Goat cheese adds a lively tanginess to spinach and bacon quiche. Recipe below.
WE GOT A NEW FOOD PROCESSOR LAST WEEKEND and wanted to test drive it. Two things we expect a food processor to do well are puréeing stuff and making pie crust dough. Next week, we’ll share a puréed mushroom potato soup that showed it could do the former. This week, we’ve made a quiche in a crust of well-made dough. Continue reading “Changing up cheese gives quiche a tangy twist: Spinach, Bacon and Goat Cheese Quiche”
Baking a banana bread in a bundt pan cuts down on the baking time and makes it more show-offy. Recipe below.
ONE EVENING OVER THE HOLIDAYS, on a night when we were rich in guests and enjoying ourselves immensely, I was looking for a way to add something extra to our evening and ended up knocking together a Vaquero cocktail for us all—it was a nice, bright, peppery change and big fun to think about, and make, and drink. Continue reading “Banana bread made faster, fancier: Pineapple Banana Bundt Cake with Vanilla Glaze”
COOKIES—AND BROWNIES—MAY BE THE PERFECT HOLIDAY TREATS TO BAKE. You can make them ahead in batches, ready to serve to guests or take to a party, scaling the amount up or down as needed. With a cake or a pie, once you’ve cut into it, you can only offer it to family or really good friends afterward without looking, well, overly thrifty. Here are seven recipes for you to bake and share. Or keep for yourself, no judging here. Continue reading “Seven cookie (okay, and brownie) recipes for the holidays”
Blackberries and lime juice and zest offer a nice tangy balance to these buttery, airy scones. Recipe below.
SO SCONES HAVE APPARENTLY BECOME A THING FOR ME. I like making them and we both love eating them, so I find myself looking for different kinds to make. Our daughter Claire and her boyfriend visited over Thanksgiving and—over our apple cheddar scones, appropriately enough—they mentioned some blackberry lime scones they can no longer get (the place has gone out of business, sadly). Let’s just say some synapses fired. Continue reading “Buttery, airy, slightly tart: Blackberry Lime Scones”
Chopped apple provides a sweet foil to the savory cheese and buttermilk in these crisp outside/airy inside scones. Recipe below.
A quick note: with this post, we have now been doing Blue Kitchen for 16 years. We’re as surprised as you are!
THESE SCONES WERE INSPIRED BY AUTUMN AND A READER’S COMMENT. The changing season has filled farmers markets and supermarkets with apples. Falling temperatures have put us in the mood to bake, which for me, often means scones. Which reminded me of a comment by Sherry when we posted lemon lavender scones here last spring. She said she tended to like savory scones, with herbs and cheese. We’d never done savory. Continue reading “Seasonal, savory and sweet: Apple Cheddar Scones”
Briefly-in-season Italian prune plums are the star of this luscious, sweet crisp. Recipe below.
WE’VE BEEN MAKING A LOT OF FRUIT DESSERTS LATELY, and for that reason we almost did not post this one. But it is so, so wonderful, so gorgeous and tasty and the stuff of dreams, that not telling you about this would be wrong. It would just plain be wrong. Continue reading “Making the delicious most of a seasonal fruit: Italian Prune Plum Crisp”
This easy-to-make crisp makes the most of delicious summer peaches and blueberries. Recipe below.
WE ARE CRAZY ABOUT THIS SUMMER’S PEACHES. We keep buying giant boxes of them at Trader Joe’s and doing all sorts of magical things with them, like returning to that cobbler from two weeks ago, and like standing in the backyard and eating them out of hand while watching the bees harvest pollen. And we also are getting some nice fat blueberries. Continue reading “Our summer of peachy goodness: Peach Blueberry Crisp”
Easy and flexible to make, peach cobbler is a simple, rustic dessert with a rich history. Recipe below.
THE OTHER NIGHT WE WERE IN TRADER JOE’S PICKING UP OUR USUAL BASICS—nuts, wine, pasta, tiny avocados—when we noticed a display of boxes of peaches. And not just peaches. Big, ripe peaches that, when I opened the box lid, sent up a beautiful fragrant invitation. Yes, I said, even though I wasn’t sure what the universe was inviting me to. Continue reading “Dessert with a side of American history: Peach Cobbler”
Mushrooms add “meatiness” to this quiche, creating a satisfying vegetarian meal. Recipe below.
YEARS AGO, CARLY SIMON’S SONG “ANTICIPATION” was brilliantly coopted for a Heinz Ketchup commercial, turning the frustration of their famously slow-flowing condiment into a delightful moment. For us, that anticipation could also be applied to quiche. One of the pleasures of making quiche is seeing leftover quiche in the fridge, wrapped in plastic and awaiting reheating. Yes, we made quiche again. And yes, seeing it in the fridge is making us quite happy. Continue reading “Weeknight quickish, vegetarian Mushroom Spinach Quiche”
These lemony treats are perfect for breakfast, a snack with coffee or tea, or just because. Recipe below.
PUT ME IN A NEIGHBORHOOD BAKERY OR COFFEE SHOP and you can be pretty sure I’ll be looking for scones. And the scones that hit the sweet spot for me are the not-too-sweet ones. No chocolate chunks or sugary glaze, thank you. Just a tiny bit of sweetness, maybe some fruit and/or nuts (or not), and maybe an herb thing going on. Like these Lemon Lavender Scones. Continue reading “Light, airy and not too sweet: Lemon Lavender Scones”