Category Archives: Recipes (Sweet)

Louisa’s Cake

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A sunny ricotta cake that is so moist, buttery, and rich.
A sunny ricotta cake that is so moist, buttery, and rich.

We all grew up seeing our parents and grand-parents, who lived through the Great Depression, wars, and/or famines, take care — to the extreme — to not let any drop of sauce from a can, any heel of bread or any minute shred of fish off the bone ever go to waste.

Not on their watch.

And now, not on ours, either.

With the pandemic creating food shortages — both real and exaggerated ones — we find ourselves looking at food much differently now, treating everything with the reverence it deserved all along.

The very bottom stems of parsley that I once tossed? No more. Now, they get finely diced and tossed into salads and soups. Those radish tops I once never looked twice at? Now, I savor them sauteed in an egg scramble.

The leftover ricotta I had from making lamb meatballs? Not that I would deign to ever throw something like that out, but these days, it takes on an outsize importance. Yes, that leftover ricotta that I once just nonchalantly enjoyed with berries for breakfast the next day, now seemed too good for that. Clearly, it should be destined for something far more special, I thought.

I found exactly that in “Louisa’s Cake.”

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A First: DoubleTree’s Signature Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

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The one and only honest-to-goodness DoubleTree Hotel chocolate chip cookie recipe.
The one and only honest-to-goodness DoubleTree Hotel chocolate chip cookie recipe.

They’re craved by legions of sweet-tooth travelers. Home-cooks have tried in vain to come up with copycat recipes for it for years. And such is its stature, that it was the first food to actually be baked in orbit — aboard the International Space Station this January.

For so long, the only way to sink your teeth into a bona fide warm DoubleTree Hotel chocolate chip cookie was to check into one of its hotels, where you’re gifted with one for free with your room key.

Until now, that is.

Yesterday, in a thoughtful goodwill gesture in these horrific times, DoubleTree released a home-version recipe of its famed cookie to the public.

And faster than my printer could spit out the recipe, I was already putting sticks of butter out on my counter to soften.

At a time like this, don't we all need a cookie? Especially a DoubleTree one?
At a time like this, don’t we all need a cookie? Especially a DoubleTree one?

Knock on wood, I actually had all the ingredients on hand, too — no easy feat in this pandemic that has stripped store shelves and online sources of many baking products, as we all hunker down to shelter in place, and apparently stress-bake to no end.

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The Chocolate Cake For When Times Are Uncertain and All-Purpose Flour Is MIA

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This chocolate cake may look plain, but it is a showstopper in taste and satisfaction.
This chocolate cake may look plain, but it is a showstopper in taste and satisfaction.

No doubt you’ve heard that Americans are drinking far more during this pandemic.

Me? I’m gorging on a whole lot more chocolate.

And that’s saying something since I consider the consumption of chocolate to be practically a daily requirement.

After all when the going gets tough, the tough get dark chocolate.

Thankfully, “Chocolate Cake” by renowned Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten satisfies on every level. It’s from his cookbook, “Home Cooking with Jean-Georges: My Favorite Simple Recipes” (Clarkson Potter, 2011), in which the Michelin-starred chef shares favorite casual recipes he makes for his family

First, this cake uses hardly any all-purpose flour, for those who are running low on it like me. In fact, it calls for just over 1 tablespoon of the stuff. It’s such a small amount, though, that you could probably get away with substituting any other kind of flour for it.

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The World’s Easiest Cookies — And That’s No April Fool’s Joke

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Yup, I made these three different cookies from one recipe that really requires only four ingredients.
Yup, I made these three different cookies from one recipe that really requires only four ingredients.

At a time when so many baking ingredients are scarce at supermarkets, come these cookies to the rescue.

They require no all-purpose flour, no eggs, no granulated sugar, and no butter.

Which means they are gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, and refined sugar-free. It also means they are vegetarian, vegan, and paleo.

“The World’s Easiest Cookies” live up to their name. It’s a recipe from the cookbook, “World’s Easiest Paleo Baking: Beloved Treats Made Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Dairy-Free, and with No Refined Sugars” (Lake Isle Press, 2016) by Elizabeth Barbone, which I spied on the Kitchn site.

These cookies use only four ingredients: finely ground almond flour, baking powder, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.

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Sheet-Pan Pancakes

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Is it breakfast? Or dessert? It's kind of both.
Is it breakfast? Or dessert? It’s kind of both.

I’m sure I’m not alone these days when it comes to inventorying my kitchen.

Lately, it goes something like this:

All-purpose flour. Oh, thank gawd there’s still some!

A half-pint of blueberries grabbed at the last minute at the grocery store a week ago. Half a pint? That’s it??? Why didn’t I think to get more?!?! What a moron.

Half a gallon of heavy cream that expires in five days. Wait. What??

A bag of walnuts. Woo-hoo, precious protein, baby.

A nearly empty bag of almond flour in the far reaches of the freezer. When did I even open this? (Dips finger in to try some.) OK, I think it still tastes OK. I haven’t keeled over yet.

And so it goes.

That, my friends, is what led me to try making Martha Stewart Living’s “Sheet-Pan Pancakes.”

Because let’s face it, we all need a respite from CNN, daily press conferences, and ever-growing statistics on this pandemic that’s remade the world as we knew it.

What we need is pancakes. Because pancakes have had the uncanny power to put a smile on our faces as far back as, well, the invention of pancakes. When you start the day with pancakes, you know it’s going to be a good day. And we can all surely use more of those kind of days right now.

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