The telephone rang shrilly. I picked it up and held the phone away from my ear. It was my mother and she wasn’t happy. Somehow, the mishloach manot (the food gift that we exchange on Purim) that my mother had lovingly presented to my family had accidentally been regifted to my Auntie Malka when we found ourselves short one package while out making our deliveries. My Auntie Malka visited my…
Rice pudding, rice and sweetened milk cooked until soft and thick, was a staple in my childhood home. Nestled in its designated white enamel pot with the red rim, cooling on the counter or sitting on the top shelf of the fridge, rice pudding was always a readily available snack. Spooned up late at night, while I talked and my father listened, or eaten in companionable silence, it provided comfort…
Richman’s bakery, located on Bathurst Street in Toronto, was an iconic Jewish bakery known for their delicious cheese buns, rugelach and Boston cream pie. However, it was their incomparable cinnamon buns that drew my car into their parking lot, as if pulled by a giant magnet, whenever I drove past the store. Pillowy soft sweet yeast dough layered with a generous amount of sugar and cinnamon and topped with a…
Visits to one of my childhood friends always concluded with a snack chosen carefully from the white bakery box tied up with string, sitting temptingly on the kitchen counter. My hand hovered over the selection of fruit tartlets on offer, switching back and forth undecidedly between the mini pastries filled with tangy lemon curd, mounds of glossy, deep purple blueberries or lustrous ruby-red cherries. Inevitably I always picked the cherry…
I reached tentatively into the corners of my bag of candy-coated chocolates. It was empty, all too soon. These button-shaped confections get me every time, with the satisfying crunch of their thin outer sugary shell, followed by the sweet sensation of chocolate melting on my tongue. But it’s the rainbow colors of these treats that make them impossible to ignore. That’s how I found myself with a big box of…
Cinnamon toast, crisp slices of bread still warm from the toaster, spread with melting butter and a heavy dusting of cinnamon and sugar, was a snack that healed all disappointments when I was growing up. Skinned knees, ignominious math test results, and bad haircuts, could all be assuaged (at least somewhat) by a slice or two of this treat. Lately, I’ve found myself craving zwieback. This light crunchy biscuit, only…
I stared glumly at the smoking wreckage of my kitchen. Homemade doughnuts had seemed like the perfect dessert for this evening’s Chanukah dinner party. Drawn in by the three page color spread in Gourmet magazine, the yeasty scent of freshly fried doughnuts beckoned. Maybe this would become a cherished annual family activity. Eight hours later, every surface in the kitchen was covered with flour, a slick sheen of oil covered…
When I flipped through the pages of Samantha Server’s latest cookbook, Midwest Made: Big Bold Baking from the Heartland, the title of this recipe, The Only Banana Bread You’ll Ever Need, made me stop for a minute. Banana bread? I haven’t made banana bread in 20 years. I don’t even buy bananas anymore. However the picture of this banana bread with its sugary, crunchy topping sent me rushing out to…
As a young girl, rushing home from school on baking day, I was greeted by the mouth-watering, sweet scent of cookies. There were chocolate drop cookies, sour cream cookies and my favorite, chocolate chip cookies, covering the surface of every counter. Packed away in special corrugated boxes that my father designed (that’s what happens when you’re in the paper business. No Tupperware in our house!), and stored in the freezer,…
I peered anxiously through the window of the oven and stared at the layer of chocolate batter on the top of the cake. I love marble cake and was intrigued by this recipe in which the chocolate batter was simply poured on top of the vanilla batter, marbling by itself while baking. I had followed the recipe instructions meticulously but would have to wait until the cake came out of…