Recipes By Samantha Seneviratne
143 recipes found
Panko-Crusted Pork Tenderloin With Tahini Slaw
Flavorful and quick-cooking pork tenderloin is a great choice for a weekday dinner. Here it’s paired with a nutty tahini and citrus slaw to cut through some of the breaded pork’s richness. In this recipe, the finely chopped parsley stems, which can take a bit more heat than the leaves, are added to the breading for color and freshness. Use pre-sliced red cabbage to cut down on the prep work, if you like. And, you can swap the pork out for chicken breast tenderloin or even your favorite white fish fillet.
Microwave Chocolate Pudding Cake
Making a cake in the microwave may not be traditional, but it makes the whole process easy and superfast — and this recipe produces a warm, gooey, pudding-like dessert. Simply mix the cake ingredients together, top with the cocoa, sugar and boiling water, and microwave on high. (Don’t forget to take the ice cream out of the freezer to soften slightly while the cake cooks.) In the microwave, the bottom sets into a supermoist chocolate cake while the topping transforms into a rich chocolate sauce. As microwaves and dish size can vary, knowing when to pull the cake out is the only tricky part. It’s done when you can see a firm cake start to bubble to the surface. Don’t worry: A little underdone is just fine, too. This dessert will continue to set a bit while it cools. The instant coffee is optional but it really does add depth to the chocolate flavor.
Horseradish Roasted Salmon With Mustard Potatoes
Slathered in a creamy horseradish mayonnaise, salmon fillet is a weeknight winner. (You can cook smaller fillets or one larger center-cut piece, whichever you prefer.) The key to moist, flavorful salmon is to roast it at a high temperature for a short length of time. Here it’s baked alongside tangy mustard potatoes, but asparagus, broccoli or even green beans would be nice, too. If using less hearty vegetables, just cut the initial bake time down to 5 to 10 minutes.
Technicolor Cookies
Cookies artfully decorated with royal icing are a holiday classic, but their fine details and beautiful colors can take hours to achieve. Not with these gorgeous cookies. Once the icing is made and stained, it takes only a few minutes to decorate. The icing is simply poured over the cookies, a technique inspired by the one used to pour swirly colors of mirror glaze over smooth cakes. (For a quicker alternative to royal icing, simply dip or drizzle the cookies with melted chocolate.) No two cookies will be the same, and that’s a big part of the charm. Underneath the exterior is a crisp, satisfying shortbread flavored with heaps of bright orange zest and quintessential winter spices.
Pumpkin Roll
This basic pumpkin roll hits the spot. The cinnamon-scented cake has a soft, airy texture that works well with the decadent American buttercream filling. It’s simple and satisfying as is, but could also be a great jumping off point for experimentation: Fold a bit of chopped chocolate, toasted coconut, raisins or your favorite nuts into the cake batter, or flavor the buttercream with bits of spicy candied ginger, earthy molasses, maple syrup or floral honey. You could even swap the buttercream altogether and fill the cake with your favorite cream cheese frosting or a simple whipped cream. The possibilities are endless.
Orange Cranberry Loaf
Orange and cranberry are a wintery match made in heaven. This loaf has a good amount of orange zest, which releases its essential oils when ground together with the sugar to give the cake a lot of flavor and a beautiful orange hue. A little orange juice, swirled together with yogurt, ensures a super moist crumb. The plump cranberries burst in the oven and dot the loaf with welcome pockets of tartness. When they are in season, fresh cranberries are perfect here, but frozen will work just as well. Do not thaw them before swirling them into the batter but do note that frozen cranberries will increase the overall bake time a bit. Freeze the baked loaf, well-wrapped, for up to 1 month. Thaw at room temperature to serve.
Pumpkin Pie Bars
Pumpkin pie bars boast the same creamy, spiced pumpkin filling as a classic pumpkin pie but in slightly different proportions. A traditional pumpkin pie has about 3 inches of filling and a mere quarter inch of pastry, but a pie bar offers a more even ratio of base to filling. This recipe starts with gingersnap cookie crumbs mixed with a bit of flour, butter and sugar to transform the bottom into something more akin to a soft cake. Topped with the perfect amount of sweet pumpkin filling, these bars are a lighter, more casual version of the classic. For a little extra flavor, add ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon and ¼ teaspoon of ground ginger to the cream before whipping.
