Recipes By Samantha Seneviratne
143 recipes found
Maple Tart With Oatmeal Cookie Crust
Maple syrup and oatmeal are usually relegated to the breakfast table, but here they create a crowd-pleasing tart. Creamy maple pudding would be lovely on its own, but truly shines nestled into a cookielike oatmeal crust. Top it with a dollop of whipped cream laced with cinnamon and nutmeg.
Apple Cider Whoopie Pies
Their name may be fun to say, but whoopie pies aren’t really pies at all but rather soft, cakelike cookie sandwiches. These are inspired by a classic apple cider doughnut and, true to form, are dusted with cinnamon sugar. Apple cider that's been reduced and a bit of apple butter work in tandem to subtly flavor the fluffy cakes, and good old cream cheese frosting makes the ideal filling. For beautiful, uniformly sized cakes, use a 2-tablespoon cookie scoop to portion the batter for baking. If you don't have one, they might bake up a little wonky, but they’ll still taste delightful.
Pumpkin Cookies
More like portable cakes, these spiced pumpkin cookies are delightfully tender and moist, simple, and absolutely divine with a cup of coffee. Eat them just as they are, or give them a dusting of powdered sugar or more ground cinnamon, a drizzle of a confectioners’ sugar glaze, or maybe a swipe of cream-cheese frosting. These little guys could even work as the top and bottom of the perfect pumpkin whoopie pie. Because these cookies are so moist, it’s best to store them layered between parchment or wax paper in an airtight container at room temperature. You could also freeze them and thaw before serving.
Key Lime Pie Bars With Vanilla Wafer Crust
Some say that a Key lime’s juice is slightly more floral than that of its more well-known cousin, the Persian lime, the kind you can find in every supermarket and corner deli. Key limes are hard to find, though, so use bottled Key lime juice or conventional lime juice in this easy recipe that's great for a crowd.
Black Forest Cake
Black forest cake, which originated in the Black Forest region of Germany, is typically made with a light chocolate sponge cake, soaked with cherry syrup and cherry brandy (Kirsch), then layered with whipped cream and cherries. This version swaps the chocolate sponge for a denser, fudgier chocolate cake to delicious effect. But slicing a rich chocolate cake into four thin layers can be a bit tricky. To make the job a little easier, cool them completely before slicing. The cherry jam and syrup can be made in advance.
Apple Butter Sticky Buns With Pecans and Currants
These sticky buns are so pillowy and sweet you may want to fall right into them and take a nap. Caramel-drenched currants and pecans blanket the top. Apple butter gives them a pleasant tang, and maple syrup nudges them toward fall. To bake these in the morning with a bit less hassle, make this recipe through Step 5 the night before, cover the buns with plastic wrap and refrigerate. About 2 hours before you plan to eat, remove them from the fridge. Let them stand in a warm place until doubled, then bake as directed.
Apple-Pear Galette With Apple Cider Caramel
A galette is the perfect dessert for anyone who thinks the crust-to-fruit ratio of the average pie is way off. In a galette, the fruit filling is thinner, so you have more flaky pastry to every bite. It also means a galette cooks a bit faster and can be sliced while warm, a boon for the impatient. Don't be alarmed if your galette leaks as they most often do. The final product never seems to suffer.
Chocolate Caramel Pretzel Bars
Like turtle bars with a twist, these squares are gooey, crunchy and salty in all the right places. If you can, use chopped bar chocolate as called for in the recipe. If you use chocolate chips, they will seize, and the chocolate layer will look uneven and a little chalky. That said, beauty is only skin deep, and these bars taste great either way, so if chips are all you can find, bake away.
