Think of the last taco you consumed. Even if it was a relatively low-end taco, (looking at you Flash Taco), the kind of tacos that come piled up high with everything vaguely Latin in flavor, it was a damn good taco. And it probably only cost $2. (If it cost more, you did something wrong.

Tacos have an air of immediacy about them; they demand to be eaten where ever (whenever!) you may be. Standing up, outside on the sidewalk, sitting down on whatever at the moment constitutes a chair, tacos cannot wait. There is really no point in taking a taco to go as it takes less than three minutes to devour. Take the time, and eat it a couple feet from whence it was given to you. Let the overflowing taco drip down your forearms and coat the sides of your mouth with a slick of taco-grease.

Maybe go back and get another.

In addition to being absolutely irresistible, tacos have the added bonus of being able to contain anything. Carnitas, carne asada, grilled pollo, poached pollo, fried fish, grilled fish, lenuga, or a simple veggie filling like papas. They work with any protein, and can sustain any number of salsas, cremas, cheeses, and condiments. As it turns out, condiments in terms of tacos are more often than not the star of tortilla-enclosed world.

Blasphemy. Not for the above statement, but for this salsa rosa. A creamy (without cream), thick salsa of roasted red peppers and Serrano chilies, salsa rosa is a substantial and spicy sauce that goes perfect with any an all tacos. Breakfast tacos, huevos rancheros (taco-adjacent), chorizo tacos, fish tacos, the list goes on. As a bonus, this salsa is easy to make. Roast, cleans, puree, done. And there you have it, three to four cups of the perfect taco condiment. (To be fair, this would be great on almost anything like sandwiches, pastas, salads, or crostinis…) The thing is, this salsa rosa is from Italian-American Michael Chiarello, not a descendent of the taco-ancestry. Oops.

Never fear. This salsa just speaks to the taco’s versatility. Tacos play well with others (and should be eaten immediately.) What a wonderful food.

Recipe on the following page.

Hummus, the dip that has taken over the world. And the best part is, it can be made out of anything, any-bean, any-spice.

Click here for the recipe, and to read more.

There is always a moment of guilt when, standing in the kitchen, you’re faced with the option of adding bacon. Bacon to breakfast, bacon to that turkey club, bacon to the mashed potatoes, bacon to the salad…bacon, in its salty crispness, plays extremely well with others. Which means, sometimes the only thing keeping bacon off the plate is self-restraint.

Self-restraint in the face of bacon? Almost nonexistent. Why even bother, when the result is a guaranteed success. (Always.)

In making Alice Waters’ Cream Biscuits, there was however, a moment of doubt. Are the bacon and cheddar additions really necessary? After all, these biscuits aren’t called cream biscuits because they’re lacking in lipid goodness. But then something strange happened. The cookbook rationalized the addition of not only bacon, but cheddar too. In its own magic way, the cookbook spoke to me. Or rather, Alice Waters spoke to me, through her Brussels Sprouts gratin.

On page 295, Alice had left a map, a guide, just for these kinds of ‘should I add bacon to this’ situation. There, in the vegetable section, Alice had left clear directions to add bacon where it may otherwise have been thought inappropriate. (Obviously clear directions, my bacon-addicted brain rationalized.) It was as if she was speaking to me, guiding me to continue down the bacon-laden path. If bacon does wonders she said, to one of the most infamous of vegetables, Brussels Sprouts, if it’s acceptable to add bacon and ‘thin shavings of butter’ to vegetables, just imagine what a little bacon and cheese could do to the already lovely Cream Biscuits.

And Alice was right. So right.

Recipe on the following page.

Cucumber kimchi…good enough to get paid in.

Click here for the recipe, and to read more.

Like these CinnaBunBombs, the Ho-Ho-Ho is a recipe that’s been a long time coming. It’s a Christmas tradition in our house, at our aunt’s house, at our other aunt’s house…wherever there’s Christmas dinner, there is a Ho-Ho-Ho waiting patiently in the fridge a la Santa up on the roofs. Waiting for dinner to end, and for everything sweet to come to the table.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Ho-Ho-Ho is yet another punny dessert. Get it? Christmas? A giant Ho-Ho that large enough it needs another ‘Ho’ added to the title? Santa Claus’ more iconic saying? It’s a dessert that’s made for the holidays, both in name and in taste.

Like the infamous Hostess treat, the Ho-Ho-Ho is a dessert that brings smiles to one and all. Except instead of that wonderful (and it is wonderful) packaged chocolate cake, thick saccharine cream, and odd chocolate ‘coating,’ the Ho-Ho-Ho is a homemade cake. A chocolate soufflé roll, vanilla whipped cream, and rich chocolate ganache. The white chocolate ganache twizzle is simply the wink on top of the cake. (True Hostess aficionados will note that the twizzle is not traditionally of the Ho-Ho treat. It’s snack cake blasphemy, I know. But it tastes good, real good. And I like to think that if all Hostesses desserts could get together and combine in joyful union, the Ho-Ho-Ho would be the result. Tasty, taste results.)

