Baker Without Borders

After reading about a pine nut and rosemary tart in The Craft of Baking, a cookbook by pastry chef Karen DeMasco, I thought about incorporating rosemary into a new recipe for biscotti, twice-baked cookies with origins in Italy. Almonds, a classic biscotti ingredient, and rosemary, an herb often used in Italian cooking, can be roasted together…

I’ve been experimenting recently with recipes for yogurt and olive oil scones, including one with leeks, feta, and fennel. These scones feature another delicious flavor and texture combination: roasted pear, Gouda cheese, walnuts, red onions, and fresh thyme. Read about it in my latest column for The Knockturnal.

These are lighter, airier, and healthier-tasting than traditional scones, with olive oil instead of butter and Greek yogurt instead of heavy cream. I got the inspiration from an herb, garlic, and olive oil scone recipe in The Clueless Baker by Evelyn Raab and began experimenting with different flavor combinations incorporating oil and yogurt. The flavor of leeks,…

This is my twist on a traditional West Asian flatbread, adapted from a recipe by The Spruce.  I used instant yeast and let the dough rise overnight in the fridge; the longer dough ferments, the more flavorful it becomes. I brushed the surface with egg white and topped it with a mixture of dried and…

These muffins combine the flavors of marzipan and poached pears.  I cooked Bartlett pears with cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, and cloves, flavored the batter with almond extract, and added buttermilk for moisture and a hint of tanginess. Almond slices sprinkled on top give the muffins a nice crunch. There’s a lot going on, but the flavors…

These are black and white cookies with a surprise twist: the cookie underneath is gingerbread, and the lemon and chocolate icings are infused with freshly grated ginger. The idea came to me after a friend and I shared a black and white cookie at a New York City bakery (the cookies are a staple item…

These challah rolls are filled with apple butter and pecans, and sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. They are  less sweet than traditional cinnamon rolls, but just as delicious.  I shared the recipe in my latest column for The Knockturnal; read more about the them here.

Every holiday season, I bake Russian tea cakes, also known as Mexican wedding cookies, snowball cookies, and polvorones (a traditional Spanish Christmas cookie), and share them with friends and colleagues. Popular around the world, as the various names suggest, these crumbly, buttery shortbread cookies are filled with nuts and rolled in powdered sugar. This is…

Galettes, free-form tarts originating in France, are simple to prepare, fun to shape, and a great way to showcase seasonal ingredients. Last summer, I made a peppery crust and filled it with peaches and blue cheese. For the fall, I used the same black-pepper-infused crust recipe and created a butternut squash and goat cheese filling….

Pumpkin chocolate muffins are a Thanksgiving tradition in my family. I’ve been baking them since I was 13 years old, using a recipe my mom’s friend found on the internet, and thought it was about time to mix things up. The original recipe calls for adding chocolate chips to a buttery dough flavored with cinnamon…

This is an autumn twist on one of my favorite cookie recipes: banana oatmeal chocolate chip, by Two Peas & Their Pod. I swapped mashed banana for apple butter, replaced chocolate with currants, and added pecans and a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon. Apple butter, a mixture of pureed apples, cinnamon, cloves, and other spices, is…

Studded with fresh pomegranate seeds and filled with condensed milk, these colorful bar cookies are at once tangy and sweet. They are perfect for early fall, when pomegranates first come into season. The fruit grows predominantly in India, Iran, California, and the Mediterranean region, and is used in a variety of sweet and savory dishes….