Cardamom and Tea

Spanakopita + how to work with filo

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I recently realized that I have strong opinions about pretty much every single food-related subject. Whenever my husband asks me what I think about a particular dish, my first instinct is usually “Oh I don’t know, I don’t feel super strongly about that one.” But then I start to think about it as I walk away, turn on my heel, and pop my head back into the doorway. “Ok actually, you know, here’s the thing about that one!” Spanakopita is one of those dishes I didn’t realize I had such strong feelings about until I sat down to write this post. I’ve included a few tips below, plus a guide on how to work with filo dough. It’s so easy to mess up, but also so easy to get right.

  • Spanakopita in a spiral, photographed from above
  • Spanakopita in a spiral, photographed from above

how to make spanakopita that you’ll love:

1) decide whether to swirl it or stack it

There’s a big texture difference between spiral and rectangular spanakopita, and which one you choose just depends on what you are looking for. If you want to maximize the amount of crispy surface area, go for a shallow rectangular pie. If you want to have lots of both crispy and flaky bits, go with a spiral.

I love a spiral pie for entertaining (especially outdoors) because it becomes a tear-away main course. Guests can just rip off the end of the spiral (or you can always feel free to slice it into wedges for a more elegantly rustic look).

This recipe will work with a rectangular pie as well—simply layer half your filo sheets with butter in a snugly-fitting casserole dish, fill it, and layer with the rest of the sheets and butter. If you want to be able to slice through without shattering the top, score the top with a sharp knife before baking. I personally love the way it flakes after baking, so I never bother.

2) make sure the filling is not soggy

We all know you’ve got to really wring that spinach out, lest your filo end up soggy. But also be careful not to introduce too many other moist ingredients. If you’re using onions (as this recipe does), make sure you sauté them until they’ve shrunk down and let off some steam. If you’re using feta in brine, make sure it’s not sopping wet.

3) make sure the filling is flavorful

The best spanakopita has a ton of herbs and isn’t just spinach-flavored. Here, I’ve gone with parsley, dill, and dried mint. Lots of recipes also use a generous amount of leeks, which would work wonderfully in place of the green onions. I like to think of the stuffing similarly to a ravioli or dumpling filling—if it doesn’t pack a punch on its own, the whole thing is going to end up tasting super watered-down. It should be like a kuku sabzi baked inside a buttery filo wrapper.

4) use clarified butter or olive oil, and save those butter solids!

I love clarifying my own butter for spanakopita, because then you can scrape up all the butter solids and add them to the filling for some extra flavor. When I used to work in a restaurant, I would save the butter solids whenever I’d clarify butter to bake baklawa/baklava, then I’d store the butter solids in the freezer, and I’d add them to spanakopita filling. So if you’re ever clarifying a lot of butter, save the solids and add them to your spanakopita filling all together.

If you’ve got ghee or olive oil, you can absolutely just use that instead. Just skip steps 3 through 5 in the recipe below, and start with 1/2 cup (105g) of oil or melted ghee. If you’ve never clarified butter, check out my clarified butter post, which includes a video. Or follow the instructions in the recipe below, and you’ll be just fine.

  • Spanakopita in a spiral, photographed from above
  • Spanakopita in a spiral with one slice about to be served, photographed from above

how to work with filo dough

I’ve heard some cooks say that filo dries out almost instantly when they use it. I work with filo often, but I’ve never had that problem until once recently. I was in a big hurry, it cracked and fell apart, and now I’m pretty sure I know exactly what caused everyone’s filo trauma. So here are 3 suggestions for a stress-free experience:

1) a lesser-known fact: let it come to room temperature before opening

You absolutely have to let your filo come to room temperature before opening the package. If you let it thaw in the fridge overnight, and then open the package and start to try to work with it cold, it will dry out almost immediately. It will ruin your day. It will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life. Just don’t do it. Leave it on the kitchen counter for at least a couple hours (after thawing).

2) a better-known fact: don’t open it until you’re ready to use it

Don’t open the filo until you have all your components in place. While filo doesn’t dry out quite as quickly as most guides claim, it does indeed dry out after a certain period. So don’t stress, but do have everything ready to go, and be ready to work efficiently.

3) a hot take: don’t use a damp cloth, and don’t worry about covering the whole stack

While you should keep your filo covered while you work with it, don’t use a damp cloth, and don’t stress about keeping the whole stack covered. Instead of a damp cloth, I like to use the plastic sheet it (usually) comes wrapped in. If you use a slightly-too-damp cloth, your layers will stick to each other.

I just divide the dough in half (or thirds), fold up one half, wrap it with the plastic sheet it came in, and set it aside while I work on the first half. You should have plenty of time to work with the first half, and your second half will be fresh as a daisy once you’re ready for it. If you’d like to work at a more leisurely pace, feel free to wrap up 2/3 or 3/4.

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Spanakopita

Spanakopita in a spiral, photographed from above
Print Recipe

  • Prep Time: 40 minutes
  • Total Time: 2 1/2 hours
  • Yield: about 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 18 sheets (375g) filo dough, thawed in the fridge
  • 1 stick (115g) butter
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • 16 oz (455g) frozen chopped spinach, thawed
  • 2 cups (120g) chopped green onion
  • 3 medium cloves garlic (10g), crushed through a press
  • 1 cup (40g) chopped parsley
  • ¼ cup (10g) dill
  • 2 large eggs (100g)
  • 1¼ cup (175g) crumbled feta*
  • 1 teaspoon (1g) dried mint (optional)
  • ½ teaspoon (1.5g) black pepper
  • Salt
  • 1 teaspoon nigella seeds** (optional)

Instructions

Notes

* Bulgarian feta/sheep’s milk cheese works great here. Feel free to use either a creamy or firm feta.

