Category Archives: dessert

Blueberry & Golden Plum Pie + A Giveaway!

8 August 2015 by local kitchen

This post is in partnership with MightyNest, the online retailer with a positive mission: providing the natural, organic, and non-toxic products that families seek for their homes while also giving back to schools. MightyNest is sponsoring the giveaway and provided a set of the materials to me for use in this post. This recipe started out as a cherry pie. An open-faced, glazed cherry pie, in fact. To which I added some lovely little golden plums of the I-can’t-resist variety […]

Categories: baking, berries, dessert, pastry, pie, plums, summer, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, berries, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes

Mini Rhubarb Pie

13 June 2015 by local kitchen

Mini pie! Though they can be a bit tough to find, I love my mini, 7-inch pie plates. I have two, actually: one in the classic heron pattern used by Tai’s Uncle Charlie at Hog Bay Pottery, and one deep-dish 7-inch by Emile Henry that I snagged years ago at a little shop in Bedford Village. And they are not so mini, really: a quarter of the pie is still a hefty serving, and with ice cream the pie could […]

Categories: baking, dessert, pie, rhubarb, spring, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes, rhubarb

Blueberry Meyer Lemon Cake

8 May 2015 by local kitchen

See that cake up there? That was my breakfast. No one, including me, should try to tell you that cake is a nutritious option for breakfast – there is plenty of butter and sugar in there, after all, and those two aren’t exactly nutrient dense. Strangely enough, however, despite my rather non-nutritionally-stellar breakfast, I haven’t “crashed” this afternoon (fiber in whole grains delays absorption of simple carbohydrates and prevents spikes in insulin), I have managed to perform complex mathematical equations […]

Categories: baking, berries, breakfast, cake, citrus, dessert, snack, spring, summer, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Oatmeal Cookies with Molasses & Bacon Fat

8 March 2015 by local kitchen

Bacon fat. In cookies. Why I have never done this before? It seems so obvious, especially with a cast of characters that is comfortable with the savory side of life: eggs, butter, flour, oats. I’m surely not the first person to think of this, as a quick Google will show you, but it seems it took the never-ending winter of 2015 to push me into Bacon Fat Cookieland. For that, my friends, we must offer up thanks. Thanks for the […]

Categories: baking, chocolate, dessert, nuts, snack, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes

Whole Wheat Citrus Cookies

29 January 2015 by local kitchen

Winter, and especially “historically epic” snow storms that are a total bust, requires citrus. And cookies. Or maybe the best of both worlds: citrus cookies. Now a glazed lemon cookie is hardly revolutionary. There are already 62 million recipes (no, really!) out there in the wide, wide world. But a couple of things make these cookies a bit unique: first, I made them with whole wheat flour. And that doesn’t mean that I added a ¼ cup of whole wheat flour […]

Categories: citrus, dessert, snack, whole wheat flour, winter • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Pumpkin Chocolate Marbled Bundt Cake + A Giveaway!

29 October 2014 by local kitchen

This post is in partnership with MightyNest, the online retailer with a positive mission: providing the natural, organic, and non-toxic products that families seek for their homes while also giving back to schools. MightyNest is sponsoring the giveaway and provided a set of the materials to me for review. Teflon in cookware is a bad idea: we don’t really need to debate this, right? When heated (which cookware occasionally is, cough), Teflon coatings on nonstick cookware can release a toxic […]

Categories: baking, cake, chocolate, dessert, fall, whole wheat flour, winter squash • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, dessert, food, giveaway, local, pumpkin, recipes

Kami’s Birthday Cake 2014

10 April 2014 by local kitchen

I loved this cake. I loved its perfectly imperfect messy abandon. I loved its sweet-tart Meyer cloud cream, made with the very last of my Meyer lemon stash, and generously dolloped between layers of cake. I loved those layers of cake: orange-zest-spiked, tender and moist, perfectly flat. I loved the droopy, thick & luscious cream cheese icing, made a glorious pinky-purple with a reduced beet purée, and I loved the finishing touch, a light sprinkle of homemade orange sugar, for […]

Categories: baking, cake, citrus, dessert, holiday, spring, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, recipes

Orange Chiffon Cake

4 April 2014 by local kitchen

April: it is the cruelest month. My feed is full of asparagus and cherry blossoms and daffodils and tulips and strawberries and and and…. we’ve got nothing. Nothing. Nary a bud on the forsythia nor a peeping green shoot in the soil. Spring is coming: the snow is gone, temps have been in the 50’s and 60’s, we’ve even taken the extra quilt off of the bed(!), but – it doesn’t seem to be coming as quickly here as it […]

