Tag: nut free

Malted milk balls were never one of my favorite candies growing up. I would get Whoppers when trick or treating and Robin’s Eggs in my Easter basket – and I would eat them – but they weren’t among the first items I would reach for, nor among those that...

Last week, we chatted about the recent scarcity of coconut snack products, particularly the chocolate covered and cocoa coconut chips that were among my family’s favorites. Despite a small hiccup in the process (due to brand differences in coconut flakes), I was able to successfully make chocolate coconut chips...

Is it just me, or are coconut chips, particularly chocolate coconut chips, more difficult to come by these days? My younger son loves coconut and used to regularly ask me to buy the chocolate covered coconut chips as a special snack, while I was partial to the cocoa coconut...

With it being Mother’s day this weekend, I wanted to share this recipe for my blueberry cheesecake French toast casserole a bit earlier than my usual Sunday evening time frame. If anyone is planning a special breakfast or brunch for mom this weekend, this dish would make an excellent...

Before moving to the Southwest, I think my only exposure to prickly pear was the reference in “The Bare Necessities” song from Disney’s The Jungle Book. In the song, Baloo warns Mowgli not to pick the prickly pear by the paw or you’ll “prick a raw paw” – very...

Snickerdoodles are ranked among the well known classic and nostalgic cookies, such as chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter and sugar cookies. They have a soft chewy texture (imparted by the addition of cream of tartar) and a warm, comforting, cinnamon flavor. For me, I would say that snickerdoodles are...

As much as I enjoy food, cooking and baking, I’m not the biggest fan of grocery shopping. Even before Covid, I availed myself of pick up and delivery options whenever and wherever possible. While there were definitely some issues and hiccups early on, over the years the services have...

For a very long time, I found blondies to be uniformly disappointing. I wanted to like them, I liked the idea of them. Blondies are basically chocolate chip cookies in bar form, what’s not to like? But, without fail, they failed to impress. They were cakey, or bready. They...

Speculoos (or speculaas, Spekulatius, or Dutch windmill cookies) are a spiced short bread or short crust cookie (or biscuit, if you prefer). They have a crisp texture and a rich, warm, comforting spicy flavor imparted by cinnamon (mostly) as well as nutmeg, clove, ginger, cardamom, and pepper. My kids...

The word “truffle” can be traced back to the Latin word “tuber” or “tubera” meaning hump or swelling and is the name applied to a genus of lumpy mushrooms or fungi which grow underground and have long been prized as a culinary delicacy. By long, we are talking thousands...