Recipes – SIP, SAVOUR, & SEE

There are probably too many chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. Really. I mean who does not have one (or three???) that they love? There is the Nestlé Tollhouse Recipe, which I grew up on, and I also remember the giant saucer-sized cookies we would pick up from bakeries in New York City. My mother ran a gourmet food store in the 1980s, and there were endless amounts of chocolate chip cookies and mocha chip cookies. I remember sneaking into the basement of her store, going into the walk-in freezer with a spoon, and eating raw cookie dough from the…

Steevy’s Granola

April 12, 2019

Granola…the first time I remember making it in earnest I was in our apartment in Boston’s South End (USA) mixing together a batch for one of my closest and dearest friends, Steevy. The flavor combinations turned out to be a success, and since then I have been experimenting with various flavor and texture combinations – sweet, salty, spicy, savory, etc. To me, the perfect granola is a combination of flavors all jumbled together with a mixture of crunch and softness. It should not be overly sweet, and it should have a hint of salt. The entire bite should not be…

Recipes

Salted Caramel Cheesecake

October 13, 2012

There is something intensely comforting about baking the things I did in Boston right here, in Abu Dhabi. Sometimes finding all of the right ingredients poses a bit of a challenge (I have yet to find buttermilk, but Laban is a good substitute) however I let these challenges take my cooking and baking in a new and more exciting direction. Several years ago around the time of the Kentucky Derby I baked a Bourbon Cheesecake with Bourbon Caramel for the top. I have not made a cheescake since then, but we recently had pounds of cream cheese left over from…

Recipes

Boozed Up Citrus Cornmeal Cake

August 20, 2012

I know – maybe the name of the cake should be a bit more refined… but really, that is exactly what kind of cake I made. It is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Orange Cornmeal Cake, which I made for my husband several years ago. Since I first made that cake he has talked about it to friends on several occassions. Even when I first made it, I boozed it up a bit. When it came out of the oven I poured a generous amount of Grand Marnier over the top as the cake cooled. The result was, well, pretty damn…

Recipes

Plain Vanilla

July 13, 2012

When asked whether I want chocolate or vanilla, I tend to choose vanilla. There is something undeniabley wonderful about the simplicity of the flavor. Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate, and I have small pieces of dark chocolate every single day. However, vanilla is often overlooked. When we first moved to the UAE I have a hard time finding vanilla extract. Sure, there was imitation vanilla, and I could find vanilla flavouring on the shelves of every grocery store and hypermarket. But vanilla extract was no where to be seen. It then dawned on me that it contained alcohol.…

Recipes

Buns in the oven…

April 8, 2012

Sticky buns that is. I grew up around these sweet, sticky, decadent delights. My father makes amazing sticky buns – he always has and he always will. I remember one Christmas morning after he spent several hours in the kitchen mixing, waiting, mixing, and baking, when he placed what seemed liked hundreds of sticky buns in several baskets. We all wanted to drive up to Boston to be with my grandparents, but he insisted on spreading early morning Christmas cheer (in the form of sticky buns) to our neighbors. He walked up the road dropping off the baskets to the…

Recipes

Done in by Dates

January 21, 2012

I have put up a recipe of this kind before – I promise you. But I keep going back to it, because the ingredients are entirely too easy to get in this part of the world – that would be the Middle East. In the summer people are often seen underneath date trees with large tarps – someone climbs up the tree and throws down the sun-soaked sweet dates. As a child I never liked dates. They were hard and too sugary, and I picked them out of granola and cereal on a regular basis. Then I started liking them,…

Recipes

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

November 22, 2011

There are countless recipes for chocolate chip cookies – everyone seems to have their favorite, and of course there is the great debate over chewy or crispy. I have always loved chocolate chip cookies, and truth be told, I have never EVER met anyone who did not like them. They come in all shapes and sizes and textures as well. I remember driving around in the summer as a child and eating Famous Amos cookies from the brown bags they came in. There was something delectable about that crunch from such a small cookie. The very first time I had…

Recipes

Khalifa City Carrot Cake

November 9, 2011

One of the best things about carrot cake is the frosting – the cream cheese frosting that is sweet with just the right amount of tang to it. I also use the same frosting for red velvet cupcakes, and it has been known to disappear on it own – right from the bowl spoonful by spoonful. I think the trick to the cream cheese frosting is to use less sugar than the recipe calls for, a small pinch of salt, a little bit of milk to smooth it out, and some vanilla to bring out all the flavors. Five simple…

Recipes

Browned Butter Brownies – with a catch

October 17, 2011

Cooking in the UAE is a bit of a challenge for me. Read thru this blog, and it is not hard to find out why. Recipes like Bourbon Caramel Cheesecake, Chocolate Cake with Rum Buttercream, or Boozed Up Banana Bread, well they are fine, and really really good, but they are not necessarily the kind of thing I could make here and bring to someone’s home, unless of course I knew for sure that I would not offend. You might ask why? Why would it matter? Alcohol. That is why it matters. It is against Islam to consume alcohol, and that means that…