Baker Without Borders

These festive shortbread cookies, also known as Russian tea cakes and Mexican wedding cookies, are rolled in powdered sugar, resembling snowballs. The rich dough is typically packed with pecans, walnuts, or almonds. My favorite recipe, from The Good Cookie, by pastry chef Tish Boyle, is delicious as is, but I couldn’t resist swapping in some…

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This delightfully creamy yet relatively healthy version of a classic autumn dessert can be served as pie slices or bars – or both; I served bite-sized pieces to my infant sons on Thanksgiving. The original recipe, from the food blog Minimalist Baker, is vegan and gluten free. My adaptation calls for Greek yogurt, rather than…

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This quick bread, adapted from a recipe on the blog Tutti Dolci, is one of my all-time favorites. It has a decadent streusel topping, a marzipan-like almond flavor, a hint of citrus, and sour, tangy bursts of fresh cranberry. Mashed banana, which I substituted for about half the sugar in the original recipe, yields a…

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These flavorful thumbprint cookies are inspired by my 9-month-old twin sons’ favorite “dessert:” dried Turkish apricots, simmered in water, and then pureed along with almonds or other nuts. The cookie is rich and chocolatey, the apricot filling tangy, earthy, and subtly sweet. Crunchy pistachio pairs nicely, and adds vibrant color. To thin out the apricot…

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The other day, I was craving brownies, but happened to come across a recipe for pecan pie bars. So I set out to make a fusion, of sorts, of the two classic American desserts. I adapted an excellent brownie recipe from Smitten Kitchen, swapping out sugar for maple syrup, adding toasted pecans, and substituting a…

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This recipe is my latest twist on jeera biscuits, a traditional South Asian shortbread cookie studded with toasted cumin seeds. (My vegan coconut cumin cookies and cumin fennel biscotti were also inspired by the classic teatime snack.) Fennel seeds lend a warm, licorice-like flavor to these savory-sweet cookies, and shredded coconut adds a nice crunch.…

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The other day, I roasted some honeynut squash, a slightly sweeter version of butternut squash, and incorporated it into one of the lightest, fluffiest quick breads I’ve ever tasted, adapted from a pumpkin chocolate chip bread recipe on one of my favorite baking blogs, Tutti Dolci. I subtracted the chocolate chips, sweetened the bread with…

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Jeera biscuits, a South Asian shortbread cookie studded with cumin seeds, and mukhwas, a popular Indian palate cleanser and digestive aid made with fennel and other seeds, are the inspiration behind these savory-sweet, entirely non-traditional biscotti.  Thanks to the addition of butter, they are a little softer in the middle than the classic twice-baked Italian…

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I developed this recipe for an online Rosh Hashanah baking class for preschoolers. The kids had fun tearing the challah into pieces, and watching it soak up a simple custard mixture sweetened with honey. Studded with apples, it’s a wonderful fall dessert (you don’t need to celebrate Rosh Hashanah to enjoy it) and it’s a…

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