** Nigella seeds look a lot like black sesame seeds, but the two could not taste more different. Luckily sesame seeds are also wonderful on spanakopita, but note that they will taste completely different.

*** Feel free to skip steps 3-5 if you’re starting with store-bought ghee or extra virgin olive oil. Just use ½ cup (105g) melted ghee or olive oil. Don’t worry about missing out on the butter solids. If you’d like to learn more about clarifying butter (and to see a video), check out this post.

*** If you don’t want to risk staining your towel, you can just do this in more like 8 batches with your bare hands. Afterwards, dab with a paper towel to make sure your spinach is totally dry.

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Persian Love Cake

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This Persian love cake has a wonderfully moist and buttery texture, as well as a subtly fragrant flavor. Use lemon or lime zest, just enough cardamom and rosewater, and drizzle it with a rosewater citrus icing for a nice and tangy-floral sweetness.

I’ve been in love with Persian love cake ever since trying Yasmin Khan’s recipe. Having grown up with my grandmother’s rich cardamom baklawa (AKA baklava), its particular flavor combination speaks my language. Over the years, I’ve written several recipes inspired by this pastry (e.g. Persian love madeleines, Persian love pop tarts, and even Persian love granola, which I’ll post soon enough).

But it recently occurred to me that I’ve never actually shared my own recipe for Persian love cake itself. So here it goes! Before I get to the recipe, I’ll share a few tips for cake decorating, or feel free to jump right in.

  • icing being drizzled on a cake
  • pistachios being sprinkled on an iced cake
  • dried rose petals being sprinkled on a cake
  • pistachios being sprinkled on an iced cake

cake decorating tips

To get a similar look to the cake in these photos, all you’ve got to do is prep your ingredients carefully, and then assemble them whimsically. Here are 5 tips:

1) buy bright green raw pistachios

Roasted pistachios are the easiest to find, but they’re not so great for decorating things like this Persian love cake. When you want something bright green and stunning, go the extra mile to track down some raw green pistachios. You can find them in all Persian and South Asian markets, most bulk food shops, and online if all else fails.

These pistachios are a little on the pricey side, so you might want to also buy a more reasonable bag of Kirkland salted roasted ones for snacking. Hide your stash of raw green ones in the baking drawer, and don’t forget to add a passive aggressive note to deter roommates/partners/children. These are strictly 100% *for guests*.

2) finely grind your pistachios

Pistachios decorate many Middle Eastern sweets, but they are usually found in a few specific forms. While coarsely chopped pistachios are sometimes used to stuff things like baklawa, those big pistachio chunks are not usually found sprinkled on top. Slivered or ground are more traditional for sprinkling, and for good reason: they’re pretty dang striking!

To finely grind your pistachios, simply place them in a food processor fitted with the blade attachment, and run it until they break down into a coarse meal. Stop way short of turning them into pistachio butter (but if you accidentally do… well, enjoy the pistachio butter!).

There will still be a few larger pieces, which is totally fine. I sometimes give them a shake so that the larger pieces rise to the top of the jar, and then skim those off for salads. Using a hand-held nut mill will get you a more consistent grind, but I’m going to assume you don’t have room in your life for another gadget (yeah, me neither!).

3) buy quality edible dried roses

There are basically two kinds of edible dried rose products you can buy: buds or petals. While whole buds look super pretty, they are only technically edible in whole form, so I separate the petals before decorating with them (as I’ve done in these photos).

Or if you prefer, you can totally buy dried petals instead of dried buds. But bear in mind they’ve got a very different aesthetic. This strawberry rose cake is a great example of one decorated with already-separate petals. As you can see, they’re a bit crinklier and look more like crepe paper. The Persian love cake in this post is an example of one that I decorated after separating a rose bud’s petals.

But whether you buy petals or whole buds, ensure that you find quality brightly-colored ones. They’re purely decorative, so there’s no point in wasting money on drab beige petals. Buy from a reliable source (my favorite is Rose Dose, though others seem to agree because they’re often sold out).

You should expect that separate petals will have a tiny bit of yellow/beige, but they should be primarily pink. Whole buds should be completely pink on the outside, with at least 2 layers of pink petals underneath. It’s pretty typical, though, for whole buds to have a dark brown center.

4) separate rose bud leaves carefully

If you’ve got already-separated petals, you’re good to go. But if you’re working with whole buds, make sure you prep them carefully (lest you wind up with rose petal dust instead of whole petals):

Gently squeeze one rosebud from its base, pop off the stem, and discard any green bits. Continue gently squeezing it from the base to loosen the petals and release the black seeds. Let the seeds fall out of the base of the bud, and gently encourage the outer petals to fall away, stopping once you reach the beige/brown core. Feel free to save the brown cores to make tea, or discard them. I love leaving the black seeds in with the petals for some contrast, but you can filter them out if you want a more monochromatic pink look.

5) make sure your icing is the right consistency

Make sure your icing is thick enough to set opaquely, but not so thick that it’s hard to pour. Follow the weight measurements in the recipe below, and you’ll be just fine, or feel free to eyeball it. Add liquid 1/2 teaspoon at a time to thin it out, or add powdered sugar a tablespoon at a time to thicken it.

  • overhead photo of a cake decorated with white icing, green pistachios, and pink dried rose petals
  • overhead photo of a cake decorated with white icing, green pistachios, and pink dried rose petals

how to get sharp cake edges:

1) bake your cake in a well-buttered parchment-lined pan for easy removal

This cake is pretty eggy and moist, and it’s semi-naked after decorating, so don’t skip the parchment liner step. This will ensure easy removal and sharp edges. Here’s a tutorial (it’s super easy). When you butter the pan, be sure to really get in the corners.

