Snack
993 recipes found

Churros With Strawberry Sauce
Squiggly churros are a crispy, crunchy alternative to sufganiyot for one of the nights of Hanukkah. Serve them coated in cinnamon sugar and, instead of injecting them with jam, dip them into strawberry sauce — or raspberry sauce, Mexican chocolate with cinnamon, even guava sauce. For fluted edges on your churros, you’ll need a pastry bag fitted with a large French star pastry tip, but you could also use a resealable plastic bag with a tip cut off. To prepare the churros in advance, try this trick: Pipe the dough into 6-inch lengths on a parchment-lined baking sheet, then freeze. Fry directly from the freezer in oil heated to 375 degrees (mixture will bubble up).

Whipped Cream Scones With Chocolate and Cherries
Chocolate and cherry is a classic combination, but how these scones come together is what makes them really special: Lightly whipping the cream before folding it into the dough creates tiny air bubbles that result in a scone that leans more toward cake than bread. They also develop a delicate, crackly crust and a melt-in-your-mouth creaminess. On top of the chocolate chunks, tart cherries and the fluffiness, here’s another reason to love these scones: The dough is made by hand and doesn’t require rolling or cutting, meaning less mess in the kitchen.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Muffins
While rhubarb works wonderfully in baked goods, baking strawberries into scones or muffins can be a little bit more of a challenge. Though delightfully sweet and fragrant when fresh, baked strawberries have a tendency to become watery and bland. This recipe solves that problem by macerating the diced rhubarb and strawberries with sugar before folding them into the muffin batter. Doing so not only draws out excess moisture from the strawberries, but also gets a head start on breaking down the fibrous rhubarb. This recipe calls for an ample amount of sugar, which balances the tartness of the rhubarb and helps create wonderfully browned and chewy muffin tops. Finally, the cornmeal in this recipe adds great texture and gives the muffins a rustic finish. Opt for medium-grind or stone-ground cornmeal, if you can find it, but fine cornmeal works well, too.

Caramelized Onion and Poppy Seed Hamantaschen
Traditionally filled with apricot, prune or poppy seed jam, triangular hamantaschen cookies are a prized treat for the Jewish holiday of Purim. This dessert serves as a reminder of the Jewish people’s deliverance from Haman, who sought to exterminate Persia’s Jews in the fifth century B.C. This recipe is fully savory, tucking crumbled feta under thyme-scented caramelized onions, but you could just as easily fill the buttery dough with sweet jam to please traditionalists. When forming hamantaschen pastries, make sure to leave an opening wide enough for the filling to be visible but small enough to retain moisture.

Granola Muffins
These substantial breakfast muffins are sort of like bran muffins, but they have a little crunch. When I make a batch, I freeze what doesn’t get eaten the first day and thaw them in the microwave.

Banana Oatmeal Almond Smoothie
My bananas were ripening so quickly last summer that every week I froze one or two, knowing I would use them for smoothies at some point. When you freeze bananas, peel them first, then double wrap in plastic. I bulked up this smoothie with oatmeal, which I first soaked until it was softened in just enough water to cover.

Cinnamon Crumb Cake Muffins
Somewhere between muffins and mini-crumb cakes, these tender breakfast treats have a surprise layer of crunchy, cinnamon-scented crumbs hiding underneath. Browning the butter for the crumbs adds a rich, caramelized depth that rounds out the flavors of vanilla and lemon zest in the batter. These muffins keep well for several days stored airtight at room temperature, and freeze perfectly for up to two months.

Whole Wheat Apple Pecan Scones
As I was playing around with the mixture for these not-too-sweet scones I learned that if I used as much liquid (in the form of buttermilk or yogurt) as I usually do in my scones, they wouldn’t be flaky. That is because the apple provides plenty of liquid. You just need to add enough buttermilk or yogurt to bring the dough together. Otherwise you will have drop biscuits and they will have a consistency more akin to a soft cookie than to a biscuit or scone. Juicy apples like Braeburn, Crispin and Empire work well for these scones.

Corn and Jalapeño Muffins
The flavor of these buttery, miniature muffins is amped up with sautéed corn kernels and jalapeño chiles. They are the perfect accompaniment to a pot of beans, but are tender and delicate enough to serve with an elegant chicken stew.

