This flourless Spanish Almond Cake (Tarta de Santiago, or St. James’ Cake) came to us from Recipephany’s Senior Cookie Advisor, Joanne Hofmann Sexeny (see Pecan Praline Cookies). Moist, sweet, light and fluffy, this simple cake tastes luxurious and looks elegant. “It’s my best almond cake go-to,” Joanne said, pointing us to the Tarta de Santiago recipe on Epicurious. Then out of the blue we got an email from Steve Granek, also a fan of the Epicurious almond cake. He had stumbled onto Recipephany and suspected that the cake and its backstory would ring our chimes. Well, did it ever. Steve bakes the cake frequently, and in many variations—with lemon and orange zest, only lemon…
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Walnut Acorn Cookies
Walnut Acorn Cookies, tender walnut shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate and more nuts, got Gourmet magazine’s title “Best Cookie of the Year” in 2000. A favorite for Christmas cookie platters, they resemble acorns with their chocolate “cap.” We haven’t mastered the acorn shape, so ours come out oval-ish and a bit blobby. Even so, these relatively easy cookies look plenty fancy, taste rich, and make us feel like it’s a special occasion. And it turns out they’re vegan, too. We usually use only butter for shortbread cookies. But because walnuts make up a lot of the flavor here, we tried our favorite margarine, Imperial.* Its soft consistency makes it easy to blend and, in…
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Egg White Custard Cups from Josie McCarthy
So you’ve made an egg-yolk-rich dessert (such as hazelnut ice cream) and have four egg whites left over. And you’re not in the mood to make anything with them, not even an omelet. So what do you do? We’ve got the perfect, super-easy, comfort-food solution—Egg White Custard Cups. You can have a deliciously silky custard, bright with vanilla and nutmeg, in just a few minutes. And the ramekins make this dessert special, even though it started out as a clean-out-your-fridge strategy. This brilliant recipe came from Josie McCarthy, a pioneer in cooking shows on radio and TV in the 1940s and 1950s. She’s gone and pretty much forgotten now, even though she was nominated…
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Chocolate Babka
In the “The Dinner Party” episode, Seinfeld says it best: “You can’t beat a babka.” He means the chocolate babka, where dark chocolate zigzags wildly through a sweet yeasted loaf, swirling this way and that. Jerry’s bakery ran out of his object of desire, but you don’t have to depend on a bakery for your babka fix. It’s easier to make than you’d think—you just have to allow time to let the dough rise overnight. And all that gooey chocolate makes it totally worth it. Babka or krantz cake? We ran across the basis for this babka recipe in the Jerusalem cookbook. Authors Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi praise it as “the most popular…
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Apple Crisp, Gluten-Free and Vegan
Capture all the spiced apple goodness you love in a pie—but without the crust. This gluten-free, vegan Apple Crisp teams up two of our favorite recipes: Apple Pie and Meri’s Berries. Fortunately, baking with wholesome oats makes it gluten-free. And while you can use an egg, it’s easy to stir up a flaxseed “egg” to turn it vegan. Mix up the sweetly spiced apple filling and then pour it right into a greased pie plate. Then sprinkle it with Meri’s crumbly oatmeal dough for a crisp, cookie-like topping. This quick and easy gluten-free Apple Crisp has all the flavor and comfort of America’s favorite pie. Who says you can’t please everyone? Filling Topping
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“Milano” Cookies (Cats’ Tongues with Chocolate Ganache)
A classic union of vanilla and chocolate, crispy Milano™ cookies remind us of cookie trays at Italian weddings. Everybody loves ‘em. So why not whip up a fresh batch at home? It just takes just a few standard ingredients and some simple piping. And with a deliciously vanilla-forward, buttery flavor, these actually beat the originals. Turns out that making them yourself may be the only alternative to buying from Pepperidge Farm. Litigiously protective of its Milano brand, the company won’t tolerate copycats. They sued Trader Joe’s in 2015 over their somewhat similar “Crispy Cookies Filled with Belgian Chocolate.” They settled, and apparently Trader Joe’s caved. Copycats?And yet Pepperidge Farm could call themselves copycats…literally. Milano…
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Thick, Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies
