Category: Baking

Swedish Meatballs

Yet another family Christmas cookie recipe – here’s my family’s variation on the classic jam thumbprint cookie.

Using a shortbread base, the cookie is rolled in chopped pecans. Once baked and topped with jam, they look suspiciously like Swedish Meatballs and lingonberry sauce.

family recipes

Tonight I had a big pot of ham and lentils on the boil for dinner, which was healthy and used up some leftovers. It tasted good but it wasn’t good enough alone. So as it simmered, I asked my mother if she had a biscuit recipe… Jill: there is only one! on the back of the baking powder […]

Foraging at the Homeplace

I was up staying at “the homeplace,” as he calls it, for a while there when we just moved over to Ireland. The homeplace is a wonderful Irish way of talking about home. It’s been beautifully warm this fall and the countryside was glorious all of September. I went for constitutional walks and ate blackberries straight off the bush. […]

Americans in London, behold!

Two important discoveries: 1. My hunt for pumpkin pie filling is over. Tesco’s on Essex Road in Angel carries Libby’s in its International foods aisle, right next to the Caribbean section on the bottom shelf. The American section consists almost entirely of sweets. I believe whole foods also carries a canned pumpkin filling but it’s […]

The Pleasures of Home

it’s a grey day lashing rain in London and I have pie on the mind: Most often I bake fresh open-faced peach or berry pies. It’s a seasonal thing for me- July and August are pie season. I’m picking up a few tricks- I use a few tablespoons of minit tapioca to thicken the filling […]

the blackberry blossom

There is a fence in my new neighborhood covered in blackberry vines. By now the blossoms there will never bear fruit. Oh England, imagine this: warm blackberries, picked from the bush by the side of the road with the sun beating down. This is kind of a west coast thing. Himalayan blackberries may not be […]