Recipes By Melissa Clark
1478 recipes found
Upside-Down Blood Orange Cake
In the cold days of a long winter, our tables are brightened by citrus season, and nothing has more flair than a blood orange. Here is a one-pan cake of cornmeal and flour that lets the orange’s ruby flesh shine. It takes just a little time to assemble and less than an hour to bake. The result is a festive fruit dessert guaranteed to lift even the worst winter doldrums.
Strawberry or Raspberry Ice Cream
Almond Ice Cream
Chocolate Cookies With White Chocolate and Cherries
Brownielike and soft-centered, these fudgy cookies are packed with dried cherries, nuts and chocolate chips. Feel free to substitute your favorite nuts and dried fruit for pecans and cherries, or leave them out entirely and add more chocolate chips (no one ever objects to more chocolate). Be sure to use bittersweet chocolate, or the cookies may end up cloying. The higher the percentage of cocoa solids in your chocolate, the less sweet it will be.
Banana Snacking Cake With Salted Caramel Glaze
This buttery snacking cake is a bit like banana bread, but richer, and topped with a sticky caramel frosting that is dotted with crunchy flakes of sea salt. The frosting, made from brown sugar and heavy cream, is easier than a classic caramel, but just as compelling, with the sea salt contrasting perfectly with its sweetness. It’s important to use ripe bananas here. Soft, spotty ones with dark yellow skins will be the sweetest and most complex. Firm, pale yellow bananas just don’t have enough intensity to flavor the cake.
Tortillita Gaditana With Spicy Mayo
Coconut Dulce de Leche With Caramelized Pineapple
Tahini Shortbread Cookies
Flavored with sesame seeds and tahini paste, these sophisticated shortbread cookies, adapted from "Soframiz" by Ana Sortun and Maura Kilpatrick, have a pleasing crumbly texture and an intense, almost nutty flavor. Serve them as part of a cookie plate for dessert, or with coffee or tea as a midafternoon snack.
Lemon or Lime Ice Cream
Vanilla or Coffee Ice Cream
Spicy Bacon-and-Egg Pie
Bacon-and-egg pie is a rustic specialty from New Zealand, here zipped up with a mixture of sriracha and cream. Made from whole eggs that hard-cook under a pastry crust lid, with fat chunks of bacon, it is closer in feeling to steak-and-kidney pie, that sturdy pub staple, than to quiche. It is terrific picnic fare.
Grapefruit Crumb Cake
Tiny bursts of juicy, tart grapefruit mitigate the richness of this moist crumb cake, topped with almond and brown sugar. You can substitute oranges, tangerines or other tangy fruit for the grapefruit; you’re looking for 1 1/2 cup fruit total. Just avoid anything too sweet (like blueberries, peaches and bing cherries). You need the acidity to balance out the sugary crumb topping. (If substituting other fruit, skip the sprinkling of salt.) If you don’t have a springform pan, use a regular 10-inch cake pan that’s at least 1 1/2-inches deep, then serve cake directly out of the pan instead of unmolding.
Pistachio, Rose and Strawberry Buns
Meant for breakfast or as an accompaniment to a mug of hot tea, these Danish-like yeast buns are filled with pistachio cream and strawberry jam, then soaked in a rose water-scented sugar syrup. Adapted from "Golden," a cookbook from Honey & Co. cafe in London, the buns sweet but not at all cloying, with the rose water and pistachio adding a heady perfume. Feel free to substitute apricot or raspberry preserves, or orange marmalade, for the strawberry jam. And if you’re not a fan of rose water, try orange blossom water or even brandy instead. These are best served within eight hours of baking, but leftovers can be refreshed the next day by heating them in a 300-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until just warmed through.
Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
Gooey Pumpkin Chocolate Swirl Bars
These soft-centered, marbled bars have all the hallmarks of a winning autumnal treat — spiced pumpkin, rich dark chocolate, toasty pecans and a splash of bourbon. It's worth the extra effort to brown the butter; its warm toffee notes bring out the best of everything.
Chorizo-Stuffed Dates With Piquillo Pepper Sauce
Adapted from Perry Hendrix, the chef de cuisine at the acclaimed restaurant Avec in Chicago, these intensely flavored mouthfuls are meaty, spicy and sweet all at once. You could serve them as an appetizer, sitting in a pool of silky sauce, but they could also work as finger food, with the sauce set aside for dipping. Make sure to buy uncured, fresh chorizo sausage rather than the salami-like cured kind. Specialty stores generally carry jars of piquillo peppers, but if you can’t find them, substitute any roasted red peppers for the sauce.
Mango Tres Leches Cake
For what might be the sweetest cake in the universe, a syrupy, coconut-and-condensed-milk-infused tres leches cake is further sugared with a purée of soft, ripe mango. You couldn’t ask for a more luscious spring dessert.
Moroccan Semolina and Almond Cookies
Semolina flour gives these rather plain-looking but delicious cookies, adapted from "Dorie's Cookies" by Dorie Greenspan, a delightfully sandy texture. Almond flour makes them moist and rich, adding a gentle flavor and scent. If you don’t have almond flour, make your own by pulsing blanched almond slices in a food processor until they're finely ground. Just don’t over-process, or you’ll wind up with almond butter. And if you’re not a fan of orange blossom water, you can leave it out, or substitute rose water.
Lamb Chops With Dates, Feta and Tahini
These tender little lamb rib chops have a deep, complex flavor thanks to a marinade imbued with cumin and Aleppo pepper. After a brief soak, they get quickly seared, then served with a garlicky tahini-yogurt sauce and a tangy herb salad filled with feta cheese and sweet dates. It’s a festive, colorful, company-worthy main course that comes together fast.
Santa Rosa Plum Galette
Olive Oil Challah
Made with extra-virgin olive oil, this challah is especially rich and complex tasting. A little bit of grated citrus zest, if you choose to use it, adds a welcome brightness to the soft, slightly sweet loaf, which is also flavored with orange juice. (Don't use store-bought orange juice with preservatives; it can inhibit yeast growth. It’s best to squeeze the oranges yourself.) If you’d prefer a more classic challah, substitute a neutral oil such as safflower or grapeseed for the olive oil and leave out the zest. This recipe makes one large loaf (about 1 pound). Feel free to double it if you’re feeding a crowd or if you’d like to toss one loaf into the freezer, where it will keep well for up to 3 months.
Pink Grapefruit and Radicchio Salad with Dates and Pistachios
Shortbread Plum Tart With Honey and Cinnamon
Based on a classic gâteau Breton, this buttery tart is filled with a fresh plum compote flavored with honey, rosemary and cinnamon instead of the usual puréed prunes. You can make the compote and dough a few days ahead, but this tart is best served within 24 hours of baking. After that, the center starts to turn mushy from the moisture released by the fruit. Serve it on its own, or with a dollop of whipped cream.
Crunchy-Topped Whole-Wheat Plum Cake
When blue-black prune plums come into season in the fall, this cake must be made. The recipe was created by the reporter Marian Burros well before The New York Times went digital; each fall, she would grumble about having to print it, by popular demand, once again. It is absurdly simple (just plum halves nestled into batter), but somehow the liveliness of fruit, sugar, and spice on top of plain cake brings out the best of both worlds. In 2010, the recipe got an update with whole-grain flour that works well with the red and black plums of summer. You can also make it with cherries and peaches.