2) flip your cake upside-down before decorating if you want sharp edges

This recipe bakes up relatively flat, but sometimes it domes very slightly. If your cake domes significantly (more likely if you’re not using grams and accidentally use too much flour), feel free to shave off the top so it lies flat. Either way, you’ll want to flip it over before icing if you’re looking for a sharp and even top. I love the way a messy, drizzly icing looks on top of a cake with super crisp edges.

But it also looks cute with a domed top too, and it’s really a personal preference. If you’re decorating the top of a domed cake, you’ll want to make your icing a bit thicker. Otherwise, it’ll run down the sides too readily before it has a chance to set.

  • overhead photo of a cake decorated with white icing, green pistachios, and pink dried rose petals (with one slice about to be served)
  • a slice of Persian love cake with coffee and more slices in the background
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Persian Love Cake

overhead photo of a cake decorated with white icing, green pistachios, and pink dried rose petals
Print Recipe

★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes
  • Yield: 8 to 12 servings

Ingredients

for the cake:

  • Butter, for greasing the pan
  • 195g (1½ cup) all purpose flour
  • 265g (2⅔ cups) almond flour
  • 9g (2 tsp) baking powder
  • 2.5g (1 tsp) baking soda
  • 5.5g (1 tsp) salt
  • 115g (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
  • 300g (1½ cups) sugar
  • 2g (1 tsp) lemon or lime zest
  • 1g (½ tsp) cardamom
  • 200g eggs (4 large), room temperature
  • 240g (1 cup) buttermilk
  • 10 g (2 tsp) rosewater

for the icing and decorations:

  • 110g (1 cup) powdered sugar
  • 7.5g (1½ tsp) rosewater
  • 15g (1 Tbsp) lemon or lime juice
  • Edible dried rose petals (optional)
  • Ground raw pistachios (optional)

Instructions

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orange chocolate coconut granola

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I was in grad school studying medieval poetry at Rutgers when I first started this blog in 2017. It’s strange to think how much has happened since then. I’ve since left my PhD program with an MA, had two international moves, I’ve written my first cookbook, and gone through 2020-2021 along with everyone else—it just feels like a lifetime ago. A few weeks ago, I was missing our NJ friends and feeling nostalgic for that time in our lives. So I looked through old emails to find the very first recipe I ever wrote: a copycat for my favorite coffee shop’s granola bars. I spent many afternoons writing with friends at OQ (now renamed Penstock), noshing on their orange chocolate coconut granola bars.

I started making similar bars at home, which eventually turned into a lower sugar loose granola. And then I started sharing that orange chocolate coconut granola recipe with friends.

Reading my first ever pre-blogging recipe kind of makes me laugh/cringe. I included like four different sugars, two different fats, and I included both orange marmalade and orange zest. Nowadays, I can’t stand recipes with redundant ingredients, so this made me eye-roll. I also included a million twee parentheticals like “orange marmalade (the secret ingredient!!).” I gave an oven temperature range of 400-425°F (why the 25° range? probably because I forgot to write down the actual temperature I set it at). I gave a super broad bake time estimate of about 10 to 20 minutes with absolutely no indication of how to tell it’s done toasting.

There’s certainly more than one right way to write a recipe… but this was not one of them. It’s a good reminder that knowing how to make something and teaching someone else how to make something are not the same activity. By the way, if you’d like to learn what makes a recipe successful, I’ve got this post.

So this week, I looked through old emails and wrote this actually coherent recipe for orange chocolate coconut granola. It’s super streamlined, and incredibly easy from start to finish. Here are some of my favorite things about it:

lots of orange flavor, not too much sugar

While this granola is not quite low-sugar enough to be suitable for a strict sugar-free diet, it’s much lower in sugar than most. Instead of orange marmalade (sorry “secret ingredient!!”), I add just enough maple syrup to give it some crunch. I also add a single stevia tablet for a tiny bit more sweetness. The stevia is totally optional, and kind of just bumps it up to have a sweetness a skosh closer to a traditionally sweet granola.

Feel free to experiment with adding a little more maple syrup if you like a sweeter granola. If you start to add much more maple syrup than this recipe calls for, you may need to experiment with a slightly longer bake time.

holds up to milk without getting soggy

This granola gets super toasted and golden brown, so it doesn’t easily become soggy after pouring on the milk. I mean it! I eat everything that I photograph, but some things hold up to a long photoshoot better than others. A bowl of granola with oat milk has got to be one of the worst things to photograph and then actually consume. But the bowl in these photos was actually delightfully not soggy! And if you’re planning to eat a bowl like a normal human (i.e., immediately after pouring on the milk), it will be perfectly crunchy all the way through.

salty goodness

Even though it’s a bit lighter on the sugar, this granola has still got plenty of flavor. That’s partly thanks to all that orange zest and golden brown deliciousness. But it’s also thanks to a pretty generous amount of salt. If you don’t feel like including a full teaspoon, feel free to cut back a little. But a decent amount of salt is essential even for sweet recipes, so don’t cut back too-too much.

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orange chocolate coconut granola

a bowl of granola with oat milk poured over it
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  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Total Time: 25 minutes
  • Yield: about 7 cups

Ingredients

  • 4 cups old fashioned rolled oats (400g)
  • 1 cup slivered almonds (115g)
  • ¾ cup pepitas (100g)
  • ⅓ cup melted extra virgin coconut oil (70g)
  • ⅓ cup maple syrup (105g)
  • 2 tablespoons orange zest (15g, from about 3 oranges)
  • 1 teaspoon table salt (6g)
  • 1 stevia tab or single-serve packet (optional)
  • ½ cup unsweetened coconut flakes (60g)
  • ⅓ cup chopped dark chocolate (50g)

