Throughout this year of baking cookies, Julie has been happily sampling and rating all of the cookies. It’s tough to do exact head-to-head comparisons, but we have come up with tiers to give us some sense of which we like more. So far, I have observed a few trends. First, chocolate chip cookies are all […]
I used to think that if cooking was like art, baking was like science. In cooking, there’s some creativity and flair to standing over a pot or pan and figuring out how to make the best dish. In baking, it’s better to follow the recipe with precision of measurements to get exactly the desired results. […]
The world is filled with great, varied ethnic cuisines: a Mediterranean salad instantly conjures a different set of ingredients and flavors from an Asian salad. A Hungarian stew is completely unlike an Indian stew. However, regional or ethnic naming has also been picked up in marketing and recipe making as a shorthand for minor variations […]
When we used the KonMari method to throw away everything that didn’t spark joy, we had a tough time deciding on our cookbooks. The obvious test for whether we liked a cookbook is how frequently we use it, but that wasn’t enough. Some had sentimental value. Others made for great aspirational cooking but were somewhat […]
Despite being the recipe in the first post, Dorie’s Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies weren’t actually the first batch of cookies I made in this spree. I can’t quite remember whether the cookies or the goal came first, but one sleep-deprived morning, I woke up and just felt like I needed to make cookies and […]
I don’t make many cutout cookies. I’m not particularly precise in my cooking and baking presentation, so drop cookies that spread to a mostly even circle are my level of comfort. However, I wanted to use these 52 batches to explore the world of cookies, and although I don’t have a nice collection of cookie […]
When I first started cooking for myself, I made a lot of stir-frys. I had watched my mom make it countless times, and it was more of a process than an exact recipe, so I could wing it. My mom usually used onions, carrots, broccoli, and beef, but it could be just about anything in […]
Growing up, my family had a few go-to cookie recipes. We, of course, made chocolate chip cookies. There was a variation that called for 4 different types of chips. And there was the peanut butter cookie. I’m sure my mom still has the same printed version in a binder somewhere, but other than using margarine, […]
When we cook meals, we usually cook full portions: most recipes are made for 4-6 servings, but even with two of us, it’s convenient to have a day or two of leftovers. However, I recently have been cooking smaller batches of both dinner and cookies for experimentation. With a dinner recipe, it gives me a […]
There are a few grocery items that I will insist on using the name brand product: Ziploc bags, King Arthur bread flour, Arm & Hammer baking soda, to name a few. For other items, I just can’t avoid the allure of a slightly cheaper product: white sugar, dried pasta, milk. It’s all the same, right? […]