Categories: baking, cake, citrus, dessert, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, food, local, recipes

Grapefruit & Walnut Tart

16 February 2014 by local kitchen

I’m having a tiny love affair with Johnny Weir & Tara Lipinski right now; their figure skating commentary has been one of the bright spots of these Olympics in Sochi and their Instagram feeds (including the combined @taraandjohnny feed) are not to be missed. I love the Olympics, but I loathe the 5:1 ratio of commercials and talking-head noise to actual sporting moments that dominates prime-time. The daytime coverage has, in general, been much more about sport and much less […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, citrus, dessert, winter • Tags: baking, cooking, dessert, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Use It or Lose It! Finnish Jam Tarts

9 December 2013 by local kitchen

My great-grandfather emigrated from Finland. From which area of the country, I have no idea, since talking about our roots is not something that we really do in my family. Despite the fact that I remember him (although I thought, as a child of 3 or so, that he was my grandmother’s husband, not her father: there’s no difference between 60 and 80 years old when you are a kid, I guess), I know very little about him, save his […]

Categories: baking, dessert, holiday, Use it or Lose it!, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, cookies, cooking, food, holiday, local, recipes

Use It or Lose It! Jam & Almond Crumb Bars

5 November 2013 by local kitchen

A few weeks ago, in the midst of birthday and anniversary celebrations, rock climbing, hiking and mountain biking excursions, and all around amazing-Fall-weather craziness, Tai & I went to a house party hosted by one of his colleagues and fellow rock climbing guides up in the Gunks. It was sort of a potluck, with friends requested to bring either a dessert or a side dish; Tai brags about my cooking to these guys all the time, so of course I […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, dessert, jams, nuts, snack, Use it or Lose it!, whole wheat flour, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, jam, local, quick & easy, recipes

Sweet Cherry, Rhubarb & Meyer Lemon Pie (with a lattice top)

30 August 2013 by local kitchen

“Grief,” I said to my good friend Karen, “makes people crazy.” That was back in December, when Karen’s Mom had just passed away, and as she had been for many years the charismatic matriarch of a large Irish clan, friends, relatives and neighbors were pouring in from all over the country for the wake and funeral services. And, inevitably, making crazy demands, asking inappropriate questions, offering unsolicited advice. Why? Because grief makes people crazy. It’s a horrible thing, grief: it […]

Categories: baking, cherries, dessert, pastry, pie, rhubarb, spring, summer, year round • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, pie, recipes

Santa Rosa Plum & Almond Tart

28 June 2013 by local kitchen

Have you had Santa Rosa plums? They’re a deep purple-black when ripe, with a blood-red interior and tangy, tart flesh. The aroma when they are perfectly ripe is indescribable: rich, floral, spicy, earthy. Amazing. Plums are not quite on the scene yet in New York; I was lucky enough to receive a small box of them in the mail from the lovely Karen of Lemon Ladies Orchard in California (along with a jar of her Santa Rosa plum jam, which […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, dessert, plums, summer • Tags: baking, cooking, dessert, food, local, plums, quick & easy, recipes, summer

Rhubarb Crumble with Ginger & Meyer Lemon

13 May 2013 by local kitchen

There’s a great conversation going on over at the Facebook page today, centered on this vastly irritating op-ed in the New York Times stating that it is “nearly impossible for a single parent or even two parents working full time to cook every meal from scratch.” Let’s set aside the fact that people without kids, married or single, can find themselves too busy to cook just as often as their child-rearing friends, and focus on the real problem with the piece: […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, dessert, oats, rhubarb, spring, whole wheat flour • Tags: cooking, dessert, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Rangpur Lime Tequila Bars

25 March 2013 by local kitchen

Using a cookbook is like dating: you get attracted by an aesthetically pleasing cover, spend 5 or 10 minutes checking it out, and then, almost on a whim, you bring it home. During that first recipe, you’re tentative, accommodating: trying to stay within safe boundaries, do it his (or her) way. A couple of recipes in, you’re ready to assert yourself: “No, that’s way too much sugar,” or “Boil for how long?” After about a half a dozen times together, most […]

Categories: baking, citrus, dessert, eggs, whole wheat flour, wine, beer & liquor, winter • Tags: baking, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes, winter