Recipes By Yossy Arefi
145 recipes found
Applesauce Muffins
Unsweetened applesauce, whole-wheat flour and toasted walnuts make these warmly spiced muffins a wholesome breakfast or afternoon snack. They are best served warm the day they are baked, but since they are made with oil, they will also stay soft and moist for a couple of days in an airtight container on the counter.
Bircher Muesli
Essentially oats soaked in fruit juice, or milk, with nuts and fruit, Bircher muesli has a long history, and enough versions floating around to prove it. The original was created in the early 1900s by Maximilian Bircher-Benner, a Swiss doctor. It consisted of oats, grated apple, nuts, lemon and condensed milk and honey, but over time, people have gotten creative with the formula. This version is a choose-your-own-adventure recipe that is great to make ahead in large or small batches. Some recipes call for apple juice or applesauce for moisture, but this version uses creamy Greek yogurt instead. Tahini adds richness, but substitute another nut butter or skip it all together if you’d rather. Swap out the nuts and dried fruit to suit your tastes and what you have. (Dates are especially nice.) Thin individual servings with more milk, if needed, then top with additional fresh fruit, nuts and a drizzle of maple syrup. It’s cool, creamy, chewy and crunchy all at once.
Kale and Brussels Sprouts Salad With Pear and Halloumi
Salty, fried halloumi cubes are the star of this bright, lemony kale and brussels sprouts salad. Crispy, melty and squidgy all at once, they are delightfully textural. Though the kale and brussels sprouts mix can sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving, for best results, you should fry the halloumi just before you plan to eat.
Brown-Butter Poundcake
This rich and nutty loaf is deeply flavorful and incredibly tender owing to plenty of brown butter and toasty hazelnuts. A thin layer of crackly lemon icing lightens and brightens it. Enjoy this cake with a cup of tea in the afternoon, or top it with cream and berries for a delicious dessert. Either way, you may find yourself sneaking a little slice every time you walk by the plate.
Potato Rolls
These extremely soft and fluffy potato rolls make excellent slider buns or a perfect accompaniment to just about any meal. Creamy and starchy Yukon Gold potatoes work well here, as do russets. Boil them until tender, then make sure to save the water you boiled them in, because you’ll use that in the dough, too. Eat the rolls warm, slathered with butter, or turn them into a delicious sandwich. Either way, they stay soft and delicious for a couple of days at room temperature.
Wild Rice and Roasted Squash Salad With Cider Vinaigrette
Toothsome wild rice, caramelized roasted veggies and crisp radicchio all shine in this generous salad, which can be served as a hearty side or satisfying lunch. Radicchio adds a pop of color and a punch of bitterness, but a peppery green like arugula would also make a great substitute. This salad is tossed with a generous batch of mustard-cider vinaigrette. If you decide to double the dressing or have any left over, it pairs beautifully with just about any grain or hearty green, and will keep refrigerated for up to three days.
Chocolate Pudding With Raspberry Cream
This rich, creamy chocolate pudding is a comforting dessert for two that comes together in no time at all. Use Dutch-process cocoa powder for the richest chocolate flavor, but natural cocoa will work too, if that’s what you keep around. This pudding is also easy to dress up for any occasion. Raspberry cream and a handful of fresh raspberries adorn this version, but you could also top with a dollop of whipped cream or crème fraîche.
Lemon Meltaways
These tender cookies are an elegant teatime snack, packed with bright lemon flavor. Bake them all at once or save half of the dough, well wrapped, in the freezer for later. If you’ve frozen the dough, let it warm slightly before slicing to prevent cracked cookies.
Potato and Leek Focaccia
Tender Yukon Gold potato slices and crispy leeks top a fluffy slab of long-risen, dimpled focaccia for a substantial vegetarian meal or a side to roast chicken. To ensure that the potatoes cook through in the same amount of time as the leeks and focaccia, they need to be sliced very thinly, so use a mandoline or slice them meticulously using a sharp knife. Like most focaccia, this one is best enjoyed fresh from the oven, but leftovers are great warmed in a toaster oven.
