Recipes

Eugenia Bone · NYT Cooking

Eugenia Bone · NYT Cooking

Scallops, yes, and pomegranate, but the real delight of this recipe is in the Foriana sauce, a sweet walnut, pine nut, garlic, raisin and oregano sauce I learned from my dad. The original recipe calls for minced anchovies and the sauce served on thin spaghetti. Either version is delicious.

Eugenia Bone · NYT Cooking

Pomegranate syrup begins with juice: Grind the arils (the seeds plus their red pulp) in a food mill, then pass the juice through cheesecloth. Or grind them briefly in a blender and strain through a cheesecloth. The latter can cloud the juice but it does not affect the flavor. A large pomegranate will produce from three-quarters to one cup of juice.

Eugenia Bone · NYT Cooking

Imagine the best grenadine you ever tasted, a grenadine that transforms a Shirley Temple or a Tequila Sunrise. That is the difference between most store-bought grenadines and this one, made with 3 ingredients in 10 minutes.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This savory monkey bread begins with a yeasted dough made with mashed potatoes, which helps make it the extra light and fluffy. Each round of dough is coated in garlic butter, cheese (Parmesan and white cheddar), and a generous dose of coarse black pepper. Think of it as cacio e pepe monkey bread. It’s best served warm. The dough rises overnight in the refrigerator, which makes this recipe especially great when you’re looking to plan ahead.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This easy skillet bread gets lightly crusty on the outside, but stays soft and fluffy inside. The dough is shaped into a log, then blue cheese is pressed into the dough before it’s rolled into a spiral. The finished loaf smells amazing, and looks like it took way more effort than it did. Serve alongside soups or stews, or all on its own as a tasty snack.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

These fluffy rolls look unassuming on the outside, but on the inside, they're generously filled with creamy spinach-artichoke dip. They're inspired by bierock, a bun of Eastern European origin that is traditionally stuffed with ground meat and onions — but this creamy meatless version takes the cake. If you have a little spinach-artichoke dip leftover, snack on it hot or cold with pita chips, or use it to fill a sandwich or an omelet.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

These no-knead rolls couldn’t be easier: Just mix together a few ingredients, and let them rise. The dough rises slowly for a long time, because the dough needs to gain strength as it rises, which contributes to its structure after baking. The rolls that emerge from the oven have a golden crust that’s lightly crisp, and a soft interior that is best served fresh.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

As easy to make as your favorite chocolate chip recipe, these cookies pack the fun and flavor of red velvet cake into a simple, and much faster, cookie. Super sweet and tender with a slightly fudgy center, they contain creamy white chocolate chunks that nod to the snowy frosting on the cake version. For particularly pristine cookies, reserve some of the white chocolate chunks to arrange on top of the cookie, as they tend to get tinted pink when mixed into the batter.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

These soft and buttery cookies get dressed up with a thin layer of salted caramel and a dusting of flaky sea salt for good measure. Using store-bought caramels makes the process especially easy and ensures that the coating has some satisfying chew to it. Be sure to err on the side of under-baking the cookies, so they remain soft and tender.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This easy stovetop pudding is smooth, rich and tangy, just like your favorite cheesecake — but it’s far faster (under an hour), far easier (no fussy water baths) and far less intimidating (the topping won’t crack). It’s considered a boiled custard, meaning the ingredients are heated slowly until the mixture forms large bubbles in the pot. Whisking the cornstarch and sugar together before adding them to the custard is a crucial step that helps the sugar granules break up the starch, which prevents lumps. This silky pudding is delicious served alone, enjoyed with just a spoon, but you can also gussy it up with fresh berries and crumbled graham crackers for a more cheesecake-like experience.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This classic poundcake has a boozy twist that’s perfect for parties, St. Patrick’s Day and beyond. Irish cream liqueur — a rich blend of Irish whiskey, cream, sugar, vanilla and other flavorings — is added to both the batter and the glaze, which yields doubly flavorful results. The alcohol in the cake burns off during baking, but if you’d like to mute the hint of alcohol in the glaze, simply bring the Irish cream to a simmer and let it cool before whisking it with the confectioners’ sugar. Serve the cake alone, with a scoop of coffee ice cream or a hot cup of coffee (spiked with Irish cream, perhaps). The cake keeps well at room temperature, tightly wrapped, for up to 4 days.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This is the kind of dessert worth dreaming about: a buttery yellow cake topped with a chocolate-sour cream frosting, made doubly rich with cocoa powder and melted chocolate. The batter may seem thin when you spread it in the pan, but, once baked, it rises to perfection. It’s not a towering, lofty cake — it’s not meant to be — but when it’s covered with a generous layer of frosting, it makes for the ideal cake-to-icing ratio. For a perfect cake, make sure designated “room temperature” ingredients truly are; this helps ensure that the batter is fully incorporated so the cake bakes evenly.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

