Never let it be said that I passed up a chance to go all out. Give me a few overnight guests, a lazy weekend morning, and a request for cinnamon rolls, and I will present this cinnamon roll wreath, complete with extra frosting on the side.
How can this glorious specimen of breakfast delight be yours? Glad you asked.
Are you ready to tackle making homemade tamales or tortillas? If so, you’ve probably run across the words masa and masa harina. Are they really the same thing, and how do you shop for them? Let’s demystify these Mexican and Latin American staples.
I have, for forever and a day, looked for a chocolate cookie I could crown with what I considered the highest honor one could bestow on it, declaring it the browniest cookie. I just didn’t expect it to take me so long to find what I was looking for. Along the way, I met cookies that suggest brownies; ones that are weakly chocolaty, better emulating mediocre brownies; those that promise soft but deliver chewy; and even versions that are a great chocolate cookie, but have little to do with the glorious puddles of square-baked halfway-between-cookie-and-cake batter I love to the point of distraction.
To me, the browniest cookie would be everything that we expect from a great brownie — a slight crackly exterior, a plush, fudgy interior — but formatted as a cookie with a piled height that doesn’t spread too flat in the oven. To bite into it, there would be no question as to what it aspired to be. The most ridiculous part of this story is that after trying dozens of iterations of so-called brownie cookies over the years, I found the perfect one in my favorite brownie recipe, i.e. it was here, all along.
… Read the rest of the browniest cookies on smittenkitchen.com
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When I was younger, no moment gave me butterflies like the night before Christmas. Even as I got older and knew the truth about where the presents under the tree came from, got over the high of it being my birthday (hello, Christmas babies!), and stopped putting the cookies out for Santa, the butterflies never left. They come earlier these years — now when I’m packing my bags and waiting for a flight home. That’s when the excitement begins for me. And when I get home, after I hug my parents and brothers, the first thing I do is head straight to the fridge to see what treasures and curiosities they have amassed.
Year in and year out, there’s a recurring item on our Christmas wish lists: cookbooks. From new releases to classics that haven’t yet made their way onto our bookshelves, you can count on each one of The Kitchn editors to have a cookbook or two on their wish lists at Christmastime.
A couple months ago I shared some of the woes of feeding a picky toddler, as well as the lessons I’ve learned so far, and many of our readers shared their own stories of the challenges of feeding picky kids. There was some great advice in the comments, and two tips in particular really resonated with me; I was inspired to totally revamp how I plan meals for our family. I started planning all of our dinners around five specific templates designed to keep everyone in the family happy and well-fed. And you know what? It really helped.
As any home bread baker will tell you, bread baking is a passionate pursuit. For those who’ve committed to the practice, there’s really no end to the learning. And thankfully for the rest of us, it’s just that fact that makes buying a gift for a bread baker so much fun!
It doesn’t matter if your beloved bread maker is just starting out or has been making loaves for years; there is always something she can use to improve or inform her technique or take her skills to the next level. With that in mind, here are our 10 gift picks for the enthusiastic bread baker in your life.
Between office holiday parties, friendly cookie swaps, and big family get-togethers, you’re likely to come across all different kinds of cookies this time of year. When presented with a platter that has a variety of cookies, which cookie do you go for first? There are so many to choose from, but deep down you know you have a favorite.
We want to know: What’s your favorite holiday cookie? Go ahead and choose a favorite and see what that says about you as a person.