Chocolate Gingerbread Cake
This cozy spiced loaf cake gets a triple dose of ginger – ground, fresh and crystallized – and the totally delicious addition of chocolate. A pour of molasses and an assortment of other warm spices help round out the flavors, and buttermilk makes it extra moist. Serve slightly warm slices of this gingerbread with a bit of vanilla ice cream for a simple and satisfying dessert. Bonus: Baking this cake will make your house smell amazing.
Chocolate-Cardamom Pots de Crème
Rich and creamy with a hit of floral cardamom, these puddings are a perfect make-ahead dessert. For the most flavor, make sure to break open the cardamom pods and crush the seeds using a mortar or pestle or the handle of a wooden spoon. Semisweet chocolate is recommended, as bittersweet will mask the cardamom, but they are interchangeable if you prefer chocolate with a higher cacao percentage. (Accordingly, you may want to use the higher amount of cardamom if cooking with bittersweet chocolate, but do go easy: A little cardamom goes a long way.) You’ll need to use chopped chocolate bars or chocolate fèves for these pots de crème. Chocolate chips are made with stabilizers that inhibit melting, so would result in a pudding that is less smooth and spoonable.
Carrot Loaf Cake With Tangy Lemon Glaze
This easy, breezy one-bowl loaf cake makes the perfect afternoon snack — and a perfect breakfast the next day, too. It’s lightly spiced and nut- and fruit-free, but feel free to add about 1/2 cup of chopped nuts or dried fruit, if that’s how you like your carrot cake. There is an optional bit of grated carrot in the lemony glaze, which doesn’t lend that much flavor, but provides a lovely light orange hue. If grating carrot for the glaze seems fussy, you can certainly skip it.
Raspberry Swirl No-Bake Cheesecake
This stunning magenta-swirled dessert uses fresh or frozen raspberries to dress up a light and creamy no-bake cheesecake, making it a treat you can enjoy year-round. The recipe calls for straining the raspberry sauce to remove the seeds, but adding a small spoonful of the seeds back to the purée for texture and crunch is a nice touch. Make sure to allow plenty of time (at least 8 hours) for the cheesecake to chill and set before slicing. Even then, this silky dessert will be softer and more pudding-like than a traditional baked cheesecake. That’s the beauty of it.
Berry Coconut No-Bake Cheesecake
In the height of summer, turning on the oven should be considered off limits, but we still need dessert. For that, there's the no-bake cheesecake, which has all the richness of the baked version without any of the baking. Here, Biscoff cookies add a bit of spice, which pairs beautifully with toasted coconut, and we swap the heavy cream for rich, fluffy whipped coconut cream. The topping combines cooked and fresh berries for a wonderful variety of texture and flavor. Just about any varieties will work here, so use what looks best. A combination of blueberries and blackberries or raspberries is quite nice. Be sure to plan ahead with this recipe. The cans of coconut milk need to be chilled at least overnight, and as does the finished cheesecake before it can be sliced.
Lemon Sweet Rolls With Cream Cheese Icing
These sweet, lemony rolls are a fresh alternative to classic cinnamon rolls. A little cardamom in the dough and filling enhances the bright citrus flavor without overtaking it. This dough is adaptable: You can let the dough rise in the refrigerator, instead of at room temperature, so you can serve fresh, warm rolls for breakfast without getting up at the crack of dawn to make them.
Summer Berry Stacked Shortcake
This stacked shortcake gives a classic summer dessert the large-format (think sheet cake and slab pies) treatment with big tender biscuits layered with juicy berries, and tangy yogurt whipped cream. Use any seasonal berries you like, but if you’d like to use strawberries, hull and cut them into halves if they are small or quarters if they are large. (Note that the juiciest summer berries won’t need as much sugar. If the berries leave juices on your hands when you handle them, cut the sugar in the berry mixture to 1 tablespoon.)