Blueberry-Rhubarb Slab Pie
This slab pie is perfect for a party because it’s easy to transport, and it serves a crowd. Convenience aside, the true draw of this sheet-pan pie is the flaky, buttery crust and its rhubarb, blueberry and crystallized ginger filling. Cooking the fruit ahead of time results in a filling that is juicy but not soupy — and prevents the crust from absorbing too much liquid. Preparing the pie dough in the food processor is effortless and helps keep the butter cold, which leads to a flakier crust, but be careful not to over-process: Stop when the mixture is moist but still crumbly.
Raspberry Nutter Butter Bars
Reminiscent of a classic, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich minus the bread, these bars hit the spot with a little youthful nostalgia. A glass of cold milk is a great accompaniment. One 16-ounce package of Nutter Butter sandwich cookies pulsed in a food processor makes 4 cups of crumbs, which is exactly enough for one recipe.
Peach and Blueberry Cobbler With Hazelnut Biscuits
Cobbler is an irresistible summer treat, with its combination of bubbling fruit and golden biscuits. This version uses sweet, nutty hazelnut flour in the biscuits, which bake up crunchy on the outside and tender in the middle. To swap whole hazelnuts for the meal, start with 1/2 cup (64 grams) hazelnuts, toasted and with skins rubbed off. Grind the cooled nuts in a food processor or coffee grinder with the 1/3 cup (65 grams) granulated sugar until finely ground, and proceed with recipe as written. Tart wild blueberries are best here; use fresh if you can find them, but frozen are widely available and can go straight into the mix, no thawing necessary. Conventional supermarket blueberries work, too, but shouldn’t be the first choice; they are watery and have a weaker flavor.
Toasted Almond-Coconut Financiers
These simple, French-style cookie-cakes are usually baked in special rectangular molds to resemble little bars of gold. In her book “Paris Sweets” (Clarkson Potter, 2012), Dorie Greenspan makes the process easier by baking them in mini-muffin tins, and the method works beautifully. They bake up soft and chewy, into perfect two-bite-size treats. This recipe uses toasted almond flour, which deepens the flavor. A dip in melted bittersweet chocolate gives the financiers a polished look and balances out their sweetness. This recipe makes 12, but easily doubles for a crowd.
Coffee-Praline Crunch Ice Cream Cake
Inspired by butter-pecan ice cream, this cake combines crunchy praline with graham crackers, coffee ice cream and fudge sauce to make an impressive, but easy to assemble dessert. Store-bought pralines are perfect here, but if you can’t find them, you can make them from scratch with pantry staples. While they can be a little tricky, even a failed praline tastes great nestled in an ice cream cake, but toffee brickle or even just plain chopped nuts could stand in for the praline, too. While you could certainly buy fudge sauce, it’s the one component that is definitely better homemade, just sweet enough and deeply chocolatey. Make a double batch for future sundaes.
Chocolate-Stuffed Oatmeal Cookies
These big, chewy oatmeal cookies filled with soft chocolate ganache are perfect for sharing. To make the process a little simpler, you can prep and refrigerate the dough and the filling up to three days in advance. (You could also freeze them for even longer; just let them warm up a bit at room temperature to make them easier to work with.) The assembly is easy: Simply enrobe the truffled filling by stacking it between two pieces of dough and pressing the edges to seal. The stuffed cookie balls can be frozen for up to a month. Bake off a few at a time for warm, gooey cookies whenever the mood strikes.
Earl Grey Tea Cake With Dark Chocolate and Orange Zest
Loose Earl Grey tea stirred into buttery cake batter adds a sweet, floral essence that’s subtle but lovely. A little dark chocolate and orange zest makes this cake extra special. While you could use chocolate chips, using chocolate chopped from a bar produces the best result: The varying sizes of chopped chocolate blend in nicely without overpowering the delicate tea flavor.
Yogurt and Jam Pops
Reminiscent of breakfast but masquerading as dessert, these pops are made with Greek yogurt or Icelandic skyr, which are thicker and creamier than regular plain yogurt. Pick whichever you enjoy the most, but make sure it’s plain and unsweetened.