We thought Allen’s Prize-Winning Whoopie Pie bordered on monstrous. But this baby tops it. Weighing in at almost a half-pound, this thick, bakery-style chocolate chip cookie barely contains all that gooey chocolate. Before you bite in, think about saving some for later. Or better yet, slice it up to share. Our daughter and son-in-law introduced us to this mega cookie from their favorite local bakery. More than its big size, we like its big flavor. Heaps of molten bittersweet and semisweet chocolate flood your taste buds, while finely chopped nuts, oats and surprise bits of apricot add extra oomph. Levain-like? More than just “bakery-style,” this recipe indeed comes from a bakery. Posted on their…
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Lemon Bundt Cake, Amalfi-Style
When we hiked mountain trails along the Amalfi Coast several years ago, we marveled at the fist-sized lemons hanging off the cliffside trees. We didn’t know at the time, but they were begging to get zested and squeezed into this ultramoist and puckery lemon cake. While this lemon-lover’s dessert comes from the region, it doesn’t require Italian lemons. The supermarket variety will do just fine. Who knows the real heritage of this cake. It has relatives all over the world. The English call it a “lemon drizzle cake.” It starts out as a classic butter cake—rich, fluffy, golden, and fairly easy to make. The jolt of flavor comes from the lemon syrup that gets…
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Chocolate Hermits
Dick’s Hermits, my mother-in-law’s classic chewy molasses-spice cookies, pack a flavor blast of epic proportions. (See original and gluten-free versions.) In our original post, we call her hermit “the spice equivalent of a decadent chocolate cookie.” But wait…could that “decadent chocolate cookie” also be a hermit—a chocolate hermit? Could there be a deeply flavorful, chewy chocolate cookie with the same signature cracks on top? A chocolate cookie made the same, easy way? We got a glimmer of that possibility when we received an email from Recipephany follower Frieda from Texas. The photo of Dick’s Hermits reminded her of the chocolate hermits she’d loved decades ago. So she reached out for help in finding—or creating—a…
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Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes
Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes perform a marvelous trick. Dig into a moist, rich cake and out flows warm dark chocolate. Restaurants serve these elegant little desserts to oohs and aahs. And with our recipe, you can bring the same chocolate drama right to your table in almost no time and with no fuss. The secret is what you do ahead of time, behind the scenes. Whisk up the batter before dinner, or even a day or more ahead. It only takes a few minutes. Then pour the batter into silicone molds or ramekins and store them in the fridge or the freezer. All that’s left is the baking—or should we say, the underbaking. And…
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Elvis’s Favorite Pound Cake
When I told my brother Mitchell that I’d baked Elvis’s Presley’s Favorite Pound Cake, he sang, “You ate nothin’ but a pound cake.” Not just any pound cake, but the King of Pound Cakes. Moist and tender, this golden cake owes its richness and height to heavy cream, butter and lots of eggs. Cake flour makes it light and silky. Of course, you would guess that Elvis’s cake would be over-the-top luxurious. You can’t help falling in love with it. This hint-of-lemon adaptation comes from Leah Greenwald, Recipephany’s Celebrity Cake Consultant and baking inspiration. She compared this to Sara Lee’s packaged pound cake—a favorite in my household when I was growing up. “It has…
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Chocolate Shell for Ice Cream
What would a Klondike bar, a Dove bar, or any self-respecting ice-cream-bar-on-a-stick be without a chocolate coating? Just everyday ice cream. In fact, it’s those little melt-in-your-mouth shards of chocolate that turn it into a treat. So why not punch up your favorite ice cream with a crisp, ready-to-crack chocolate shell? This chocolate sauce mimics Smucker’s popular “Magic Shell,” hardening seconds after it hits the ice cream. And yet—not surprisingly—this homemade shell has a deeper, richer flavor than the commercial squeeze-on topping. It comes together in no time with only two ingredients: chocolate and coconut oil. Virgin coconut oil (which solidifies at room temperature, so it looks more like shortening than oil) makes the…
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Pecan Praline Cookies
Pecan Praline Cookies have become an instant favorite here. Chewy inside, crispy around the edges. Buttery caramel flavor. Toasty, tasty pecans. Complex in taste, yet simple to prep. I asked Dan why, with all the cookie cookbooks I’ve obsessed over, I’d never run into this irresistible cookie until now. “You travel in the wrong circles,” he replied. Well, maybe in the past. But luckily now I travel in the same baking circle as Joanne Hofmann Sexeny. She really knows her cookies. So when she recently recommended this winner, I knew enough to stop everything and try it. She called it “one of the best cookies to bake.” Yes, and to eat. But before you…
