About once a year I get the urge to write about my brother, who was killed six years ago today. I’ve posted about his love for protein shakes and about the time he told a girl he had a pot roast in the oven so he could get off of the phone.

I thought these were the only connections I could make between my brother and food, so this year I planned to post only a picture of us as kids. I love this shot for its 80s references (Rainbow Brite, Ms. Piggy, headbands, Reebox), for our dress-up clothes, and for the fact that Pat is laughing and I am smiling and we are having a good bit of fun. Together.

Then I remembered that we had most of our fun together at the beach in Ocean City. Other than hot dogs and peanut butter crackers made with Sociables, there was one meal we always had at the beach: Maryland crab soup.

My family had crab soup on our annual one-week vacations. The way I remember it, my grandfather would go crabbing on the Bay and bring his catch back to the condo in his cooler. My grandmother would then pick the crabs and make the soup with crab shells and beef broth and packages of frozen peas, carrots, and corn. Or, if my grandfather didn’t catch anything, which I think happened in later years, they would buy the crabs.

I never ate this soup though, and I’d bet money that Pat didn’t either. Being from Baltimore, I’m ashamed to say this, but we were not crab people. To this day, I do not love picking crabs. After Pat died, I learned he didn’t either.

And he hit the reason why right on the head. My mom told me he once said he thought picking crabs was too much work for too little reward. I completely agree.

Still, today I will take a seat at the brown paper-covered table when my family gets crabs. I will even participate, breaking off the claws of an Old Bay-crusted crab first, then using my knife to pry open the main shell and to scrape away the intestines and the mustard. I will even eat the meat inside and think it tastes good, a bit sweet from the meat and spicy from the Old Bay.

But after one or two crabs I’m done. It is too much work.

I much prefer to eat crab meat as part of a meal, either as a topping for fried green tomatoes, in a crab salad with oranges and herbs, and or in Maryland crab soup.

The two former meals are a bit too light for my brother, but I like to think he would eat crab soup with me if he was here today. Maybe the two of us would enjoy a bowl in the kitchen at the beach while the rest of my family sits at the table, working hard at picking their crabs.

Maryland Crab Soup
This is my grandmother’s non-recipe for crab soup, one that she still makes every year in the summer. It’s just a guide really, so it’s a perfect “recipe” for those who don’t like to follow directions in the kitchen. I recommend buying crab meat at the seafood or grocery store. It’s much less work.

Unfortunately, the last thing I want to eat is soup these days. It’s just too hot. So that’s why this posts lacks a picture. But you can imagine the soup: a rich crab and beef broth seasoned with spicy Old Bay and filled with vegetables and sweet lumps of crab. It’s kind of like a minestrone soup for Marylanders.

Crab shells
Beef broth, homemade or store-bought
Soup bones (beef bones)
1 14-ounce can tomatoes, diced or pureed
Cabbage
Celery
Onions
1 bag (or more) of frozen peas, carrots, and corn
Crab meat (either backfin meat, if you like lumps of crab, or claw meat)

Add your crab shells, beef broth, and soup bones to a large soup pot or Dutch oven, enough to nearly fill the pot. Bring the broth to a boil, then reduce to low heat. Add the tomatoes, cabbage, celery, and onions, and simmer for one hour. Remove the crab shells and soup bones.

Stir in one bag of frozen vegetables (we like peas, carrots, and corn) and let them defrost for a few minutes. Run your fingers through the crab meat to check for shells, and discard any that you find. To finish, stir in the crab meat and cook until heated through. “And then you have to put some Old Bay in it, to give it some flavor,” my grandmother says. So add Old Bay to taste and serve.

If you have a recipe for Maryland crab soup, please feel free to link to it in the comments section.

I love chocolate chip cookies, but making them can be a boring task. The steps – softening the butter, measuring the sugar and flours – are incredibly standard. Most of the time they feel like a chore.

