From the category archives:

Recipes for Winter

An Understated Chocolate Cake

by Laura 29 June 2012

This cake has been part of our repertoire for more than a decade; I bet I’ve made it more than 20 times now. It’s from an era when I still cooked and baked from recipes, and one of the rare ones I still pull off the shelf. I make other chocolate cakes, of course, but [...]

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The Lazy Man’s Banoffee Pie

by Laura 27 May 2012

While my Honey Girl and I were on our way from Connemara to Dublin to see my Sweet Boy’s choir perform at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in April, the kind of trip that breezes past, carried by enthusiasm for the event to come, we desperately needed to stop. As we were driving through a nameless town, [...]

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Baby Barmbracks with Sherry

by Laura 9 May 2012

My Honey Girl and I spent the first week of April together in Ireland. Beneath a cornflower blue sky and tucked into the soft Connemara mountains, celadon in sunlight, black in shadow, we settled into the Cashel House where Mrs. McEvilly and her soft-spoken staff surrounded us with their incomparable care, tucking hot water bottles [...]

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Pink Grapefruit Curd with Honey

by Laura 14 April 2012

This pink grapefruit curd is buttery and silky and pleasantly piquant with a strong note of honey. Eat it smeared on toast, biscuits, or scones; stirred into plain yogurt or oatmeal or porridge; rolled up in a jellyroll or between cake layers; or piped into plain cookies. Share This: Recommend on FacebookShare on PinterestShare with [...]

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Italian Cream Cake

by Laura 21 March 2012

Work is so engrossing for me that, when my Sweet Boy is away, I often realize I am sitting in total darkness, the sun has set, the black sky has swallowed up the day, and the moon has appeared out my window. The television set in my neighbor’s window flickers across the way and lights [...]

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Simple, Perfect Roast Chicken

by Laura 3 March 2012

Cheesemaker Jodi Ohlsen Reed asked me about myself when I first met her. I was nervous, writing about a local gem in Minnesota, my first such piece, and I didn’t expect to talk about myself. I think I said something about it all being a blur, which is not what I meant to say, or [...]

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Lefse

by Laura 2 March 2012

It’s thirteen degrees here this morning. The young pines are bending under the weight of heavy, wet snow, threatening to break, and the tall shrubs are splayed out like snow-covered wreaths strewn along the pathway I’ve shoveled to the house. Annie, our little terrier, thinks the snow is a platform across the patio out back; [...]

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Braised Lamb Shanks

by Laura 1 March 2012

My grandma was a letter writer. I have sheaves of her letters, all typed and on thin, pale green paper. They detail the buses she took, and in what weather, to the bank, to Mass, to help with the church rummage sale; the breakfasts and lunches and dinners she ate—toast with butter or peanut butter, [...]

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Apple and Lingonberry Upside Down Coffee Cake

by Laura 21 February 2012

It’s been a pallid winter. I don’t mind. The fog that’s wrapped the house today is lovely and soft and has lingered nearly ‘til midday. And the mild temperatures have made everything here easier. I can scamper out to the chicken house in my nightgown and bare feet, across the bit of dry land under [...]

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Midnight {triple chocolate} Cookies

by Laura 14 February 2012

This triple chocolate, slice-and-bake cookie is made with black cocoa, raw cacao nibs, and ground dark chocolate. It’s chewy with just a little crunch from a roll in turbinado sugar. The ultra-Dutched cocoa, dark chocolate, and raw cacao give the cookie great depth. If you don’t want to hunt down or special order ingredients, substitute [...]

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Feather Pillow Pancakes with Warm Lingonberries

by Laura 21 January 2012

My Honey Girl flew back to college tonight. Everywhere now, throughout the house, there are reminders of her, and of our last week together: a scarf hanging to dry after a walk in the snow, boots tossed in the hallway, the last blueberry pancake from our breakfast this morning wrapped in foil in the refrigerator, [...]

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