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 425°F (220°C).
  2. Place the rolled oats, almonds, and pepitas on a rimmed 13×18 inch sheet pan. Mix together and shake out into an even layer. Bake for 10 minutes, pausing the timer and stirring about halfway through.
  3. While the oats and nuts are roasting, mix together the liquid ingredients: In a large bowl, combine the melted coconut oil, maple syrup, orange zest, table salt, and stevia (crush very finely if you’re using a tablet). Stir together, breaking up any big clumps of zest. Set aside, and don’t worry if the oil separates as it sits.
  4. Once the oats and nuts are lightly golden brown, top evenly with the coconut flakes. Do not mix them in, and return the sheet pan to the oven for only 1 to 2 minutes (keep a close eye on them, as they tend to burn).
  5. Once the coconut flakes have turned deeply golden brown, remove the sheet pan from the oven (but leave the oven on). Dump the oat mixture into the large bowl with the liquid ingredients, and immediately toss together to coat very evenly. Once evenly coated, return to the sheet pan and spread out into an even layer.
  6. Place the coated oats and nuts back in the oven for about 7 more minutes, pausing the timer and stirring halfway through. They’re done once they no longer feel damp as you stir them, but feel somewhat sticky and a bit drier against the spoon. Remove from the oven and give them one last stir.
  7. Let the granola cool to warm room temperature* in the sheet pan, and then top with the chopped chocolate so it melts slightly in spots. Let it cool completely to room temperature (wait for the chocolate to solidify completely), then mix together and move to a storage container. You should end up a nice combination of chocolate streaks and whole chunks.

Notes

* If you add the chocolate while the granola is still too warm, it’ll fall out of temper and will not re-solidify. This is fine, as long as you don’t mind the chocolate completely mixing into the granola. But if you want to insure chocolate chunks, just wait for the granola to cool all the way (or just err on the side of cooler).

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breakfast skillet with herbs

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While tomato season has just recently left Australia behind, the northern hemisphere is about to get back to it. So I thought I’d share a dish that I started making a couple months ago, during the final few weeks of the season: A breakfast skillet with herbs aplenty, potatoes, kale, blistered tomatoes, and feta. I kept bringing home bags of these nifty “pull-apart” tomatoes from the farmers’ market, which were perfect for blistering. But feel free to use whatever small tomatoes you can get your hands on.

Also feel free to use whatever leafy herbs you’ve got around, and don’t be shy. In a breakfast skillet with herbs by the handful, any combination of parsley, dill, cilantro, or basil will work great.

Heaps of herbs make up the backbone of most of the food I grew up with, but I find that the uninitiated are usually a little wary of adding such a large quantity. So promise me that you won’t do a little restrained sprinkling, and that you’ll really go for it. It’s truly hard to overdo it. (Although the same can’t be said for woody herbs like rosemary, thyme, and oregano. They can get a bit perfumey).

Basil tends to be a bit less expensive and easier to find in large quantities later in the summer. But cilantro and parsley are perfect for early summer and late spring, and it’s easy to change this skillet up with whatever you’ve got on hand, no matter the time of year.

For a guide on chopping herbs like a pro and storing them so they’ll last for weeks, don’t miss my herb post. Having a few containers of cilantro and parsley in the fridge makes everything a little more delicious. And once you know how to chop them efficiently, you’re on your way to easy and delicious meals.

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breakfast skillet with herbs

breakfast skillet with herbs, from overhead
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  • Total Time: 20 minutes
  • Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients

  • Neutral oil (e.g., avocado or canola)
  • About 4 medium gold potatoes, sliced into ½-inch-thick wedges [455g]
  • Salt
  • 1 cup sliced green onion [50g]
  • 4 cups coarsely chopped kale leaves [80g], from about 1 very small bunch
  • 2 medium cloves garlic, finely minced or crushed through a press [10g]
  • 1 pint cherry tomatoes [300g]
  • 1 cup chopped leafy herbs [40g] (any combination of dill, cilantro, parsley, and basil)
  • ½ cup crumbled feta [75g]
  • 3 or 4 medium or large eggs (optional)

Instructions

  1. Preheat your oven to 450°F [230°C].
  2. Place an oven-safe nonstick or cast iron skillet over medium heat for a few minutes. Once it’s hot, add about 3 tablespoons oil and swirl to coat evenly. Add half of the potatoes (they should be in one single layer), season to taste, and let them sit until crispy on one side (about 5 minutes). Flip and let them get crispy on the other side (5 more minutes). Once the potatoes are crispy and cooked through, remove to a large bowl with tongs or a slotted spoon, and cook the second batch the same way.
  3. Add the green onions kale to the remaining oil in the skillet and season with a pinch of salt. Stir for about 2 minutes, then add the kale and another pinch of salt. Stir the kale and onions often for about 4 minutes. Once the kale softens and wilts, add the garlic and cook for 1 more minute, stirring constantly. Remove to the bowl with the potatoes, and increase the skillet to medium-high heat.
  4. Add 1 teaspoon oil to the skillet, swirl to coat, and add the whole cherry tomatoes. Let them blister and soften slightly for only about 2 to 3 minutes, while shaking the pan or stirring them constantly. Don’t let them turn into tomato sauce, and remove to the bowl as soon as they start to split open in spots. Remove the empty skillet from heat.
  5. Add most of the chopped herbs to the bowl, along with most of the feta (hold back some of each). Gently toss everything together, season to taste, then return to the warm skillet.
  6. Sprinkle the remaining feta and place in the oven for about 5 to 7 minutes, just until it’s warmed through and the feta has melted and slightly browned.
  7. While the skillet is in the oven, fry or poach the eggs using your favorite technique.
  8. Top with the cooked eggs, sprinkle on the reserved herbs, and enjoy.

