I go through cooking phases. Hard. So, I’ve made granola before. I thought that the granola I was making was the bee’s knees. And it’s great classic granola– oaty, fruity, wholesome. But I was wrong. I think that I may found my new, absolute favorite (mind you, I say this now) granola.

It has cornflakes in it. Cornflakes! Isn’t that sort of brilliant?

One breakfast cereal begets another. I love it.

I had never thought of using cornflakes until I read this granola article, and this recipe, in the Dining and Wine section of The New York Times about a month ago. I’ll abbreviate the article, and tell you that granola is all the rage again– you know, everything old is new again. Now I will implore you to make this granola by writing that I have made and eaten this cornflake granola, in one way or another, three times since the article was published. And the recipe makes between 8 and 10 cups. And it’s just my husband and I. It’s that good.

Besides the cornflakes, this recipe actually has a few more unusual ingredients, like steel cut oats in addition to old-fashioned oats. I had never thought of using such a coarse type of oat meal– but it’s delicious– nutty and crunchy. It also uses a bit of citrus zest. While baking the granola, the zest seeps into the oats adding a gently sweetness.

Of course, I heavily adapted the original recipe. I added flakes of coconut– because I love it, wheat germ– because I have it, and I altered the combination of sweeteners. I also have made it with and without the zest– different, but equally delicious.

This recipe is highly adaptable. The following is my recipe, but toy with the proportions. Just make this granola. Please. Next, I’m going to substitute rice crispies for cornflakes– the mind reels!

Granola with Cornflakes

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cup unsweetened cornflakes
1/2 cup steel cut oats
1 cup unsweetened flakes coconut
1 cup sliced almonds
3 tablespoons wheat germ
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup canola oil, or another neutral tasting oil
1 orange, zest only
2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine the rolled oats, cornflakes, steel cut oats, coconut, almonds, wheat germ, and salt. Toss well to combine.

In a small saucepan, mix the honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, oil, zest, and vanilla. Over medium heat, bring to a boil, and let cook for about one minute.

Pour the wet ingredients over the oat mixture, and mix well with a rubber spatula. Empty onto a large, rimmed baking sheet that has been lined with parchment or a Silpat. Spread the granola evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes, tossing once halfway through.

Granola should be a light, toasty brown. Remove from the oven, and place pan on a cooling rack. Granola will become crunchy and dry during the cooling process. When completely cool, break the granola into bite-size pieces.

Granola will stay in an airtight container for about one week.

A little while ago I was on QVC. And it was wild.

A few months ago, my publisher informed me that QVC host David Venable was interested in my cookbook. Would I be interested in going on-air to sell it with him?

Um. Blink. Blink.

My answer was, of course, yes.

So, a few Wednesdays ago, I drove down to suburban Philadelphia, stomach aflutter, and my heart only mildly racing. But I had no reason to be nervous. David is a pro, and the segment flew by. I even got him to do a “happy dance” while tasting one of my many pies.

Here’s a clip of my segment. Make a pie, then do your own happy dance!

Guys, I’m going to be on QVC tomorrow night with host, David Venable! My cookbook will be on sale, we’ll be talking pie, and David will no doubt sample some of the recipes from the book. The show is on Wednesday from 8-10 Eastern time (5-7 Pacific).

For those of you on the East coast, we’re expecting another winter storm. There’s no better way of confronting inclement weather, than with a little home shopping :)!

I’ll be back soon to tell you all about it.

I wanted to start this post out lavishly quoting to you the lyrics of a Purim song of my youth. It is sung to the melody of “Roll out the Barrel,” but the words have been changed and this rousing rendition is entitled “Roll out the Megillah” (the scrolls on which the story of Purim are written). But you know what? I couldn’t find them! Anywhere! I  mean, isn’t that what the internet is expressly for?

I thought that everyone knew this song; that it was like, “I Had a Little Dreidel” or “Jingle Bells,” for my non-Jewish readers. But none of my Jewish friends have even heard of it. So apparently, unless you went to Temple Sholom, in the suburbs of San Francisco, in the eighties, this song is news to you. I have forgotten all of the lyrics in the last twenty-five years. But let me assure you, it was epic.

The song told to you to “hoot and holler.”  It sang of “Haman’s plight.” There might have been mention of the fourteenth day of Adar (that’s the date on the Jewish, lunar calendar). Anyways, I loved the song. I loved Purim. I loved dressing up as Queen Esther. And I loved apricot hamantashen.

