Category Archives: Desserts

Peach and Tayberry Upside-Down Pie

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What?  It’s been four days since I posted the recipe for the Easiest Pie Crust Ever and you still haven’t made a pie?  What are you waiting for?

Ok, ok, here’s a recipe that’s even easier than pie.  I’m calling it an upside-down pie, because it’s a single-crust pie with the crust, get this, on top.  Isn’t that smart?  So you get a scoop of juicy fruit and a crisp, buttery top crust.  That’s it.  The Rustic Fruit Desserts people (I told you you’d be hearing hearing more about them) refer to this dessert by the funny name “pandowdy,” and indeed it was their Gingered Peach and Blackberry Pandowdy that inspired mine.

This dessert was especially sweet because I made it with the last of the peaches we brought home from California and tayberries from our Tonnemaker’s fruit CSA.   (You can substitute raspberries or blackberries or both; tayberries are a cross of the two.)  I personally wouldn’t usually put peaches into a pie–I know, other people do it successfully!–because I think they give up too much juice, resulting in a too-liquid filling and a soggy bottom pie crust.  Both problems are solved by this recipe: the bottom crust has vanished and the filling is thickened to a luscious consistency by macerating the peaches and then simmering the juice to thicken it.

Continue reading Peach and Tayberry Upside-Down Pie (click for recipe)

Easy Perfect All-Butter Pie Crust

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Is it too presumptuous to call this the “perfect” pie crust?  Especially since I’m not a baker who’s tried a great many of them?  It’s perfect for me, anyway, because it’s so easy, so sweet-salt-buttery-flaky, and because it uses all butter instead of shortening.  And although it’s a fairly standard recipe, I found it via Martha Stewart many years ago, and everything she does is perfect, right?

How do you make your pie crusts?  If you have a different perfect method, I definitely want to know.Yesterday, July 5, marked Seattle’s traditional first day of summer, and it arrived right on schedule.  (Apparently the “meteorological cognoscenti” pin the date as July 12, but this year it was indeed July 5.  Note also in that article that it is expected to last through August 15.  Yay?)  My sister and I celebrated by taking the girls to Molly Moons for ice cream, then swinging in the park, then to the local wading pool.

We were on summer slow time, little kid time, and walking a little less than a mile and a half took us more than an hour, even with the incentive of ice cream cones moving us along.  Look, bumblebees!  Leaves with holes!  A leaf in the shape of a magic (better still, say it like my just-now-four-year-old: “magict”) key!  The girls squatted on the sidewalk to peer into cracks, point, and consult.  You cannot rush past any of those things.  We did not rush past any of them.

Here’s where you want to rush in the summertime: in the kitchen.  And so now that it’s summer, to return to my original point, you’ll be needing an easy pie crust.  This is mine.  I make it using a food processor.  If you don’t have a food processor, I recommend following this method where you grate frozen butter directly into your flour mixture.  (I have never, ever understood the directions for using two knives to make a pie crust.)  If it gets too warm/soft/sticky at any point, just pop the dough in the fridge for a few minutes before continuing.  Easy peasy. Continue reading Easy Perfect All-Butter Pie Crust (click for recipe)

Chocolate Waffles

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Oh, friends.  You rightly clamored for the chocolate pancake recipe to accompany that Summer Berry Sauce, but I have a confession: not only did I not make those pancakes, but I was probably still asleep when my mom made them.  (Thanks, Mom!)

But today was the Real Birthday.  I think was a good day on the four-year-old-birthday scale, as evidenced by the fact that the house is covered in glitter.  And that the day started, as requested, with chocolate waffles (and ended with chocolate cake).

I have had my eye on the “waffle brownies” from Tea and Cookies for a while, but in the end I decided that they seemed too decadent.  For breakfast.  For a four-year-old.  Instead I went with the first recipe that came up in my Google search, an Alton Brown recipe that seemed a little more like your standard buttermilk waffles but with some cocoa powder and chocolate chips mixed in.  Ok, a lot of cocoa powder and chocolate chips, and the chocolate chips melted and the waffle edges were crisp and it was a pretty great combination.  And then we served them with whipped cream and strawberries.

