Aunt Margaret’s strawberry delight
A few weeks ago, before it was strawberry season, my grandma tempted me with a dessert my Aunt Margaret used to make: strawberry delight. Aunt Margaret was one of the…
Dessert recipes
Peach cobbler, banana pudding, pecan pie, chocolate sheet cake and cool ice creams are included in this category of beloved Texan desserts.
Dewberry cobbler is your reward
Picking dewberries is a wonderful warm-day pastime. When I was young, my friends and I would march out to the wilder parts of my suburban Houston neighborhood—such as the bayou,…
Ratios and cherry almond cookies
I’m an improvisational cook. This means that I’ll take stock of what I have in the kitchen and then create dishes from what’s available. This method usually works if I’m…
Pinto bean pie: sweet, not savory!
Vinegar pie, buttermilk pie, and corn meal pie—these are all desserts that were in vogue when my grandmothers were growing up in the Great Depression. Made with just a few…
Sweet cornmeal biscuits
A few weeks ago, I had a lovely lunch at Dovetail, an Upper West Side restaurant that serves what I would call creative comfort food. The meal was good but…
Uncle Richard’s sweet potato pie
In times like these, I’m in need of some serious comfort. I work in magazines and it’s very grim seeing your industry on a downhill slide. Not a day goes…
Apple wacky cake
Recently, I was perusing my photocopies of old family recipes in search of inspiration. I was hoping to find a casserole since it’s officially turn-on-the-oven weather, but instead I came…
Grandma’s chocolate pie
There are pies and then there is my grandma’s chocolate pie. It’s a luscious chocolate custard resting on a flaky, almost salty crust, topped with a springy meringue. For me,…
Buttermilk peach ice cream on a summer morning
I was talking to my grandmother the other day, and she mentioned that she had just eaten a peach from her tree. “It was a perfect peach,” she said. The…
Easy as blueberry fried pie
Cake or pie? That’s a question often posed, with much weight attached to the answer. For me, the choice is simple: I’ll take the pie. I don’t know what this…
