Extra-juicy, extra-jammy strawberry shortcakes all done up with a splash of bourbon and buttery rye biscuits: Can you think of a better way to celebrate summer? Truth is, I didn’t grow up eating shortcakes, but now that I’m an adult, they are one of my favorite sweets. They’re always easy to throw together, but these are special. Instead of using just any ol’ biscuit recipe, I worked in some rye flour. The brightness of strawberries works so well with the heartier rye, and while the biscuits are still buttery and flaky, they really hold up against the superjuicy berries. That splash of bourbon ties everything together in a beautiful, warming way, though you can easily leave it out if you prefer. If you have strawberries on hand and don’t know what to do with them, you NEED to make these shortcakes. You just do. You can also swap out the strawberries for any other berry you love, or use a mix of all your favorites!
So, tart strawberries and sweet cream is a yummy- sounding combo, am I right? And when the strawberries are of the freeze- dried variety, and the “cream” is white chocolate, and a buttery, blondie- type bar cookie is the vehicle that brings them together, yes: something delectable is, indeed, happening. Here, I am going to go completely off brand and suggest that an actual bar of white chocolate, chopped, works better than chips, as the chopped chocolate gets a tad meltier when baked. But they both work and give you strawberry-and-cream vibes in the most heavenly of ways possible.
This recipe was born one quiet, rainy Saturday afternoon when I couldn’t work out if I wanted brownies or cookies. With the self-assurance of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planting their flag on the moon, I crowned a tin of brownies with a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough, and haven’t felt bad about being indecisive since. If you don’t want to use raw egg in the cookie dough, replace it with 3 tablespoons of whole milk. You’ll need 40g less flour.
Sweet biscuits and gravy sounds like a gimmick, right? Well, there’s documentation of this dish being made as far back as the 1700s. It’s a fascinating example of how migration along the Appalachian trading route helped establish Indigenous Mexican influence on Southern cuisine.
Thickened in the traditional French way, warm, spicy, and faintly bitter Mexican chocolate ganache forms the “gravy” for raw-sugar-crusted biscuits. It’s great with any biscuit recipe really, though. The relationship of sugared biscuits to plain ones is very similar to that of pâte sucrée (sweet pastry crust) to pâte brisée (savory pie dough).
If you have spent some time in Venice, you may have noticed yellow, often
log-shaped, biscuits called zaleti in pastry shop windows. As the towns along
the west coast of Istria were part of the Republic of Venice for some 500 years,
the foods were heavily influenced by those of Venice.
These incredibly easy cookie bars use cornflour (cornstarch) to make a wonderfully tender shortbread-style bar that is topped with a lime curd: impressive yet simple. While I would always encourage you to use homemade lime curd for optimal flavour, I will look the other way if you want to use a shop-bought version.
This chocolate and hazelnut toffee is one of my favorite treats to gift during the holidays. Crack the toffee into shards and package it in small paper boxes. As with most candy-making, be sure to use a calibrated candy thermometer to cook the sugar to the right temperature—not too soft and not too hard.
A Ritz cracker smeared with cream cheese and hot pepper jelly is the holy trinity of snacking. The cooling richness of the cream cheese balances the sweet spiciness of the pepper jelly, while the buttery crunch of a Ritz cracker holds it all together. It’s the ultimate combination of hot, cold, smooth, and crisp. These festive thumbprint cookies borrow that same flavor profile.
Crispy around the edges, chewy in the middle, and delicious all over -- it's virtually impossible not to fall in love with these tahini cookies. As their name suggests, the star of the show is the sesame paste that you may know as the crucial component of hummus, but it also works wonders in sweet treats. In this recipe, tahini gives an incredible depth of flavor, and a coating of sesame seeds makes the cookies as pretty as they are delicious.
Given how often we need onions to start a recipe, let’s not forget or discount how important they really are. So in this tart, I’ve made them the star of the show, sweet and lightly scented, in pride of place on a layer of light, puffy pastry and delicious crumbled blue cheese.