Fig Cookies
These bites of delight are bold with dried fruit and spices and kept fresh with orange zest. The contrast of the smooth filling with the bite of fig seeds and crunch of nonpareils sprinkles gives the cookies a depth of excitement that most cookies don’t have.
Stuffed Apples
Stuffed Apples is hardly a name for such a delectable dessert that boasts the freshness of fall apples paired with the warm fall flavors of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and mace in one of the best custards you’ve ever had that is tied together with a crisp meringue.
Fig, Yogurt, and Almond Cake with or without Extra Figs
Fresh fig juice caramelizes around the edges of this almond cake, creating the perfect crispy pillowy contrast.
Cookie Butter and Banana Potstickers
A delicate crunch filled with banana that is made heavenly by the complexity of cookie butter. It makes for such a special dessert that no one will guess how easy it is to make.
Squash and Pistachio Crumble
It tastes like apple pie, but screams summer with its bright notes of lemon. Even people who snub their nose at squash will have smiles on their faces. I argue that this dish is more American than apple pie because apples are not native to North America and squash is.
Butter Cake with Blackberry Filling and Lemon Russian Buttercream
Sister enlightened me with Russian buttercream, something I never heard of and is made with condensed milk and butter. We paired it with my favorite standby Bonnie Butter Cake and made it “summery special” with blackberry filling.
Higos y Datiles (Figs and Dates)
I had these wonderfully glorious creamy cheese filled sweet dried fruit with pistachios and a bit of citrus to break the sweetness as a dessert at El Farol, a Spanish tapas place in Santa Fe.
Apple Butter
Bring on the cool nights, crisp days, and apples! Slow cook those bad boys and that sweet freshness will become a complex decadence that will warm the soul.
Perfect Peaches with Almond Pesto
This dish has it all. It has the smoothness of ripened peaches, coarseness of almonds, earthiness and crispness of sage, brightness of citrus, sweetness of fruit and amaretto.
Chocolate Orange Beet Cake with Cream Cheese Walnut Icing
Here’s the elegant, more sophisticated sister to the red velvet cake. It’s more orange than chocolate.
Chewy Spiced Molasses Sandwich Cookies
If you want a festive Christmas cookie, but don’t want to roll out dough or decorate cookies, these are for you.
Brown Butter Sweet Potato Pie
The brown butter adds a complexity to the pie that kicks it up a notch. It’s rich, it’s decadent and I hope it will find its way to your Thanksgiving table.
Popcorn Balls
At each driveway, we’d jump off the wagon and run down loooooong driveways to get the goods. There was always the house with plenty of witch’s brew, the house with Zapp’s, and my favorite — the house with popcorn balls.
Wedding Cake
I’m definitely a wedding cake person. Before I lose you because there’s nothing special about wedding cake, wedding cake should be a white cake with almond flavoring, filled with fruit pineapple (most traditional), lemon or strawberry.