Lemon Cupcakes
These little cupcakes are light, fluffy and packed with bright lemon flavor. Topped with a not-too-sweet cream cheese frosting, they are both well-balanced and indulgent — and easy to prepare in one bowl. While you will need two to three lemons to yield enough zest for the cakes, you may not need to cut so many open for ¼ cup of juice. To save the remaining zested lemons for another recipe, be sure to wrap them in plastic wrap. Without the zest, bald lemons tend to harden in the fridge fast. The frosted cupcakes are best the day they’re made, but you can make the cakes in advance and freeze them for up to 1 month in an airtight container. Thaw at room temperature to frost and serve.
Creamy One-Pot Orzo With Corn and Bacon
In “Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook,” Joe Yonan suggests grating corn to take the kernels off and extract the delicious milky pulp from the cob. This method maximizes the amount of pure corn flavor that you can add to any dish. Here, most of the corn is grated to create a super creamy, one-pot pasta that tastes sweet and summery. Calabrian chile paste, which is usually made of chiles from the Calabria region of Italy, oil and vinegar add heat, acidity and a bit of smokiness to this dish. If you can’t find it, swap in some homemade red chile sauce or harissa.
Skillet Chocolate Chip Cookie
Skillet cookies are perfect for lazy nights when everyone wants something sweet, but no one wants to work that hard for it. The batter comes together in one bowl, and it’s baked in a big skillet so there is no portioning dough, no baking in batches and very little time spent overall. It is important to use an oven-safe skillet. A well-seasoned cast-iron pan is perfect but a basic skillet or an enameled version works well, too. Just be sure to avoid anything with wooden or plastic handles. Serve big scoops of warm cookie in bowls topped with ice cream or whipped cream. Or, serve cooled slices like you would any cookie.
Soft Pretzels
Traditional pretzels are dipped in a lye solution to give them that quintessential pretzel tang and gorgeous color — but this fun home-baking project relies instead upon baking soda. Food-science writer Harold McGee suggested baking the baking soda before using it to mimic lye more effectively. It takes a little bit of extra time, but very little extra effort, and the results are well worth it: These pretzels are deeply burnished and flavorful. Before twisting the dough, if your ropes are a little thicker at the ends, you can trim the thicker bits and cook them separately — following the same procedure as for the pretzels — to make pretzel bites. Pretzels are best enjoyed the day that they’re made. You can freeze leftovers for another day and reheat them tucked in a foil packet in the oven, but the results are never quite as good. Instead, halve the recipe and make only five if 10 is too many for one day.
Cherry Almond Cake
Using frozen fruit is a great way to bring some summer sunshine to your baking all year round. It’s dependably sweet, delicious and usually affordable. Frozen fruit does tend to let off a lot juice, so it’s a good idea to thaw it first and let some of the liquid drain before adding it in. If you don’t have time to thaw your fruit, you can still bake this cake, but the fruit will sink to the bottom. Cherry and almond are a classic combination, but wild blueberries or chopped peaches would work, too. This naturally gluten-free cake is made with almond flour, which has the potential to make it dense. But whipped egg whites folded into the batter ensure that the cake is light and fluffy, despite being made almost entirely of nuts.
Applesauce
Applesauce isn’t just for babies. Sure, this very basic version is perfect for tender palates, but it also works as the base for many a sweet treat. In the fall you might try swapping in 1 1/2 pounds of pears for half of the apples and a bit of caramel in place of the maple. (Omit the maple syrup if serving with savory foods.) In the summer, swap out some of the apples for red plums for a tangy and a beautifully pink variation that’s lovely served over vanilla ice cream. Add a bit of grated ginger and a few plump medjool dates to make a sophisticated purée that would be nice with some whipped cream or even a pork chop. Make extra, as it doubles easily and freezes well, too.
Pumpkin Roll With Coffee-Caramel Cream
A roulade is a classic dessert made by rolling a thin cake around a flavorful filling, which creates an inviting swirl once sliced. This roulade starts with a subtly spiced, moist pumpkin cake that is wrapped around a rich filling made with cream cheese, heavy cream, caramel and coffee. The filling is bittersweet and slightly savory, which works nicely with the earthy pumpkin sponge. Make sure to use very finely ground coffee, like what you would use to make a cup of pour-over.
