can use tangerines instead of lemons.

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My New Favorite Summer Dessert: Shaved Ice and Ice Cream and Fruit at Mr. Boba

When people enthuse about something they ate, it’s always a good idea to pay attention. For example, two weeks ago I was at Park’s BBQ in Koreatown with our friends Jim and Jess, and also our friends Jimmy and Raef, and as we were fighting over grilled pieces of rib-eye and skirt steak, Jim mentioned this amazing dessert he and Jess once ate nearby at a place called Mr. Boba. “It’s seriously like the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” he said and before I could yell “Hyperbole!” Jess echoed the sentiment. Which led me to say, “Then why don’t we go there after this?” And everyone nodded their heads in approval.

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Nancy Silverton’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies, cookies everywhere and not a chocolate chip cookie in sight. Look, let’s be honest about Christmas cookies: they’re fun to look at but are they really fun to eat? Most of them taste like cardboard with over-sweetened frosting slathered on. While everyone tries to reproduce the cover of Bon Appetit (which is, admittedly, pretty stunning), why don’t you do what I’d do and make a batch of these comforting, hot from the oven chocolate chip cookies from one of America’s greatest bakers? As someone who makes a lot of chocolate chip cookies (Martha’s, whole wheat, Eric Wolitzky’s, ones with cranberries and oats) these may be the most wholesome and comforting I’ve yet made, partially because they’re packed with walnuts.

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