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snickerdoodle blondies + how to create a dessert mashup

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For my husband Simon’s birthday (this week! 🥳), he requested that we come up with a recipe idea together, and that I develop it and test it to make his vision a reality. Since Simon’s been enjoying all the snickerdoodles I’ve been making, he went with snickerdoodle/blondies hybrid. And after discussing how to make these snickerdoodle blondies work, I decided to write up a few thoughts on baking mashups in general.

So if you’re interested in making your own mashup, feel free to read through. You might even want to read on to decide whether to spend three hours waiting in line to try the latest craze. Really good mashups take two beloved desserts to create something new and exciting. Not-so-good mashups risk losing the two things we loved in the first place.

Or if you’re just here for the snickerdoodle blondies, feel free to jump to the end of this post for the recipe. Either way, you don’t want to miss this one.

how to create a dessert mashup

The kind of dessert mashup I’m talking about is not the kind where you layer two desserts together. (E.g., brookies, donut ice cream sandwiches, etc.—delicious, but not the subject here). I’m talking about the kind of mashup where you take features of one thing and combine it with features of another. This kind of dessert mashup creates a whole new thing.

The cronut, for instance, takes some of the best features of both croissants and donuts, and marries them together. Certain other hybrids are more like Frankenstein’s monsters, losing what we loved about each dessert in the first place, and replacing each one with new slightly worse qualities, just for the sake of merging the two.

For instance, I don’t love big loaves of pretzel bread. More than anything, I love pretzel rolls’ vast surface area of dark brown crust. You lose out on so much of that when you boil and bake the dough into a giant loaf. We’re all going to disagree a bit about our favorite features of various baked goods. Perhaps you always wished that pretzels had just a little less brown crust, because you don’t like bitter flavors.

But when coming up with your own dessert mashup, it’s important to spend a few minutes coming up with something that keeps all your favorite features of your favorite things. This post shows you how to come up with an idea, but I won’t get into recipe developing here. Check out this post if you want a little primer.

Ok, let’s go!

The first step: choose two desserts that you think might merge well, and draw a venn diagram.

Choose two desserts that are not too similar but also not too different. Make sure you choose two things that you completely understand (both culturally and technically. If you don’t fully understand one of the things, research it until you do, or try another dessert that you’ve got a better handle on.

List out features like important ingredients, ingredient ratios, qualities, and/or techniques. Draw a venn diagram to help you think through whether these two desserts actually go well together, or if they’re incompatible and best left on their own.

Here’s my venn diagram of snickerdoodles and blondies:

Once you’ve got your venn diagram, ask yourself some questions about it. These questions will help make sure you don’t lose the thread, to keep the best of both worlds:

1) Which of the features of each dessert are essential, and which features are you willing to let go of?

In this case, snickerdoodles absolutely must be made with white sugar and cream of tartar, and they need to be coated in some sort of spiced sugar. But I’m open to the idea of changing the least important of the 4 features of snickerdoodles: their shape. E.g., a snickerdoodle without its spiced sugar coating is just a sugar cookie. A snickerdoodle with cinnamon sugar mixed into the batter is just a cinnamon sugar cookie. But a snickerdoodle that’s been baked into one giant cookie and coated in cinnamon sugar is still a snickerdoodle, even though it happens to be a giant one.

The essential features of blondies: They must be baked in a pan, and they must have some chocolate chips or chunks mixed in. Unlike snickerdoodles, their shape makes them what they are. E.g., if you add a little extra flour and roll them into balls, they become plain old chocolate chip cookies. The brown sugar, on the other hand, is a much less important component. Blondies are still blondies if they’re missing the brown sugar.

So let’s go ahead and cross off the less essential features:

2) Are any of the remaining essential features incompatible?

To decide if this plan will work, we need to decide if any of the remaining things are incompatible.

For instance, if we had instead decided that blondies must be made from brown sugar, and that snickerdoodles can only be made with white sugar, then these two desserts would not be good candidates for a mashup. But luckily, we’ve decided that we don’t absolutely need brown sugar to make blondies, so it’s looking good. Likewise, we’ve decided that the shape of snickerdoodles isn’t super important, but if we had instead decided that the shape of snickerdoodles and the shape of blondies were both equally important, then (again), this wouldn’t be a good candidate for a mashup.

Luckily we’re in the clear. We have full compatibility between left and right. Everything on the left is totally compatible with everything on the right. We’re keeping the snickerdoodle cinnamon sugar coating, getting rid of the brown sugar, keeping the white sugar, keeping the cream of tartar, adding some chocolate chips, and going with a chewy vanilla batter that can be poured into a pan and sliced into bars.

But doable plans aren’t always good plans:

3) Did we create any new problems? How can we solve them?

For instance, one of the best things about snickerdoodles is their crackly cinnamon sugar crust. If we instead sprinkle a pan of blondies with cinnamon sugar, we risk losing all that surface area and might not get a satisfying amount of coverage.

And what about the brown sugar that we’re leaving out of the blondies? While not 100% essential, will we miss it? Or are we adding another similar flavor or texture to compensate?

Finally, we’ve got the problem of a moderately sweet cookie that’s also going to be stuffed with chocolate chips, which might just push them over the edge to cloying territory.

To solve the surface area problem, I developed a recipe for relatively thin blondies, rather than super deep-dish ones. That way, we’ll get a ton of crackly cinnamon crust with each slice.

After thinking a bit more about the issue of the brown sugar missing, I decided that we’ve compensated with the addition of cinnamon sugar. Brown sugar and cinnamon both add a nice warm note. But to make sure we don’t lose any of the chewy/gooey texture that brown sugar would’ve provided, I made sure the recipe didn’t have too much flour.

And to solve the too-sweet problem, I went with dark chocolate instead of milk/semisweet chocolate. While milk or semisweet goes great in a blondie, dark chocolate goes much better with a sweeter snickerdoodle batter.

4) Finally, is this new dessert mashup still recognizable as both things?

