Baking For Others

Last week, I got my hair cut for the first time since August. A haircut should be a fun, pampering activity, but I always treat it like an unfortunate task, akin to a pedicure (another necessary evil I’ve heard some people also enjoy). I always feel like I’m losing something, watching my discarded curls fall to the ground and get swept away. Those are curls I’ve spent years growing! Curls that remind me of college, or high school, or childhood.

After the haircut, I want to be soothed, even though I’m happy to feel lighter curls bouncing…

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After over 3 years of sharing my quarter-life cooking with you all, it’s with a heavy heart and a grumbling stomach, that I end this chapter of my virtual food story and say goodbye to BGSK.

If the mid-twenties have taught me anything so far, it’s that this time of life is one of constant transition and questioning. Not just for me. Most of my dinner dates recently have been dominated by exasperated, anxious, and excited friends across the table, expressing pangs of uncertainty related to jobs, relationships, finances, and that big scary capital letter term: THE FUTURE.

Over…

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Passover cake.

Dry.

Heavy.

Has funny aftertaste.

Has about as much appeal as a root canal. (And trust me, I’ve had one two.)

I got together a focus group and asked them what they thought when I said “Passover cake,” and the above are their quotes.

I’m kidding, of course, but I don’t think my hypothetical group is that far off in its determination about Passover desserts. When you replace versatile white flour with anything—be it millet flour or matzoh meal—you can run into some textural issues with your baked goods.

That’s why one of the easiest Passover…

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My cookies are like little piggies: “this cookie went to market, this cookie stayed home, this cookie ate roast beef.” The cookies from my oven end up in the hands and bellies of friends all over town.

And these cookies crossed the Atlantic and went all the way to Oxford, England.

So as I write this post about cookies (it became cookie week, somehow, at BGSK), I’m finishing a thick slice of British Mr. Kipling Battenberg cake, which came back across the Atlantic in the cookies’ stead. Alex goes to England every few months for work,…

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The idea of moderation makes a lot more sense when you’re not standing in front of a metal mixing bowl full of freshly whipped-up cookie dough.

You know exactly how much butter and sugar have gone into that bowl. You know it contains raw egg (from the farmers’ market, but still). But then you creamed it, added flour and chocolate chips and vanilla extract, and it became one of the most alluring substances on earth: cookie dough.

The dough beckons, of course. And it tastes really good, arguably better than the finished cookie.

I’ve heard Jackie O. stayed so…

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SEE ALL OUR QUICKBREADS, MUFFINS, AND SCONES!

If you scroll just a little bit back in our archives, you’ll see that between the two of us, we’ve been taking an awful lot of inspiration from Heidi of 101 Cookbooks.

I’m not going to make any generalizations about why, beyond to say that Heidi’s cooking is original and, well, inspiring. Any explanation of the phenomenon would distract me from showing you why this bread, which I call Oatmeal Quickbread with Walnuts and Heidi names “Easy Little Bread,” is so…

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CHOCOLATE DESSERTS: Airy Chocolate Mousse; Best Brownies; Hot Fudge Sauce; Chocolate Pecan Tart; Raspberry-Chocolate Mini Brownies; Double Chocolate Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chips; Nutella Soufflé

In some old notebook, on some crinkled, doodled-upon page, I have a list of dishes and categories that Phoebe and I brainstormed at a BGSK meeting early last fall. In addition to “lasagna,” and “vodka sauce,” “apple pancakes,” and “chicken tikka masala,” under the heading of Classic Comfort Food I wrote “more everyday cakes.”

Because I used to…

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See all our favorite Christmas cookies here!

There was a time when Phoebe and I had this little, you know, cookie conflict. As you’ll know if you read every word of our book’s introduction or have ever glanced at our about page, back in the day, just a couple of years after we met in the seventh grade, we were engaged in an oatmeal cookie competition. I stood by one recipe, Phoebe another, and like any good world political conflict, there appeared to be no middle ground. We used to make our friends taste…

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We’re entering pie territory here. It’s fall heading into winter, and we can’t be alone in having our thoughts turn to pumpkin, pecan, or pumpkin-pecan pie.

But for some (or so we’ve heard), making pie crust is one of the most daunting of kitchen tasks. The butter at the right temperature! Some liquid–but not too much! Rolling out the dough!

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OTHER GROWN-UP TREATS: M&M Blondies; Raspberry Crumb Squares; Madeleines; Apple Crumb Coffee Cake

When you’re a kid, you have to search outside your home for candy. If you were anything like Phoebe or me, your pantry wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams with fruit roll-ups and Pepperidge Farm goldfish and other elementary-school goodies, and Halloween–today!–was the moment to go out and stuff yourself silly on the Tootsie Rolls, Twix Bars, and Peppermint Patties that generous neighbors doled out.

I think there’s a moment of awakening for most of us, around the time we…

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