That’s why I like this chocolate chip cookie recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. Instead of softening the butter, you melt it in a saucepan or Dutch oven on the stove, then stir it constantly until brown flakes slowly form and the butter begins to smell nutty and fragrant.

You’ll still need to measure the sugars and flour, but you won’t need a mixer to make the dough. With only a whisk and a wooden spoon, everything is stirred together in a process that is pretty close to the normal Toll House cookie recipe (sugars, vanilla, and salt first, then eggs, then the flour mixture).

Cook’s Illustrated also recommends making large cookies, about three tablespoons of dough per cookie. This, the editors say, leads to cookies that are crisp on the outside and soft and chewy inside: the ideal texture. To measure, I like to pat down the dough in the bowl, and scour it like a pizza into eight wedges. Then I use my hands to shape each wedge into two cookies.

The best part though is that the entire process is much more fun than making standard chocolate chip cookies. And the size of the cookies makes them a bit more special for a party or gift-giving.

Do you have a cookie recipe that you love these days? Share a link with us here. 

There is a secret to making ice cream, and it took me a very long time to learn what it is. It’s going to sound obvious when I say it, but here it is: You have to use heavy cream.

If you’re resistant to using heavy cream, I understand why. It packs a whopping five grams of fat per tablespoon, and you’ll probably be using a cup or two in your ice cream.

But you’re results won’t be the same if you try to substitute half-and-half or milk or Greek yogurt or any other lighter, more figure-friendly dairy or dairy substitute you can think of.

I have tried to make many less-fattening ice creams in my Cuisinart, using soy milk, 1% milk, and half-and-half. They are always a disappointment because of their texture.

If I freeze these ice creams for a little while, to the point where they’re soft and even slightly soupy around the edges, they aren’t so bad. But too much time in the freezer gives them an icy texture that I don’t like.

If you use real cream though, the ice cream will remain thick and smooth when frozen, almost like a custard if you follow the vanilla ice cream recipe below. This ice cream is so rich that a few spoonfuls are all I need.

Then again, if you decide to be a rebel and use a lighter dairy alternative and  you like the results, I hope you’ll come back here and tell me how it’s done.

Vanilla ice cream
Slightly adapted from Aja Cage, as featured in Baltimore Magazine

I followed this recipe close to the letter, but I noticed that the Baltimore magazine version doesn’t say when to add the cream. You can pretty well guess by reading the recipe, but I figured I still listed when I used the cream here.

Also note that Aja Cage, the chef from Salt restaurant in Baltimore, uses this recipe as a base for other ice creams. I think it’s delicious on its own, though next time I would add an extra vanilla bean or a teaspoon more of vanilla extract to up the vanilla flavor. Then again, I really love vanilla, so experiment and see what works best for you.

1 cup 2% milk
Pinch salt
3/4 cup sugar (divided into 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup)
1 vanilla bean
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream
5 egg yolks

Add the milk, salt, 1/2 cup of sugar, vanilla bean, vanilla extract, and cream to a medium sauce pan, and cook over medium heat until bubbles form around the edges. In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and 1/4 cup of sugar.

When the cream mixture is ready, slowly pour it into the egg mixture in a steady stream, whisking constantly so the hot cream doesn’t cook the eggs. Return the entire mixture to medium-low heat and stir constantly. It will thicken very fast. When it coats the back of a spoon and you can draw a line through it, it is ready.

Strain the mixture into a container with a fine mesh strainer and cool in a bath of ice cubes and water. (You can also let the mixture rest in the refrigerator for several hours until cool, which is what I did.)

When the ice cream base is cool, it will be very thick. At this point, follow the directions for your ice cream maker. I have a Cuisinart, so I spun my ice cream for about 30 minutes.

While it’s spinning, I also like to dig in with a spoon every five minutes or so (as long as I’m not sharing it with company) and taste the ice cream. Seeing it thicken is fun, but tasting the ice cream’s changing texture is the best part about making your own, I think.

