Reader’s Choice Recipes: Braided Challah Bread
Challah is a traditional yeast bread—with a glossy crust frequently dappled with sesame seeds—that gets its trademark golden yellow color from the addition of eggs. Older recipes include several eggs. Most modern versions, like this one, usually call for fewer.
Cracking the Code on All Things Egg @ The Hungry Beast
Check out my latest article, Cracking the Code on All Things Egg, which runs through a laundry list of little-known facts about eggs.
Homemade Garlic Mayonnaise (a.k.a. Aioli)
I have another confession to make. When I was a little mouse, one of my absolute favorite treats was a mayonnaise sandwich. Yep, you heard right. A big dollop of Hellmann’s spread on a slice of white bread, then folded in half. (Jam sandwiches, a la Paddington Bear, were a close second.) These days, I still love my mayo. Here are step-by-step instructions for how to make my version of aioli, Miss. Mayonnaise’s sophisticated French cousin.
Sinfully Rich Chocolate Pudding
I have no excuses for this one. It’s all chocolate, sugar, heavy cream, butter, and eggs. Grab a spoon and put on your fat pants. Move over, Jello. That’s all I have to say. Warm pudding When it’s warm, it’s really thick but has a more traditional pudding consistency. When it’s chilled, however…oh, oh, oh!…it [...]
Fresh Herb Egg White Omelet with Black Olives & Sun-Dried Tomatoes
So recently, I found myself with a bunch of spare egg whites. (Stay tuned to find out what happened to the yolks sometime later this week…) I was starving when this happened. I whipped them together quickly with a handful of stuff I had in the fridge, and…voila! A super light omelet that was packed [...]
Homemade Irish Cream Liqueur
I learned to cook from my mom, who works a certain kind of magic in the kitchen. Of all the things I’ve learned from her, how to make homemade Irish cream liqueur may not be one of the most practical, but it is one of my favorites. The short version of this recipe is: Add [...]
Basic Cooking: The Secret to Perfectly Cooked Hard-Boiled Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs? How about *hardly* boiled eggs? Now that’s more accurate. (And that’s also the secret to perfectly cooking them.) I make hard-boiled eggs the way my mother does. And she uses the same basic method that Julia Child did—minus the egg pricker. Every time I do this, the eggs are marvelous. The whites are [...]
Old-Fashioned Pound Cake
Technically, this is half-a-pound cake, since it only uses about a half-a-pound of each of the key ingredients. (Pound cake gets its name from the pound each of butter, sugar, and flour originally used to make it.) However you slice it, though, this cake is moist, dense, rich, and buttery. I prefer mine plain with [...]
Simple Bacon and Cheese Omelet
I love fancy food. Really, I do. I love complicated recipes, exotic ingredients, and dishes that take three days to make. I have to admit, for all my gourmet inclinations, I also love all sorts of decidedly Not Fancy Foodstuffs. Especially things that make me feel like an eight-year-old again. For example, I love American [...]
Happy Sea Urchin Meringues
When I made a batch of Tuxedo Meringues a few weeks ago, my dear friend the Lady Otter and I got to talking about cookies. Our conversation went something like this: “Hey Mouse, you know what would be really cool?” “What would that be, Otter?” “Meringues in the shape of sea urchins. You could make [...]
