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Category: Holidays & Celebrations

  • Mother Linda’s Arkansas Fig Fruitcake

    Four days until Christmas Eve, five days until Christmas Day. Are you all set, all ready? Are your presents purchased and wrapped and hidden away? Are you avoiding the kitchen or still churning out cookies and cakes and edible gifts like there's no tomorrow? (Not making a Mayan calendar joke, not making a Mayan calendar…

  • Ottolenghi’s Spice Cookies

    Oof. Readers, Hugo was up four times last night (10:15 pm, 12:50 am, 3:00 am, and then 5:30 am, at which point he started to do this adorable cooing, chattering thing that really is the sweetest thing on the planet except that it's 5:30 in the morning, child, and you have kept me up ALL…

  • Making Springerle

    Last Friday night, I put Hugo to bed and tip-toed out of the bedroom as I usually do, hearing him settle into his crib for the night as I closed the door behind me. I walked carefully down the hallway and into the warm, golden-lit living room where my mother sat on the couch, surrounded…

  • Clementine Bakery’s Banana Cake

    As promised, dear readers, I come bearing cake. Not just any cake, mind you, but the best banana cake the world has ever seen, if you will allow me some superlatives. This is not banana bread, in case you're wondering; it's nothing rustic and it's not remotely acceptable for breakfast. This is cake, rich and…

  • Karen DeMasco’s Devil’s Food Cupcakes

    I still remember the first time I ate a Karen DeMasco cupcake. It was back in the days when I worked in a lofty office on the 11th floor of a building near Union Square. I had a corner office with hardwood floors and beautiful views of all the water towers of the area (and…

  • Karen DeMasco’s Carrot Cupcakes with Mascarpone Frosting

    Hoo-ee, folks. I've had a rough couple of days. The mean reds or the deep blues, or whatever you want to call them, got me in their bony little claws and shook me around for a few days, making me feel useless and despairing and generally not fit to get up out of bed. (I…

  • Tartine’s Panforte with Candied Quince

    It is a lot, I know, to expect you – in this mad December rush – to slow down and candy your own quince. Forgive me, will you? It's just that I believe in you! I know you can do it. I know you can find the time. And furthermore, I know it'll be worth…

  • Amy Scattergood’s Brown Butter Mashed Potatoes with Fried Sage

    I am, shall we say, a little distracted these days. I'm leaving for Germany in a little less than three days. And I'm not coming back until the first days of January. That's the longest vacation I've taken in a good bit and I'm sort of agog at the prospect of so much (badly-needed) time…

  • Sara Levine’s Duck Rillettes

    Our next recipe reviewer, Lynn at Spoon & Fork, sacrificed herself for the sake of the duck rillettes from the chef at Vertical Wine Bistro in LA. And I, for one, am quite glad she did. "So my fiance and I are plopped on the couch in a duck fat-induced food coma. Wow. The duck…

  • Regina Schrambling’s Salmon Rillettes

    I don't know about you, but all I want to do in January is snuggle up on the couch wearing woolly socks, with a pot of soup on the stove and a movie on the television. Maybe, too, some low-intensity creative projects and quiet reading, but that's it. The hyper-insanity of December leaves me so…