Pumpkin Blondies With Chocolate and Pecans
Festive and earthy, these bars are made with canned pumpkin purée, which nudges them toward cake territory while maintaining that chewy, rich and irresistible blondie texture. For a swirly chocolate ribbon effect, work with butter that is still ever-so-slightly warm, so that the chocolate chunks have a chance to melt a bit as you fold them in.
Rhubarb Macaroon Tart
Rhubarb makes any dessert a showstopper, but this tart has more than meets the eye. Under the fruit is a luscious vanilla custard nestled in a chewy macaroon shell. When shopping, look for rhubarb that is about 1/2- to 3/4-inch wide; any bigger and the stalks might start to fall apart in the poaching liquid before the center becomes tender, and any smaller and you’ll need to keep a close eye, since they’ll cook quickly. While the rhubarb topping is a show-stopper, freshly sliced fruit makes a great understudy if you can’t find robust pink stalks.
Chocolate Cream Pie With Oreo Crust
Chocolate wafers may be standard, but a buttery Oreo crumb crust is an even better base for this chocolate cream pie. A store-bought cookie crust filled with from-scratch custard is the perfect combination of simple and sophisticated, with a bit of nostalgia for good measure. Depending on the size of your pie plate, you may have some custard left over after filling the crust: It’s a perfect baker’s treat.
German Chocolate Cookies
While a big slice of German chocolate cake may appeal to many, baking one from scratch may not. That’s where these cookies come in. They satisfy the craving for deep, dark pools of warm chocolate, sweet pecans and fragrant coconut with only a fraction of the work. To toast the coconut, spread it out on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 5 to 10 minutes. Take it out of the oven when the edges and some of the coconut in the center are deep golden brown. It’s fine if some of the coconut is still pale.
Overnight French Toast
If you have a crowd for breakfast, overnight French toast is a winning idea. Instead of standing over the stove, cooking slice after slice, it bakes in the oven and emerges puffed and golden and ready for a big glug of maple syrup. Try making it with a stale loaf that you forgot to eat amid all the other holiday goodies. A fat brioche, fruit-filled panettone or a braided challah all work well. Stay away from croissants, though: Their chewy interiors are best enjoyed fresh.
Snickerdoodles
These classic, tender cookies taste of sweet butter, cinnamon — and not much else. Since ground cinnamon plays such an important role, be sure to check that it's still fresh and spicy before making these treats. The cookies' secret ingredient, cream of tartar, is an acidic salt and a byproduct of wine making. Often used to help stabilize egg whites for meringues or as the acidic component of baking powder, it helps these cookies stay soft and chewy.
Homemade Cheez-Its
This cheez-its recipe makes tasty little cheese crackers that are extra-delicious when made from scratch. Try using cheddar and added cayenne for some kick.
Scotcheroos
Originally printed on the Rice Krispies box in the 1960s, Scotcheroos are Rice Krispies treats minus the marshmallow but with gobs of peanut butter, chocolate and butterscotch chips. Use either natural, unsweetened peanut butter or the more conventional stuff. Either will work just fine, with the natural version tasting a tad less sweet. For a twist, you could also swap the corn syrup for honey, golden syrup or a mix of both. Bittersweet chocolate, as opposed to semisweet, helps to balance the sweetness. A sprinkling of flaky salt and crushed peanuts aren’t traditional, but they look as good as they taste.
Apple Crumble
Apple crumble is one of those desserts all cooks should have in their back pockets. It’s a no-fuss favorite that works as well for dessert with a big scoop of ice cream as it does for breakfast with some plain, whole-milk yogurt. This recipe starts with a hefty crumb mixture, studded with pecans and old-fashioned rolled oats. Plenty of butter and sugar ensure the crumb stays crisp after baking, creating a delightful textural contrast between topping and tender fruit. Using a mix of sweet and tart apples that soften at slightly different rates also keeps this recipe interesting.
Pecan Squares
A cousin to the pecan pie, but much less fussy: Pecan squares are a kitchen classic. Here, we've updated a version that came to us in 1998 from William Grimes, scaling it down and moving away from the original pâte brisée. The pecans are mixed in an addictive caramel sauce, which — if you can stop eating it on its own — is spread over shortbread and baked until just set. The end result is sweet, but not cloying, balanced by the crust and sure to please.