Date Smoothie With Brown Rice and Almond Milk
This is inspired by Bryant Terry’s recipe for date-sweetened almond milk, which I came across in his wonderful cookbook “Afro-Vegan.” You could use commercial almond milk, but it will taste much richer if you make your own. Blanch and skin almonds (it goes quickly), soak overnight, blend and strain. The smoothie is a simple one, subtly sweetened by the dates, and mildly nutty. If you want to introduce another flavor into the mix add a half banana. I liked it both ways but I think I prefer the simpler version, so I have made the banana optional.

Almond-Apricot Granola Bars
Many granola bars are assumed to be healthy, but aren’t. These are. A combination of granola, almonds, apricots and crisp brown rice, the recipe is wide open to interpretation as long as you keep the ratio of glue (the almond butter and honey mixture) to granola and mix-ins about the same. Mix everything together, press it into an oiled dish lined with plastic wrap, and throw it all in the fridge for an hour. These bars are more chewy than crunchy, and will fit well into a child’s lunch bag or a grown-up’s breakfast plate.

No-Bake Granola Bars
Here is a good alternative to a commercially made granola bar. It’s a flexible recipe, allowing for any number of additions: dried cherries, pistachios, peanuts, dates, orange zest. You could substitute a dried fruit purée (directions are in the notes) for the honey and brown sugar, providing a complex twist on the binding agents. You could add chocolate. Coconut. The possibilities are endless.

Peach Almond Smoothie
Peaches and almonds are closely related and make a great match in this not-too-sweet smoothie. Peaches and almonds are closely related botanically, one reason why they have always made a good match in desserts and baked goods. I combined ripe summer peaches with almond milk and soaked almonds here, and also added some almond extract for additional flavor. The smoothie is further enriched with oatmeal, and only slightly sweet. You can add more agave syrup, or honey if you eat honey, if you wish. If delicious fresh peaches are no longer available, use frozen peaches.

Cornmeal Plum Scones
Scones with jam is classic. But in most cases the jam is served alongside; here, we’ve baked it right into the pastry. This recipe calls for a whipping up a quickly made plum and honey jam scented with bay leaf (you can substitute a rosemary sprig or cinnamon stick if you’d rather). If that seems like one step too many, use any prepared jam you like, though something on the less sweet side works best. Or bake the cornmeal scones unfilled. They are moist, lightly sweet and perfectly satisfying all on their own.

Joanne Chang’s Maple-Blueberry Scones
These scones, created by Joanne Chang for her Flour Bakery & Cafe in Boston, are studded with fresh blueberries, sweetened with maple syrup and made with a blend of whole-wheat and all-purpose flours — but don’t think of them as health food. They’ve also got crème fraîche and plenty of butter. They’re big. They’re glazed. And they’ve got a singular texture: tender, like a layer cake, but also flaky, like a traditional scone. It wasn’t until I made them myself that I realized that their texture is different because the technique is different: Most scone recipes call for the butter to be rubbed into the flour mixture until it’s coated with flour. In Ms. Chang’s recipe, half the butter gets this treatment, which makes the scones characteristically flaky. The other half of the butter is beaten into the dry ingredients so that it becomes the coating for the flour, making the scones tender.

Skillet Berry and Brown Butter Toast Crumble
This is a great way to use up all the bits: a bag of frozen berries, those oats in the back of your pantry, some bread that may be past its prime. Feel free to reach for whatever frozen berries you might have on hand, and cinnamon, cardamom or any other sweet spice in place of the star anise. You could serve this with Greek yogurt instead of the cream or, if you’d like, some homemade or store-bought custard. Serve this as a brunch dish or as a late afternoon treat.

Frozen Strawberry-Coconut Smoothie With Pomegranate Molasses
Fruity pomegranate molasses is the perfect sweetener for this thick strawberry smoothie. This summer I bought a flat of strawberries, and soon afterward realized that they were going to go off before I had a chance to use them. So I hulled them and froze them in small freezer bags (a heaping cup, or 6 ounces, per bag), and now I’m using them for smoothies. When I was working on this smoothie I felt that it needed something to sweeten it, but what? I looked in my cupboard and saw a bottle of pomegranate molasses, and voilà! Now I know that pomegranate molasses, with its fruity, tangy yet sweet flavor, is perfect for red fruit smoothies of all kinds. This one is enriched with cashews, soaked in water for a few hours or overnight, chia seeds (also soaked), and oatmeal.

