baking

Baked Pandoro French Toast

January 13, 2013

It’s not often I have leftover Pandoro. Everyone in my family loves it so it doesn’t last long. I still have a clear image in my mind of my son at age 1, toddling around in a blue and white striped one-piece thingie with a sailboat on it, clutching a giant piece of Pandoro in [...]

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Dicembre Dolce: Cherry Republic Biscotti

December 2, 2012

There is more than one way to slice biscotti. There are at least sixty. Or there will be when I’m through with them. Which is a roundabout way of saying I’ve just started work on a new book project. Subject: Biscotti. It won’t be an exhaustive project ~ just a fun little homage to one [...]

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Strawberry-Apricot Pie

June 20, 2012

I hope they have health food in Dublin and strawberry apricot pie If they don’t have those things in Dublin we’ll probably die For years—decades—I have wanted to make this pie. Strawberry-apricot pie. Ever since I first heard those three words strung together in the song “The Troubles” by The Roches. This was back in 1979 or [...]

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A Favorite Cake to Welcome the New Year

January 3, 2012

Buon Anno a tutti! Happy New Year. As I sit here writing and thinking about the year ahead, I am (literally) surrounded by the past. During the Christmas break, my husband and I decided to start a long-overdue project to clean and reorganize our basement. So far, we have said farewell to five huge bins [...]

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Dicembre Dolce: La Cicerchiata

December 20, 2011

Fabulous photo by France Ruffenach for Chronicle Books Fried dough pellets glued together with honey to form a ring. That, in essence, is la cicerchiata, a traditional dessert from Italy’s Abruzzo region. There is nothing subtle or sophisticated about it. And yet, it is impossible to resist. Here is what will happen if you set [...]

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Dicembre Dolce {Sweet December}

December 4, 2011

Photo by Maren Caruso, from Williams-Sonoma Rustic Italian (2011, Weldon-Owen) I do not have a sweet tooth. Nine times out of ten I will choose a second helping of pasta over dessert.

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The Family Dish: Coffee-Spiked Banana Bread

October 6, 2011

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post’s All We Can Eat Blog) The bananas in the fruit bowl always seem to ripen faster than we can eat them. Personally, I like a slightly overripe banana, one with lots of brown speckles on the skin. But once the ratio of yellow to speckle tips in [...]

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Stendhal Syndrome, Farmers’ Market Fever, and a Rustic Fruit Crostata

July 21, 2011

Years ago when I was a newspaper reporter, I came across a wire story that described a rare, peculiar illness. It seemed that certain sensitive souls, upon being exposed to the glorious art of the High Renaissance, were so overcome by the beauty before them that they literally went mad and had to be carted [...]

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Spirals (Cookbook Appreciation)

April 11, 2011

Something odd happened Friday night. I found myself, at about 9:00, alone in a quiet kitchen. My daughter was at a sleepover and my husband was working late. My 14-year-old son, who had deigned to stick around for our take-out Chinese dinner and a DVR’d episode of The Office, had retreated to his cave room. [...]

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Chocolate Hearts and a Cookbook Appreciation

February 11, 2011

Eight or nine years ago I took a cookbook writing class at L’Academie de Cuisine, in Bethesda. I don’t know what prompted me to sign up for it; I never imagined I would be writing a cookbook. Writing cookbooks was for people like Julia Child and Jacques Pepin and Marcella Hazan; certainly not for a [...]

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