Million Dollar Cookies

When I was a child, this was a fairly common cookie at our house. As we stirred up this dough and rolled it into long snakes, I always asked my mother why they were called “Million Dollar” cookies, and she always told me she didn’t know, they just were. Maybe because of their coin shape?…

Old Fashioned Chocolate Pudding

Here’s an old, old recipe that happens to be gluten free, from way back before people even knew they might want to make such a thing. In fact, our family has a story almost a hundred years old, in which chocolate pudding played a key role. In the winter of 1918, during the great “Spanish…

Chocolate Apple Cake with Fudge Topping

Hungry for chocolate even in this season of apples and pumpkins and lots of rich sugar cookies? Ready for a different dessert after all those Thanksgiving pies? Here’s a quick and easy cake that will satisfy your chocolate sweet tooth that you could almost pretend to be healthy–something we all need after the turkey day…

“Royal Raspberry Cake”

As those who know me can attest, my style of cooking has always been pretty freeform, with approximate measures–even when baking–more common than carefully measured out ingredients. Having this blog has been a good challenge for me, because I try never to post anything that I have not carefully measured and tried at least a…

Peach Kuchen

Growing up, I was exposed to very little “German” food, with sauerkraut probably the only that fit that description. So when I married into a family that had maintained their German traditions and recipes, I began to learn about things like “tortes” and “kuchens”–and even bratwurst which at that time were not widely known or…

Nectarine Quinoa Salad

This is the season when some of my favorite fruits–peaches, nectarines, and plums–begin to appear in the stores, and this year there have been some wonderful deals–signs of a good harvest? Whatever the reason, I am taking advantage and finding all kinds of good ways to use these. Now is the time for slicing them…

Split Second Cookies, and a Sad Tale about Food Blogs

The recipe at the end of this post is based on an old recipe that was very new to me when I went searching for a “jam-filled cookie” some time ago. When I found the recipe on one site, it seemed just what I was looking for, and the blog post-er made quite a big…

Whole Orange Cake

While oranges are available pretty much year round, this is the season when, at least here in the Midwest, they are most economical, and usually a little more flavorful and sweeter too. It is also the season when the trees we had in our back yard in Arizona would be loaded with both sweetest of…

Apple Banana Cake

 x Sometimes, the bananas all seem to ripen (or over-ripen) at once. When a couple of spots develop on those apples in the crisper drawer at the same time, it might just be time for a dessert that uses up both these kinds of fruit. This cake is super moist and is the kind that…

Apple Gingerbread

Novembrrrrr. This has been a pretty chilly fall here in the upper Midwest, and a winter storm advisory has just been posted for tonight, with perhaps 3 to 5 inches of snow in the forecast….And I still haven’t finished clearing the last (I hope) layer of leaves off of my deck. What better time to…