There are a lot of nice things about being home, and particularly being home in the wintry days of Christmas. My sisters and I were all at the farm (where we grew up and my parents still live); these days, Christmas looks a little different than it did when we were growing up. Most notably, there are two babies now and a two-year-old. They’re the focus of everyone who walks in the room, and they make the holidays feel more full and joyful than ever. There are also men now, whereas growing up the house was just women women women and my dad. (He is very, very used to the company of lots of ladies, but I do think he secretly thrills every time he walks down to the basement now and finds his sons-in-law drinking beer and watching football.)
Read moreCHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT BUNDT CAKE
Merry merry! I’m here to wish you happy holidays. I’m also here to offer a recipe that’s too festive not to be making this week: chocolate peppermint bundt cake. But let me pause here and defend this cake’s rightful place in your kitchen year-round. I appreciate eating seasonally (and that’s a topic for an entirely separate set of musings), but that’s an ethos to follow when you’re thinking about buying ingredients: strawberries in summer, kale and potatoes in winter, and so on. But SPOILER ALERT I am about to let you in on a little secret that will set you free (kidding, hyperbole) and open new worlds (and by ‘new worlds’ I mean ‘lots of pints of Americone Dream’).
Read moreGINGERBREAD BRIOCHE
The scent of warm bread fills the kitchen. There's sugar and spice too—cinnamon and sugar and a hint of festive, fragrant flavors like nutmeg and cloves. I sniff the air. “Butter,” I think, picturing myself early as I methodically sliced two sticks into pale yellow pats and dropped them into the bowl of my stand mixer. A faint yeastiness hints at what’s rising inside the oven: a gorgeously browned brioche loaf, prettily domed with a curved surface as the hillocks of pale dough puff in the heat.
Read moreEXTRA-MERINGUE LEMON MERINGUE PIE
There are some good things that you can’t really have enough of, like the scent of warm bread baking, the feeling of finding matched socks in a tumble of clean laundry, or sunshine on your face on a very cold day. Other things—say, a cranberry cocktail topped with a chilled pour of Prosecco or Christmas music—are very nice but you could argue that you can very easily have too much of them.
Read moreLEMON BUTTERMILK BUNDT CAKE
Cozy weekends feel even more so in the winter. The rain-soaked streets are dark tonight, lit up in spots by the amber glow of street lamps. I’m sitting at a cafe on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue —I’m at a window seat watching people duck into restaurants. The ramen shop across the street has a sleek wooden bar in the front, illuminated by dozens of hanging pendant lamps. Further up, a dive bar beckons with multicolored Christmas lights and neon signs for 2-for-1 happy hour drinks and holiday-themed shots (yuck! Can it be true that once upon a time I happily threw back shots on a Saturday night? Between you and me, my shot of choice was the ‘springbok shot’—a lethally delicious combination of creme de menthe and Amarula liqueur discovered while studying abroad in South Africa).
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