A more descriptive name for this could be Cookie Dough Pie.  The filling is composed of very basic ingredients (eggs, sugar, a little flour, butter) and accessorized with chocolate chips, walnuts, and whiskey; when it comes out of the oven, it’s not exactly custardy (due to the flour) and not exactly cakey, with the sweetness of pecan pie filling but not the gelatinous texture.  It is also surprisingly easy to make, especially if you have pie crusts on standby.  The most important part of the process is achieving volume while beating the eggs, dry ingredients, and butter to make the filling; this will ensure a rich, but not-too-dense, end result.

To get clean slices, this pie definitely needs to set for a couple of hours, but try to be patient–it is easily revived by doing as the authors suggest and popping it into the microwave for 15 seconds; the filling gets soft, and the chocolate chips turn warm and melty.

Baked’s Tuscaloosa Tollhouse Pie

• 1/2 recipe pie dough, chilled
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened and cut into pieces
• 1 tb whiskey (I used Southern Comfort)
• 3/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips

On a lightly-floured surface, roll out dough to form a 12-inch round.  Press into a pie dish, folding under edges.  Freeze crust while you make the filling.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a bowl, whisk together flour and sugars; set aside.

Fit an electric mixer with its whisk attachment, and beat eggs on high speed until foamy, about 3 minutes.  Switch to the paddle attachment, and mix in flour and sugars on low.  Turn mixer to high and beat for 2 minutes; add butter and beat on high until combined.  Scrape down sides, add whiskey, and beat on high for another minute, then fold in walnuts and 3/4 cup of chocolate chips. 

Pour filling into chilled pie shell, scatter remaining 1/2 cup chocolate chips across the top, and bake for 25 minutes.  Cover edges of crust with foil and bake for another 25 minutes; remove from oven when inserted knife or pie tester comes out clean.  Cool on a cooling rack completely (at least one hour) before serving.

When the beloved Brooklyn bakery, Baked, issued its first cookbook, I was all over it.  The founders/authors, Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, began with a mission and ended up with a great story:  to create The Best Bakery in an industrial expanse, serving all-American treats with friendly service, while overcoming logistical challenges and having their signature product, brownies, featured as one of Oprah’s “favorite things.”  I would have bought this book for that brownie recipe alone, but fortunately, it offers plenty more fodder for inspiration, albeit with a few complications.

This book is filled with comforting, classic recipes for the home baker:  simple baked goods, cakes and cupcakes, pies, bars and cookies, and candies.   I can’t wait to try the Maple Walnut Scones, Butterscotch Pudding Tarts, or another signature of the bakery, Baked Bars, composed of a graham cracker-coconut crust and a kitchen-sink filling of walnuts, chocololate and butterscotch chips, and sweetened condensed milk.  As for those brownies:  make them.  They are calorie-laden and worth every one.

The caveat:  some of the recipes are a bit overwrought.  The Sweet and Salty Cake, which I was desperate to make and even more desperate to eat, was a huge project that included making caramel twice and lasted about eight hours.  I started to question the accuracy of the recipe when making the caramel ganache frosting.  After caramelizing sugar and adding cream, the recipe calls for one pound of chocolate and four sticks of butter–that’s a lot of ingredients for thin layers of frosting, and I found the ganache to be plenty rich after adding the third stick of butter.  Peanut Butter Crispy Bars are completely delicious, but the recipe calls for a caramel-like solution to be mixed into rice crispy treats to form the crust; this solution must be mixed in quickly to prevent hardening, and tends to stick to the teeth when one enjoys this otherwise-perfect dessert.

Similarly, I did not always find flavors and textures to be on-point, such as in Easy Homemade Granola, which had a too-pronounced flavor of honey, or Black Forest Chocolate Cookies, which seemed to lack baking soda, as the end result was crackly and puffed, not rich and gooey as promised.  The Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Loaf could have benefited from the use of butter instead of vegetable oil, which yielded an oily texture.

