Traditionally, this recipe calls for a shortcrust pastry topped with raspberry jam, finely chopped walnuts, a layer of unsweetened whipped egg whites, and some more walnuts, baked until the egg whites are crispy on the outside but still fluffy on the inside. I updated the filling to use blackberry jam, and also replaced the egg white topping with a sweetened meringue. I also had 12 young apples lying around my kitchen, so I chopped those up, mixed the with red wine, cinnamon, more walnuts, and brown sugar, and threw those between the jam and the meringue. I topped the whole thing with a little fresh rosemary and blackberries to brighten it up. Soooooo gooooooood.

My mom recently told me about some peanut butter brownies she’d had at a restaurant in Florida, and demanded I make them for her. I told her that was basic AF, and that I would make something better. And then I did it.

I’ve done it. I’ve finally done it. I’ve created a cookie that my mom has deemed “Christmas-worthy”. This is no simple feat, people. Christmas is a huge deal in my house, and it is not easy to create a recipe which can rival any number of my grandma’s 50 time-tested and perfect varieties that she makes every year, but I think I managed!

Continuing with my Eastern European obsession, I’ve ventured into desserts! I call these the pop tarts of the Czech Republic.

I had persimmons, so…. I basically had to…

A few weeks ago I travelled to Czechia for work, and while I was there I spent some time eating foods in Eastern Czechia as well as Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria. Now I’m back and over my jetlag, and find myself super inspired by all the Eastern European food I tried while I was over there. In particular, the pastries stand out in my mind. In Budapest, I saw something like a croissant, though less laminated in texture, filled with walnuts, some kind of fruit, and dark kind of sugary paste, and it instantly reminded me of rugelach. I resolved to make some, but wanted to update the traditional Jewish recipe, which originates in Poland. I replaced the raisins with cranberries, and updated the dough a little to make it flakier, more similar to what I had seen in Budapest. The result was a crispy, layered, chewy confection, super sweet yet balanced well by a relatively huge amount of butter (obviously) and nuts.

I’ve been wanting to make cheesecake for a while, but I didn’t want to make a giant cheesecake, and I was having trouble finding smaller springform pans, so the idea just lingered in my mind like the one orange in the bag covered in mold that makes you not want to eat any of the other oranges. But, I finally found 4-inch springform pans, and so am now uninhibited in the realm of cheesecake, or so I thought. Alas, I think it was not a hardware issue that was keeping me from making this next culinary endeavor; I think I was afraid because I had no experience with setting dairy-based batters. People make cheesecake and it has this perfect un-cracked surface that seemed so unattainable. Whatever though, I like cracks more, so I decided I was really just being a baby, and so I took the leap and bought some cream cheese.