January 2012

Bread Basket-Case

30 January 2012
Cornmeal Graham Bread

When I realized that I could make potato bread without the recipe, I knew the time had come to expand my bread repertoire.   This sounds obvious, but making it happen proved more challenging than you might think. Every week since school started in August, I’ve baked bread for my daughter’s peanut butter and jelly [...]

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Tarted Up

22 January 2012
Cranberry Cake with Vanilla Crumb Topping

I eyed the cranberries last week as I rolled my cart through the grocery store’s produce section.  I already have several bags of cranberries taking up serious real estate in my too-full freezer, so I tried to keep moving.  I can currently close the freezer door, and I try not to mess with this.  But [...]

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Jam-Packed

18 January 2012
Peekaboo Jam Tart

I‘ve always operated under the assumption that real people don’t make puff pastry.  Since most recipes that call for it for include “frozen puff pastry, thawed,” on their ingredient lists, I just figured that the secret to all those crazy layers required too much magic for the likes of me to discover. But the other [...]

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Best Laid Plans

9 January 2012
Butternut Squash Galette

I have a hard time planning more than a day ahead when it comes to dinner.   Sometimes I pretend I can pull off some extended planning and do a week’s shopping at a time.  When I do, I usually end up tossing out an embarrassing amount of perishable food because it has, well, perished, before [...]

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One Sweet Cookie

3 January 2012
Lemon-Poppy Seed Linzer Cookies

My 14-year-old niece Katja likes to bake.   Finding her a Christmas present this year allowed me to do some serious cookbook browsing without feeling completely selfish.  I lose myself in cookbooks almost as much as I do in good novels — let me loose in a bookstore and I pretty much disappear from the [...]

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