Not Your Mother's Cookbooks

I come from a long line of movie buffs. I mean hard core movie lovers from way back. I went to the movies every Sunday with my Aunt Marge all the years starting from about age 6 growing up in northern New Jersey. My aunt had all the old Dell Publishing Modern Screen and Photoplay movie magazines form the 1930s on up, as well as books written by the movie stars about their lives.

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Chocoholics live in a world that is defined by passionate words-everything from love and crave to addiction and indulgence. Some prefer milk chocolate, others dark. Europeans have a developed palate for white chocolate that Americans haven’t got yet. Everyone loves chocolate baked into cookies. It is culinary luxury in a bite and even the most timid baker longs to bake the perfect batch.

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The gooey childhood delights composed of melted marshmallows and chocolate bars sandwiched between two graham cracker squares are one of the newest members of the creative home kitchen.

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One of the great members of the bar cookie world is the lemon bar. You can say there was BLB (before lemon bar) and ALB (after lemon bar) in my life. Certainly there is no other bar cookie that is as unique and vibrant as the lemon bar.

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Butter cookies are good for company, for Christmas Eve, after mass, after dinner.  They are a gloriously simple rolled cookie. And this recipe is the one perfect recipe to have in your stash of Christmas cookies for giving and sharing,…

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What is Christmas without Christmas cookies? I have friends who start at Thanksgiving with their baking and bake right on through the month of December, ending up with a cache of beautiful cookies in different shapes, styles, colors, and flavors. For my holiday catering, I used to always offer the cookie tray, which was wildly popular and worth all the hours of baking that went into creating it.

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Buffet Preparation, Storage,and Service Timeline

* Prepare two chocolate tortes, the chocolate sauce, the crêpes, almonds, biscotti, chocolate chip cookie dough, and compote 2 to 3 days ahead.

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You want some dessert, but are satisfied with a few cookies or a slice of cake, not more than that. And you don’t want it hanging around the house for days, worrying about eating too much, have to give away the rest, or have to freeze it. If you are half of a couple or live alone, small batch baking is not a new concept for you, but a practical way to bake.

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This chocolate chip cookie-cake heart is the handiwork of my friend and incredibly versatile cook Jacquie McMahan. Jacquie’s daughter-in-law fell in love with a cookie-cake with her name written on it available by mail order from a bakery in San…

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Most people have never heard of Murray Jaffe. But if you shop at stores that stock mainstream natural foods like Whole Foods, you are familiar with products from a company called Barbara’s. From the best instant mashed potatoes (yes, there is such a thing–I use them in bread machine recipes all the time) to dry cereals with no refined sugar, the man who conceived, created, and promoted the products is Murray Jaffe. The moniker Barbara is the name of his daughter.

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