Peanut-Butter Fudge
Traditionally, fudge is made by boiling sugar and flavorings to a specific temperature, then cooling it, and finally beating it for just the right amount of time. It’s not hard to do, but if the conditions are not just right, the texture of the finished fudge can be too soft, too hard or even unpleasantly grainy. This peanut butter fudge may not be traditional, but it’s much simpler to make properly and results in the creamiest confection imaginable. For a delicious textural contrast, don’t skip the toppings!
Kukul Mas Maluwa (Sri Lankan Chicken Curry)
The hallmarks of this tasty Sri Lankan chicken curry include creamy coconut milk and homemade curry powder, which is made by toasting and grinding whole spices. Don’t let the long ingredient list deter you; once you have everything together, this dish is very easy to make. Tiny bird chiles are small but potent. In Sri Lanka, the curries are spicy, but you can use as few or as many chiles as you’d like. Prepare it in advance and you’ll find that it’s even more delicious the next day. Serve with some long-grain rice and a few different vegetable curries.
Salted-Caramel Rice Pudding
Rice pudding is pure dessert magic. Simple ingredients like jasmine rice, whole milk and sugar cook together to make a luscious treat, and the bittersweet salted caramel swirled throughout makes it even more irresistible. This pudding is flavored with vanilla, but a little orange zest, some instant espresso powder or a few smashed green cardamom pods would take it in another delicious direction.
Buttercream Frosting
American buttercream is simpler to make than its Swiss and Italian counterparts, which require cooking some of the ingredients, but it's no less tasty. Butter and confectioners’ sugar are beaten until fluffy; heavy cream softens the texture and vanilla extract gives it dimension. It’s leaner than other buttercreams, as it requires much less butter, but it’s still luscious. You’ll want to choose a flavorful butter to start, and make sure it’s at the correct temperature. Room temperature butter should be soft enough to press into with a finger without seeming greasy. It will whip up nicely with the confectioners’ sugar to create a fluffy, silky frosting.
Sweet-and-Salty Party Mix
This joyful, crunchy snack to share with friends (and enjoy with cocktails) relies on corn syrup, sugar and soy sauce for a balance of sweet and savory. The glaze in this recipe is a riff on the sweet-and-salty coating used in cereal-seaweed snack mixes found in Hawaii that bakes into an irresistible, super-crisp shell. A bit of Worcestershire sauce lend some tang, and cayenne adds a surprising touch of heat. Use the mix-in amounts as a guide, and feel free to use whatever cereals, crackers and nuts speak to you.
Whole-Orange Snack Cake
It may strike you as curious, but adding an entire orange to this easy snacking cake, rind and all, imparts a wonderful flavor reminiscent of orange marmalade, pleasantly bitter and sweet. A high-speed blender is the best way to process the orange, but a food processor works too. You want the purée to be as smooth as possible. While the cake bakes, prepare an easy orange glaze. For that step — or any recipe requiring both orange zest and juice — be sure to zest your orange before juicing it, as it’s much more difficult the other way around.
Chocolate Banana Icebox Cake
Banana pudding with a twist, this icebox cake embraces chocolate wafers instead of the classic vanilla. After a bit of time in the fridge, the cookies soften into thin layers of chocolate cake. Add some mini chocolate chips to the vanilla custard, if you like, but be sure to cover the bananas completely to keep them from oxidizing. This pudding is best the day it’s made, or up to 24 hours later — but it’s so delicious that it may not last that long.
Creamy Lemon Pops With Basil
Both refreshing and satisfying, these creamy lemon pops are just the thing for a hot summer day. Steeping the zest in the sugar syrup releases the essential oils, and the fresh lemon zest brightens everything up. Although unexpected, basil’s sweetness pairs nicely with lemon, but feel free to experiment with another fresh herb, like bay leaves or thyme. A few fresh raspberries or blueberries would be nice if you’d like a little texture, but the bars are luxurious as is.