All my culinary kudos are going to Alice Medrich these days. She does that thing none of us want to do: she makes the same darned thing over and over again, each time tweaking the recipe until it comes out just perfect. All that toil translates: Alice's chocolate pecan pie is to die for, her […]

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A while back, Deb of Smitten Kitchen fame blogged about the shortcomings of Martha Stewart's chocolate pretzel cookie recipe. "Dry, bland, and not chocolatey enough" and more colorful adjectives described a cocopretzel that just didn't cut it. She suggested trying to make pretzels out of Dorie Greenspan's very flavorful and buttery chocolate rollout cookies, which […]

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In honor of the holiday season, Daring Bakers’ took on what may be the holy grail of daring recipes: Buche de Noel, or Yule Log. Until Lis and Ivonne charged DBers with making this, I didn’t even know it was a food. See, traditionally, the Yule Log was a large, thick piece of wood burned […]

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With candy canes and sprinkles lining grocery store shelves, holiday season just screams, "sugar cookies!" Around this time each year, I toss aside my fanciest dessert recipes and opt for the more humble sugar cookie instead. Sugar cookies can be enhanced any which way, from flavoring the dough to adding crushed candy to topping with […]

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Apple Pie has been done, done, and done again. If you skim anyone's list of cookbooks or blogs, you'll find infinite declarations of how to make apple pie. Some claim to have the definitive recipe. Since I have never (to the best of my memory) actually made an apple pie, start to finish, from scratch, […]

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