From the category archives:

Christmas Baking

Santa Bread

by Laura 24 December 2010

It’s Christmas Eve morning and, as usual, I’m so excited I can’t sleep. I usually get up before 5:00 every year, and when my Honey Girl and my Sweet Boy were little ones they were up with me, too, waiting for my Dear Husband. We would gallop around the house before we started shaping the [...]

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Coconut Macaroons

by Laura 14 December 2010

If you like coconut and you’ve never made macaroons, you must make some. One bowl, one spoon, three ingredients—and 30 minutes from start to finish, including baking time, dishes, and wiping down the kitchen. They are crispy at the edges where the coconut is toasty, and tender chewy on the inside. Many macaroon recipes call [...]

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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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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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