Bar cookies

These crispy-topped brown sugar bars are at once familiar and surprising. The ingredient list is short and grocery store and pantry-friendly. The combination of Rice Krispies (or whatever puffed rice cereal you choose) and chocolate is reminiscent of a Nestle Crunch bar. But this particular arrangement—a layer of crisp and buttery brown sugar cookie covered …

Sometimes you want a fruit dessert that isn’t as much fuss as a pie, is more easy to share with limited utensils than a crisp or a crumble, and definitely doesn’t involve the chilling and rolling and folding of individual turnovers (even if strawberry rhubarb turnovers or strawberry rhubarb crisp with oat flour can be …

I’ve long dismissed blondies as a sort of lesser dessert. They lacked the rich fudgy qualities of the best brownies, and they were never as flavorful or as texturally interesting as a good chocolate chip cookie. Often, they could be kind of dry, a bit too thin, not soft enough to be cookie dough-gooey and …

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what makes a cookbook great. Deb just wrote about what makes a recipe great, and, as usual, she articulates with aplomb thoughts that have rattled around aimlessly in my brain. But my favorite cookbooks are more than collections of great recipes. They give me entree into the mind …

Hi there. Things here have been mercifully quiet. Slowly, we’re getting our new place put together. We reassembled the dishwasher. We put books on the shelves. We determined that we, do, in fact, need more bookshelves. We’re daydreaming about built-ins and a library ladder. We’re learning the rhythms of this new space. I’ve been listening to …

It’s been a busy month for us. Our suitcases have gotten a workout. We moved and began to unpack. Two weeks later we packed our bags and headed to Vegas where Dan was attending a conference. Then we got home on Friday afternoon, hastily dumped the contents of our bags on the floor unpacked and …