Many of you probably have seen a hamantashen or two at a Jewish bakery, or delicatessen. They’re a cookie made to resemble the three-pointed hat that the evil Haman wore on his head. The hamantashen you may have seen before are giant, rustic cookies, with the filling practically pinched closed, so you can’t even see it. As you can see, my hamantashen aren’t like that at all. They’re diminutive, delicate sweets– just like my mom makes.

These are the hamantashen I grew up with. These are the hamantashen meant to be enjoyed after a rousing rendition of “Roll out the Megillah.” Yes, these cookies are holiday-specific, but my mom made them year-round. That’s how much we loved them at my house.

So, I know that Purim was last Sunday. But here is my mom’s recipe for hamantashen dough. For the filling, we always used Solo Apricot Filling, but prune, or poppyseed is also traditional. I couldn’t find any Solo filling, much like I couldn’t find any amazing lyrics to share with you, so I used apricot jam, which worked well.

You’ll notice, this isn’t a golden-brown cookie. While you still want it baked, you don’t want it to color a lot. The cookies get too hard if left to bake too long. Roll out the Megillah foks…

Hamantashen

Makes about 24-30 cookies

8 tablespoon unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 tablespoons orange juice
1 1/2 tablespoons water
2 1/2-3 cups flour, sifted

apricot filling
1 egg, mixed with water, for an egg wash

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla, and salt. Blend to combine. Add the liquid, and continue to combine. Mixture may look like it is curdling, but will come together when flour is added. Add flour, in half cup increments, until a dough stiffer than a pie dough is made.

Flatten the dough into a half-inch disk, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 2-3 hours, or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Divide the dough into thirds. Roll out one third of the dough, to about 1/8 of an inch thickness. With a round cookie or biscuit cutter, cut circles out, about 3 inches in diameter. Spoon approximately 1 teaspoon of filling into the middle of the circle. With your finger, apply the egg wash to the perimeter of the circle. Tightly pinch the circle into a triangle. Lay on a parchment paper, or Silpat lined cookie sheet. The cookies will not spread much during baking. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Scraps can be rolled out again.

Bake for 10-15 minutes. Let cookies to room temperature, the filling will be bubbly and hot.

Last Friday I went on local television to bake a pie– a Chocolate Raisin Pie. I think chocolate and raisins are sort of the perfect combination. I always eat the raisins with the chocolate chips out of the “bad-for-you” trail mix. (Which is really the only type of trail mix I like.) I love a Raisinet. And an oatmeal raisin cookie is always sublime with a few bittersweet chocolate chunks thrown in. So when I found a recipe for Chocolate Raisin Pie while doing research for the pie book, I knew I had to try it. I modernized the classic, and toyed with proportions, and arrived at a delicious dessert.


This pie is a perfect winter pie, it’s still fruity (from the raisins), but in a concentrated way. It’s rich, and moist, but the chocolate is not overwhelming. I hope you like it! You can find the recipe here.

It all started when my dear friend’s mother sent me some blue cornmeal from Arizona. The cornmeal was from Native Seeds, a non-profit in Tucson that safeguards ancient seeds, and promotes the use of these heritage seeds in the American Southwest. The small sack that I received was Tamaya Blue Cornmeal– and it’s pretty amazing.

Sure, I had cooked with regular cornmeal before. I am even planning on having an entire mini-chapter on American cornbread for the bread book. But I had never done any cooking with blue cornmeal before. Well, over the weekend, this changed, and I fell hard for blue cornmeal.

I have found that sometimes, when cooking with regular cornmeal, it is more of a desired texture that I get than a, actual flavor or taste. This was not the case with my blue cornmeal. Yes, it has the pleasant grit of cornmeal, but it also has a wonderfully sweet, corny flavor.

I cooked with the Tamaya Blue Cornmeal twice this past weekend. On Saturday night I made blue corn blinis with it. The thin, tiny pancakes were the perfect foil for some peppered smoked salmon, a slathering of creme fraiche, and sprinkling of diced red onion. They were such a hit with my dinner guests I only managed to steal away two, before they were quickly consumed! So Sunday’s breakfast was blue corn silver dollar pancakes. (I needed to get my fill!)

