Sour cherry pudding cake
Recently I’ve begun looking into my ancestors’ roots. This isn’t a new project, but it’s the first time I’ve researched my family’s history outside of Texas. Curiously, I’d never thought…
Dessert recipes
Peach cobbler, banana pudding, pecan pie, chocolate sheet cake and cool ice creams are included in this category of beloved Texan desserts.
Salted butterscotch oatmeal cookies
There is one cookie that reminds me of Dallas in the 1970s—a chewy oatmeal cookie laced with caramelized butterscotch chips. When I was young, a plate of these was seen…
Grandma’s lemon pie
My eldest nephew Austin recently became a high school student. Since he’s been old enough to stand on a chair, he’s been helping his parents in the kitchen. These days,…
Champurrado brownies
The other day, I saw on a Dallas food forum a request for places that serve champurrado. This is a Mexican beverage that combines hot Mexican chocolate with masa harina…
Blue corn sugar cookies
A few years ago when I was at a bookstore in West Texas, I met a longtime reader. She asked me what my plans were, and I admitted that for…
Lavender peach cobbler ice cream
For the past few summers, I’ve been tinkering with a recipe for peach ice cream pie. The combination of sweet fruit, cinnamon crust, and cool ice cream works in theory,…
White chocolate macadamia blueberry bars
For a friend’s birthday last year, I made a batch of my mom’s raspberry bars. The tangy raspberry jam matched with the rich white chocolate and the buttery cake-like foundation…
Nantucket cranberry pie
In 1992, Gourmet Magazine published one of Laurie Colwin’s final recipe columns. The novelist and food writer had died unexpectedly a few months before, and they were coming close to…
Sopapillas with a side of honey
Sopapillas are total decadence for me. You’d think after concluding a stomach-swelling multi-course meal of chips and salsa, queso, guacamole, tamales, rice, refried beans. and enchiladas that it would be impossible to find room for just one…
Apple crisp with green chiles
While my grandma was a cobbler person, somehow my mom turned into a crisp person. Instead of a buttery, flaky crust on top of a sweet and thick fruit filling,…