Recipes By Erin Jeanne Mcdowell
78 recipes found
Rainbow Cake
This Technicolor cake is a project, but one you can pull off with a little elbow grease and lots of butter (nine sticks, to be exact). Most rainbow cakes call for coloring the individual layers of cake batter, but here, the frosting is tinted, creating an impressive rainbow inside each slice. The batter uses egg whites for a light, fluffy, just-sweet-enough layer cake, while the leftover egg yolks in the frosting make it smooth and creamy. We’ve included instructions for making the ombré and piped versions of the cake below, but you’ll need to make an extra half-batch of frosting for the piped version. A standard mixer cannot accommodate more than one batch of frosting at a time, so you’ll need to make the half-batch separately, then combine them before coloring and frosting.
Speculoos Cookie Butter Pie
Traditionally served on St. Nicholas Day in Belgium and the Netherlands, crisp, gingerbread-like speculoos cookies have risen in popularity after airlines began offering them as mid-flight snacks. Cookie butter, a creamy spread, incorporate that cookie’s flavors. This easy pie uses crumbled speculoos (also known as speculaas) in its crust and the cookie butter in its filling, doubling up on the flavor of warm spices like cinnamon and ginger. The whole thing comes together in about 30 minutes. The pie is perfect all on its own, but if you want to dress it up, add some unsweetened whipped cream and a sprinkle of cookie crumbs. Avoid sweetened whipped cream, which would take this pie from sweet to cloying.
Tart Lemon Pie
This vibrant pie is especially tart, due in part to the high quantity of lemon juice, but also due to the fact that it has no meringue. Use fresh squeezed lemon juice for the brightest flavor. Serve it with lightly sweetened whipped cream to temper the tartness, if you like; you could also skip the decorative triangles for a more classic look (in which case you only need to prepare dough for a single crust). You can make and chill the pie up to 1 day ahead, but don’t add the triangles until just before serving. Store leftovers in the refrigerator, covered with plastic wrap.
Lemon Raspberry Layer Cake
A lovely layer cake recipe for special occasions. It boasts layers of light lemon cake, raspberry jam, & lemon Italian buttercream: simple, delicious, elegant.
Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits
This recipe makes easy-peasy homemade peanut butter dog biscuit treats that you can whip together in no time and feel good about giving your pup.
Spicy Cumin Roasted Carrots
A simple side dish that goes wonderfully with braises. You can also puree it after roasting...it makes a great mash or dip.
Roasted Cumin Carrots
I love carrots and cumin - this is easy enough to toss together quickly, which is a relief at Thanksgiving when there's a lot going on.
Radish Crostini
My mother is responsible for turning me from a picky eater into an adventurous foodie. She made this for me once as a simple snack with radishes from her garden and farm fresh butter - it was a food epiphany for me. Radishes that fresh taste so peppery - the whole thing was heaven. Now I make it all the time. I know it's not even really a recipe...but it's so good that I don't really care.
5 Ingredient Onion and Garlic Soup
This easy and delicious onion and garlic soup recipe is my go-to since I always have everything I need on hand. It only has 5 ingredients and it freezes well.
Hot Pepper Jelly
I know these aren't bell peppers, but the key to this recipe is to make it with red jalapenos - I love their flavor, and I set out trying to make a jelly that captured that flavor, with just the right amount of spice that wouldn’t overwhelm it. Not too sweet, not too spicy, SO much peppery goodness. - apartmentcooker
Strawberry Cheesecake Bars
Great for picnics or potlucks, these portable cheesecake bars incorporate cooked berries directly into the custard, which means they take on a rosy hue. You can even add a few drops of red food coloring if you want to make up for out-of-season berries, which are less vibrantly colored, or if you just want a livelier result. Feel free to use frozen berries in place of fresh, though you’ll need to thaw them fully before beginning the process.
Cinnamon Apple Sheet Cake
This simple cake is studded with large pieces of fruit, so that each slice has its own piece of tender baked apple. Press the apples gently into the batter and be aware that the pound cake-style batter will rise around them. The cake is sweet enough that it needs no frosting, and is finished simply with a dusting of cinnamon-scented confectioners’ sugar that dissolves onto the surface of the apples, leaving only its sweetness behind. Cut the cake into 12 large squares and serve with ice cream, or cut the squares in half for a sweet snack.
Plum Cobbler Bars
What's not to love about a juicy plum filling surrounded by plenty of buttery streusel? In this simple recipe, you have to cook down the plums to be thick enough, but the process is relatively hands off, and the flavor of the slow-simmered fruit is well worth it. You can cut the cobbler easily into bars, as the name implies, but the filling stays a bit soft, so you may prefer to eat them with a fork. They're excellent with ice cream, but many like them best topped with a drizzle of cold heavy cream.
