Lemony-Glazed Cream Cheese Cookies
In our house, we make these cookies around Christmas, but they’re great year round. They’re soft and sweet—and slightly tangy. This recipe is a family heirloom. (I actually called my mother to ask for permission to share it with you. No joke.) You’ll need a standard cookie press to make them. If you don’t have [...]
Buttery Greek Apple Tart
Fall is coming. Boston’s been on the cold side. The stores are starting to fill up with back-to-school supplies. This means one thing to me: Apple-picking season is on its way. And I couldn’t be happier. I have a handful of apple recipes I love. Here’s one of my favorites. It’s amazingly simple to make—and [...]
Old-Fashioned Pasta Salad
This is one of those recipes that’s better the next day. And even better the one after. It’s a good base pasta salad recipe, so you can add anything else that you want to it (little bits of crispy bacon, other veggies, different kinds of cheese), but I think it’s perfect as is. Old Fashioned [...]
Infuse Your Booze: Making Fruit-Flavored Liquors
Fresh fruit + vodka = summer in a glass, all year round. I’ve been making fruit-infused liquors for about 10 years. I get it from my mother, who makes jars of lemon verbena liquor and blackberry brandy (and amazing Irish Cream in the winter). I know the whole fruit infusion thing has been done to [...]
Cream-Cheese Frosting
This is another one from my mother. It’s just the right kind of tangy frosting to top any kind of apple or carrot cake. It’s also really good on chocolate cake. I always make this a few hours before I’m going to want to use it, since it stiffens up quite a bit in the [...]
Crunchy Kosher Pickles
Seeing as it’s summer, here are the pickles I remember from my childhood. They’re the perfect complement to any BBQ. They’re really crispy, and have just the right amount of bite that they don’t overwhelm whatever you eat them with. Mom’s Kosher Pickles 4 lbs. pickling cukes 1/4 cup salt 8 cups water 5 cloves [...]
Perfectly Melty Fondue
I love cheese. Melted cheese is even better. Melted cheese on bread is about as close to heaven as I think I can get. I’m also very much an 8-year-old at heart, and love food that’s fun to eat. This is the fondue that my mom used to make when I was a kid. After [...]
Blueberry Buckle
This is the blueberry buckle I grew up on. According to Epicurious.com, a buckle is a cake where the batter rises above the fruit, “buckling it” while it cooks. It’s a really quick and simple cake to make. A note on fruit If you use whole, fresh blueberries, you’ll get a nice white cake studded [...]
Crab Rangoon Dip
Crab rangoons have to be one of the best appetizers ever made. (In fact, we probably have one of the only dogs on the planet who comes running when offered one.) My mother’s hot crab dip is basically a dippified version of a crab rangoon filling. It’s amazing with fresh crab—or canned (so shoot me, [...]
