Baker Without Borders

Made with the peel, pulp, and juice of an entire orange, this cake is extremely moist and flavorful.  A friend baked one for me a long time ago, using a recipe from an American cookbook. But it turns out these cakes originate in the Siciliy region of Italy, where oranges, particularly the deep red blood…

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Sufganiyot, round, jelly-filled doughnuts, are a popular Hanukkah treat. I finally got around to making these towards the end of the holiday, but they are so delicious that I plan to make them all year round. I lightly adapted a recipe from the New York Times, swapping orange zest for a pinch of cardamom, a…

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The other day, I came across a recipe for turmeric sugar cookies on Food52. I loved the idea of brightening cookie dough with turmeric, an earthy, orange-hued spice used in savory cooking throughout the Middle East and South Asia. So I developed a recipe of my own. Turmeric pairs naturally with its cousin, ginger. Using that…

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This is my coworker, Maria’s, twist on bougatsa, a breakfast pastry from northern Greece. It has a creamy pumpkin, milk, and semolina filling, and  a crust made from layers of filo, a paper-thin dough used in Greek and Middle Eastern pastries. With a generous coating of cinnamon and sugar, it’s sweet enough to eat as…

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A coworker with a gluten and nut allergy inspired me to create these delicious, relatively healthy cookies, filled with oats, dark chocolate, honey, tahini (sesame paste,) and a hint of sea salt and cinnamon.  See the recipe in my latest column in The Knockturnal.

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  This is my take on hojarascas, cinnamon-infused cookies from northern Mexico. I used butter in place of the traditional lard or shortening, and added a generous amount of sea salt to balance out the sweetness of the cinnamon sugar coating. In Spanish, hojarasca means dry, fallen leaves. Fittingly, these are crisp and slightly dry, almost…

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Parathas, flaky, griddle-cooked flatbreads, are a popular breakfast food in South Asia.  They’re especially delicious stuffed with potatoes (aloo) and spices. My mother-in-law taught me how to make aloo paratha the traditional way, but I decided to put my own twist on the recipe, swapping potatoes for sweet, starchy Japanese yams.  I added two common ingredients…

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My favorite challah recipe, adapted from Eveleyn Raab’s cookbook The Clueless Baker, is delicious on its own, but sometimes I like to jazz it up. A few years ago, I added South Asian spices to form “masala challah.”  Here, I sprinkled on black sesame seeds, which not only look stunning but add subtle flavor. When I…

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This is an autumn variation on banana bread, adapted from a recipe by Genius Kitchen, with apple butter (a thicker, longer-cooked version of apple sauce) in place of the bananas. I used a simple store-bought apple butter, with no added sugar or spices, but feel free to experiment with using a flavored homemade variety. With butter…

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There are two kinds of chocolate in these not-too-sweet shortbread cookies: cocoa powder and white chocolate chunks. Shortbread, which has origins in Scotland, is delightfully smooth and buttery; a high ratio of butter to flour “shortens” the gluten strands in the dough, producing tender cookies. The dough is often baked as one large circle and cut into…

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