Gluten-free pumpkin pie, from scratch

I didn't start out to make from-scratch pumpkin pie— it was an accident of being unable to find canned pumpkin in Poland. However, as circumstances go, it's one I'm happy to deal with. Interestingly, Polish doesn't have a separate word for pumpkin (which is a type of squash.) When you buy pumpkins and squash, they're all...

Sugar noodles (Makaron z cukrem)

Yes, this is a communist dessert. I first saw this recipe on East Germany museum's restaurant's menu, and my then-dining companion recognized it from his childhood. When candy and chocolate was scarce, it made an easy dessert for kids, in a pinch. For my birthday, I asked him to make it for me, as I love noodles—...

I am going to eat tropical fruit and imagine, until spring

Eating tropical fruit reminds me of places I’ve been— or new places I want to go. In my mind, the taste of papaya will always be linked with Hawai’i. I can even remember the last papaya I had— stopped at a convenience store on the big island, and they happened to have a pile of...

Dear winter: pbbbhhtthhh (also: recipe for baked apples)

That’s the sound of me sticking my tongue out at winter, which seems to have no shortage of cold and snow to dump on the midwest. Weather like this, I have two things I take shelter in: exercise and food. But. swimming is the way I stay active in the winter, and that gets harder...

Chocolate pudding cake, sans wheat

I am now going to hand down an ancient family recipe that has been ritually served on many a birthday and holiday. This recipe is wonderfully easy, and for those of us who are gluten-free but don’t want to spend lots of time measuring out four different kinds of flour, this cake is a good...

Ice cream in a melon bowl

This is less a recipe and more of an assembly. But with the temperature in the 90s and the heat index in the 100s, I’m just not feeling like cooking. So: two cooling summertime foods— fruit and ice cream. A Turkish friend of mine mentioned this concept in passing— and it stuck in my mind....

Cold fruit soup

  With the Game of Thrones season finale tonight, I thought a themed recipe would be appropriate.— and I love the food descriptions from the book. The mention of this soup in a Game of Thrones book made me very curious, since soup usually involves vegetables, spices and lots of simmering. Fruit, the sweeter counterpart...

Gluten-free brownies

After taking a gluten-free baking class, and tasting Zingerman’s wonderful Townie Brownies, I decided to pull out a favorite recipe of mine. I made these brownies as gifts last Christmas, and they were a hit— wonderfully rich. Teff flour is traditionally used in Ethiopian cooking. It has a nutty flavor, so it blends deliciously with...

Sansa’s Lemon Cakes (sans wheat)

I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of how a new recipe came out. With the debut HBO’s Game of Thrones season three quickly approaching, I realized I had to get working on converting a recipe. For those of you who haven’t read the books the that epic, soap-opera like fantasy is based on,...