LAYERED CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE CHEESECAKE BARS

January 30, 2019 Posie Brien

I live just a few steps away from a very famous bakery. (No, it’s not my own kitchen, weird right?! Funny how word hasn’t caught on about my mad kitchen skills yet…) People come in droves to buy their cookies; I’ve counted lines of 70+ people on more than one occasion. They make a lot of excellent items—a perfectly domed blueberry muffin, squares of thin-crust squares of pizza shingled with rosemary-flecked potato slices, a dense banana bread packed with chocolate chunks—but most customers only have eyes for their cookies. Granted, the cookies are worth the wait.

TRIPLE CHOCOLATE RYE BANANA BREAD

January 28, 2019 Posie Brien

The other morning my yoga teacher said the following, as she encouraged us to lie quietly in between postures and not fidget: “The past has already happened. What will come next hasn’t happened yet. The only thing we really have concretely to experience is what is happening right now.”

Before you start thinking “wow, this girl has her chakras lined up, all refreshed and on the ball with her life and mentally centered”, let me assure you that just like every other human, my days are not one smooth stretch of blissful yoga classes where I stretch and smile beatifically, then head home—rosy-cheeked and glowing—to an immaculate apartment where I whip up dinners for my husband (not splattering oil all over the stove or accidentally spilling the g-d turmeric over the counter, no no), and so on.

EVERYTHING BAGEL BISCUITS

January 26, 2019 Posie Brien

It is decidedly not warm outside. After a spate of truly frigid weather, we were thrown for a loop with one odd day this week where the temperature nearly reached 60 degrees. The warmth was accompanied by a downpour of rain all day, leaving the city feeling sodden and slightly sticky, everyone wandering about looking a bit disoriented by the whole affair, shaking their damp umbrellas on each other and tracking water all through the shops.

CHOCOLATE BOURBON MARSHMALLOW CAKE

January 24, 2019 Posie Brien

Picture it: A campsite, in the height of summer. A campfire crackling away merrily in front of you, spitting showers of orange sparks into the inky blackness of the night sky. You’re wearing a Patagonia fleece, which will smell faintly of wood smoke for weeks. You can just make out the outline of people sitting across the fire from you, clamoring for space above the flames as they roast their marshmallows. Some char them, pulling off the shattered blackened crust to reveal a gooey lump within. Some treat it like an art form, lightly toasting them to a perfectly uniform golden hue. Some (okay fine, YOU) just hang out eating marshmallows straight from the bag. Keeping it real, kids. Keeping it real.

CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE

January 23, 2019 Posie Brien

The party dessert platter. You know what I’m talking about. The dessert platter I mean is not a gorgeous spread of irresistible pastries, but rather a catering essential that feels like an afterthought. It shows up at these kinds of gatherings: an after-school soccer team celebration, a piano recital reception, a working lunch with clients, a buffet-style cocktail party. The platter in question is usually on a shiny black plastic tray lined with a paper doily. It sports an array of baked goods—squares of brownies, lemon bars showered in powdered sugar, and slices of pound cake. It suffers from what I call the “Starbucks pastry effect”—it looks inviting, but the second you bite into any one of the desserts, you realize your mistake. Dry. Overly sweet. Pretty tasteless.

Eating and adventuring.

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