Many people probably used Passover as an opportunity to diet, cut out the carbs and sweets for a week, eat more salad. I concocted two different types of flourless brownies and made ice cream sundaes with them every night.

This is something you need to make, like, tonight or this weekend. It’s the cake that, when it’s on the menu, just has to be ordered, even in the face of more exciting options (not to say that you can’t then order two desserts). It’s gimmicky, to be sure, and not unlike a filet mignon: [...]

I am super in love with these. You can eat one for breakfast. You can have one for a snack. You can warm one up (or not) for dessert and top it with a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream. You can pick one up and eat it like a slice of pizza (over [...]

These rugelach would’ve been a lot better if only I’d remembered how much I dislike orange marmalade and used another jam instead, like apricot. Or strawberry, even. Marmalade is so bitter! Is it just me? Also, the recipe made two to three times more filling than was needed, which I realized early on, and yet [...]

Another holiday season and cookies continue to frustrate and underwhelm me. Like why didn’t these bake up with a crinkle top as they were supposed to? Did I underbake them? (No.) Overbake them? (I don’t think so.) Scoop them too small? (Would that make a difference?) Bake them while the dough was too cold? Not [...]

Plural puddings because these are baked in a muffin tin so as to be individually sized. But don’t kid yourself; you’ll have at least two in a sitting and yes, that is a threat. The two of us devoured two thirds of these before I fed the remaining third to the garbage can upon the [...]

After a day like today, it’s difficult to be excited about mere chocolate spelt cookies. I made baked yeast doughnuts at work, and they exceeded expectations. They were huge and totally ridiculous looking, shaped more like blobby amoeba bagels than doughnuts but hey, that was part of their charm. (At least that’s what I’m telling [...]

I keep looking at this picture and thinking this piece of cake is evil. You see the beady eyes and pointy nose and tongue too, right? I’m not crazy. Anyway, here’s something embarrassing: before this crumb cake, I’d never cooked with rhubarb. I was always sort of afraid of it and now I know why! [...]

I’d had my eye on these brownies for a while. Since Valentine’s Day, to be precise, when I thought of making them but ultimately chickened out because the absence of butter made me too nervous. Instead, I made Melissa Clark’s other brownie recipe, which is magnificently awesome, my current favorite. These brownies were never far [...]

Polvorones (from polvo, the Spanish word for dust), are soft and crumbly Spanish shortbread cookies popular in Spain and Latin America during Christmastime. The Mexican version, traditionally served at weddings and celebrations, is also known as a Mexican wedding cookie. Cinco de Mayo falls into the “celebration” category, right? Flashbacks of dark bars, oversize margaritas, [...]

A couple weeks ago we went to visit the husband’s fam. There was a barbecue, and I was in charge of bringing dessert. (And what’s new with you?) I needed something easily transportable, something I could make a couple days in advance and that I knew would keep well, even improve with age, and so [...]

Well, it seems I’ve met my match: a dessert so ridiculously rich I can barely stomach it. I’ve only been able to eat this cake in the thinnest possible slivers, and only then with a generous dollop of fresh whipped cream to temper the intensity of the chocolate. I’ve gone back for a second sliver [...]

What feels like a million years ago I made these mini cupcakes for Natalie’s birthday. They were basically her birthday present last year in mini cupcake form. Except without the cookie dough component. Dammit. I realized too late that I probably should’ve filled some of the cupcakes with cookie dough, and I hope she’ll forgive [...]

Dammit dammit dammit. I hate bundt pans. Never again. I’m getting rid of mine, does anyone want it?? I’ve been a little burnt out, yes even though I just got back from vacation, and I wasn’t going to make anything for St. Patrick’s Day. Instead, I was going to lamely refer you to last year’s [...]

A few posts ago I briefly mentioned a blood orange olive oil cake that I made and loved two years ago but that disappointed me when I made it this year because the oranges I bought were bitter. I was turned off to blood oranges for a few weeks, but I eventually had to give [...]

Remember when Gourmet folded and finished out the remainder of our subscriptions with issues of Bon Appetit? Well this is the one recipe I took away from that short-lived Bon Appetit subscription. (I declined to continue it but for some reason have had this intense longing for food magazines lately and so I might reconsider. It’ll [...]