Sometimes when we create a mashup, we lose sight of one of the two base desserts by the end of the process. Are both still identifiable? Can you see the snickerdoodle and the blondie? Or just one or the other? Can we really still call these “snickerdoodle blondies”?

If you’re trying to combine two things that are just way too similar, like trying to combine a brownie with devil’s food cake, you’re going to have trouble finding enough friction and difference to have both things represented meaningfully in the final product.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to combine two things that are way too different, you might have trouble finding enough common ground to bring them together, and one of them might get a bit lost. Like, if you took baklava and tried to cross it with rice pudding, you’re probably just going to end up with a spiced rice pudding or a really mushy baklava (or you’re going to go the “brookie” route, sprinkling some baklava on your rice pudding, which is delicious, but isn’t really the kind of mashup we’re talking about here). It’s going to be hard to see both desserts represented in a mashup of such disparate things.

But in this case, we’ve still got iconic features of both, and neither takes anything away from the other, so we are all good to go. At last, snickerdoodle blondies!

A few last thoughts: Do you really need to go through this whole process? I mean, we’re talking about fun dessert mashups here. This is obviously not an emergency. But going through this process will go a long way in making a mashup that feels like it’s truly both things at once. Instead of just dusting your classic blondies with a cinnamon sugar topping, or baking snickerdoodle batter in a pan and slicing into bars, you’ll make something that’s greater (or at least fun and different from) the sum of its parts. Merging two desserts while keeping recognizable features of both is a challenge. But it’s also fun and worth trying out!

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snickerdoodle blondies

blondies topped with cinnamon sugar and placed on a plate
Print Recipe

  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Total Time: 2 hours

Ingredients

For the batter:

  • Butter, for greasing the pan
  • 1 cup all purpose flour (130g)
  • 1 teaspoon cream of tartar (5g)
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda (1g)
  • 1 stick butter (115g), melted and cooled*
  • 1 cup granulated sugar (200g)
  • 1 large egg (50g), straight from the refrigerator
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (5g)
  • ½ teaspoon salt (3g)
  • ⅔ cup dark chocolate chunks (100)

For the topping:

  • 1 tablespoons sugar (12g)
  • 1½ teaspoons cinnamon (3g)

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Cut a parchment square the size of the bottom of a 8 inch (20 cm) square baking pan. Grease the pan with butter on the bottom and sides. Press the parchment onto the bottom of the pan, flip the parchment over so it’s greased on both sides, and again press onto the bottom of the pan so it makes very good contact with it.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda. In a separate medium mixing bowl, whisk together the butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, and salt until completely incorporated. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir together just until there are a few visibly dry pockets remaining. Add the chocolate chips and stir together until they’re evenly distributed and there are no streaks of flour (but do not overmix).
  3. Pour the batter into the parchment-lined greased pan. Smooth out the top.
  4. Mix together the sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle it very evenly over the top of the batter. Gently tip and tap the pan to shake it around if it’s too clumpy in spots.
  5. Bake for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and meets with some slight resistance. Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then trace around the edge with a knife, and remove by carefully inverting and then inverting again. Let cool at least 15 more minutes before slicing (let it cool completely, at least 1 hour, for cleanly sliced pieces).

Notes

* Make absolutely sure your melted butter is no longer warm, otherwise your chocolate chips will melt. Using an egg straight from the refrigerator (rather than at room temperature) helps make sure the wet ingredients aren’t too warm.

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blackberry scones with sumac icing

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Glazes and icings are always beautiful, but most taste too cloyingly sweet to me. While royal icing has a lovely texture, it has very little acidity. Egg white and powdered sugar lend it that billowy texture, but don’t give it much else. Many recipes get around the lack of acidity by using buttermilk, cream cheese, or lemon juice. These are a wonderful alternative, and I often use them in my own recipes, but these blackberry sumac scones need a little something extra.

When it comes to a magenta blackberry icing, there’s little room to introduce any additional liquids. This recipe’s blackberry icing gets its moisture, flavor, and color from five measly berries and nothing else. There’s absolutely no wiggle room for a little squeeze of lemon juice.

sumac saves the day! (but don’t worry if you don’t have any)

If you added a squeeze of lemon juice to give this blackberry icing a little more zing, it would end up super runny. Moreover, that blackberry flavor and color would become totally watered down. But if you don’t add any acidity at all, it’ll taste like blackberry-flavored royal icing—certainly not a tragedy, but not the most exciting thing in the world.

Sumac is the hero of this whole situation, and you don’t need very much of it to do the job. It adds acidity without adding any extra liquid, so you get as much flavor and texture out of those five blackberries as you possibly can. Moreover, sumac goes wonderfully with just about any berry.

If you don’t have sumac at home, you can absolutely still make this recipe. A little pinch of citric acid will work just as well. And if you don’t have citric acid around, you can always just leave the sumac out entirely. It will still be bright pink and beautiful, and while it won’t have that sweet/tart flavor, it’ll still be delicious. This recipe also has the added benefit of lots and lots of cream cheese in the scones themselves (think rugelach meets biscuit dough), so you’re already a step ahead on the acidity front.

incorporating the blackberries

These blackberry scones are easy to throw together, but there is a trick to incorporating the blackberries without squishing them. Follow the recipe closely and they’ll turn out just fine. But just remember not to start compressing the dough before sprinkling on the berries. And careful not to let the food processor overwork the dough to begin with.

Dump the loose crumbs onto the counter, sprinkle on the blackberries, bring the dough together while making sure the berries are evenly distributed, and then start to compress once they’re all in place inside the shaggy mound of dough. It’s really hard to squish them once they’ve got even pressure from the dough that’s surrounding them, and even if you do manage to slightly squish one or two of them, it’s not a big deal once they’re already situated in the dough. Try not to use your fingertips, and only apply as much pressure as you need to bring it all together into a cohesive mound. And don’t worry if a few of them peek through the top or sides—they’ll turn out really pretty that way.

