This apple cobbler with hot sugar crust emerges as a thin layer of bubbling fruit topped with a shatteringly crisp crust. Serve with vanilla ice cream — so good!! Peeled and cubed Honey Crisp apples, about 6 cups + lemon zest and juice: Making the batter: Ready for the oven: Ta-da! Description Adapted from the peach cobbler with hot sugar crust recipe in Kristen Miglore’s Food52 Genius Desserts Notes: Below is half of the original recipe from Genius Desserts , and, as you can see, I’ve used apples in place of peaches....

Do you procrastibake ? I meant to do many things this week, but instead I baked. I baked slow-rise refrigerator focaccia. I baked slow-rise, sourdough focaccia. I baked fast-rise, yeasted, freshly milled flour focaccia. I baked slow-rise, yeasted, freshly milled flour focaccia. And when I tired of the focaccia genre, I made these bake-sale winningest gooey oat bars from Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen Every Day . I baked them late at night, stashed them in the fridge, and awoke the next morning ready to face the potentially troubling task of slicing, which turned out to be a cinch thanks to the rest in fridge....

I’ve been making this cabbage pad Thai-ish in some form or another since the late fall, when I spotted the recipe in Andie Mitchell’s Eating in the Middle , and the contents of my CSA miraculously included all of the key ingredients: cabbage, peppers, cilantro, and onions. With peppers now out of season, I’ve been using shiitake mushrooms, whose meaty texture and woodsy flavor nicely complement the cabbage, and I imagine a number of other vegetables—julienned carrots, shredded Brussels sprouts or broccoli, for example—could also be used....

A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me she had checked out Canal House Cooks Every Day from the library and described it as the loveliest cookbook she had seen in a long time. Middle child that I am, afraid to miss out on any fun, I immediately followed suit. That night by the light of my itty bitty book lamp, I poured through every chapter, making mental notes of ingredients to purchase and recipes to try, feeling more wound up with every page I turned, finally closing my eyes to a photo of a sheet pan lined with chocolate chip cookies, the last beautiful image in the book....

This creamy, oven-baked polenta recipe is a game-changer. It’s a hands-off process: there’s no stirring or careful monitoring at the stovetop here . This recipe takes 5 minutes to prep, and 60 minutes later it’s done . Shortly before Thanksgiving, I helped out with a little dinner at the Vischer Ferry General Store . We made salad with orange-shallot vinaigrette , peasant bread , sherry vinegar chicken and polenta, which I had forgotten how much I love....

Ina Garten’s roasted broccoli recipe is excellent and comes together quickly, a perfect veggie side dish to make year-round. Seasoned with fresh lemon zest, juice and grated parmesan, it is irresistible! Upon seeing Ina Garten’s roasted broccoli recipe in Food52’s roundup of the 10 most popular genius recipes of 2017 , I made it immediately. The recipe comes from Ina’s 2008 Back to Basics cookbook, and one bite of the sweet, slightly charred, perfectly lemony florets instantly made me one of the recipe’s many admirers....

I’ve been trying to get this post out for weeks and almost, in fact, didn’t publish it because I feared at this point in the summer it might be irrelevant, but a trip to the Schenectady Greenmarket this past Sunday quelled my worries. Basil—in large bunches—is still readily available and affordable. And perhaps your backyard basil bushes are flourishing, too? (Mine are dead.) Three weeks in a row (several weeks ago now), an enormous bunch (or two!...

This is the BEST banana bread! I got the recipe from a college friend’s mother, who brought the bread to every lacrosse game. It is super moist, perfectly sweet, and always was the first to disappear from the dessert buffet. Make it! It likely comes as no surprise that many fond memories of childhood sports center around food. From the orange slices at halftime, to the post-game treats, to the end-of-season celebrations, food visions rival the victories, the losses, the nail-biters....

Soft-crumbed with a nice chew, these no-knead pretzel rolls are perfect for sandwiches of all kinds: egg and cheese, turkey and brie, roasted vegetables and mozzarella. The dough takes no time to mix together, and time does the work from there. Simple and delicious! Upon discovering that my children love pretzel rolls, I set out to make them from scratch, using this favorite soft pretzel recipe as a starting point. After several experiments, I created what I was looking for: a soft-crumbed but sturdy roll, with a crisp but tender, very pretzel-y tasting crust....

When it comes to cookies, I shy away from anything that looks too complicated, anything that might require a piping bag or a frosting tip, anything with ornate detail. But when I saw a photo of an embossed sugar cookie, lightly glazed, looking like a frosted snowflake in Rebecca Firth’s The Cookie Book , I read on. Rebecca had been inspired by the stamped molasses cookie in Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh’s Sweet and wanted to create something similar but with a different flavor profile....

