I relish creating dishes that I find in my many cookbooks, using techniques and ingredients I’ve gathered there, plus my own hunches to cook a new dish. These ideas kind of cook in my brain and I use them as jumping off points for fun, creativity, deep satisfaction, and fresh flavors. I’ve been a fan…
Category: sugar
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
I love to bake cookies because of what they offer: quick, tasty gratification! And since my father was a baker with his own shops, as a kid, we always had sweets around. My sweet tooth traces back to my childhood. To turn out the best cookies, please read several suggestions on page XX to help…
Buttery Snickerdoodles – Surprise!
I always thought snickerdoodles were dull, rather hard cookies, not tasty at all, and could easily be bypassed for something more desirable, like a thumbprint lemon filled cookie or a brownie bar. I often imagined people bought snickerdoodles because of their cute name, or maybe they liked a bit of crunch and their sugary pop….
Majestic Morning Muffins: Sweet or Savory
Aside from banana muffins, or simple toasted English muffins next to eggs for breakfast, muffins were often, decades ago, ho hum for me, kind of bland, mostly an aside to any meal. I never ate them as a child, even though my Dad owned bakeries. (We usually ate rye bread, bagels and yeast rolls, nice…
M and M Chocolate Chip Cookies – A Colorful and Tasty Treat
I’ve baked many varieties of chocolate chip cookies, all recipes purport to be the best, tastiest, most luscious! And they are – until I find the next one on line or in a cookbook, and then I begin to create my signature cookie. Cookies are quick, most are easy to concoct, and once baked, easy…
Streusel and Chocolate Chip-Stuffed Banana Bread
Even though my loving father died shortly past my tenth birthday, and that Dad was barely home – working tirelessly at his bakeries – in spite of this–his smiles and baking endeavors have resonate in me for decades. All aspects of baking flash before me, daily; they hound me to bake something, anything. I love…
Pasta, Cabbage, Potato and Bean Soup
I love soup, and often check them out at restaurants seeing if they resemble something that appears tasty to me, or if they bring back fond childhood memories or fresh recent ones. Soup comforts and satisfies, especially on cold, snow days, like we often have in Denver, even as the sun shines! I like…
Saucy Asian Pork and Shrimp meatballs
I’m a big meatball fan using beef; I especially love meatball recipes which use small pieces of slightly moisten bread cubes folded into the meatball. (That’s how our maid, when I was growing up, cooked her meatballs.) But cooking pork meatballs never occurred to me until I saw recipes in various Chinese cookbooks. Recipes with…
Chinese Char Sui – an American approach
As a young lady, beginning in my 20s in New Jersey, I sometimes ate at Chinese restaurants with friends. These restaurants dotted the landscape at strip malls in small towns across southwestern New Jersey. My best friend Helene and I went to one such place in Irvington, a 20 minute drive from my Maplewood home. …
Sweet Potato-blueberry-walnut bread-lemon iced
After cooking sweet potato soup, which was delicious, I’ve dug around the extensive sweet potato website based in North Carolina, and learned historical facts and viewed many recipes. Most of the historical information can be found on my recipe for the soup. But personally, I’ve discovered my own small tidbits about sweet potatoes. One, I…
Marilyn Raff 