Just Baking

 
The bucket, at last, is full again.  For the past four days my sons have been pointing to a kitchen cabinet and saying, in a tone reminiscent of Oliver asking for more, “Mommy, the bucket’s empty.”  Horrors.
The bucket, you see, is the large, deep rectangular storage container in which we keep the cookies.  I love […]

Sugar and spice and everything nice . . . that’s exactly what you’ll find in these yummy Sugar and Spice Gingerbread Biscotti. With the homey flavor of gingerbread and the satisfying crunch of biscotti, these cookies deliver the best of both worlds. And, unlike many biscotti, these aren’t rock-hard, so if the idea of cookie […]

Friends, meet my latest addiction: Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Sparklers.
Oh my, are these ever easy. The cookies are really just French Sablés, the best ones I’ve ever had. The secret to a perfect sablé is not to overmix the dough once you’ve added the flour. After that, all you have to do is roll, chill, slice, […]

I never made a big deal out of Valentine’s Day, and, really, I still don’t. My wife is just the same way. To us, it’s just a made up holiday, heavily marketed by Hallmark to make people feel guilty for being single. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to do something special for my wife; […]

Gale Gand is one busy woman.  Besides being the pastry chef at Tramonto’s Steak & Seafood, Osteria di Tramonto, RT Lounge, Gale’s Coffee Bar and Tru (all luckily located in the same town of Wheeling, IL), she is also a popular cookbook author and host of Sweet Dreams on the Food Network.  To say she […]

If you’re looking for something super chocolatey, these cookies are for you. They take a little bit of work and a ruler, but the end result is definitely quite worth it.
If you think of the chocolate Peak Freans sandwich cookie, these are similar, though not exactly the same. The cookies are dark with an intense […]

I’m a writer for the Well Fed Network’s site dedicated to grilling and BBQ: GetYourGrillOn.net.   This is a cross over article doing some baking on my outdoor grill: The Big Green Egg.  For those not familiar with a Big Green Egg, it is a ceramic grill.  It is a very versatile piece of equipment […]

Are you done with your Christmas cookies yet? I hope your answer is no. Because I’m not either. Although I have baked some cookies earlier to send to a special friend, and test baked a few batches of various recipes to see if they were good, I haven’t really made any progress on the […]

I’d actually call these more of a butter cookie, than a sugar cookie. Of course, that’s probably because I didn’t roll them in sugar, as the recipe states. Despite the fact that I cheated and made my own change to the topping, the cookies are fantastic! I’m already a sucker for anything with citrus in […]

The US Postal Service is not as busy as it used to be.  With emails, UPS, DHL, and FedEx, the only items left in my mailbox these days are bills and junk mail.  I can even view my bills online.  It looks like I won’t be needing my mailbox anymore.  Or maybe I do.
My neighborhood typically […]