When Kenny and I were dating and I was spending time in his Queens apartment for the first time, I would often look inside his refrigerator and freezer for a snack. Many times this ended in disappointment.

At first, it seemed that he had an adequate amount of junk food. In his freezer were a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in flavors like Chubby Hubby and Phish food; in his refrigerator were cans of Sprite and Coke. This is a surprise I always hope to find when staying over at other people’s homes.

I suppose this goes back to childhood, when my mom, who has a sweet tooth, would always keep sugary foods around. At the very least – and because my mom is lactose-intolerant – we had tofu ice cream in mint ripple or chocolate, the best soy ice cream I’ve ever tasted to this day.

Now if I’m not staying in my own home or my childhood home, it comforts me to know that these same foods I grew up with are close by.

So in Kenny’s kitchen I remember opening the freezer one day, spoon already in hand, and grabbing a comforting pint of Chubby Hubby (which, in an interesting aside, has now been renamed Hubby Hubby in support of marriage equality). I expected the container to be sturdy, thanks to the frozen ice cream inside. But my fingertips pushed through the cardboard. There wasn’t much ice cream left.

No matter, I thought. I only wanted to taste a little bit anyway.

I popped opened the lid and looked inside to find…an empty container.

Completely empty. Maybe there was an overlooked dab of ice cream stuck to the edges, but those peanut butter pretzels and the fudge and peanut butter ripples? Those were gone.

You can imagine how sad I felt. This happened more than once.

Still, despite the initial disappointment, Kenny’s chilled empty containers didn’t really bother me. What a cute quirk, I eventually thought. After all, we were in the beginning stages of dating.

So how does coffee cake figure into this story? White cardboard boxes of Entenmann’s crumb coffee cake, the kind with the thick cinnamon crumble on top, were often one of the fun junk foods in Kenny’s refrigerator. Sometimes the boxes were empty; other times, blessedly, there was still a square of cake inside.

This all happened so long ago that I nearly forget about those empty containers. Then I came home from Ocean City this weekend to find two bright red cans of Coke, opened and hanging out on the top shelf of our refrigerator. Both had only drops of liquid left inside.

So it seems fitting that yesterday, when I felt like baking and I asked Kenny what type of dessert he felt like eating, he suggested coffee cake with a crumb coating.

The cake is sitting in a square pan in our refrigerator as I write this. After it’s gone, I’m tempted to leave the pan there, crumbs clinging to its sides, for him to find, just for old time’s sake.

Raspberry and lemon coffee cake with lemon crumb topping
From Baking Bites

The fresh, tangy raspberries and subtle lemon flavor are the two stars of this simple coffee cake.

I find that the raspberries sink to the bottom of the batter when baking. This is a nice surprise when the cake is done because, you have a couple of options when eating it. You can eat the cake straight up, slicing down through the crumb coating, cake, and raspberries to get a complete bite. Or you can slice the cake in half lengthwise and enjoy two different coffee cakes: one with a streusel topping, the other with a raspberry crust.

To make this version of coffee cake, I used Baking Bites recipe for lemon blackberry coffee cake with lemon streusel with a few small adjustments. Instead of using only 1 tablespoon of lemon zest each in the crumb coating and the cake, I used all of the zest from one large lemon for each component (so 2 lemons total).

The recipe also calls for 16 ounces of berries, which should be 2 cups. But 2 cups of berries for me was less than 12 ounces (yet another reason I should buy a kitchen scale). Still, I stuck to 2 cups of berries in this recipe, but I think you could add more.

Is there a dish or food that you had recently that brought back old memories? Tell us the story behind it.

Heidi Swanson of 101 cookbooks calls this recipe for pancakes with blueberry maple syrup her “favorite pancake recipe.” So I had to try them. I made them for my mom (and dad and Kenny) on Mother’s Day.