Yellow Sheet Cake With Chocolate Frosting
This is the kind of dessert worth dreaming about: a buttery yellow cake topped with a chocolate-sour cream frosting, made doubly rich with cocoa powder and melted chocolate. The batter may seem thin when you spread it in the pan, but, once baked, it rises to perfection. It’s not a towering, lofty cake — it’s not meant to be — but when it’s covered with a generous layer of frosting, it makes for the ideal cake-to-icing ratio. For a perfect cake, make sure designated “room temperature” ingredients truly are; this helps ensure that the batter is fully incorporated so the cake bakes evenly.
Lemon Sheet Cake With Raspberry Whipped Cream
This lovely cake was inspired by the colors and flavors of pink lemonade. Don’t be tempted to skip the first step of this recipe, which asks you to rub lemon zest into granulated sugar: The sugar granules help release the essential oils in the zest, making for a brighter lemon flavor and fragrance. (If you’re really short on time, you can skip using your hands and just mix with the paddle attachment inside the mixer bowl on low speed for 1 minute.) Slather this sunny cake with swoopy, easy-to-make raspberry whipped cream then serve as is, or dressed up with lemon zest or sprinkles.
Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars
A simple cheesecake recipe that requires no water bath or springform pan and tastes like a creamy pumpkin pie. Baked in a 9-by-13-inch pan, these are sliced into bars that are easy to serve and eat. If you want to make them a bit fancier, you can reserve some of the plain cheesecake batter to swirl into the pumpkin batter just before baking.
Blueberry Cream Popsicles
These naturally purple pops are made with a combination of simmered blueberries puréed into an easy no-churn ice cream base. You can substitute yogurt or crème fraîche for the sour cream; either will give the popsicles a subtle tang. You can use fresh or frozen berries. (Frozen berries can be thawed and used as directed in the method below. Or use them straight from the freezer, but add 2 to 4 minutes to the cook time.) The number of pops this recipe makes depends on the size and shape of the molds used. The base can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours if you need to freeze in batches; just give the mixture a stir before using.
Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread
This recipe uses four bananas, which is more than is typical for a single loaf. The natural sugars from the ripe, brown bananas keep the bread incredibly moist for up to one week, even sliced. The high moisture of the batter can make it tricky to determine doneness, so take care not to underbake the the loaf. It should have a dry, shiny, cracked surface, and a tester inserted into the thickest portion should come out with a few moist crumbs attached. Serve this banana bread for breakfast or brunch, or even as a simple dessert, topped with a scoop of coffee ice cream.
Giant Yorkshire Pudding
Classic Yorkshire pudding is the combination of a few humble ingredients—eggs, milk and flour—bolstered by the savory drippings from a large beef roast. The recipe is simple, and relies upon just a few ingredients whisked together in a bowl then baked at a high temperature to achieve puffy, golden-brown perfection. (Yorkshire pudding also happens to serve as a perfect accompaniment to said roast.) If you don’t have roast drippings, or run short on them, or are serving vegetarians, the recipe can also be prepared using butter instead.
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
This delightful recipe, a veganized version of the legendary Times’s chocolate chip cookie, is the result of hours of research and more than 50 batches of cookies. In place of unsalted butter, this recipe calls for vegan butter, which provides plenty of flavor and just the right amount of spread. Instead of eggs, a combination of flaxseed meal and water provide structure and moisture, while granulated sugar and brown sugar — which are processed using animal products — are replaced with cane sugar and coconut sugar. Be sure to check the ingredient list on the chocolate, too: Sometimes even bittersweet bars contain dairy. The resulting cookie looks, bakes and tastes like a classic chocolate chip cookie. This recipe makes huge, bakery-style cookies, but if you want smaller cookies, use 1/4-cup mounds of dough and bake for 16 to 18 minutes, or 2-tablespoon scoops and bake for for 10 to 12 minutes.
Sweet Potato Meringue Pie
Everything about this sweet potato pie is surprisingly light and creamy, from the soft custard filling to the swoopy toasted meringue. Piping that meringue dresses it up even more. Instead of focusing on making uniform shapes and sizes with the piping tips, give into spontaneity — use two tips with different shapes and use them to make different effects within a designated portion of the pie. The untopped pie can be made up to 1 day ahead, but it’s best to make and apply the meringue within 2 hours of serving.
No-Knead Dinner Rolls
These no-knead rolls couldn’t be easier: Just mix together a few ingredients, and let them rise. The dough rises slowly for a long time, because the dough needs to gain strength as it rises, which contributes to its structure after baking. The rolls that emerge from the oven have a golden crust that’s lightly crisp, and a soft interior that is best served fresh.
Cheddar Beer Bread Rolls
These cheesy rolls pack a lot of flavor considering their short ingredient list. Thanks to the beer, they’re also especially light and fluffy, taking any meal to the next level. But they're also perfect all on their own, slathered with butter.
Everything Parker House Rolls
There’s nothing better than a warm Parker House roll, except maybe one with a salty, seedy everything-bagel topping. While there are a million subtle variations of the classic roll, this recipe keeps the shape simple (just basic rounds) for the most buttery, fluffiest results. You can purchase everything-bagel seasoning in the spice section of some supermarkets, but it’s also easy to make your own.