This is a great book for a dedicated, detail-attentive home baker with plenty of equipment and ingredients on hand.  Those with a less well-stocked kitchen can bake from it as well, though the options will be more limited.

The Baked Brownie (from Baked:  New Frontiers in Baking)

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tb cocoa powder
• 11 oz dark chocolate (60 to 72% cacao), coarsely chopped
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 tsp instant espresso powder
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 5 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter a 13×9 baking pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and cocoa powder.

Put the chocolate, butter, and espresso powder in a large metal bowl; place bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Stir together until melted and well-combined.  Turn off heat and add sugars, whisking to combine.  Whisk in three eggs until well-combined; whisk in remaining two eggs and vanilla.

Add flour mixture and fold in until only traces of dry ingredients remain.  Spread into pan and bake for 30 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking.  Brownies are done when inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a few crumbs attached.  Let cool before serving.

I’ve all but given up American-style yogurt; I now favor the thick, tangy Greek variety that is finally available in most supermarkets. It’s largely, but not solely, a taste issue: plain Greek yogurt not only has a more assertive flavor that melds well with fruit, granola, honey, and any number of other accessories, but it lacks the high sugar content, gelatin, and other additives commonly found in typical grocery store brands. Its bewitching texture comes from straining excess water from the mass, leaving a more intense flavor and a consistency similar to cream cheese.

While lovely eaten on its own, what really excites me is using the yogurt in baking, substituting it for cream cheese, sour cream, milk, and buttermilk (it also makes a creamy sauce that is an amazing accompaniment to a variety of meats). For these cupcakes, I began with a basic yellow cake recipe from my old standby, the Gourmet cookbook. I substituted Greek yogurt, in this case, full-fat Fage, for the stipulated sour cream in the cake batter. Although Fage is quite heavy, the resulting cakes were insanely light and fluffy, as if i had folded in beaten egg whites, as in this white cake recipe. For the frosting, I used Fage as if it were cream cheese, and added a bit of lemon juice to heighten the tartness. Together, these produce compulsively edible little cakes, sweet with just a hint of tart.

Fluffy Yogurt Cake (adapted from Gourmet’s Golden Cake)

• 3 1/2 cups cake flour
• 1 tb baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 sticks (16 tb) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups Greek yogurt, such as Fage

Yogurt Frosting

• 1 stick (8 tb) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup Greek yogurt
• 4 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 tsp fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 muffin tins.

Make cake: sift together first four ingredients into a medium-sized bowl; set aside. In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream butter and sugar on medium-high speed until fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each, then vanilla. Reduce speed to low and mix in half of the flour mixture just until combined, then the yogurt, and end with the rest of the flour mixture. Do not overmix. Pour batter into cupcake tins and bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden and inserted cake tester comes out clean. Let cool in tins for 10 minutes, then remove to baking rack to cool completely.

Make frosting: in the bowl of a standing mixer, beat yogurt and butter on medium speed until well-combined, 1 to 2 minutes; add lemon juice. Mix in confectioner’s sugar, 1/2 cup or so at a time, beating between additions to ensure smoothness.

When cakes are completely cool, spread each with 2 to 3 tablespoons’ worth of frosting.

Makes about 30 cupcakes, or 2 9-inch layers.

This unassuming, modest-looking Venetial Apple Cake is, so far, my favorite recipe from the new book of Babbo restaurant’s desserts, Dolce Italiano, by Gina De Palma.  Polenta lends it a slight chewiness; a grated apple nearly dissolves into the rest of the batter when baked, producing a sweet flavor that is intensified by the addition of honey and ginger.

Perhaps the best element of all, though, is the extra-virgin olive oil.  The result is, for lack of a better word, so interesting that I’ve made this cake three times in as many weeks; I’m still ruminating over how the flavors meld and compliment each other.  There is a definite “olive oil-ness” in the flavor, but even to my American palate, it doesn’t seem out of place in a dessert.  I like it dusted with powdered sugar, a day or two old–keep it wrapped tightly in plastic, and you will find that the texture settles in a bit, yielding a slightly denser cake (a good thing, I think, especially when it comes to a polenta dessert) and intensified flavors.