Obviously my healthier-waffles logic was not crystal clear here, but the resulting dessert-for-breakfast was just delicious.  I think you’ll forgive me about the pancakes. Continue reading Chocolate Waffles (click for recipe)

Apricot and Blackberry Cobbler

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Here’s what we brought back from California: a huge jug of olive oil, grown and pressed a few miles from where I grew up.  Bags and bags of almonds and walnuts from the nut orchards we drove through to get to my parents’ house.  And a 20 lb. box of peaches, nectarines, and plums, so that we can go on pretending that it’s summer even though it appears to have skipped straight from spring to fall in Seattle.

Mostly we eat ripe fruit alone, which is really its highest and best use, but last week this cobbler recipe appeared on Dinner: A Love Story and it sounded so simple and good that it was in the oven almost before I knew it.  Luckily we had lots of people hanging around that day, and it was gone within hours.

Continue reading Apricot and Blackberry Cobbler (click for recipe)

Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk

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Watch this space for more Thai food now that summer is coming.  Tropical fruit gets all the love, but vegetables like eggplants, peppers, and squash are unique products of hot temperatures as well, and with summer comes the opportunity to cook like we live someplace warmer.  Like Thailand.

My sweet tooth has always liked the idea of eating dessert first, and we’re starting our summer Thai series with it here.  I have to admit that we cook less Thai food now that Little Uncle makes it so well and so close by, but the flip side of that coin is that it was one of their desserts that reminded me to dig out this recipe for black sticky rice pudding.  (The dessert in question was kabocha squash simmered in sweet coconut milk; watch for it on the menu!)  It’s a great dessert to make for a party because it’s so simple yet visually impressive, and also because you can make it in advance and serve it cold or gently reheated.

Little Uncle’s simmered kabocha was excellent stirred into this rice pudding, but if you don’t have any handy you can just serve it plain, as I usually do, or with mango slices stirred in or on the side.  Of course you can also make this dessert with white sticky rice in place of the black, although, as you’d expect, the resulting color is a bit more pedestrian.  Try to remember to save a swirl of the thick coconut cream from the top of the can to garnish the dish. Continue reading Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk (click for recipe)

Crispy Chocolate-Granola Haystacks

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Road tripping ain’t what it used to be, friends.

Gone are our lazy days of puttering down the coast, of long lunches with spectacular views, of starting and stopping and pitching camp where and when we like.

We’re all business now.  It’s I-5 all the way from Seattle to Northern California, aggressive packing of PB&J fixings so we don’t need long lunches, and hardly noticing the view because of the song and dance I’m doing in the back seat to entertain the girls.

That’s right, we packed the whole family into the minivan (which I like to call the “Man Van” now, both to distance myself from it and to convey to J how sexy it is for him to take the kids to swimming lessons).  And we drove all afternoon and night, and much of the next day, and lived to tell the tale.

Here are some of the things that we did in the car to entertain three children aged 1, 3, and 5: made a list of things to do, read books, sang songs, colored, napped, watched a video, ate snacks, played peek-a-boo, and let the baby pull out an entire package of floss.

Here is something we did not do in the car: eat these chocolately granola treats.  We meant to, we really did.  Hannah said they were road food and I’m inclined to agree, but once I made them we had to taste one and then, wow, another, and they were so crispy and chocolately and then it was the next day and J was asking me to please take a photo of the things already so he could keep eating them and just like that…gone, as fast as the miles roll by when you’re having a good time out there on the road.

Continue reading Crispy Chocolate-Granola Haystacks (click for recipe)

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Chocolate is woefully under-represented on this blog compared to the role it plays in my life.  I’d say I eat chocolate almost every day, sometimes in moderation and sometimes, frankly, not.  But most of the chocolate I eat these days is in pure, unadulterated bar form.  I don’t bake with it much anymore because, in a perplexing twist of fate, I have a child who doesn’t like chocolate.  She spits out a cookie, face twisted in disgust, if she finds an errant chocolate chip in her mouth.  It’s unfathomable to me, but I work with it and mostly bake without chocolate.

So when I make something chocolate, I like to go all-out. These cookies are all-out. Are you still mulling over what nice thing to do for your dad for Fathers Day?  Skip down to the ingredients list and start baking.