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blackberry scones with sumac icing

blackberry scones topped with magenta icing and fresh blueberries
Print Recipe

  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Total Time: 35 minutes
  • Yield: 8 scones

Ingredients

for the blackberry sumac icing:

  • 35g blackberries (5 blackberries)
  • 125g icing sugar (1 cup)
  • 6g sumac* (2 teaspoons)

for the blackberry cream cheese scones:

  • 260g all purpose flour (2 cups)
  • 50g sugar (¼ cup) + more for sprinkling
  • 12g baking powder (1 tablespoon)
  • 6g salt (1 teaspoon)
  • 55g cold unsalted butter (3 tablespoons)
  • 115g cold cream cheese (½ of an 8oz brick)
  • 2 large eggs (100g)
  • 165g blackberries (1½ cups)
  • Egg wash: 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 teaspoon water
  • Decoration: blackberry sumac icing (above), extra sumac, and extra blackberries

Instructions

  1. For the icing: Place the blackberries, icing sugar, and sumac in a food processor. Blend until completely smooth, then move to a small bowl and set aside for an hour or two until you’re ready to use. It should be very thick and should slowly run off of a spoon.**
  2. Give the food processor a quick wipe or rinse to use again for the scones. No need to wash it fully, but just get rid of any big icing blobs or thick streaks, and dry it out if you rinsed it.***
  3. For the scones: Preheat the oven to 400°F [205°C].
  4. Place the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a food processor. Pulse 2 or 3 times to blend. Cut the butter and cream cheese into approximately 1 tablespoon blobs as you add them to the food processor. Pulse about 10 times until only small lumps remain. Add the eggs and pulse about 6 more times, just until the eggs blend in and the dough starts forming little clumps.
  5. Dump the clumpy crumbs out onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Don’t compress the dough yet and spread it out into a loosely even layer. Sprinkle on the blackberries evenly. Very gently shape the dough into a loose mound, taking care to keep the blackberries evenly distributed in the dough as you work, and being careful not to squish them. Some of the blackberries will peek out and some will be hidden inside the dough.
  6. Once the dough looks like a shaggy mound, start to gently compress it into an approximately 7 inch [18cm] diameter circle (the blackberries will squish slightly, but once they’re in the mound of dough, it’s less likely you’re going to totally smash one, because the pressure on them is now very even).
  7. Cut the circle into 8 wedges, and space the wedges out evenly. Brush each wedge generously with egg wash, and sprinkle with a little extra sugar.
  8. Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through. Let them cool either on the sheet pan or a cooling rack, and then drizzle with icing. Decorate with extra blackberries and a little more sumac before the icing hardens.

Notes

* If you don’t have sumac on hand, see the note above the recipe for instructions to sub.

** If you’re not weighing your ingredients precisely, you’ll probably have to adjust a bit. If your icing turns out too thick (like a spreadable paste that doesn’t run at all), blend in one additional small blackberry at a time until it reaches your desired consistency. If it turns out too thin, blend in a tablespoon more of powdered sugar at a time until it’s very thick but still pourable.

*** If you make this recipe scones-first/icing-second, then you should wash the food processor fully in between because of the raw egg and flour.

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chai snickerdoodles + spice variations

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Even if you’re here visiting my blog for the very first time (hi!), even if you know nothing else about me, you’ve at the very least probably inferred that I seem to like the combination of cardamom and tea. And you’d be right! (You can read more about why here). Indeed, these spiced chai snickerdoodles get their flavor from cardamom and black tea powder.

A little cardamom goes a very long way, so be careful not to overdo it, lest your cookies go from fragrant to perfumey. I’ve included a lot less cardamom here than the amount of cinnamon you’d use in a classic snickerdoodle. But the black tea powder swoops in to give them that classic snickerdoodle patina. It also lends a nice bitter note—a welcome addition to a typically *sweet sweet sweet!* cookie.

The base snickerdoodle recipe here yields a chewy-crisp cookie. If you’ve always wanted to customize a baking recipe, but find the idea intimidating, snickerdoodles are a great starting point. You can add pretty much whatever spices you’d like to the sugar coating, and you can taste it as you go. Spices and powdered tea won’t affect the chemistry of the recipe, and it’s really all about flavor customization.

So feel free to experiment! This recipe’s dough includes some ground-up black tea, which you can leave in or omit. It won’t affect the texture of the dough one bit.

snickerdoodle variations

  • anise cinnamon: Omit the black tea in the cookies and sugar coating. Replace the cardamom with 2 tablespoons of cinnamon and a small amount of ground anise seed. Add the anise seed about 1/4 teaspoon at a time, and taste the sugar mixture as you go. My preference for anise is never to add so much that it makes something taste like licorice. Instead, it should add an element that feels like an emotionally moving single note held on the violin. Or if you’re not a metaphor person, just taste as you go, and stop once you’re happy with it.
  • masala chai: Leave the black tea in both the dough and sugar coating. Replace the cardamom with your favorite warming spices. Spice blends that work well with tea are perfect. Try this recipe from the chai box, featuring cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and fennel. Add about 1 to 2 teaspoons of ground spices at a time, and taste as you go. Use more sparingly than cinnamon, but more generously than straight-up cardamom—you’ll want to use different blends in different amounts.
  • coriander cinnamon: Omit the black tea in the cookies and sugar coating. Replace the cardamom with 2 tablespoons of cinnamon and 2 teaspoons of ground coriander. My friend Rebecca says that coriander smells to her like Cap’n Crunch, which might be why I love using it in small amounts in sweets. If you add too much, it’ll taste perfumey. But if you add just a little, people will just be that little “ooh, these are so good! but what is that background note that reminds me of Saturday mornings??”
  • plain old cinnamon: Omit the black tea in the cookies and sugar coating. Replace the cardamom with 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. It’s a classic for a reason!