Venetian Apple Cake

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup instant or fine polenta (fine cornmeal works here too)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 large  Granny Smith apple, peeled and coarsely grated
• 8 tb (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tb extra-virgin olive oil
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter and flour a 9-inch cake pan, tapping out excess flour.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, polenta or cornmeal, baking powder, salt, and spices.  Set aside, along with the grated apple in its own bowl.

In a standing mixer on medium speed, cream the butter, olive oil, and sugar until lightened in color, one to two minutes, scraping down sides as needed.  Stop the mixer, pour in honey, and resume beating on medium until mixture is smooth, about one minute.  Beat in eggs one at a time until well-blended, then vanilla extract.

On low speed, beat in half of the dry ingredients, the milk, and the remaining dry ingredients.  Beat mixture at medium speed for about 30 seconds, then fold in the grated apple with a spatula.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until edges are golden and just beginning to pull away from the pan.  Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto cooling rack and let cool completely.  Re-invert onto serving dish and dust with confectioners’ sugar.

Serves 8.

A must-visit for any baker, cooker, or food-lover in the city is Kitchen Arts & Letters, a cozy nook on the Upper East Side specializing in cookbooks and other culinary literature.  It is organized into sections according to subject, including soups, salads, chocolate, baking, and books by big-name chefs.  Hard-to-find and out-of-print books can be had as well. 

What I find most charming about this shop is that it is a destination, and that seems to breed a certain enthusiasm within its walls.  You don’t get the casually-interested shopper, as at Borders or Barnes & Noble; customers here agonize over which bread-baking book to buy, or which new cuisine they’d like to venture into, starting with a cookbook.  If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll spot a prominent New York chef rooting around for inspiration.  My favorite find was a book in French from Poilane bakery in Paris–definitely not something you will find at the local book megastore. 

 Kitchen Arts & Letters

1435 Lexington Avenue, near 93rd Street

212.876.5550

For the serious baker (and by “serious” I mean obsessed with making and eating pastries and the like), I recommend Gina De Palma’s Dolce Italiano cookbook for its recipes, of course, but also for its instructional value.  You will learn so much from this book.  Doing a cursory flip-through, I was a bit intimidated; De Palma is, duh, a serious pastry chef.  There is a ton of information on technique packed into the recipes themselves, along with suggestions for wine or cheese pairings.  Also throughout the chapters are primers on flour, spices, chocolate, balsamic vinegar, and more.  Cultural background precedes each section; for example, the role of desserts in le feste is explained in the “Celebrations” chapter, fleshing out the “Italian-ness” of the book and providing context for the desserts themselves in the cultural landscape of Italy. 

These recipes are rustic but sophisticated in their simplicity.  Don’t be fooled by the lack of adornment on most; the flavors are complex and more than stand on their own.  I can’t wait to try the Sweet Grape Focaccia, and the plain, austere Venetian Apple Cake is out of this world.  I’ve made a few of the tarts (this is my favorite section), and the doughs are impeccable; tasty in and of themselves, crisp, and perfect foils for the fillings.  The Honey and Pine Nut Tart is like an infinitely-better version of pecan pie, essentially a thick, buttery milk-and-honey filling crowned with crunchy pignoli (please see my version, made with cashews, above).  The Chocolate and Polenta Tart, in a polenta shell flavored with lemon zest and vanilla extract, is surprisingly light, not overly sweet, and has a bit of a chewiness from the polenta bits folded into the chocolate filling.  Also worthy of mention are the chapters on spoon desserts, fruit, and fried doughs. 