The real beauty of the Ho-Ho-Ho is neither taste-based nor aesthetic. The secret is: the Ho-Ho-Ho is a soufflé roll that’s ridiculously easy to make. It’s practically foolproof as long as you take the requisite cooling steps with damp paper towels, and don’t over beat the eggs. Though I’ll tell you another secret. Even if the cake breaks during rolling, it’s still delicious. Just pretend you made a layer cake, the abstract interpretation of a Ho-Ho. Pastry is a great medium for abstract expression after all.

Recipe on the following page.

I apologize, that was inappropriate. But these are a baked good made for punning. Sometimes, the pun just can’t stop. Won’t stop. Shouldn’t stop.

These cinnamon buns, or rather pecan cinnamon sticky buns, have been a long time coming. Six years in fact. The first tray of cinnamon buns I made were adapted from America’s Test Kitchen, of these magical muffins, and of course, everything else tested and approved that tastes good in the kitchen. At 15, I knew these buns were special, yet imperfect. They were the novice buns. A dozen or so trays and a half dozen years later, after the wholesome addition of more goo, the removal of that cream cheese white icing which is at once unnecessary and a reminder of those delectable and entirely easier Pillsbury buns, this recipe has risen from the remains. The gooey, sticky, sweet remains of the buns of holidays past.

Since these are the perfected Frankenstein of cinnamon buns, over time they’ve accrued a mish-mash of the cinnamon bun name—CinnaBunBombs. Cinna is obvious. Bun is a reference to the bun itself (duh, for the slow in the crowd) as well as a nod to the chain that brings the buns to the masses. (A worthy task if there ever was one.) Bombs is in there for a healthy dose of alliteration, but also to signify the Magnitude of the Bun. These are not buns to be taken lightly. They are so incredibly rich, so over-the-top, that only on holiday mornings does it really feel right to consume such decadence. Hence, the Bombs.

That being said, my brother ate five. So perhaps deliciousness can overcome any fear of the sugary and buttery.

Recipe on the following page.

The kitchen is a weird place. Sometimes, things get a little crazy. For example, when the parents flee for a couple days, and only the children remain, the kitchen can turn from a place of spotless surfaces and a well-stocked fridge into a cityscape built out of dirty dishes and empty cracker and cookie boxes. Stacked high around the sink, eventually the dishes move out and colonize the other countertops, making their way from wall to wall to island until eventually, there are no dishes left to be used. Talk about a limiting resource.

In the absence of parental supervision, the food that’s been turned out of our kitchen has been a little off kilter too. No vegetable dinners. Solely vegetable dinners. Sandwich meals, of five different sandwiches. Pie meals. All have been odd, it’s true, but they’ve been glorious as well. After all, it’s pie for dinner.

The one substantial meal-that-most-resembled-a-meal included sweet potato cakes a la Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty cookbook, an early holiday gift. (A gift that doubled as an ‘eat less baked goods, for Pete’s sake’ message from my mother. But since the book is so pretty, and offers up so many delectable options, I’ve forgiven it for the lack of pastry.) Coupled with a bit of kielbasa, onions, and peppers, the sweet potato cakes rounded out a full meal. Remarkable, considering we had no clean dishes to start cooking with. The experience was somewhat of a MacGyver cooking endevour.

These cakes take what you love about sweet potatoes—the color, the taste, the natural sugars, the starchy goodness—and add in a few simple seasonings—hints of smoke and chipotle peppers, a blast of fresh green onions. Then, of course, it’s all fried in butter. Voila,  sweet potato cakes. If you follow the recipe and use tablespoon portions of the potato mixture—as I did after creating massive potato cake anomalies with handfuls of the stuff—the result is something wonderfully crispy, starchy, and heartening. The perfect appetizer or accompaniment to any variety of sauces and dips. Warmed up the next day, it’s practically a potato party for lunch. At that point, since they’re leftovers, if you eat with you’re hands, there are no dirty dishes accrued. Win.

 Recipe on the following page.

Some say the holidays are stressful, as any couple of weeks filled with travel, nog, and a bit of caroling could very well be. Gift-giving, the hunt for the perfect gift, or the hunt for the perfect-gift-for-right-now-before-the-store-closes, clearly can cause stress levels to rise up right around the mistletoe. So please, instead of hunting, searching, foraging, for the perfect gift, get up to your knees in toffee instead.