Made with buttermilk and melted butter, the pancakes were fluffy, light, and lovely. But while the blueberry syrup, a combination of maple syrup, sugar, and blueberries, sounded fancy and special, it didn’t have a rich blueberry flavor. I think the sugar mellowed out the maple flavor and made the whole sauce taste overly sweet.

But I would definitely make the pancakes again. I’d just find a different way to incorporate the blueberries. Using the 101 cookbooks pancake recipe, here are a few tips for making warm pancakes that pack a punch of blueberry flavor.

1. Cook the blueberries in the pancakes. After ladling your pancake batter in the pan, scatter a few blueberries across the top. Proceed as usual, flipping the pancakes when small bubbles are scattered across the batter. The blueberries will be warm and soft and, if I’m remembering their texture correctly, a little gooey too.

2. Make a blueberry sauce. Add a container of blueberries, 1/4 cup water, and maybe a little bit of maple syrup to a small saucepan. Cook down the blueberries until they begin to split and soften and gel together into a sauce. Pour over your pancakes and serve with more maple syrup.

3. Keep your pancakes warm. Since you can only make 3 or 4 pancakes at a time, keep the others warm in a 200 degree oven until you’re ready to serve.

Do you have a favorite pancake recipe? We’d love to hear about it.

Sometimes I make food that does not stem from a great story. This food comes from another place – and more often than not, that place is procrastination.

I’m a writer who needs to take a lot of breaks to think through a story. If I get stuck on a lead or a transition or I don’t know where a story is going, I need to get up and do something physical to figure out my next move. So I often break for a mid-day walk or a cooking break.

And that is how these chewy chocolate coconut bars came to be: a walk to the grocery store then a break in the kitchen, all in the name of thinking through a story.

Chewy chocolate coconut bars with a  graham cracker crust
These are decadent bars. The graham cracker crust is rich with butter, and the filling – made with sweetened coconut, semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips, and sweetened condensed milk – is chewy and very sweet. The graham cracker crust is a touch too thick for my tastes, but Kenny thought the balance of crust to coconut filling was perfect.

The recipe was supposed to make 9 bars, so I doubled it. Because the bars are so rich, I easily cut 25 squares from a double batch – and most likely a few more. For the double recipe, I used a 9×13 pan, and I baked the filling until a good portion of the coconut turned toasty brown, which took about 27 minutes.

Otherwise, I followed Baker Steet’s recipe for chocolate chip coconut bars exactly.

What do you do when you need to think through a problem or a story? If you head to the kitchen, what do you like to make? 

Flinn does just that after finding a group of 9 women, all of varying ages and from a range of economic backgrounds, who want to learn more about cooking. The students lack confidence in the kitchen, but Flinn thinks that a few basic hands-on cooking lessons could change their eating habits, save them money and time, and help them feel more comfortable – and even have fun – making food.

The cooking lessons in The Kitchen Counter Cooking School are basic – cutting up a whole chicken, baking bread, scrambling eggs – but I still enjoyed being reminded of what I already know (I really could make my own salad dressing more…) and learning new skills too (So that’s how you cook without a recipe…).

Here are four lessons I took from Flinn’s book that could help you gain more confidence in the kitchen too.

1. Learn flavor profiles to cook without a recipe. Late in the book Flinn’s students learn how to make fish en papillote, or cooking in foil or parchment paper, without a recipe. Instead they pick a food or flavor they like – olives, for example – then think about what would go well with it – tomatoes, basil, white wine. One group focuses on Asian flavors: fish sauce, ginger, rice wine vinegar, lime juice. All the students need to know is the en papillote method and temperature and time at which they would cook their fish. Everything else is intuitive.

The takeaway? Consciously pay attention to flavor profiles, and you may rarely need a recipe to make simple meals. Flinn provides a “cheat sheet” with flavor profiles for Cajun/Creole, Indian, French, and six other cuisines. (Also check out The Flavor Bible by Andrew Dornenberg and Karen Page for more ideas.)

