Come August, peaches are ready for their close up. The market bins overflow with the colorful, fragrant fruit, and I find it hard to resist their call. Just this week, I took home peaches almost as large as softballs and every bite was sweet and juicy. Although I love making Read more
A rustic but still decadent strawberry dessert for Mother’s Day? Shavuot? Just because? Yes, yes, and yes, please. Ever since seeing a photo last year of a strawberry cassata, a Sicilian-style ricotta cake, it’s been on my list to try. This year’s arrival of spring’s best strawberries motivated me to do it—to create my own Read more
Pumpkin and squash were historically favored by Italy’s Jews. You could find these fall fruits in soups, risottos, pastas, stews, fritters, and yes, even cake. I found recipes for Jewish-Italian pumpkin cakes, but decided to develop an updated version. We served samples of this during my talk in September about the culinary history of Italy’s Read more
The pound cake arose, sometime in the 18th century, as a cake of simplicity—originally one pound of each ingredient, flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. As recipes do, of course this one evolved, using modern ingredients like leaveners and glazes and adjusted to more manageable sizes for a household. Bakers Read more
Passover, let me introduce you to my newest sweet friend, the chocolate lava cake…wait, what? You know chocolate lava cake’s Italian grandmother? Seriously? Yes, that’s right. Lava, molten, or pudding cakes with that luscious liquid chocolate center might seem like a hot, hot, hot contemporary fad, but the concept has Read more
Years ago, I found a recipe for a clementine cake made with ground almonds. This sponge-style cake (getting most of its body from beaten egg whites) enticed me as a contrast to a Christmas dessert buffet of heavy, creamy, and chocolate-y confections. The way my imagination rendered the recipe, it Read more