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Soho Globs
Testing out these Soho Globs warm from the oven, Dan called the first one “more of an event than a cookie,” and his second “a challenge.” These fudgy cookies may look like brownies, with their deep color and crinkly shiny crust. But watch out. They pack an intense, bittersweet triple-chocolate punch that can send you spinning if you don’t brace yourself. If you’re from around Boston, you may recognize these objects of desire from the display case at the iconic Rosie’s Bakery. With its happy pink sign outside and sweet indulgences inside, Rosie’s spread the joys of butter, sugar and especially chocolate from its Cambridge, Boston and Chestnut Hill stores. After a run of…
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Classic Apple Pie with Screwdriver Crust
Here it is…the perfect “as-American-as,” best-in-its-class dessert. Years ago we posted our favorite apple pie filling (Pi Day 2015: 10 Digits of Pi) to celebrate the rarest Pi Day we’ll ever see. More recently we raved about our crisp, flaky, never-fail Screwdriver Pie Crust. And now here they are, joined in this lightly spiced, sweet-tart Classic Apple Pie. Two recipes for one great pie. Together at last. One-stop baking. Do you love apple picking, but then wonder what you’ll do with that half-bushel? Make ready-to-use apple pie fillings. Peel and slice apples and toss them in a bowl with seasonings, just as you would for a fresh pie. (But hold off on the cornstarch,…
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Classic Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Like cozy jammies and a binge-worthy TV show, these Classic Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies (CCORCs, for short) take us right to our happy place. Satisfyingly delicious oats and raisins, with a spark of cinnamon and molasses, make us feel good all over. And with this recipe, we have finally achieved that crisp-on-the-outside and chewy-on-the-inside texture that has eluded the Recipephany Culinary Research Institute for so many years. The very first oatmeal cookie recipe appeared in 1896 in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook (then called The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer). Quaker Oats put a version on its cardboard cannister and called it “Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.” It’s now the home baker’s gold standard—and…
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Quick Puff Pastry and a Starter Recipe (Puff Pastry Mini Chocolate Croissants)
Classic puff pastry calls for lots of rolling and folding to create zillions of those celebrated flaky layers. For bakers who don’t care for all that work, store-bought frozen puff pastry has long been their secret to everything from turnovers to tarts, pigs-in-blanket to Beef Wellington. But now, with our easy Quick Puff Pastry recipe, we no longer need to rely on Big Pastry for our supply. This quick and easy version rises into maybe a half zillion light, buttery layers. And the dough keeps beautifully in the freezer, ready for whenever the urge for la pâtisserie overtakes you. And if you need more convincing, compare ingredients. Quick Puff Pastry has only three: flour,…
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Tiny Hazelnut-Chocolate Sandwich Cookies (Baci di Dama)
In our last post, we wallowed in the chocolately pleasure of Whoopie Pies, perhaps the world’s largest sandwich cookies. Now we indulge in the delicate chocolate-filled confection called baci di dama, probably the world’s teeniest-tiniest sandwich cookies. Diminutive bites of melt-away hazelnut shortbread and bittersweet chocolate, baci di dama embody the classic Italian love affair of nocciola with its soul mate, cioccolato (yeah, hazelnuts and chocolate, but it sounds so much sexier in Italian). Baci di dama, also known as Italian Hazelnut Cookies, date back to the early 1800s in the Piedmont region of Italy, when chefs devised creative ways to promote the bounty of locally-gown hazelnuts. The name means “lady’s kisses,” maybe because…
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Allen’s Prize-Winning Whoopie Pies
Born in Pennsylvania Dutch country and named in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the Whoopie Pie has fans all over the country. But no state loves it more than Maine. Mainers went all out and declared it their Official Maine State Treat in 2011. And why not? This sensational sandwich of black chocolate cake filled with fluffy vanilla creme plays havoc with our self-control. And now, thanks to our friend Allen’s authentic recipe, we can whip up the real deal, the divine Maine Whoopie Pie, in the comfort of our own kitchens. How did Allen unlock the secret to the ultimate Whoopie Pie? He started with the master recipe his sister-in-law developed when she was a student…