2. We all have old food in our refrigerators, freezers, and cupboards – and there’s a way to use it. One of my favorite parts of the book comes when Flinn takes an inventory of her students’ refrigerators, freezers, and cupboards, as well as her own. Flinn found that nearly everyone, including her, had food that they had forgotten about (frozen chicken, dried herbs and spices, expired yogurt). This was a comforting discovery for me because I can relate: last weekend I threw out the remains of three containers of lettuce, all partially eaten, that had wilted and grown wet when I was out of town for a several days. But as long as your food hasn’t rotten or soiled, there are a couple of ways to use up large amounts of it at once. Flinn recommends making soup or frittatas, neither of which require much of a recipe.

3. There’s little need to buy bottled salad dressing or boxed caked mix. I say “little need” because my sister-in-law recently told me that some schools will only allow parents to bring baked goods to their children’s classrooms if they are made from boxed mixes. But as long as you keep a stocked pantry with basics like olive oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, and salt, you’ll have the ingredients to make vinaigrette or cake anytime without the added preservatives that are in prepared foods.  

4. Taste every ingredient – before it hits the pan. You’ve heard it plenty of times on cooking shows: you have to taste your food. I took this to mean “taste the food as you are cooking it so you can check for seasonings.” But Flinn encourages her students to taste the raw ingredients too. She holds several tastings at the beginning of her classes, offering up varieties of olives, canned tomatoes, salt, olive oil.

I have never tasted a canned tomato before I dropped it in a pan, or even thought about doing so. But it makes sense. It’s unlikely any of us are going to buy 10 varieties of canned tomatoes and hold our own tasting at home (though it does sound fun, doesn’t it?). But next time you buy one can, you could taste the tomatoes first. If you think the tomatoes taste like tin or are too acidy, get a different brand next time.

What has helped you gain confidence in the kitchen (a special tool, a piece of advice, a book)? 

When I think of meals to make for others in times of need (sickness or recovery, busy schedule, etc.), lasanga is the only one that comes to mind. It keeps well in the freezer and usually provides enough food for several meals, depending on the size of the family. So, thinking that they wouldn’t have much time to cook, I made a big pan last week for my brother- and sister-in-law, who just had a new baby, their second child.

Kenny and I have our own pressing commitment these days that keeps our kitchen time limited: watching 24, Season 5 as quickly as possible. On Sunday we drove back from New Jersey, went to our childbirth class, had a lovely dinner at Kenny’s co-worker’s house, then came home and watched three episodes of 24. Have you ever tried to watch one episode and call it a night? With every show ending in a cliffhanger, it’s much too hard. 

But that means that as I write this, I’d much rather lay my head on the computer and go to sleep.

Thankfully, I made an extra mini-lasanga for us, so there’s no need to cook dinner tonight.

Lasagne with Chard, Ricotta, and Walnuts (Here I adhere to the chef’s spelling.)
Slighly adapted from Local Flavors by Deborah Madison

Even though its made with three cheeses, this is a light lasanga. The walnuts add a toasty crunch too, making this lasanga feel like a dressed-up version of the traditional tomato and cheese variety. 

1 cup walnut halves or pieces, toasted and finely chopped
3 bunches of chard, about three pounds, leaves only
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra to coat the baking dish
3 garlic cloves, chopped finely
Splash of apple cider vinegar
1/3 cup water
1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup mozzarella
1 1/4 cups milk, any kind
8 ounces no-boil lasanga noodles

1. Prep and boil the chard: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Fill a Dutch oven or large pot with water and bring it a boil. Add one tablespoon of salt and the chard. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the chard is tender. Scoop the chard into a colander (or scoop it out with a slotted spoon if you’re like me and that’s all you have). Run the chard under cold water, and set a bowl underneath the colander. Squeeze the chard over the bowl, like you would frozen spinach, to remove most of the water. Reserve the chard water for later. Finely chop the chard and set aside.

