Recipes By Erin Jeanne Mcdowell
78 recipes found
Blue Cheese Swirl Bread
This easy skillet bread gets lightly crusty on the outside, but stays soft and fluffy inside. The dough is shaped into a log, then blue cheese is pressed into the dough before it’s rolled into a spiral. The finished loaf smells amazing, and looks like it took way more effort than it did. Serve alongside soups or stews, or all on its own as a tasty snack.
Cheesy Garlic-Potato Monkey Bread
This savory monkey bread begins with a yeasted dough made with mashed potatoes, which helps make it the extra light and fluffy. Each round of dough is coated in garlic butter, cheese (Parmesan and white cheddar), and a generous dose of coarse black pepper. Think of it as cacio e pepe monkey bread. It’s best served warm. The dough rises overnight in the refrigerator, which makes this recipe especially great when you’re looking to plan ahead.
Cheesy Beer Bread
This easy bread recipe uses beer and baking powder to leaven instead of yeast, producing a loaf with a lightly crisp crust and a beautifully soft interior. A strongly flavored cheese, like sharp Cheddar or Gruyère, complements the flavors of the beer. The brown sugar isn’t absolutely necessary, but it extends the bread’s shelf life, keeping the interior soft even after it’s been sliced. This bread is especially lovely served warm, but is also delicious at room temperature.
Baked Apple Cider Doughnuts
This recipe yields the classic flavor of baked cider doughnuts. For the most traditional result, a doughnut pan is recommended, but you can also bake these off in a muffin pan.
Candy Apples
Traditional candy apples are dipped in a vibrant syrup that’s tinted red. This version skips the food coloring, and instead infuses the candy coating with cinnamon and vanilla. If you're worried about your teeth, serve these by slicing them, rather than trying to take a bite, as the candy coating sets to be quite firm. Be sure to start with room temperature apples as cold apples will cause the candy mixture to harden too quickly making it difficult to work with.
Caramel Apples
An easy recipe for making homemade caramel apples, this can be doubled or tripled easily to make more. Once dipped, the apples can be rolled in chopped nuts, candy, or drizzled with chocolate for a little extra flair. Be sure to start with room temperature apples as cold apples will cause the caramel mixture to harden too quickly making it difficult to work with.
S’mores Blondies
These messy-in-a-good-way blondies capture the essence of s’mores — toasted marshmallows, gooey chocolate, malty graham cracker flavor — in a home oven. The blondie base replaces some of the flour with graham cracker crumbs, and is studded with large chunks of chocolate and marshmallow. Use chopped bar chocolate rather than chocolate chips, which contain stabilizers and don’t fully melt (though substituting chips will still result in a delicious blondie). As the blondies finish baking, they’re topped with a layer of marshmallows and another round of chocolate; messy and delicious, just like the real thing.
Roasted Pear Quick Bread
Roasted pears add juiciness and depth of flavor to this otherwise simple quick bread. You can peel the pears if you want, but they add a sturdiness to the roasted fruit and a nice texture to the finished loaf. The addition of streusel takes this bread over the top, but it is excellent without it, too, if you feel like skipping a step.
Old-Fashioned Doughnut Bundt Cake
This simple vanilla Bundt cake has plenty of freshly grated nutmeg to nod to the flavor of old-fashioned doughnuts. But since it’s baked rather than fried, it also gets a generous coating of melted butter while it’s still warm to give it some of that doughnut richness. Then it’s coated in cinnamon-sugar. It’s neither a doughnut nor a cake – it’s both. It’s delicious right after it’s made, but it tastes even more like an old-fashioned doughnut after sitting overnight. Store it tightly wrapped in plastic wrap at room temperature for up to 4 days.
Apple Skillet Cake With Salted Caramel Frosting
This buttery cake is filled with soft, caramel-infused apples and topped with an easy caramel frosting. It’s better to err on the side of underbaking the cake slightly, since it makes for a gooier end result.
Triple Ginger Skillet Cake
This cake, at its best when warm, is full of dark molasses flavor and three kinds of ginger (fresh, ground and crystallized). It can be served with powdered sugar, whipped cream or even ice cream — a drizzle of caramel sauce is especially nice, too.
Apple Butter Quick Bread
Apple butter gives this bread a deep autumnal flavor and helps keep it moist for several days after baking. Whole-wheat flour adds a bit of heartiness to the batter, which can be made using only one bowl and a whisk.
Skillet Brownie With Chocolate Ganache Frosting
This skillet brownie has it all: It’s chewy at the edges, and gooey in the center. (For maximum gooeyness, err on the side of underbaking slightly.) Topped with more chocolate and a sprinkling of flaky sea salt, this easy recipe is a chocolate lover’s dream.
Fluffy Cheddar Biscuits
These biscuits are golden and crisp outside, light and fluffy inside, and wonderfully cheesy inside and out. They come together in minutes, and triple basting them in butter (before baking, halfway through baking and once more when they come out of the oven) really takes them over the top. You may be tempted to skip the 3 tablespoons of sugar in this otherwise savory biscuit, but don’t: It’s the secret to the biscuit’s tender interior. Inspired by Red Lobster’s buttery biscuits, these are drop-style, which means you just scoop up the batter and gently plop it onto baking sheets. Try to handle the dough gently to avoid compressing it, which can result in a less-than-fluffy biscuit.
