Baker Without Borders

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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These doughnuts are light, airy – and made with pizza dough! Pizza dough has fewer ingredients than classic yeast-raised doughnuts, or even the cake variety, for that matter: no eggs, no milk, no butter. Yet they are just as delicious, if not more, and can be fried in a relatively shallow amount of oil. For…

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This is a dairy-free, whole grain, fruit-filled version of my all-time favorite pancake recipe: Rosa Parks’ “featherlite” peanut butter pancakes. The civil rights icon scribbled the recipe on the back of an envelope, which was discovered with her personal belongings after she passed away at age 92, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was…

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The American version of Rugelach, a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish pastry, typically contains butter and cream cheese, and occasionally sour cream. Classic European (and modern Israeli) rugelach are yeast-risen, but the cream cheese dough is much simpler to prepare; all the ingredients are thrown into a food processor. My twist features Greek yogurt in place of…

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I took a classic Parisian tart recipe by pastry chef Nick Malgieri, author of one of my favorite cookbooks, The Modern Baker, and put a slight twist on it. Rather than bake mini tarts, I prepared one large one, pressing the decadent cookie dough crust into a tart pan with a removable bottom. And instead…

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My kids call these addictive, flaky flatbreads “matzo parathas.” We had set out to prepare homemade matzo for Passover, using a simple New York Times Cooking recipe. One of my sons noticed that the dough, shaped into thin discs for baking into matzo crackers, resembled parathas, a delicious Indian and Pakistani flatbread that my mother-in-law…

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If the famous Dubai chocolate bar had a cookie cousin, this might be it! These chocolate pistachio sandwich cookies don’t have kadaifi pastry in the filling, but they are just as decadent as Dubai chocolate, which went viral in 2023 and may have worsened an already-existing pistachio shortage this year. When I first experimented with…

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This is my twist on a simple pomegranate cupcake recipe I found online. The dairy-free batter is prepared in one bowl, and the gorgeous pink glaze has only two ingredients: sugar and pomegranate juice. I added cocoa powder and molasses to enhance the flavor, and baked the batter in a round pan rather than a…

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Made from partially whole wheat challah dough, these light, fluffy rolls contain hidden swirls of pureed olives (I used Kalamata, a Greek variety) and a sprinkle of freshly grated Parmesan, which becomes slightly crisp in the oven. The rolls are delicious served with slices of Gouda or cheddar, or a little goat cheese or feta.…

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