Baker Without Borders

For my birthday this year, a friend surprised me with a black sesame cake filled with layers of chocolate ganache. Inspired by those flavors, I incorporated black sesame, an Asian ingredient used in ice cream in Japan, as well as glutinous rice dumplings and sweet soup in China, into a classic American dessert: the sandwich cookie, made popular…

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A friend and I came up with the idea for this pizza in the middle of winter, and waited until a July afternoon to prepare it. We brushed a homemade pizza crust with olive oil, sliced some peaches, and spooned on creamy burrata, an Italian cheese made from buffalo milk mozzarella filled with curd and cream.…

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The other day, I saw ripe yellow plums on display at my local fruit and vegetable market, and couldn’t resist buying a whole bag of them. Every summer, the shop’s owner picks up fresh produce from farms just outside New York, and the plums were among the crops that had recently been harvested. It was…

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Rugelach, an Eastern European Jewish pastry, means “little twists” in Yiddish.  With their crescent shape and flaky, buttery crust, these  bite-size treats are cousins of the French croissant. They are typically filled with fruit preserves, cinnamon, nuts and/ or chocolate. When I set out to make rugelach at home (having long eaten rugelach at bakeries, I…

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I took my favorite buttermilk muffin recipe, from the cookbook Clueless Baker by Evelyn Raab, and added almond extract, fresh blueberries, and a crumb topping adapted from a recipe by Tutti Dolci. In place of store-bought buttermilk, I stirred together milk and lemon juice, and let the mixture turn acidic and curdle. Buttermilk lends tanginess and…

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The other day, I was craving one of my favorite pizza toppings – homemade basil and walnut pesto – but my food processor had broken, and the new one had yet to arrive in the mail. So I prepared a pizza with deconstructed pesto: whole basil leaves, coarsely chopped walnuts, and grated Parmesan, sprinkled over a layer…

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Coconut adds texture and fragrance to these dessert-like pancakes, which are the invention of one of the students in my after-school cooking class. On a recent afternoon, I set out to teach the kids how to make a simple pancake recipe by Mark Bittman. A creative young chef added shredded coconut to the batter and…

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I recently wrote a column for The Knockturnal about my latest cookie creation: biscotti with a subtle peanut butter flavor and bursts of dark chocolate. With a high fat content from the peanut butter and nearly a stick of butter, these are less crisp than traditional Italian biscotti, which typically only contain the fat from eggs.  Prepared…

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I got the inspiration for these bar cookies from a visit to a Romanian bakery in New York City, where I tried a pastry filled with a thick layer of poppy seeds. Popular in Eastern European cooking, poppy seeds can be sprinkled on bread rolls, mixed with noodles, or combined with milk, sugar, and other ingredients to…

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This is my twist on empanadas, a classic Spanish and Latin American pastry typically filled with meat, fish, cheese, or corn. Empanadas can be baked or fried, but I prefer the former (it’s more convenient, and the empanadas taste lighter.)  I adapted a dough recipe from A Cozy Kitchen, swapping butter for olive oil to yield a…

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