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Gluten-Free, Vegan Hermits
To get a really great gluten-free vegan cookie, start with a really great cookie. One that plays well with gluten-free flour and won’t miss the eggs. In this case, it’s Dick’s Hermits. Crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, these classic New England molasses-spice cookies make the mouth tingle with delight. My mother-in-law Dorothy, nicknamed “Dick,” (see Dick’s Coffee Cake for that story) spoiled her kids with these cookies. With a little culinary sleight of hand, we now can spoil just about everybody. It doesn’t take much—just gluten-free “1-1” flour (from Trader Joe’s or King Arthur Baking Company, for example) and a little ground flaxseed. The flour swaps cup-for-cup for all-purpose…
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Julia Child’s Madeleines
In the early 1900s, author Marcel Proust wrote 1,267,069 words in his seven-volume masterpiece In Search of Lost Time. And yet “madeleine” is the word that made him famous. Madeleines, little tea cakes baked in scallop molds, have been delighting the French since the 18th Century. And it was Proust who made them popular worldwide. She [my mother] sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell….And once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-flowers which my aunt used to give me…the whole of Combray…
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Meringue Cradle Cake
Fit for a celebration, Meringue Cradle Cake evokes all the drama of a layered pastry, yet it comes together as if by magic. A crust of chocolate-flecked meringue covers a luxurious golden cake. It looks complicated, but the heavenly contrast of crispy and tender springs from the simple alchemy of separating egg whites and yolks. Rarely have eggs performed so many tricks in one cake. Yolks pump up the flavor, moisten the crumb, and deepen the color. Whites whip into a brilliant built-in meringue topping. Everything gets used, so there’s no need for egg-white omelets later. Contrary to what others report, this recipe has nothing to do with the Baby Jesus. We discovered it…
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Spiced Pecans
Except for those with nut allergies (apologies to one of our nieces) or those who avoid cinnamon (apologies to one of our nephews), just about everybody loves spiced pecans with a cinnamon-sugar crunch. The coating elevates the nuts to a luxurious treat—in just a few minutes and with the simplest ingredients. We like to give these away at Christmas, but they also make a perfect sweet for Passover. What’s more, they qualify as vegan and gluten-free without even trying. This recipephany came from The Boston Globe’s Confidential Chat (or informally, “Chatters”). An early form of social media, the column connected readers who mailed in recipe requests, recipes, and good-ole-fashioned kitchen advice. The Globe retired…
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Chocolate Whipped Mascarpone in Dark Chocolate Mini Cups
Our daughter once gave us a box of imported chocolate mini cups, which made any filling an instant dessert. Turns out, if you can melt chocolate you can make them yourself. Paint the inside of small paper baking cups with melted bittersweet chocolate, let harden, then strip off the paper. The crisp accordion pleats make these cups look so much like paper liners, your guests will try to peel them off. It’s such fun—the opposite of fake food. It’s both a craft project and a dessert. Better yet, fill these petite cups with mascarpone chocolate cream and you get a dreamy, deep chocolate that melts away with each heavenly bite. Mascarpone—the milder and creamier…
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Tibetan Bon Bons (Baked Cinnamon Sugar Donuts)
Tasting just like donuts but without the mess of frying, these gems originated in the rustic hearth of the Nangzhik Monastery in Tibet. The monks offered these “righteously delicious” little cakes to pilgrims so they could keep up their strength and spirits on their strenuous hikes. The monastery subsequently became a Tibetan “Trek Stop,” welcoming travelers from around the world. One such adventurer, the famed J. Peterman, cracked the monk’s secret recipe in 1983 and named the small cakes “Tibetan Bon Bons” after Tibet’s ancient religion, Bon. He identified the secret ingredient, the key to the tender crumb and depth of flavor: finely chopped tart apples stirred into the batter. Actually, none of that…