Flag Cake
Layered with whipped cream, raspberry purée, saltines and fresh fruit, this easy icebox cake balances bright, fresh flavors with tangy cream cheese. The saltines add a nice saltiness, but you can substitute graham crackers or even chocolate wafers if you prefer things on the sweeter side. The addition of cream cheese makes the icebox filling thicker and more stable. And, while the cream firms up, the saltines absorb its moisture, becoming tender and making the cake easy to cut into impressively striped slices.
Crispy Mushroom Focaccia
In this recipe, the secret to achieving crispy, not soggy, mushrooms is roasting them twice: first, alone on a sheet pan until they’re just tender and their moisture reduced, then again on top of a soft and fluffy focaccia dough, where they will brown and crisp. For a vegan version, skip the Parmesan and use flaky salt or nutritional yeast instead.
Two-Tone Ginger Custard Pie
This silky, spiced custard is especially dreamy inside a crisp, flaky crust. Some custard pies use eggs as a binder — this one uses flour for a thick custard that always sets perfectly, creating a flat surface that’s ideal for a dusting of sugar. This striking design requires just a sheet of paper and a sifter, while the topping itself is ground freeze-dried mangoes and strawberries mixed with confectioners’ sugar. You can find the freeze-dried fruit at most grocery stores and health-food stores, where they are often grouped with the nuts and dried fruit. The pie can be made up to 1 day ahead, but for the cleanest look, it’s best to apply the sugar within 2 hours of serving; beyond that, the sugar will eventually absorb moisture from the pie and begin to change color. But even if you skip the topping, the filling is beyond delicious all on its own.
Peppermint Brownies
These crowd-pleasing treats start with a dense, chewy brownie that’s topped with a layer of creamy peppermint filling, dark chocolate glaze, and a sprinkle of crushed peppermints. For the cleanest slices, chill the finished brownies thoroughly, then use a warm knife to slice them. Dip the knife blade into hot water and wipe it dry with a kitchen towel between each cut, and you’ll be rewarded with clean layers of chocolate, peppermint and glaze. It’s fine to sub chocolate chips for the chopped chocolate, just make sure they are fully melted before proceeding.
Ginger Mango Cream Tart
Festive enough for a holiday party or a summer cookout, this bright and creamy mango tart has a crisp gingersnap crust and is topped with candied ginger, pistachios and toasted coconut. The no-bake crust, which is made from store bought gingersnaps, butter and light brown sugar, comes together in the food processor with the press of a button. For the filling, fresh or frozen mango is cooked with ginger and turmeric to deepen its flavor and brighten the color of the finished dessert.
Guinness Brownies
The earthy flavors of stout beer pair perfectly with three kinds of chocolate in these dense, fudgy brownies. You can use bittersweet or semisweet, bars or chips, depending on what you have on hand, but this recipe is at its best using bar chocolate because of its meltability. A sprinkling of milk chocolate chips before baking is a sweet counterpoint to the rich, complex brownies. Do not overbake them: When the brownies are done, they will appear just set in the center and on the verge of underbaked. They’ll set further as they cool. Chilling the brownies makes them easier to cut, but allow them to come to room temperature before serving for the best flavor.
Small-Batch Blueberry Muffins
Michelle Lopez, the author of “Weeknight Baking: Recipes to Fit Your Schedule” (Simon & Schuster, 2019), was inspired by the oversize muffins at Levain Bakery when she developed this recipe. The keys to the loftiest muffins? Plenty of batter and a high oven temperature, which ensures that they rise quickly and bake with a beautiful top and a tender interior. For the best results, rest your batter before baking. One very important tip: Spray the muffin pan and its edges generously with nonstick cooking spray. When the muffins come out of the oven, immediately use a small offset spatula to gently release their edges from the pan, then let them cool completely before removing them. You can use frozen blueberries instead of fresh, but be sure to thaw and drain them, then let them come to room temperature before adding them to the batter.
Fried Apple Pies
These little pies are filled to the brim with juicy caramel apple filling, fried, then tossed in cinnamon sugar. You may need to adjust the temperature as you fry them: If the oil is too hot, they’ll look golden on the outside, but the dough may not fully cook through. If the oil is too cool, they may be greasy. If you don’t have a thermometer, use a piece of scrap dough to test the oil for frying; it should rise to the top immediately.
Salted Caramel Cookies
These soft and buttery cookies get dressed up with a thin layer of salted caramel and a dusting of flaky sea salt for good measure. Using store-bought caramels makes the process especially easy and ensures that the coating has some satisfying chew to it. Be sure to err on the side of under-baking the cookies, so they remain soft and tender.
Red Velvet Cookies With White Chocolate Chunks
As easy to make as your favorite chocolate chip recipe, these cookies pack the fun and flavor of red velvet cake into a simple, and much faster, cookie. Super sweet and tender with a slightly fudgy center, they contain creamy white chocolate chunks that nod to the snowy frosting on the cake version. For particularly pristine cookies, reserve some of the white chocolate chunks to arrange on top of the cookie, as they tend to get tinted pink when mixed into the batter.