The first time I met Bill Yosses he was interviewing for the position of White House pastry chef. The Chief Usher, Gary Walters, and I had been interviewing pastry chefs for a couple of months and I was struck by Bill’s easy self-confidence and positive attitude. Then he baked for the Bushes (Gary and I taste-tested also) and everyone was sold. He went on to expand his skills even further in the Obama White House, where he found new and […]
Everyone loves homemade chocolate chip cookies. It’s almost impossible to make a bad one. But it’s natural to be curious about the other chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. If there’s an ingredient that hasn’t been folded into the recipe for novelty’s sake at this point (bacon, chocolate, cherries), I can’t imagine what it is. Garlic, maybe. But what if you gave a chocolate chip cookie recipe the kind of close attention and precision you’d give a soufflé or sourdough […]
When I think of Halloween, my mind always turns to popcorn balls, those salty-sweet homespun sweets of my childhood. Our neighbor, Mrs. Snider, was a cheerful old lady with a little white bun on the back of her neck and sensible lace-up shoes that had been fashionable during World War II, and I never saw her without a cotton “farmer’s wife” apron like the ones my grandmother wore. When we showed up on her doorstep on Halloween, she would invite […]
Some recipes bear repeating, and this one from 2014 for pear clafoutis is so beautiful that it looks as if it belongs in a Dutch still life, with those ethereal-looking Bosc pears poking out of rich, golden custard. Emerson once said “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” and that’s the key to this recipe. You either need to buy perfectly ripe pears, or have the patience to wait until […]
I like to find recipes from former first ladies and post updated versions from time to time, and while there are a few recipes that survive from Martha Washington, there is no recipe for a cherry dessert. If she’d known how the myth of her husband admitting to chopping down a cherry tree to prove his truthfulness and integrity would grow to become a part of American folklore, I’m sure she would have left us her recipe for Tidewater cherry […]