My only issue with this book is the variety of moderately-hard-to-find ingredients, flour in particular.  Many recipes call for more than one kind, including, but not limited to, chestnut, semolina, and “oo,” an Italian flour that is a cross between all-purpose and cake flours.  I found this at an Italian deli, but you might have to order it online, taking away that exciting, instant-gratification rush that comes from already having everything you need to make a fabulous treat.  That said, I suggest placing an order online for everything not readily available, and going to town with this book.  I’m pretty sure you will love every recipe you try, as I have!

Fan of Top Chef that I am, I was so excited to get Padma Lakshmi’s new cookbook, Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet.  There is a great emphasis on foods with light, fresh flavors; spices; and the blending of culinary traditions from around the world.  Weaved throughout are little vignettes that reveal a bit about the author and her evolving relationship with food.

I especially like the section on starters; here, Padma presents light dishes that are appealing to both the eyes and the palate.  The tea sandwiches with cucumbers and goat cheese are spiked with dill and scattered with ruby-colored pomegranate seeds; I can imagine the sensation of smooth cheese and cool cucumbers, followed by a pleasant shock of crunchy and sweet.  See also the hot and sour fruit chaat, a fruit salad that delivers both heat, from spices, and a cool bite, with cucumbers and mint. 

You can learn a lot about spices, particularly those common to Indian and Southeast Asian cooking, by flipping through this book.  When an exotic ingredient is incorporated into a recipe, there is a note indicating where it can be bought and how it functions.  For example, amchoor is a powder made from sundried green mangoes that acts as a souring agent.  It is stocked in Indian grocery stores, but if you don’t have any on hand, use lemon juice, and reduce the liquid in the recipe.  Tips like these are scattered throughout, and prove useful if you live in an area without immediate access to ethnic grocery stores.  That said, I now have a reason to stock up at Kalustyan’s, the famed Indian grocer.

As lovely as the recipes are, this Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet could stand on its own as a coffee table book.  The pictures have a cool-toned, rustic quality, and pictures of mundane objects like weathered spoons and whisks take on an appealing quality.  The intense greens of salads, charred and juicy surfaces of meats, and pale, sweet rose-petal-and-pistachio ice cream make you want to run to the kitchen and get to work.

The things I intend to make right away:  Chili Honey Butter (!), Chipotle & Date Chutney, Homemade Masala Chai, Grilled Manchego Bites with Apricot Preserves, Cardamom and Cashew Cookies…yikes!  Looks like I will be busy for awhile.

Anyone who knows me can attest to how much I adore Nigella Lawson.  I think she is a fantastic, engaging writer who has a way of making her recipes sound both comforting and exciting.  So it was with great anticipation that I awaited her latest book, Nigella Express.  Happily, it is the same mix of entertaining prose and inventive recipes that Nigella’s audience has come to expect, uncompromised by the ”express” element.

Unlike many a chef whose hallmark is speed, Nigella rarely incorporates ready-made products into her recipes.  This is not a book on how to best accessorize a frozen pie crust or embellish a grocery store’s rotisserie chicken (that said, she does advocate the use of pre-made puff pastry, but it’s the rare home baker who makes his own anyway).  Instead, she emphasizes advance preparation, simple use of fresh ingredients, and effective ways to add spices and herbs.  Refreshingly, her dishes aren’t riffs on favorites; they ARE those favorites, re-jiggered to be on the table sooner.  Coq au Riesling, for example, is a classic Alsatian dish whose preparation she breaks down into steps–it becomes so simple, yet retains sophistication.  The same goes for a chicken schnitzel, accessorized with bacon.  Her soups, quickly prepared and blitzed until smooth, can easily serve as a substantial first course, or a lighter dinner;  my favorites are the pea-pesto and the butternut squash-and-sweet potato. 