Melissa Clark just published a recipe for Olive Oil and Coconut Brownies and in the accompanying write-up talks about how, when it comes to dessert, her husband is perfectly content as long as chocolate features prominently, preferably in the form of chewy dark brownies, and about how well this works out for her since she’d [...]

Today is special. Do you know what it is?

Don’t be afraid! You’ve come to a happy place. Although I get why you might be wary and confused, because why on earth am I making gluten-free vegan cookies? Well. I have this gig where I test recipes from upcoming cookbooks, which I’ve mentioned before, and when my editor (I love saying that, “my editor”) gave me [...]

Really, Dale? You burned the cookies? What are you, some sort of amateur? You don’t even want to know how many times I’ve berated myself for this. There’s almost nothing worse than overcooking cookies. It’s a terribly disappointing thing. So yes, I burned the edges of some of these cookies, resulting in uniformly crisp cookies as [...]

I realize that complaining about the weather is the most boringest thing ever, but gosh darn it, this is the coldest, most horrendous winter ever, and no, I don’t say that every year. On the contrary, I am a self-professed winter lover who finds the cold air invigorating and the falling snow throat-catchingly beautiful, and [...]

No one wants to look at cookies right now, I know I know I know. It’s officially diet and exercise season. But I suspect that some peoples’ resolutions for the new year included being more organized, planning ahead, and procrastinating less, and so this is how I’ll spin the macaroons: it’s never too early to [...]

When I was little, my nickname for my father’s mother was “Rum Ball Grandma” because of these sweet little bombs of rum-spiked chocolate she’d make. There seemed to always be a cache of them in the freezer, and they were my favorite thing to eat at her house, in addition to the See’s lollipops and [...]

Well. Hello there. The plan was to post this bunch of cookie recipes in the week before Christmas. That obviously didn’t happen. I got a little busy. A lot busy. As I’m sure many of you did in those frenzied days leading up to Saturday. Fortunately for everyone, cookies can be made and eaten year-round! [...]

We went to the husband’s side of the family’s Thanksgiving this year and so I didn’t have the privilege of tasting these amaaazing oaty chocolate caramel bars that my brother’s girlfriend brought for dessert. My mother and sister were positively gushing about how sinful they were, so I had to get the recipe and make [...]

Just in time for the first icy blast of winter (not the current one, mind you, but the first one that hit about two weeks ago), I made this tropical pie. Not making this pie was never an option. When I first saw the recipe, I got superexcited and mentally bookmarked it for the winter, [...]

A month ago or a couple months ago or something (I’ve sorta lost track of time) I hired a web designer person to help me redesign the blog. When Nick and I had our preliminary meeting, he confessed to me that he was tinkering with homemade beet ice cream. I think it goes without saying [...]

Probably all of you remember my little rant on Halloween about wishing I could stay home and make homemade candy bars instead of going out. I went to the party that night, but I promised that the homemade candy bars would happen, and when I promise something, I deliver, even if no one could give [...]

It’s been a whole week since my last post, and there’s really no excuse for it. Still, I’ll give you three. First and foremost, my recent, too-brief state of funemployment has come to a jolting end, and I am now working what feels like an exorbitant amount of hours at a physically exhausting job that [...]

So you know how a recipe calls for 1 cup pumpkin puree, so you open a can of pumpkin, then you have like almost a cup left over, and so you find another pumpkin recipe so you can use up the leftover pumpkin, but it calls for a whole can of pumpkin, so you have [...]

I fell in love with this dessert when I made it for the first time last fall because it is so frickin’ weird. It’s like nothing you’ve ever tasted before. The top is like a crusty meringue but better because whole eggs are used, not just the whites. Underneath the crackly top is a sweet, [...]

I had this brief moment of panic yesterday when I realized I hadn’t made anything special for Halloween. I considered ditching my friend’s party last night, sending the husband out by himself to deliver the message that I needed to stay home to make homemade versions of candy bars, like Twix or Whatchamacallits, so I [...]

Sometimes I don’t have anything particularly illuminating to say about a recipe but I really like the photos. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of some baby pear porn, so here goes.

In the process of deciding whether or not I liked these cookies, I ate about 30 of them. I asked the husband for help: “What do you think of the cookies?” “They’re good.” “Are they pumpkiny?” “Yeah.” I eventually decided I liked them, the main reason being that they got better as time went on, [...]