Butternut Squash Pasta With Bacon and Parmesan
In this cozy weeknight meal, roasted butternut squash and Parmesan are combined for a dish that’s flavorful but not too heavy. A bit of thick-cut bacon adds crunch and smokiness. If you don’t have thick-cut on hand, you can certainly use thin-cut, but keep an eye on it, as it will cook through faster. Be prepared to pluck it from the oven once crisp and allow the vegetables to finish cooking at their own pace. A handful of chopped fresh herbs added just before serving gives this comforting dish a bit of brightness.
Gingerbread Cheesecake
The warm, spicy flavors of gingerbread are a natural match for cheesecake. I mean, who doesn’t love a slice of gingerbread cake slathered with cream cheese frosting? This dessert is certainly rich, but it is also packed with lots of spices, including a hefty sprinkle of both ground and fresh ginger, classic cinnamon, allspice that lends a slightly peppery note, and a bit of fresh lemon zest to brighten things up. It can be a little tricky to get the batter completely smooth, so make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature before you start mixing, and take care to bake the cheesecake gently to avoid cracks. The cranberry topping here is optional but it is festive and delicious, and a great little cover-up if the cheesecake does happen to crack. Alternatively, this is great with a bit of lightly sweetened whipped cream or crème fraîche. Slice cheesecake with a clean, hot knife for the tidiest servings.
Lemon Meringue Bars With Poppy Seed Crust
These bars are equal parts puckery lemon curd punctuated with a generous amount of lemon zest, and crisp poppy-seed shortbread – twice baked to avoid a soggy bottom. The bars are finished with a billowy swoop of meringue, made with a bit of cornstarch to help keep it from weeping. Make sure to top the bars with meringue while they are still hot from the oven to help seal the two together.
Butterscotch Blondies
These rich, chewy bars get their deep caramel flavor from a combination of brown butter, dark brown sugar and an optional sprinkle of flaky salt on top. They're delicious as is, but feel free to add some mix-ins (see note), if that’s more your style. You'll want to keep the amount of extra ingredients, like nuts, chocolate and dried fruits, to 2 cups total, since blondies with a lot of mix-ins may take a few minutes longer to bake. For an especially delicious combination, try a mix of 1 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate or chips, 1/2 cup toasted walnuts and 1/2 cup chopped pitted dates.
Salty Peanut-Pretzel Ice Cream Cake
Grab a couple quarts of your favorite vanilla ice cream, crush up some peanuts and pretzels, and invite the neighborhood over for this sweet, salty, satisfying summer treat. For the most robust peanut flavor, use well-stirred natural, unsweetened peanut butter. You can also use a sweetened variety, if that’s what you have on hand, but bear in mind that the ice cream and honey lend this cake enough sweetness. The savory dry-roasted peanuts add a wonderful depth of flavor, but make sure to look for a brand without onion or garlic powder listed among the ingredients.
Rose Apple Tart
This striking tart is all about the apples, and — believe it or not — it’s fairly simple to make. The crust is the pat-in-the-pan variety, and a mandoline makes quick work of slicing. For the most beautiful results, use firm tart apples with red or pink skin like Honeycrisp, Empire or Cortland, and stand the slices up vertically, rather than laying them flat. This tart is best the day it's made, but the shell can be made a day in advance, if you’d like to break up the work a bit. If you keep vanilla sugar in your pantry, this would be a great place for it. A sprinkle of cardamom wouldn’t hurt either. However you choose to embellish, make sure to use a smooth apricot jam, rather than chunky preserves, for a smooth finish.
Sugared Cranberries
These little gems are the perfect garnish for just about any dessert, and they are delicious on their own, too. They are pleasantly sweet, tart, and addictively crunchy. Standard granulated sugar is what you need here, but vanilla sugar is really nice if you have it.
Pumpkin Chocolate-Chip Cookies
These cakey cookies have crisp edges and fluffy centers almost like muffin tops – which we can all agree is the best part of a muffin. Packed with sweet spices, pumpkin purée and lots of chocolate chips, they are a delightful autumn treat that pair well with a cold glass of milk. Use whichever type of chocolate chips you prefer, in whatever proportion you like, but a combination of milk and bittersweet are especially nice.