As Nigella emphasizes in her introduction, not every recipe is stove-to-table in under an hour.  Rather, many of them are prepared in advance, like the maple chicken and ribs, or are quickly thrown together then left, unattended, to cook slowly, as in her directions for a lamb tagine.  She also scatters helpful tips throughout:  thinly-pounded slices of meat cook more quickly, leave potatoes in a gratin unpeeled, shred leftover roasted chicken into a salad for lunch or dinner.  A particularly Nigellan trick that I’ve come to appreciate, and that is prevalent in Express, is the roasted bird:  put a body in a roasting pan, rub it with some kind of fat, throw into oven.  Varying the birds and the rubs yields a seemingly endless list of options for getting a hot, comforting dinner on the table with relatively little effort.

I worried that this new book would compromise what Nigella’s audience has come to love about her writing:  that cooking does not have to be just a way to provide sustenance, but, rather, is a celebration of feeding yourself and others, and enjoying the therapeutic act of creating something delicious.  Those values remain, but perhaps beg the question:  why, then, write a book about efficiency, rather than pleasure?  Is it an attempt to remain relevant in a food era dominated by Rachael Ray and 30-minute dinners (and, even more ridiculous, 60-minute Thanksgiving!)?  Ultimately, my impression is that Express uses the “quick” concept more liberally than a Food Network prime-time segment, and so successfully delivers the message that cooking can still be fun, without being a major time commitment.  And I cannot wait to make the croque-monsieur bake on a weeknight.

I just bought Ruth Reichl’s Gourmet for $8 from Amazon! This is great deal–hardcover, less than the price of a movie ticket, and containing hours of cooking fun.

It looks like Amazon’s normal price for this book is about $26, but, inexplicably, the link I found has the price as only $8. I looked at the other version and they appear to be the same, except for the ISBNs and that the version I bought is 16 pages longer.

Blueberries taste so good right now, and I bought a big container of them at Whole Foods with this recipe (sort of) in mind. A slightly tart, rustic pastry just seems like the right sort of dessert to have in weather like this.

This is derived from the fruit galette recipe in Tartine, by Elizabeth Prueitt. The main difference between my recipe and hers lies in the making of the dough. Instead of working on a board, spreading out the flour, scattering over the butter, repeatedly rolling it out, and mixing in water, I worked in a mixing bowl, cutting the butter into the flour, then mixing in the water, as I’d seen my mom do when I was growing up. This little kitchen, unfortunately, has neither a big wooden board nor the room to use it. Nevertheless, the dough came out as light, crisp, and flaky as any I’ve made.

Another interesting tip from Prueitt is filling the dough, then sprinkling the sugar and lemon juice over the fruit, rather than mixing it, then filling the dough. This way, the sugar doesn’t settle to the bottom or clump onto certain pieces of fruit. Rather, sprinkling it over the top ensures even distribution, and the heat will cause some of the sugar to melt through the layers of fruit.

Blueberry Galette

Makes 2 medium-sized galettes

Dough

• 1 cup cold, unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

Filling

• 3 cups blueberries
• 2-6 tsp turbinado sugar
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Egg Wash

• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 tb heavy cream

Turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 375.

Cut the butter into 1-tb pieces; chill in freezer for 10 minutes. Dissolve salt in water; chill in freezer for 10 minutes. Measure the flour into a large mixing bowl, and cut in the butter using a pastry cutter. It’s ok to have a few dime-sized pieces of butter; it doesn’t have to be a uniform mixture. Make a well in the flour mixture; pour in water, and, using the pastry cutter, combine to form a dough. Turn out onto a floured surface, sprinkle with flour, and roll out to form a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Fold dough in half, and roll out again; repeat this step 3 or 4 times. Chill for 30 minutes.

Remove from refridgerator, cut in half, and roll each half into a circle, 1/8 inch thick. Mound 1 1/2 cup berries in middle of each circle, leaving a border of about 2 inches, sprinkle berries with 2 tb sugar (more or less to taste, depending on natural sweetness of fruit), and squeeze lemon juice over. Fold in the border to partially cover the fruit. Whisk together the egg and the cream, then brush over the dough and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 50 minutes; let cool and enjoy, perhaps with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.