Crisp around the edges yet fluffy in the center, the perfect thickness (or thinness, as they they were), and drizzled with pure maple syrup, these pancakes proved to be just right for a Sunday morning meal. I still have a bit of the cornmeal left, maybe next weekend I’ll branch from pancake territory. We’ll see…

Blue Corn Pancakes

This makes about 16 3-inch pancakes, but the recipe is easily doubled

1/2 cup blue cornmeal
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
3 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup whole milk

In a medium-size bowl, mix the cornmeal and the boiling water. The cornmeal will thicken substantially, and the mixture will have a paste-like consistency. Add the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder, and stir to combine.

In another small bowl, mix the egg, butter, and milk together until blended. Add the wet ingredients, all at once, into the dry ingredients. Blend until thoroughly mixed. (You should blend this mixture more than you ordinarily would other pancake batter.)

Heat a griddle over medium-high heat. Lightly grease the griddle, and then pour spoonfuls of the batter onto the griddle. The mixture will spread slightly as it is cooking. Cook until bubbles break at the surface, then flip. Continue cooking a few moments, until pancakes are golden, brown, and cooked through.

Pancakes will hold in a warm oven until all are completed cooking.

Note: If you want to make blinis, simply omit the sugar, and make small, teaspoonful-sized pancakes.

I never really liked rice pudding, that was until I discovered that it wasn’t really the rice, or the pudding part that didn’t float my boat. It was the raisins. Enter this updated rice pudding with dried apricots. It hits the spot– delicately sweet, perfectly wobbly, and a tanginess from the apricots.

I love this homey recipe so much, I went on television to cook up a batch!

If you’d like the recipe, it’s right here. I think it’s the perfect dessert for those winter doldrums.

It seems like I don’t bake a lot of cookies around here, so when I do bake a batch, I want them to have a bit of everything in them. And apparently Joanne Chang, baker and proprietor of Boston’s Flour Bakery feels much the same way. (Although I suppose that being the baker at a bakery, means that she bakes a lot of cookies. But still!)

These cookies, called the Crunchy Lola Cookie, for no apparent reason except that they won the cookie-naming contest at the bakery, have almost everything that you want in a cookie in them. Yes, they’re chocolate chip, but they also have oatmeal, and sweetened coconut, and let’s not forget about the pecans. They could be called a Crunchy Kitchen Sink Cookie, it’s a little more descriptive.

I’ve made these cookies twice, once in California, where I actually bought the cookbook, and once here in Connecticut. Each time, I made them slightly more “kitchen sink” in nature. Originally, the recipe calls for 9 ounces of bittersweet chocolate chunks. My mom didn’t have bittersweet chocolate, she did have some semisweet and some milk chocolate chips, so I threw those in instead. When I made them at home, I also cobbled together my chocolate, some chips, some chunks, all with varying degrees of cocoa butter. Both recipes were great!

That’s what I love about a good recipe. Making minor alterations doesn’t make it better or worse; it just makes it different. I can imagine the Lola Cookie with raisins, or dried apricots, different nuts, using dark muscavado sugar. What I mean is– this recipe is a keeper– with possibilities for even more experimentation.

One note: Ms. Chang recommends letting the dough rest in the fridge for at least 3-4 hours, or better yet, overnight, before baking. This gives the flavors a chance to marry, and the liquid from the eggs and the butter to fully absorb into the flour. As difficult as this may be, I have to say I agree. The cookies are perfect, chewy yet crisp, chocolatey, and decadent.

Crunchy Lola Cookies
adapted from Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery and Cafe by Joanne Chang

makes 24-30 cookies (I made them slightly smaller than originally called for)

1/2 cup plus 3 tbsp, 156g unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup, 140g granulated sugar
2/3 cup, 150g brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups, 175g all purpose flour
2/3 cup, 70g rolled oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
9 oz, 255g bittersweet chocolate, or any kind of chocolate, roughly chopped
1 1/4 cups, 125g pecans, toasted and roughly chopped
1 cup, 120g sweetened shredded coconut

Using a stand mixer, with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and the sugars together on medium speed for approximately 5 minutes, or until mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla on medium speed for about 2-3 minutes, or until fully incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

In a medium-size bowl, stir together flour, oats, baking soda, and salt. Add the chocolate, coconut and nuts, tossing to combine. On low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, mixing until just incorporated.

For best results, scrape the dough into an airtight container, and refrigerate for a minimum of 3-4 hours, or up to one week.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Roll the dough loosely into a ball, and place 2 inches apart. My cookie balls were about 2 tablespoons each. Flatten gently with the palm of your hand.

Bake 15-18 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown on the edges and slightly soft in the center. Leave on the cookie sheet a few moments, before removing to a rack to cool additionally.