Traditionally served on St. Nicholas Day in Belgium and the Netherlands, crisp, gingerbread-like speculoos cookies have risen in popularity after airlines began offering them as mid-flight snacks. Cookie butter, a creamy spread, incorporate that cookie’s flavors. This easy pie uses crumbled speculoos (also known as speculaas) in its crust and the cookie butter in its filling, doubling up on the flavor of warm spices like cinnamon and ginger. The whole thing comes together in about 30 minutes. The pie is perfect all on its own, but if you want to dress it up, add some unsweetened whipped cream and a sprinkle of cookie crumbs. Avoid sweetened whipped cream, which would take this pie from sweet to cloying.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This stunning bread is made from 16 small cinnamon rolls that are arranged in a loaf pan, creating a swirled pattern that’s surprisingly easy to achieve. The bread is delicious served slightly warm, but if you want to see precise spirals in your slice, let it cool completely before slicing. The icing is meant to be quite thick; if you apply it while the loaf is still warm, it will remain soft and gooey. If you apply it once the bread is fully cooled, it will harden to a thick, glossy frosting. Both are equally delicious, and which one you choose may depend entirely on how patient you can be once the aroma permeates your kitchen.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This braiding technique looks fancy, but it couldn’t be easier to achieve. The lemon-raspberry-mascarpone filling is pudding-like, which makes it important to weave the dough as tightly as possible to prevent too much leakage (though a little is to be expected). Let the pastry cool completely before glazing and serving. This allows the glaze and the filling to set properly; impatient slicers will be met with a sloppy filling rather than a creamy one.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

Great for picnics or potlucks, these portable cheesecake bars incorporate cooked berries directly into the custard, which means they take on a rosy hue. You can even add a few drops of red food coloring if you want to make up for out-of-season berries, which are less vibrantly colored, or if you just want a livelier result. Feel free to use frozen berries in place of fresh, though you’ll need to thaw them fully before beginning the process.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This Technicolor cake is a project, but one you can pull off with a little elbow grease and lots of butter (nine sticks, to be exact). Most rainbow cakes call for coloring the individual layers of cake batter, but here, the frosting is tinted, creating an impressive rainbow inside each slice. The batter uses egg whites for a light, fluffy, just-sweet-enough layer cake, while the leftover egg yolks in the frosting make it smooth and creamy. We’ve included instructions for making the ombré and piped versions of the cake below, but you’ll need to make an extra half-batch of frosting for the piped version. A standard mixer cannot accommodate more than one batch of frosting at a time, so you’ll need to make the half-batch separately, then combine them before coloring and frosting.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

Layered with whipped cream, raspberry purée, saltines and fresh fruit, this easy icebox cake balances bright, fresh flavors with tangy cream cheese. The saltines add a nice saltiness, but you can substitute graham crackers or even chocolate wafers if you prefer things on the sweeter side. The addition of cream cheese makes the icebox filling thicker and more stable. And, while the cream firms up, the saltines absorb its moisture, becoming tender and making the cake easy to cut into impressively striped slices.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

These messy-in-a-good-way blondies capture the essence of s’mores — toasted marshmallows, gooey chocolate, malty graham cracker flavor — in a home oven. The blondie base replaces some of the flour with graham cracker crumbs, and is studded with large chunks of chocolate and marshmallow. Use chopped bar chocolate rather than chocolate chips, which contain stabilizers and don’t fully melt (though substituting chips will still result in a delicious blondie). As the blondies finish baking, they’re topped with a layer of marshmallows and another round of chocolate; messy and delicious, just like the real thing.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This no-churn ice cream doesn’t require any cooking or special equipment. All you have to do is mash up some bananas and whip some heavy cream. The whipped cream mimics the air that’s incorporated into traditional ice cream when it’s churning in an ice cream machine. For the strongest flavor, use really, really ripe bananas; mushy, bruised ones with black peels will work well. Large crumbles of vanilla wafers stirred into the ice cream and sprinkled on top add crunch.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

This recipe makes the perfect breakfast, brunch or sweet treat for a lazy weekend. Any 10-inch ovenproof pan or baking dish will work here, but for the puffiest and crispest pancake, use a cast-iron pan. Don’t skimp on the amount of butter you melt in the pan in the first step; it prevents the pancake from sticking, and helps brown and crisp the Dutch baby while it bakes. The easy, no-fail caramel sauce infuses the apples with brown sugar and vanilla, while also serving as a syrup to drizzle over each slice. For maximum ooh and aahs, spoon the apples, caramel and all, into the center of the Dutch baby and serve it in the skillet. To keep the pancake crisp longer, serve the apples and caramel separately and allow guests to top their own.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

These biscuits are golden and crisp outside, light and fluffy inside, and wonderfully cheesy inside and out. They come together in minutes, and triple basting them in butter (before baking, halfway through baking and once more when they come out of the oven) really takes them over the top. You may be tempted to skip the 3 tablespoons of sugar in this otherwise savory biscuit, but don’t: It’s the secret to the biscuit’s tender interior. Inspired by Red Lobster’s buttery biscuits, these are drop-style, which means you just scoop up the batter and gently plop it onto baking sheets. Try to handle the dough gently to avoid compressing it, which can result in a less-than-fluffy biscuit.

Erin Jeanne McDowell · NYT Cooking

Shortening replaces butter in this vegan version of traditional pie dough. Because shortening has a higher melting temperature than butter, you can prepare the dough without any sticky disasters. It also bakes into a beautifully tender and not-at-all-soggy crust. When shopping for a shortening, look for one made with coconut oil, palm oil or a combination of the two.