Pawpaws, like bananas, take well to baking. Here, pawpaw flesh replaces mashed banana in a favorite banana bread recipe, and the result is heavenly: moist and fruity, tasting better with each passing day! I learned about pawpaws from Sam Consylman, one of the farmers at the Livengood Family Farm stand at the South and Passyunk Farmers’ Market, just a few blocks from my apartment in South Philadelphia. Pawpaws are a fruit indigenous to North America, known for their tropical flavor and creamy texture....

A few weeks ago I found, hiding in a stash of to-make recipes, a magazine clipping featuring “better-than-takeout” udon noodles. It had been torn from a Bon Appetit, and a note before the recipe intrigued me. It said: “You can easily make this vegetarian—omit the pork and sub in 8 oz. shiitake or crimini mushrooms.” I loved this idea, and I happened to have mushrooms on hand because I had been making large batches of vegetarian chili ....

These vegetarian black bean and cheese enchiladas are so satisfying. It’s a simple recipe with a modest ingredient list, and best of all, it’s ready in 40 minutes! 🎉🎉🎉🎉 This has become one of my favorite vegetarian recipes: bean and cheese enchiladas. It is a simple recipe with a modest ingredient list, and because of this, its success lies in the details, namely: A super flavorful sauce: this fresh, red enchilada sauce , made with broiled vegetables, fresh lime juice, and a chipotle in adobo sauce comes together in no time and is the foundation of the dish: it smothers the stuffed, rolled tortillas on both sides, infusing them with heat and spice, smoke and char, sweetness and acidity....

This vegetarian broccoli-cheddar soup is made with water rather than stock and tastes super flavorful thanks to onions, garlic, spices, Cheddar cheese, and a small amount of yogurt. It’s a one-pot, prep-as-you-go job and is so comforting on a cold day. With heaps of cheese, half-and-half, butter, and sometimes bacon, recipes for broccoli-cheddar soup often resemble Super Bowl queso more than soup. Not this one, which calls for water, as opposed to stock or milk, and which is thickened by puréed broccoli stalks and potato, as opposed to a roux....

Very recently I discovered the joys of baking tofu — no pressing, no marinating, no sticking — and now my tofu repertoire has expanded to a grand total of three recipes, all of which I love. For the baked tofu, I’ve been using a recipe from Moosewood’s Simple Suppers . When combined with a favorite recipe for roasted kale and coconut, it becomes a sheetpan supper — easy peasy (though I do like to make coconut rice to go along with it)....

The funny thing about not having traveled anywhere in nearly a year is that even the most ordinary of excursions would be a thrill right now. I’d give anything to spend a morning at the Honest Weight Food Co-op in Albany, wandering the aisles, loading up on bulk-food essentials, sipping an apple zinger, a freshly squeezed ginger-spiked juice (costing a small fortune). Or to pop into Nora’s for labneh and pomegranate molasses or any of the homemade Armenian food the owners have prepared that morning and so generously will sample should you show a whisper of interest....

Last week, a friend, a reliable source of all things cooking — books , ingredients , attire, drinks — texted me a recipe. It came from Canal House Cooking Volume No. 6: The Grocery Store , and she described it as a small miracle. I, of course, made the dish, “chicken and rice,” immediately, and then made it again, and then made it once more last night. The dish is miraculous foremost for its reception — we ALL gobble it up — but also for its simplicity: it’s a one-pot wonder calling for nothing more than butter, one onion, a few stalks of celery, one chicken, rice and water....

Made with both cocoa powder and chocolate chips as well as a small amount of espresso powder, which heightens the chocolate flavor, these cookies are deeply chocolatey, properly salted, and perfectly textured, crisp on the exterior with a dense, fudgy center. What’s more, they come together in one bowl! Every year around Mother’s Day, the wonderful people at Fair Trade work hard to share the stories about the many women behind their Fair Trade products....

The only trouble, if I can call it that, with baking cakes is having leftovers. A bite with my morning coffee, a sliver post lunch, a nibble with afternoon tea—I am the one at home making sure those leftovers don’t go to taste. To mitigate the leftovers-for-days situation, I bought two small cake pans . They’re round, measuring 6×2 inches, and they’ve been so handy to have on hand. I use them to bake a half recipe of my children’s favorite one-bowl buttermilk birthday cake , and I’ve found I can nearly always halve a recipe and bake off all of the batter in one of the pans or split the batter between the two pans, as I’ve done here....

This cucumber and green grape gazpacho soup recipe is a variation of the chilled Spanish soup ajo blanco. It’s so refreshing and always a huge hit! Topped with a spicy tomato salsa, it looks striking, and with a hunk of bread on the side, can be a nice summer lunch or dinner. Sometimes I find myself baking bread solely for the purpose of making bread crumbs. This is one of my favorite uses for a stash of fresh crumbs: cucumber and green grape gazpacho, a variation of the chilled Spanish soup ajo blanco....