A couple of days ago, I bought a ginger pecan tart from a bakery at the Chelsea Market, which was a racket of food and dishware shops, bakeries and take-aways, and exposed-plumping industrial ceilings. The tart melded two of my favorite desserts in one, something I had never considered before. It had a cake-like gingerbread layer, topped with a thin layer of gooey pie filling and lots of nuts, and it was delicious for breakfast.

In other news, I have finished exams, spent the last few days in New York City, seen the Statue of Liberty for the first time, eaten moules frites and an incredible salmon avocado tartare, seen the Rangers and the Jets play, and now there’s only about three days before we’re piling into the car and driving to Montreal. Finally having a real vacation from school has been a relief as I was beginning to go a bit stir-crazy sitting around on campus, in front of my computer for two weeks straight. I’ll be back soon with some real kind of post, but for now, I think I need Microsoft Word and I need to go on a break.

Two days ago we were driving down the winding coastline, swinging around the curves in the road and pulling over to stand at the brink of the waves, the salty water, with the dusty sand between our toes. Yesterday, fives lanes of car lights shone in each direction in the dark on the drive to the airport. Before I know it, my plane will be landing in New York. And I’m not sure I’m really ready.

The other day, I gave a talk on food writing and local eating at my old high school. To prepare for it, I scrolled way back in the blog, looking at entries I had written a year ago, and then even some beyond that. It’s bizarre reading your own writing with a year or two in between you and it, it comes close to reading the writing of a stranger, except you have a creepy feeling that that person knows who you are, or rather, that you know that stranger inside and out. Around this time last year, I was finally coming home from Europe, with absolutely zero idea as to what I would be doing for the next few months. I was lost, terrified and very, very stressed, close to throwing it all in and becoming a ski bum except that it was too late in the season to be on the job-hunt. It seemed almost too late to start any kind of search.

Some people wander easily, it’s simply their nature. Other people struggle with order their entire lives. I like to think I come down somewhere in the middle, riding in the back of the car along the highway, my iPod on, staring out at the ocean, but my mind lost in its own thoughts, plotting, planning the path ahead.

I arrived in New York yesterday evening after a flight of sleep and unrest and with a sense of dread for the weeks ahead. A day later, several pieces I had been stressing about seem to finally be falling in place. I remember leaving here a couple of weeks ago high-strung, upset and desperate for a way out. But coming back, it’s calmer, easier to face the problems for what they were. And also harder to accept that my surroundings are not this anymore:

Sometimes I get really into hearty cookies. That might be the reason behind my obsession with digestive biscuits and why I regularly snag them off the hors-d’oeuvres table whenever they are available. I would never put anything on them, I find them perfectly crumbly, buttery and gritty as is.

One of the reasons I love traveling is the variety of textures desserts take depending on the region. While desserts in the U.S. are often light, fluffy and made mostly with white flour, desserts in Laos are often gummy and made with coconut and tapioca flour. I particularly loved this one slice of cake I had at a restaurant in Vienna that was packed full, practically black, with poppy seeds. I was very happy when a similar poppy seed cake, this one a little lighter in color, appeared in a friend’s kitchen in Prague, made by a Hungarian visitor, who has since become the Hungarian girlfriend of one of the roommates. That morning, we spread thick slices of the speckled cake with raspberry jam and before we knew it, the entire pan was empty. It was grainy while remaining moist and had a heft to it that many American cakes lack. We thought about it for months afterwards and kept asking when the girl was coming back.

While I haven’t tried to recreate the poppy seed cake at home, I have been using poppy seeds quite liberally lately. These biscuits are a perfect example. Thin and light, but made entirely with whole-wheat flour, they have a dense crumb with crispy edges and a subtle sweetness, like a caramel prematurely removed from the fire. Two thin biscuits are sandwiched around a delicate spread of melted dark chocolate, to which I added a sprinkling of fleur de sel while still over the heat. They are a perfect accompaniment to a pot of tea on a foggy day, and made their way onto our holiday cookie plate this year.

We never get much of a traditional Christmas around here. I’ve been running in shorts all week and this year there’s not even enough snow in the mountains to go skiing. So the parts we do have, we tend to do to extremes. We have five kinds of Christmas cookies (including one double batch). We got a tree that’s a foot taller than usual this year.

We made a lemon-themed bûche de noël instead of our usual gingerbread house; lemon sponge cake, rolled and filled with lemon curd, topped with torched meringue with lemon cookie elephants walking along the sides. Told you things were a bit alternative — the elephant cookie cutters have been in the family since before I started doing most of the baking. We also have a collection of flying dinosaurs, but that’s a story for later.