Toffee is a good place to be, as far as the candy-reaches of the world go. Nutty, buttery, and sweet, toffee breaks in all the right places and hits all the right flavor notes. It’s the kind of gift you’ll make, have to eat, and then be more than happy to make again.

When a gift is good enough to want to keep for yourself, you know you’re on the right track. An obvious plus—toffee is easy to make, and you can make it in your slippers. Slipper giving? Sign me up. A batch of toffee and four little gift bags later, you’ll have four presents ready to go. Three if you’re like me, and are inclined to eat a quarter of the batch.

No big deal. As always, a toffee gift is a great alternative to socks. Homemade candy,  with a little tender loving care.

Recipe on the following page.

Everybody should love to ski, even betches. If you don’t love skiing because of the actual sport, the downhill rush, the swish as you cut through powder, wiping out because oops! skiing backwards is not as easy as it looks, then you should love skiing because of everything else that comes with. Après ski for one, which can mean a variety of things from sweaters to hot tubs to naps to fires, but always comes with something warm to drink. Add a cup of hot chocolate, hot toddy, buttered rum, spiced wine, etc. to something sticky and sweet, and you’ve got everything wonderful about skiing distilled in the perfect snack. Similar to the camping phenomenon, everything tastes better when you’re skiing. (It may have something to do with removing yourself from the routine, from the couch, from the desk, but hey. Don’t worry about the why.)

You know you love caramel, you know you love nutty blondies. Throw in some peanuts and the salty crunch of crushed pretzels, and you’ve got the perfect skiing snack—Butterscotch Blondie Bars with Peanut-Pretzel Caramel, courtesy of the December issue of Bon Appetit. (I know I’m late to the game getting behind the Bon Ap redesign, so let’s get right to it. Sweets and treats have never had a better close-up.)

These bars are everything wonderful about a blondie, enhanced by a rich, salty-sweet topping. Real talk: blondies are the pale, inferior cousin of brownies. You know it, I know it. It’s the sad truth when you’re down a half-pound of dark, luscious chocolate. But in these bars, with the help of browned butter and the equivalent of a crack-topping, the cousin has got a tan, and is killing it for ski season.

They’re easy and delicious. Just in time for the holidays. Make a tray, and watch them fly- down the slopes. (Then turn right around and make another. They’re that good.) 

Recipe on the following page.

There is a bakery in Los Angeles, just off La Brea on Beverly. It is called MILK, and as far as I can tell, it is the one of the few bakery havens in the city.

Last year, I went on a cake-tour of Los Angeles, only to conclude that the best cake in Los Angeles is actually in Glendale, and all other cake and cupcakeries in the area suffer from a lack of fat. Or a clientele that doesn’t purchase cake often enough to avoid the unfortunate dry-cake syndrome. Dry cake, no matter how high or how generously schellaced in frosting, is beyond saving. Build a house out of it, burn it for warmth, just don’t eat it.

I was ignorant to the baked good magic at MILK at the time, and worse off for it. There were iced molasses cookies, snow drops, snickerdoodles, rice krispie treats the size of my fist, blue velvet cake, and a whole case full of perfect ice creams waiting for me. All I had to do was find the red milk bottles. Granted, the best at MILK is not the cake. But on the grounds of liberal butter and sugar use, MILK bypasses the cake-category of the cake tour. If you are currently in Los Angeles, go and get one ice molasses cookie and one ice cream sandwich. These ice cream sandwiches contain over an inch of frozen goodness sandwiched between two macaron shells. Macaron shells, which as it turns out, are the superior shell for an ice cream sandwich. Everything crunchy and melty, sweet and crusty about a macaron is a heightened by an ice cream filling. I recommend the coffee toffee.

The second best thing at MILK however, is not a baked or frozen good. It’s their soups. Butternut squash, creamed cauliflower, and most spectacularly, the carrot chipotle. Blended and spiced to perfection, the soups are good enough that a visit to MILK sans the purchase of a baked good is perfectly acceptable. (A little less well-rounded, obviously, but you can’t eat cookies every day. Or…)

Creamed soups are extremely easy to make, as long as you have a blender or immersion blender. For the level of ease, the product is astonishing. The roasted carrot chipotle soup is creamy, spicy, luscious, and vegan, if you so desire. It’s a soup you want to submerse yourself in, curl up on the couch with when it’s cold outside. The chipotle adds a smoky depth that balances the sweetness of the carrot, and the celery adds back notes of a more zesty spice that cuts through an otherwise extremely rich soup. Swirled with a bit of sour cream and chopped fresh herbs, it’s a soup that needs no dessert afterwards.  Considering this is primarily a baking-blog, that’s saying something.

Recipe on the following page.