Baker Without Borders

This is one of my favorite childhood recipes, with a twist. When I was growing up, my mom made a delicious version of vanilla pudding with only four ingredients: milk, cornstarch, brown sugar, and pure vanilla extract. Here, I simmered milk with coconut sugar and sprinkled shredded coconut and toasted pecans on top. Derived from…

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These sparkly, sugar-coated gingersnaps are the latest of several “secretly vegan” cookie recipes I’ve adapted in recent months (See my posts on chocolate maple and chocolate covered pretzel cookies.) With oil in place of butter and water instead of eggs, they are lighter and a bit chewier than traditional molasses cookies, but retain the same…

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The first few times I baked this incredibly moist, egg-free chocolate cake, adapted from a vegan recipe by Nora Cooks, I decorated it with salty-sweet chai frosting. For my twin sons’ third birthday celebration last month, I decided to try something a little different: Cake Whiz’s out-of-this-world maple buttercream, jazzed up with chocolate chips, peanuts,…

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For my husband’s birthday last month,  I set out to make a tiramisu cake to share with our two-year-old twin sons. The only problem? Tiramisu, which means “pick me up” in Italian, is typically made with espresso-soaked ladyfingers. Espresso and toddlers don’t exactly mix, so I dialed down the caffeine and, adapting an excellent New…

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Ovenly’s “secretly vegan” chocolate chip cookie recipe, which substitutes water and oil for dairy and eggs, is brilliant and easy to adapt. Last month, I baked a chocolate maple version. Yesterday, I put a salty, crunchy twist on the recipe, swapping out chocolate chips for chocolate covered pretzels, adding toasted pecans, and upping the brown…

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Ovenly, a popular bakery in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, is known for its “secretly vegan” chocolate chip cookie recipe, which is brilliant and nearly impossible to improve upon; take a bite of these crisp-on-the-outside, gooey-in-the-middle treats and you would never guess there’s no butter or eggs. Still, I couldn’t resist making a few changes,…

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This recipe is the invention of one of my two-year-old twin sons, who picked seasonal produce off the kitchen counter – a yellow squash, a Bartlett pear – and asked if we could add them to the banana bread we were baking together. I said sure, why not, and helped him grate the fruits and…

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This bread recipe from Coley Cooks is so delicious, and disappears so quickly, I’ve made it four times in one week alone! There’s minimal work required: just mix all the ingredients in one bowl, cover to rise, then shape into a loaf the next morning and bake in a dutch oven. The magic takes place…

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These crisp, buttery little cookies are a variation on jeera biscuits: cumin-studded shortbread cookies popular in India and Pakistan. In place of jeera -cumin seeds- I used a combination of black and white sesame seeds. The difference between the two? Black seeds contain a nutrient-rich outer hull, and pale seeds generally (though not always) have…

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Summer is South Asian mango season. Indian grocery stores carry sweet, fragrant varieties like Kesar and Alphonso. And if you’re lucky, you can sample velvety, out-of-this-world Pakistani mangoes. Priced at $10 per mango, at least in some shops in the Chicago area where I live, they are a luxurious treat – practically the equivalent of…

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