Tonight we’re cooking up seven kinds of fish, a tradition we’re apparently stealing from the Italians. This morning, we took the local grocery in full family-force and the intake includes salmon, tuna, whole crabs and crabmeat, scallops, prawns and mussels (we may be cheating and counting crab twice). Because of the Spare the Air alerts, we’ll be baking instead of our usual BBQing and we won’t be having a fire in the fireplace tonight. But I’m excited to recreate the stuffed mussels I had in Italy and to pan-fry potato latkes and crab cakes. Again with the mismatched traditions.

Even without the white Christmas, the air smells distinctly like Christmas. A run around our hill brings the slow setting of the sun as it settles into the misty, pastel sky. As it gets darker, the outlines of houses covered in lights start to appear up and down the hill on either side, and families wrap up their early evening walks, kids get carried home. Maybe we’ll drive out looking at the lights tonight after dinner. Maybe we’ll even convince Dad to let us play Christmas carols on the drive.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Most of the year, I am all for innovation and new desserts. But come Christmastime, there are a few cookies that absolutely have to make it on the cookie plate (which, yes, we still put out for Santa). They come from cookbooks with pages falling out, stained with eggs and chocolate. Every year, you have to flip through torn pages, all out of order, past dozens of cookies you’ve never made, until you find what you’re looking for. Yesterday, I made the lemon sugar cookie dough, rolled it out and baked it into pretty shapes. Today, when I woke up to ice them, there were maybe half the number of cookies we had last night. I guess that’s what happens when you go to bed at 9 p.m. and stop keeping an eye on them.

I always like to have a balanced assortment of flavor on my cookie plate. These are the most delicately-flavored of the bunch. The cookie is soft, but with a crisp crumb. Don’t skip out on the glaze, it’s necessary to achieve the full lemony effect and it makes for a nice tart-sweet contrast with the buttery cookie.

Lemon sugar cookies
Adapted from The Christmas Cookie Book by Lou Seibert Pappas

Dough:
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt

Glaze:
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk and lemon zest until smooth. Add the flour and salt and mix to form a dough (this can be done with your hands if you like). Gather the dough into a ball, flatten, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll out the dough on a floured surface less than ¼ inch thick. Use cutters of your choice to cut out cookies. Place cookies on prepared sheets and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. Transfer to racks to cool.

To make the glaze, stir together the sugar and lemon sugar. It should be thin and transparent. Spread the glaze on the cooled cookies.

I’m pretty vocal about cake. Notably about not liking most cakes. If I eat a cupcake, it’s for the salted buttercream frosting. If I eat a layer cake, it’s either because I’m starving or I can’t resist a sugar rush. But if I slice off a sliver of a dense, vanilla cake topped with gooey, caramelized brown sugar and sticky, candylike, tart cranberries and pop it on top of the toaster for added warmth and crunch, you can believe that I really want to eat that cake.

I made this back in late-November but somehow December has turned into a whirlwind of papers and projects and now finally, just as winter break is about to start, internship applications and you never saw it. Somehow (don’t look at me!) nothing has been posted in almost half a month. And I’m here to rectify this, because really if you wanted to stray from the cranberry sauce but stick to the cranberries, this showstopper wouldn’t be out of place on your holiday dessert table. Sure it has imperfections; the bright cranberries balloon out on the surface like tiny pieces of confetti tossed in the air, the sticky sugar top (or bottom depending on how you look at) flows like syrup around everything in sight when you flip the pan, and it is so laden with fruit and liquid that the cake itself threatens to split down the middle when still warm if you don’t call in reinforcements. But the eye won’t be able to stray from it to the other competing desserts on the table. This I swear. Plus, who doesn’t like cake you can toast and eat for breakfast for days afterward?

Did somebody say cake?

Chocolate always seems like such a relief after the decadence of Thanksgiving, ironically. It packs a dark punch, with hints of bitterness, which offsets the soothing heaviness of the butter-laden cakes and pies of the proceding days. It awakens one from the food-induced slumber, a sort of jolting enlivening that reminds you that, yes there is a whole host of things to do following the big day.

Last weekend, San Francisco brought a blanket of white fog that wanted to keep me in bed. This weekend threatens to be the real beginning of the long winter in Princeton. I know people further north might scoff at that, but to this California girl it is depressingly long when you finally hit March and still can’t go outside without a jacket. But for now, the shivers have the charm of it being the holiday month, complete with Advent calendars, peppermint bark and strands of colorful lights. And chestnuts roasting on the open fire, you can add those to the mix too. Except I might have cheated and roasted these in the oven.