2. Saute the chard: Heat the oil in skillet, add 2 cloves of the garlic, then the chard. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar (make it a big splash if you really love that puckery acid flavor), and water. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring the chard frequenly until its soft and wilted. Turn off the heat and set the pan aside.

3. Make the cheese filling: In a bowl combine the ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, 3/4 cup of a mozzarella cheese, and 1 clove of garlic. Add 1/3 cup of the chard cooking water, then stir in the chard. Taste for salt and pepper – and try not to eat the whole bowl before you assemble the lasanga.

4. Prepare the pasta and assemble the lasanga: Bring a large pot or Dutch oven full of water to boil. While you’re waiting, oil an 8 x10 or 9 x 13 pan, and pour a quarter cup of milk over the bottom of the dish. Back on the stove, drop in three sheets of lasanga noodles and cook for one minute. Remove the noodles with tongs and lay them in pan. Drizzle on top 1/4 cup milk, spread 1/3 of the cheese mixture, and scatter with 1/4 cup of the walnuts. Repeat this process two more times: pasta, milk, cheese, and walnuts. When you arrive at the last layer, scatter the last 1/4 cup of milk, and sprinkle on the remaining mozzarella cheese and walnuts.

5. Bake the lasanga: Use aluminum foil to make a tent over the pasta. Deborah Madison says to insert four toothpicks into the pasta, then cover with foil to make a rectangular tent. Since I did not have toothpicks, I bent the foil in the middle, creating a triangular tent shape over the lasanga. Bake for 25 minutes. Then remove the foil and bake for 10 minutes longer, until the cheese is lighly browned on top and the pasta noodles are soft when poked with a fork. Let sit for 10 minutes, then dig in.

What dishes do you like to make ahead and store in the freezer for later? Please share the recipes with us!

There was a time when I only ate Tums at my grandmother’s house. She keeps a bottle on her kitchen table, and, soon after arriving, I always grabbed it and ate two. I like their fruity taste. It’s like eating chalky candy wafers.

Now I have my own bottle of Tums. I’ve even moved on to my third bottle in the last few months, thanks to that acid-in-the-throat feeling that comes with pregnancy heartburn.

You’d think eliminating trigger foods would be the easiest solution to curing heartburn. But I can’t identify the foods that are constant triggers for me. Sometimes tomatoes, chocolate, and spicy foods are a problem; other times they digest just fine. So I munch on Tums.

But recently they’ve stopped working. I’m not sure they ever did work. I just liked eating them.

Kenny and I recently started childbirth class, and our doula Emily told our group that some people believe there is a natural heartburn cure: papaya, in fruit or supplement form.

I haven’t seen research to support this, but I have seen a few online forums where visitors say that papaya helped their heartburn.

So I tried the supplement – papaya enzymes – first. The enzymes are chewable, sweet wafers similar to Tums in texture and, unfortunately, effectiveness. They haven’t helped yet.

Then I bought a big papaya and sliced it up, hoping that the whole fruit in its natural state would help. When I ate some raw and on its own though, I didn’t care for the bitter aftertaste.

But if papaya was only one ingredient in a larger dish? Maybe that would work.

3 Ways to Eat Papaya
A one cup serving of papaya is high in vitamins A and C, folate, and potassium. Here are three ways to incorporate this healthy fruit into one of your next meals:

Salads. With its thick skin, papayas are similar to mangos and avocados, so I think they are a natural salad component. Try this tropical fusion salad, which pairs papaya with black beans, corn, avocados, and golden raisins.

Smoothies. Smoothies have become my favorite way to get a quick, easily digestible shot of nutrition. This papaya smoothie with ginger, honey, and mint will be the next one I try.

Salsas. I love fruit salsas with fish, and I’ve been wanting to try cooking fish in a paper bag. So this recipe for brown-bagged halibut with papaya salsa fits the bill. The halibut is cooked en papillote; the salsa is a mixture of papaya, lime juice, scallions, cilantro, and red peppers. If you’re struggling with heartburn, I would leave out the jalapeño chillies.

