lemon & lime drops

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Like Maria mentioned, we all have our favorite variations of the Joy of Cooking's Sugar Drop Cookies with Oil. The original recipe is perfect, so I don't typically mess with it. At the most, I might add some vanilla bean powder to the sugar that the cookies are rolled in, giving them a pretty vanilla-flecked exterior.  But sometimes for a party I think it's fun to have a whole spread of the same cookie in different variations. Since these are so simple to mix up, and quick to bake, you can churn out a bunch of different variations within an hour. 

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3-ingredient peanut butter cookies [gluten-free]

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These little peanut butter bombs require three ingredients. I'm serious! Just peanut butter, sugar, and egg. They pack a powerful peanut butter punch, so when I'm struck with a peanut butter craving, these are what I want. 

Because they are so simple to mix up, and they bake in roughly 10 minutes, they are the perfect dessert to whip out when a gluten-free guest shows up unexpectedly at your home. Rather than apologize that you have nothing to serve, just sneak away to the kitchen for a quick break. Come out fifteen minutes later with a tray of these treats. 

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Cream scones

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These are not only my favorite scones but quite possibly one of my favorite foods. It is an absurdly easy recipe from Joy of Cooking which I have used a million times to produce delicious scones in just 20 minutes. These aren't like the overly sweet cake-like scones that you find at Starbucks or the crumbly dry British scones that need to be slathered with butter and jam. They're in between, simple and perfect, moist enough to eat on their own but not dense or squidgy. Just sweet enough to be called a breakfast treat but not so sweet as to confuse it with a dessert. 

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Honey Almond Fig Cake

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My husband's great-grandfather Giovanni was an avid and skilled gardener. He often comes up in family conversations, especially how he had twenty bee hives, how he would check on his bees every ten days without fail, how huge his honey extractor was, and how he would ever have on hand a little bear jar of honey to gift. One legacy of him remains in the fig trees in our backyard. They were branches from his very own fig trees that my in-laws replanted and cultivated until they became full-grown trees of their own.

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Brown butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies

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I don't make cookies very often. These cookies reminded me why. I just can't keep my hands off the dough! I pick a little here and then a little there and I've probably eaten the equivalent of two or three by the time they're baked. These cookies get it right from every side: the perfect combo of sweet and salty with the deep, warm flavor of brown butter, not to mention a little substance from the oats, crunch from the nuts, and, well, chocolate. 

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Lime & Coconut Cake

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I've lived in Southwest Florida for eight years now, and not once have I made it down to the Keys. We had plans to make a family trip there over the summer, but things happened (like, I had a baby).

Much of Southwest Florida is filled with constructions built in the last few decades. So whenever I stumble upon anything in Florida that dates earlier than this century--anything that has the merest wisp of historicity about it--I am eager to soak it in. One of the places I have my heart set on visiting is Ernest Hemmingway's home. Sure, he may have been a less-than-admirable and deeply flawed character, but his prose defined a new style in American literature and his stories, though often troubling, are filled with an aching beauty, a longing for something beyond. Also, his home is worth visiting in itself,  having been built in 1851 by marine architect and wrecker Asa Tift out of limestone he excavated directly from the site. 

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Solution for Leftover Rice: Coconut Cardamom Pudding

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We've all been there before: rice was on the menu for dinner and you simply made too much.

I don't know why, but rice is one of those things I find nearly impossible to estimate right. Sometimes it forms a main component of a meal (think rice & beans) and we find ourselves scraping the pot clean. Other times, it's the flavorless and forgotten side. It ends up packed in a container and stowed away in the fridge, waiting for the day it's discovered again and promptly tossed in the bin. Because, let's face it, microwaved rice really stinks. 

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