Soft Gingersnap cookies, filled with candied ginger and given a sweet crunch with a sugar coating The Holiday Home Tour is tomorrow and what was I thinking when I said they could show my house? Did I realize it was one week after Thanksgiving which meant my legion of decorations must be up and the house cleaned to suit my relentless eye which can always, always, find a spot of dust, a smear, or a tiny piece of lint that I missed? And that I would have less than a week to do it in? Well I got it done and there will be no cooking in my kitchen tonight so that it will look as good as I could ...
Baking
TEA AND SPICE SHORTBREAD
For many of us, with Christmas comes cold weather. It’s a time for cups of tea and hot chocolate. And tea and hot chocolate are always better with something to nibble on (or dip!) along with our drinks. This recipe makes a rich shortbread, flavored with a winter spiced tea and topped with an orange drizzle icing. It comes together quickly, keeps well and meets both the criteria above. You can nibble on it but I like it best dipped into my tea or coffee! It starts with the tea. When I think of spiced tea my mind goes back to my past and Constant Comment Tea by Bigelow. This is a ...
CHRISTMAS COOKIE SERIES: KEY LIME KRACKLES
Zesty Key Limes are the base for this melting bite of cookie with crackle crust. Thanksgiving has come and gone and we can move from pies to cookies. The Christmas cookie is a tradition beloved by bakers and eaters alike. It is a tradition of long standing. Cookies came into being as a part of the Winter Solstice Celebrations when people would gather to celebrate the changing seasons. As Christianity flourished, the cookie became one of the traditional foods served at Christmas feasts. Queen Elizabeth I is credited with inventing the Gingerbread man when she had gingerbread cookies made ...
MESSING WITH TRADITION: A LAYERED PECAN PIE FOR THANKSGIVING
This layered pie marries two of our favorite Thanksgiving pies: Pecan Pie and Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake. A top crust of pecan pie sits on top of a rich pumpkin spice cheesecake layer and ends with a delicious and gooey pecan filling. Woof! Thanksgiving: a meal so laden with tradition that there is little room for new dishes. At least that’s the way it is in my house. It’s perfectly fine to ADD a new dish but you can’t subtract or fool with any traditional item. That works out okay when one is feeding ten to fifteen people, but this year we are going small; there will be just four of ...
HOLIDAY BAKING: BOURBON AND BROWN SUGAR MINI CAKES WITH MAPLE PECAN GLAZE
Holiday baking, it’s what I do. It’s who I am. As soon as Halloween is out of the way I get started making cookies, cakes, pies and all the other special sweets of Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is no magazine that I won’t buy, no TV cooking show I won’t watch and no blog or e-newsletter I won’t read. And the recipes start today. This particular recipe for a bourbon and brown sugar cake topped with a maple pecan glaze had two different sources of inspiration: last year’s Food Network Halloween Baking Championship and a gift of special baking pan from my daughters. On the ...
BROWN BUTTER SAGE APPLE BREAD
Forsaking the traditional cinnamon flavoring, this quick bread uses the savory flavors of Browned Butter and Sage for a fresh take on Apple Bread. October is here. I am not sorry to say good-bye to September. My September was pretty eventful: from hurricanes to a wedding to a funeral, it pretty much spanned every type of stress. As a friend put it to me recently, I have been living in a deep end of emotion. Which might explain my obsession with baking these days. Homemade muffins and breads, pies and cookies, cakes and desserts, they all speak to me of comfort and stability. So ...
APPLE AND FIG BUTTER CAKE: TAKE THAT GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW!
A basic yellow butter cake recipe is topped with seasonal apples and figs in this homage to The Great British Baking Show I love the Great British Baking Show. The cakes and desserts they bake remind me of my years in Hong Kong and England. My British and Australian friends would always have a cake or some other home-baked good on hand whenever we got together. “Tea” was a real thing. Many afternoons were spent at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a slice of something delicious. When it was my turn to host, I would scour my English cookbooks or turn to The Australian Women’s Weekly ...
ADVENTURES OF AN ASHEVILLE COOK IN A HURRICANE
Did you miss me? Did you notice I was gone? It has been two weeks since I posted anything on my blog, the first missed entries in a year and a half. I wish I could say it was on purpose. I wish I had gone on a fabulous vacation and left the cares of the world behind me. But I did not. Instead, the roaring winds of Hurricane Dorian turned its sights on North Carolina, the beach on which my family has a much-loved home, and on Wilmington, the coastal city where my youngest daughter, Abby, was to get married that same week. I arrived in Sunset Beach a week before the wedding with every ...
Tomato Tarts: Summer on a Plate
This has been a wonderful summer. And now it is the middle of August. The mornings are getting cooler and the sun rises later. In the evening the light has a golden tinge which signals the coming Autumn. An even surer sign of summer's end is the sound of children waiting for the school bus. Their laughter is such a pleasant sound to wake to although I am sure they would rather not be headed back! My tomato plants are sagging under the weight of ripening red orbs and I have eaten tomato sandwiches for lunch and dinner with an undiminished joy. But, as the summer harvest continues, even ...
Spiced Tomato Bread
My crazy summer continues. I have been doing a LOT of traveling and really enjoying myself as I explore new cities and places, and their food. I realized that while I have traveled around a lot of the world, it has been a long time since I visited many of the cities in the United States. So it has been a treat for me to do some travelling in the United States. You can follow my travels on Instagram @awomancooks and on this blog in The Adventures of an Asheville Cook. This week I returned from Cincinnati (Graeter's Ice Cream and Montgomery Inn BBQ Ribs) to find a massive number of lovely ...