Honey-Apple Bread Pudding
Soft and cakelike challah makes for a deluxe bread pudding. This one is shot through with cubes of apples caramelized in honey, then topped with sliced almonds for crunch. You can assemble the pudding up to two days ahead of time and store it, covered, in the refrigerator. Then pop it into the oven an hour or two before you want to serve it, adding a few minutes onto the baking time. It’s best served warm, when the apples are at their most jamlike. But leftovers served cold from the fridge make a terrific breakfast.

Big-Cluster Chocolaty Granola
This granola pairs the bittersweetness of a good chocolate bar with the crunch and nuttiness of classic granola. By not stirring and by letting it cool in the oven, the granola will break apart in big clusters — perfect for snacking on. Eat this granola with berries and yogurt for breakfast, by the handful for an afternoon pick-me-up, or with peanut butter ice cream after dinner. (And yes, if you eat it with milk like cereal, it makes chocolate milk!) If you like your granola on the sweet side, stir in milk chocolate chips or a chocolate cereal like Cocoa Puffs once the granola is cool. Alternatively, lean into its bitterness by adding cacao nibs or chocolate-covered espresso beans.

Rosemary and Pistachio Granola
This recipe came to The Times from the chef Steve Redzikowski of OAK fourteenth in Boulder, Colo., and moves granola out of the breakfast realm while still remembering its hippie roots. It is a savory mix, pairing rosemary and red-pepper flakes with a flourish of juniper berries. As with most granolas, simply mix the ingredients and toast them in a low oven until crisp. The result here makes for a substantial afternoon snack, but try it using it as a crust for red meat. It’s a surprising addition to dinner.

Berry Coconut Almond Smoothie
I was inspired to work on smoothie recipes this week when I defrosted a freezer and dredged out a half-filled bag of frozen berries. There was only one place for this lump of frozen berries — a rich smoothie. The key to the drink’s flavor is the cinnamon. I always strain mixed berry smoothies because I don’t like the texture of the little seeds, which don’t blend up.

Breakfast Bars With Oats and Coconut
A little like granola bars with their combination of oats, seeds, almond butter and dried cherries, these cookies — adapted from the chefs Michelle Palazzo and Peter Edris of Frenchette Bakery — have a soft and chewy texture rather than a crunchy snap. Perfect for a breakfast on the run or an afternoon nibble, they are lightly sweet and decidedly filling. At the bakery, the dough is baked into large, individual cookies, but, in this slightly simpler version, the dough is pressed into a 9-inch pan and baked into bars. (To make cookies, see the note below.)

Fatima’s Fingers (Tunisian Egg Rolls)
These deep-fried pastries, which are known as “doigts de fatima” in French, are named after the prophet Muhammad’s daughter and her delicate fingers. They are commonly eaten to break the fast during Ramadan, but are also enjoyed year round, especially at weddings. While this particular recipe is Tunisian, many North African and Middle Eastern countries have their own versions. They are typically made with thin, delicate malsouka pastry sheets, but spring roll wrappers are used here instead. The fillings are wide-ranging (you may find versions with tuna, shrimp, ground beef or vegetables) and flexible: Feel free to omit the chicken in this recipe for a tasty vegetarian snack.

Chocolate Babka
Baking a chocolate babka is no casual undertaking. The Eastern European yeast-risen coffee cake has 14 steps and takes all day to make. But the results are worth every sugarcoated second – with a moist, deeply flavored brioche-like cake wrapped around a dark fudge filling, then topped with cocoa streusel crumbs. If you want to save yourself a little work and love Nutella, you can substitute 1 1/2 cup (420 grams) of it for the homemade fudge filling. Also note that you can make this over a few days instead of all at once. Babka freezes well for up to 3 months, so if you need only one loaf now, freeze the other for later.