That’s not to say that I’m done with the pumpkin and the pecans — no, I’m not anywhere near done — but I’m ready to bring on the slow, dripping dark molasses, the grated, spicy ginger, the icing dribbles, and the glitzy holiday baking that somehow manages to feel homey despite sophisticated appearances.

No one prepared me for the disappointment of cracking open piping-hot chestnuts with my bare fingers only to find that over half of them had gone bad, which is completely normal apparently. With that kind of success rate, I only had enough to use thin slices in a decorative manner. I spread a sweet pate brisée crust with roasted chestnut spread (available at your local specialty store), over which I poured David Lebovitz’ chocolate tart filling. The initial taste is the undertone of burnt caramel, then soothed by the sombre, molten chocolate. If you want lessons on roasting chestnuts, it suffices to cut an X at the top of the nut (through the skin) and to throw them on a tray in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes. If you just want to eat chestnuts, I suggest skipping the home-maker’s lesson and hitting up the guy peddling chestnuts (did you know they are actually boiled and then just “roasted” for show?) on the nearest street corner.

I woke up yesterday morning on the other side of the continent. That’s a dramatic way of saying that I am home in San Francisco for the weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you had a wonderful (and delicious) holiday!

It was a great race. We lined up in our respective corals before the sun had risen. Parts of the course were lined with people, screaming, clapping, in costume, like they were at a parade. Our, wonderful, wonderful, friends were standing at miles 1, 8, and 14, cheering. Apparently they had quite a time shoveling down half a scorching-hot pizza and walking a half-marathon trying to find us on the course.

Mid-race, I wondered why the hell I had ever decided that this would be fun. But the last two miles I almost felt like I was floating, which is a feeling I never thought I would associate with marathon running. Even now, just one day later, I’m struggling to remember anything specific about the race itself.

Admittedly, there were things we could have planned better — namely having a place to meet afterwards in the madhouse that was the finish line area. So sadly, there are no smiling post-race pictures with medals around our necks, but I will say that it was an adventure. We rolled out of Philadelphia Sunday afternoon, with a stop at the Medic tent and then at Dunkin’ Donuts.

I can’t say I feel like running another anytime soon. But if you happen to be at Boston 2013, please remember my cake and beer at the finish line.

In the meantime, I’ll be eating this.


I don’t think I’ve ever made anything else from Martha Stewart besides these cakes. They pour lava chocolate, which is reason enough to make them. And they come out perfectly every time, dark, rich, baked on the outside and gooey on the inside, in less than ten minutes, which is like exactly what you’re craving at 11 p.m..Needless to say, I’ve made them quite a few times.

Just when we were preparing for a long period of hibernation, just when I was preparing to outlast the snow, the sleet, and the slush, it suddenly became summer again. Well, as close to summer as you can get mid-November; Hey, I was actually wearing shorts today! And I realized that with all the time I’ve spent complaining about being stuck in Princeton, and how awful and uninspiring most of this state is, I’ve neglected to tell you about the beautiful parts of New Jersey.

We spent the last weekend on our fall break at my long-time roommate’s house in northwest New Jersey. My roommate is a very defensive defender of New Jersey. Crack one joke about how dirty Jersey is, and you’re in for a spiel about how all of Jersey isn’t Newark. And as much as we give her a hard time, she’s right.

Her house sits on the highest piece of land for miles around, above the largest reservoir I have ever seen. We happened upon the area at the peak of fall, when the air was chilly and brisk and the trees hadn’t quite ridded themselves of their yellowed leaves. We spent the majority of the weekend being what we call “old ladies.” We went on short walks, did crossword puzzles, watched movies, and baked every night — a sort of routine that was as enjoyable as it was comforting. We did some hill running that was more or less comparable to running at home in San Francisco. We made this pear-cranberry gingersnap crumble, and may have spooned it over oat pancakes and topped it with maple syrup from a two-gallon jug the next morning. The morning’s activities were interspersed with updates from the New York City Marathon on TV. Next thing we knew, break was over and we were piling up in the car and driving back to campus.

This crumble combines all the flavors I love about the fall — the spicy bite of ginger, the tartness of cranberries and the sweetness of soft, translucent cooked pears. It was impossible to ignore sitting on the countertop. We added an extra apple, thinking the fruit filling might get too mushy with ripe pears. Oh, and we browned the butter, of course. Otherwise, we left the recipe untouched.