From the category archives:

Recipes for Christmas

Salted Peanut White Chocolate Lollipops

by Laura 12 December 2010

These sweet lollipops are so easy to make it’s a little silly. You pipe melted chocolate into molds, pop in a stick, and, well, that’s it! Last year I made them with dark chocolate flavored with mint extract. This year I decided to try white chocolate with chopped salted peanuts. I think white chocolate deserves [...]

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Lavender Blueberry Pear Pâté de Fruits

by Laura 12 December 2010

I first had pâté de fruits in France when I was in college. My Dear Husband and I, then dating, rented a car in Calais with no plan and no reservations except for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and set off to wander for a month. It was pure bliss. Our little rented Renault puttered [...]

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Rosewater-scented Turkish Delight

by Laura 10 December 2010

Proust’s madeleine, Charles Arrowby’s toast, Edmund’s enchanted Turkish Delight. Don’t you love a character with a penchant for a particular food? I first made Turkish Delight for my Honey Girl and my Sweet Boy years ago when we were reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I was more interested in the candy than [...]

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Dark Chocolate Caramels with Smoked Sea Salt

by Laura 9 December 2010

I’ve made caramel for many years now, but when I saw this recipe in the December, 2006 issue of Gourmet magazine I had a feeling it would become a staple in our Christmas candy repertoire. It has. I make it every year now, and it gets a lot of wows. Salted candy has been trendy [...]

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Tangerine-scented Cranberry Pistachio Tiles

by Laura 8 December 2010

The whole house smells of tangerines this morning. When my Dear Husband staggered into the kitchen in his bathrobe for a first cup of coffee, his eyes widened and he asked me how I’d managed to make the house smell so good so early. I had gotten up before the sun to bake, and the [...]

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Vanilla Cheesecake with Fresh Lingonberries and Cardamom Whipped Cream

by Laura 6 December 2010

Our Honey Girl’s Mr. Right’s parents (Are you still with me?) visited us this past weekend from Alabama. It was Mr. Right’s dad’s birthday, and I had it on good authority that a cheesecake would be something that would make the birthday boy happy. Since they were visiting from the South, I thought it would [...]

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Almond Danish Kugelhopf

by Laura 4 December 2010

Making puff pastry is no picnic. The butter has to be the same temperature as the dough. You have to be pretty stellar with a rolling pin. And, at least for me until I’m more practiced, it’s not always a pretty picture. This recipe uses a fake-out puff pastry, which you make by leaving bean-sized [...]

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Cream Caramels

by Laura 2 December 2010

Sometimes my recipe notes are a little amusing. I usually scribble as I’m cooking and over a number of years, my sheets of paper can become quite a mess. Being stuffed into a bursting-at-the-seams ring binder doesn’t help. After twelve years of making this caramel, there is a lot of scratch to sort out. So, [...]

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Chocolate Fudge with Walnuts

by Laura 24 November 2010

I have it in my head that I like fudge. I mean, shouldn’t I like fudge? So when we are traveling and I see a fudge shop, we usually pop in and buy a little slab or two. I’m inevitably disappointed. All the fudge I’ve tasted is grainy, overly sweet, and has the texture of [...]

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Grandma Fladeboe’s Ginger Cookies

by Laura 21 November 2010

My grandparents’ kitchen was the happiest place in my childhood. I spent a lot of time there, especially the year my parents were busy building a house themselves. Cousins from Ireland, Hillary and Camilla, were staying, too, and they taught me Gaelic, words and phrases and childhood rhymes, which I still remember. We had lots [...]

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Orange Flower Water Pound Cake with Candied Orange Peel & Rum and Orange Liqueur Glaze

by Laura 19 November 2010

This is definitely an egg-before-chicken recipe, but sometimes those are the most fun. I made too much glaze for my Pfeffernusse the other day (recipe here), and it was too good to just throw away, so I decided to dream up another vehicle for its sticky yummy-ness. I’ve been baking a lot of cookies, so [...]

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