The brookies (brownies+cookies=brookies) recipe on this site is one of my favorite chocolate cookie recipes. This is the other.  Those are chewy; these are a decadent, chocolatey, crumbly sable, packed with chunks of chopped bittersweet chocolate.  The recipe comes from French pastry chef Pierre Hermé, Dorie Greenspan published in her book Baking: From My Home to Yours, and I found it via The Splendid Table.  Thank goodness.

The only warning I will offer is this: the dough can be quite crumbly, and if it is too crumbly it will be difficult to slice into cookies.  I have read that using high-quality cocoa powder makes the dough easier to handle, but I used up some decidedly low-quality cocoa powder this time and the cookies came out fine.  If your dough is truly too crumbly to form into logs, stir in a spoonful of milk and the dough will come right together.  You’ll lose a tiny bit of the light, sandy texture, but the cookies will still be delicious. Continue reading Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies (click for recipe)

Salted Caramel Ice Cream, No Ice Cream Maker Required

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The truth about how J and I met is kind of boring, so we usually make something up when people ask us.  For a long time we used to say that we’d met in an internet chat room, back when that sounded scandalous, but now everyone meets online and we have to be more creative.  We met underwater off the Great Barrier Reef?  We were seated side by side for jury duty in small claims court?  We both worked at Baskin Robbins in high school?

That last one is true, actually, although the establishments in question were thousands of miles apart.  But it proves an important point: we have a long history with ice cream around here.

So I am well-qualified to tell you that this one is outstanding.  I already sang its praises here, but I feel wrong depriving you of this recipe for Seattle’s iconic ice cream flavor from Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream.  Especially since, get this, you don’t need an ice cream maker to make it. Some magic having to do with the salt and the cream keeps the texture sublime, even if you make it with a pan and fork instead (directions below).  If you do have an ice cream maker, you can save yourself a few minutes of stirring. Either way, this recipe will make your summer better.  And probably the entire rest of your life. Continue reading Salted Caramel Ice Cream (click for recipe)

Rhubarb-Strawberry Cornmeal Tarts with Ginger and Orange Zest

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There are plenty of good reasons to make friends with your neighbors.  You can always borrow a cup of sugar, they’re conveniently close for impromptu cocktail parties or afternoon barbeques, and you can share a lawnmower.  (What, not everyone shares a lawnmower with their neighbors?  Well, maybe you all mow more than twice a year.)

We are lucky enough to have the kind of neighbors who, in addition to all of the benefits above, sometimes drop by with treats.  Recently it was a dish of petal-pink tender baked rhubarb, barely sweet and redolent of orange zest and ginger.  I know, right?

I admit to eating a few stalks straight from the dish with my fingers, and heaping spoonfuls made their way into bowls of yogurt for breakfast.  But I have a new cookbook, Good to the Grain, and it has a picture on the cover of some mighty handsome little single-serving rhubarb tarts.  I couldn’t resist cooking the remaining rhubarb down into a jam with fragrant strawberries and baking them into delicate and delicious free-form tarts.  They’re like the biggest, best jam-filled cookie you’ve ever had.  We shared them with the neighbors, of course.Strawberry Rhubarb Tart

Continue reading Rhubarb-Strawberry Cornmeal Tarts with Ginger and Orange Zest (click for recipe)

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

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Our strawberry plants are being tended much more diligently than usual this year.  I had really given up on the strawberries, as they are such slug magnets and I want the sunniest spaces for my tomatoes and zucchini.  But my little girls are not so jaded, and they claimed a huge pot and chose blooming strawberry starts at the plant sale.  They watch them closely and water them daily.  For their efforts, they have been rewarded with some hard little green nubbins that even the slugs still scorn.  June-bearing, my foot.

So I am clearly jumping the gun by buying strawberries so early in the year here in Seattle.  But I have seen the photos of your gardens elsewhere, and I don’t want to wait until it’s too late to get this recipe to you.  Besides, it’s been an ice-cream-making kind of week around here–it’s never the wrong time of year for that.

This recipe is from David Lebovitz’s inspiring book The Perfect Scoop, which makes me want to make so many frozen confections.  This year I’m definitely going to try the parsley ice cream. 

Continue reading Strawberry Frozen Yogurt (click for recipe)