In addition to lying in bed at night dreaming up ice cream flavors, I’ve now been contemplating cake pops as well, how frickin adorable they are, how the woman who popularized them is so ingenious. I’ve never considered myself a “crafty” person in the kitchen, although I did make some penis-shaped cookies for a bris once [...]

I made challah for Kol Nidre, which I know was an embarrassingly long time ago, don’t even try to calculate it. And believe you me, it hasn’t been easy to keep this to myself for so long. This was my first time making challah! It was really exciting. So why did I wait so long [...]

If chocolate-covered pretzels are so amazing in ice cream, then it should logically follow that they’re also great in cookies, right? Of course they are. And since I was adding a salty element I thought it only fair to add something extra sweet: butterscotch chips. Hence chocopretzelscotch. Pretty clever, huh? Came up with that one [...]

Rich Vanilla Bean, Peanut Butter with Chocolate-Covered Pretzels and Peanut Butter Cups, Raspberry Swirl with Vienna Fingers No matter how many different ice cream flavors I churn out, the husband remains loyal to his all-time favorite: vanilla. So lame. Who is he? True, this vanilla ice cream is incredible. Super smooth, intensely rich and creamy, [...]

In the midst of making this cake, I realized that I’d never made a layer cake from scratch before. How embarrassing! And it was so impressive looking and fun to frost that I started thinking I have got to do this more often. Why on earth not? It wasn’t until I actually cut into the [...]

What kind of a place would the world be without brownies stop. It’s too terrible to contemplate. Seriously, though, what would I have done following the disappointment of those stuffed peppers if I didn’t have these babies to pop immediately into my mouth, one after the other? After the other. After the other. And people [...]

Baklava. Perfect for Rosh Hashanah and yet I’ve never seen it made. I can speculate as to why. It’s a pain in the arse and, not to generalize, most of the Jewish women I’m acquainted with do not concentrate their efforts on desserts. Their energy instead goes into more worthy causes: chicken soup, brisket, stuffed cabbage, [...]

And it was at this moment that I started snickering and called the husband into the kitchen to ask him what these looked like, and he took a cupcake and put it under his butt and made a farting noise and presented it to me and we both started cracking up and I named these [...]

Don’t mess with perfection. We all know the adage. And yet we defy it. Did I actually think I could improve upon the hallowed almond cake? Am I delusional? Yes, and apparently yes. It started with a recipe for a citrus-almond poundcake that I nearly shat myself over because it sounded so similar to the [...]

Tonight I’m off to the land of milk and honey and falafel and hummus for probably the longest vacation I’ve ever taken. Yes, in an attempt to prevent any sort of unnecessary widespread panic, I am telling you very last minute. But don’t worry. It’s going to be fine. In a perfect world, I would’ve [...]

Before I give you the backstory on this one, I must gush and rave. This cake is f*ing amazing. It is sooo f*ing good. Good enough to necessitate expletives, Dale? Really? Hell f*ing yes! If I ever write a cookbook or open a restaurant, this cake will surely be featured. It is just so delicious. Nothing fancy, [...]

Does blue cheese-honey ice cream sound good to you? Take a moment to think about it. It could be good, no? You may be a little skeptical, but you’d try it, wouldn’t you? It’s got the sweet, it’s got the savory, and ooh, it would probably be very nice drizzled with honey and topped with some [...]

So, I recently went through two very exciting major lifestyle changes, the first of which has absolutely nothing to do with this cake, the second of which has everything to do with it: 1. I am now an official Jewess (yes, I had to go in the mikvah; no, the rabbi didn’t see me naked); 2. [...]

Do you need a Fourth of July dessert recipe? Pies are quintessential, but maybe not the most convenient for serving as they can get a bit messy (mine do, at least). Here’s your solution: blueberry crumb pie in bar form, individually portioned. They can be cut into tiny two-bite rectangles or more substantial squares. A dollop of fresh [...]

I’d been meaning to get this recipe for over a month, my little bag of recently purchased Spelt flour sitting in the back of the cabinet waiting to contribute itself to this odd experiment of a cake. The book this recipe is from, Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours, by Kim Boyce, has garnered [...]

Unsatisfied (duh) by the recent raspberry sorbet, I was sitting in front of my computer the other night idly musing over what my next ice cream flavor should be, and (I wasn’t even looking for a recipe) this just popped out at me. I took it as a sign. I got up from my chair that instant, checked my spice [...]