These bananas—cooked in just a bit of caramel—are crispy and gooey on the outside and almost like a soft pudding inside. Sweet, messy, and irresistible. They make a great topping for ice cream or cake or pudding, but are also lovely on their own. Caramelized bananas are a really wonderfully inexpensive, satisfying treat if you are craving something sweet, but not wanting to spend much. Keep reading
When I was a kid I always thought that dipping strawberries into cream looked like the greatest idea anyone had ever had. In our house whipped cream was something we would get every once in a while on a special occasion as part of a dessert. You ate it serenely on top of something wonderful and appreciated it because it was a rarity. Fast-forward to a few days ago, listening to The Sporkful—a wonderful podcast centered around eating and human behavior—and the host, Dan Pashman, proclaims that his new years resolution is to eat more home made whipped cream. I am struck. Me too Dan, me too. Let’s eat fruit and whipped cream right now, in the middle of winter. Today I experimented with frozen mango and raspberries and fresh oranges. All were great, but raspberry was probably the favorite.
Keep reading
Still away in the cold north for the holidays but I wanted to share this quick and easy (and festive, dare I say) warm brown sugar pear cake with you. I made it just before leaving and couldn’t bear not to share it with you. It’s based on the peach coffee cake from Good and Cheap, and uses pears in place of peaches and nutmeg in place of cinnamon. This is a good reminder that this cake recipe is mega adaptable to just about any fruit. I love it so much. It gets all browned and crunchy and sweet on the outside, and gooey and soft and moist and sticky on the inside. Oh man.
Keep reading
As a rule, summer is the time for simple foods, cool foods—crisp salads, raw vegetables dipped into creamy cold things, icy glasses that leave condensation marks on your table. Watermelon everything. But there are exceptions: juicy burgers, fluffy baked potatoes, pretty much anything cooked on an open flame outdoors.
There is also the great fruit pie exception. Who doesn’t want a slice of jammy pie at the cookout?! But pie can be intimidating. And I get it. There are rules. It takes time and attention and we don’t want to be disappointed. Enter the crostata. You can fill it with any fruit, but today we’re going to make a juicy blueberry crostata.
Keep reading
