Baker Without Borders

Coconut macaroons (not to be confused with French macarons) are a classic spring holiday dessert with origins in 18th century Italy. The flourless cookies are served at Passover seders and also shaped into “nests” to fill with Easter candy. I am not a fan of the store-bought variety, which is often sticky and overly sweet.…

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In my latest post for The Knockturnal, I shared my recipe for chocolate-chunk-filled tahini almond squares. There is no flour or butter in these blondies, just finely ground almonds and tahini, a sesame paste used in Middle Eastern cooking. The flavors of almond and sesame may seem like a strange combination, but they work extremely…

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  This one-bowl recipe is my vegan twist on jeera biscuits, a South Asian cookie studded with toasted, fragrant cumin seeds. Typically made with butter, the salty-sweet biscuits have a similar texture to shortbread and are often eaten as a teatime snack in India and Pakistan. I swapped coconut oil for butter, yielding a soft,…

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Peanut butter and banana are the main ingredients in this moist, dairy-free cake, but the crumb topping is the real star of the show. Made with roasted peanuts, brown sugar, and olive oil instead of butter, the topping is light, salty, crunchy, sweet, and addictive. Both batter and crumb have relatively few ingredients, and are…

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Hamantaschen are triangular, jam-filled cookies served on the Jewish holiday of Purim. Variations on the fillings are endless – I’ve even come across savory ones, like the New York Times’ caramelized onion and poppy seed hamantaschen (read more about the recipe, and the history of Purim, here) – but I had yet to encounter hamantaschen…

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After sharing a batch of banana brownies with coworkers, a debate broke out over which dessert I should bring to the office next: more brownies or a classic banana bread. I split the difference and came up with this rich, chocolatey loaf, which straddles the line between banana bread and chocolate cake with its frosting-like…

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Whenever a pizza craving strikes, I tend to bake it from scratch at home. The other day, I made a rare exception, and visited Brooklyn with friends to sample some of the borough’s best pizzas. My two favorites – a thin-crust slice from Best Pizza topped with ricotta and caramelized onions (and baked in a…

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In Brazil, condensed milk and cocoa powder are cooked until thick and shaped into bonbons called brigadeiro. This was one of my favorite treats growing up; my mom and I would heat up the condensed milk and chocolate in the microwave, and I would eat spoonfuls of the rich, caramelized mixture as it cooled down.…

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