What’s your favorite way to eat papayas (or your most effective heartburn cure)?

This past Sunday, over breakfast with my family at Friendly’s, where my grandparents are regulars, my aunt asked me what foods the baby is craving. I had to think about that for a minute. I always tell Kenny that she likes Pitango Gelato, which isn’t entirely a lie. She has gone through a crazy kicking spell on at least two gelato-eating occasions.

But really I just can’t get enough of the gelato sorbets though, especially the chocolate noir, a deep, dark, creamy chocolate with tiny flecks of crunchy chocolate pieces, and the rotating fruit flavors like passion fruit and rhubarb.

Other than gelato though, I (she?) haven’t had outlandish or interesting cravings. Though lately, I have been wanting to eat a lot of scones.

It started on an evening last week when Kenny said his co-worker brought in homemade strawberry basil scones for breakfast. I never eat scones, but I was upset he didn’t save me one.

Then, over the weekend, I happened to catch two Food Network shows that featured scone recipes: the Pioneer Woman’s petite vanilla bean scones with vanilla icing and Paula Deen’s cream scones.

When the stars align…

Orange, Dried Cherry, and Rosemary Scones (with a Lemon, Strawberry, and Rosemary variation)
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

I tried two variations of these scones: one with orange, dried cherries, and rosemary; the other with lemon, fresh strawberries, and rosemary. The dried cherry version was crumbly and dense, as a scone should be. The fresh strawberry batch had more moisture (think of a cross between a muffin and a scone) and required a longer cooking time (25 minutes instead of 15) so the strawberry juice could evaporate.

Making these scones also marks the first time I’ve purchased turbinado sugar and now it may be hard to go back to the white stuff. If you’ve never had raw cane sugar before, the granules are large and crunchy with a subtle molasses flavor. It costs more than white sugar, but is well worth it.

3 cups whole wheat pastry flour
½ cup turbinado sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cut into small chunks
2 cups of rolled oats
Zest of one orange
2 tablespoons very finely chopped rosemary
1 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup dried cherries, chopped
Extra turbinado sugar for sprinkling on top of the scones

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine the flour with ½ cup turbinado sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in a food processor. Add the chunks of butter (I like to cut the butter up first and put it in the freezer while I measure the dry ingredients to keep it cold) and pulse 15-30 times until the butter turns into tiny clumps. (101 Cookbooks describes this look as “sandy pearls.”) Plop the dough in a bowl and stir in the oats, orange zest, and rosemary. Add the buttermilk and dried cherries and stir until the batter is just moistened.

Try to bring the dough together with your hands to see if it sticks and holds its shape. If not, add a bit more buttermilk, stir, and try again. Form the dough into two 4-inch circles. (I like to dump the dough onto a cutting board and gather the pieces together there.) Note: Pay attention to the size of your rounds of dough. On my first batch, my dough circles were much too think and took an extra 15 minutes to bake. (See the picture below.)

Cut each circle of dough into 8 triangles, like you would a pizza, and transfer the scones to a baking sheet (non-stick or lined with parchment paper), leaving some space between each one. Sprinkle the tops with turbinado sugar. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the bottoms are a deep, lovely brown and the scones are cooked through.

Makes 16 scones.

Strawberry, Lemon, Rosemary Scones variation: Substitute zest of one lemon for the orange zest. (Note: The lemon flavor wasn’t as strong as I hoped, so next time I would add the zest of 2 lemons.) Stir in 2/3 cup diced strawberries instead of the dried cherries. Line your baking sheet with parchment paper because the strawberry juice will ooze. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes (after the first 15 to 20 minutes, check them every 5 minutes to make sure they don’t burn) or until the strawberry juice begins to evaporate (i.e. when you open the oven and sound of the strawberry juice sizzling is slowing down) and the bottoms are a lovely, golden brown.