a quick PSA about the phrase “chai spiced” and “chai tea”

Whenever someone says “chai spiced” or “chai tea,” I always think of Inigo Montoya:
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

1) Chai simply means “tea,” and tea cannot be used to “spice” something (especially itself 🥴):

In Assyrian, Arabic, Hindi, and many other languages, “chai” just means tea, with or without spices. Calling something “chai” does not necessarily mean it will have spices in it, since it’s just the word for tea. And since you can’t really “spice” something with tea, “chai spiced” just doesn’t make sense when you know what the words actually mean. It’s like calling rice pilaf “chicken-spiced rice.” Or calling French onion soup “onion-spiced soup.” These things are not spices. They can be spiced, but they can’t do the spicing.

And it probably also goes without saying that “chai tea” makes even less sense, and literally just means “tea tea.” It’s like saying “When I was in Italy, I had so much caffè coffee” or “I love Spanish pan bread.” On the other hand, you could of course say “When I was in Italy, I had so much caffè latte” or “I love Spanish pan de barra,” just like you could say “I love masala chai” or “I love spiced chai,” because those additional words are actually specifying the kind of coffee/bread/tea you like. “I like coffee with milk,” “I like Spanish baguettes,” and “I like spiced tea.”

2) Furthermore, chai doesn’t necessarily include spices:

While chai literally means tea, it doesn’t necessarily mean “spiced tea.” Some folks add spices to it and some folks do not. For example, if you ask my grandmother for a cup of chai, she will most likely bring you a cup of plain black tea, maybe with some cardamom if she is using her favorite Persian blend. On the other hand, South Asian masala chai is tea (“chai”) with spices (“masala”), and can include a variety of different flavors (see my friend Izzah’s recipe for kashmiri chai and this super aromatic chai with lemongrass and ginger from Goya Journal).

Whether there are spices (and which spices are used, and even which kind of tea is used) entirely depends on who is making it, but one thing holds constant: “chai” simply means “tea,” and does not mean “spices.” Chai is black tea, it’s green tea, it’s spiced tea, it’s plain tea. It’s literally just a generic term for tea. So if you’re going to call something “chai” flavored, it should really have some actual tea in it.

How to coherently name things inspired by all things related to chai:

  • If you flavor snickerdoodles with the kinds of spices you might find alongside tea, but with no actual tea, you do not end up with “chai spiced snickerdoodles”… you’ve just got “spiced snickerdoodles,” which happen to contain 0 chai.
  • If you flavor your snickerdoodles with tea and spices, you’ve got something like “spiced chai snickerdoodles” or maybe “masala chai snickerdoodles” if they were inspired by a South Asian blend. Or simply “chai snickerdoodles” works great, as with this recipe (since chai may or may not contain spices).
  • And if you flavor them with just tea and no spices, you could totally call them “chai snickerdoodles” or “tea snickerdoodles,” since the word “chai” does not mean spices, and is simply synonymous with “tea.” Will most people be like “where are all the spices?” after you call them “chai snickerdoodles” without including any spices? 100%! If you’re an insufferable know-it-all like me, just correct them. I’m told most people love being corrected, right?
  • “Chai spiced snickerdoodles” doesn’t work for any of these, since you can’t spice something with tea. But having it in the title sure does help with SEO if you’re a food blogger, and leads to fewer conversations about language and culture. So I get it.

So to recap: chai = tea, chai ≠ spices, and “chai-spiced” and “chai tea” are both really awkward phrases when you know what the words mean. No shade if you’ve used these phrases without really thinking about it, but I think it’s always nice to know what the words we use mean.

The more you know! ✨🌈

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chai snickerdoodles

chai snickerdoodles on a sheet pan
Print Recipe

  • Prep Time: 20 minutes
  • Cook Time: 12 minutes
  • Total Time: 60 minutes
  • Yield: 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients

for the cookie dough:

  • 345g flour (2⅔ cups)
  • 7g cream of tartar (1½ teaspoons)
  • 3g baking soda (½ teaspoon)
  • 227g unsalted butter (2 sticks), at room temperature
  • 300g granulated sugar (1½ cups)
  • 4g finely ground* black tea (from 2 bags)
  • 6g salt (1 teaspoon)
  • 100g eggs (2 large), at room temperature
  • 10g vanilla extract (2 teaspoons)

for rolling:

  • 60g granulated sugar (¼ cup)
  • 5g ground cardamom (2 teaspoons)
  • 8g finely ground black tea (from 4 bags)

Instructions

  1. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda in a mixing bowl. Set aside.
  2. Place the butter, sugar, black tea, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or a large mixing bowl to use with hand-held beaters). Mix on medium-high speed for about 2 minutes, until it becomes noticeably lighter and fluffier.
  3. Add the eggs one at a time with the mixer running on medium, pausing to scrape down the sides between each one. Add the vanilla. Once it smooths out, stop the mixer.
  4. Scrape down the sides again, add the flour mixture, and mix on low speed, stopping once it comes together and there are no dry patches. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and give it a couple folds to make sure it’s homogenous. Let it rest** in the fridge for 30 minutes, up to 48 hours.
  5. Preheat the oven to 350°F [180°C] while your dough chills, and line a few sheet pans with parchment.
  6. Mix together the sugar, cardamom, and black tea in a small mixing bowl.
  7. Scoop a 20g blob of cookie dough (1 heaping tablespoon), roll it around generously in the spiced sugar, roll it between your hands to make sure it adheres, roll it around in the sugar again, and roll it between your hands again.*** Move to the parchment-lined pan, and repeat with the remaining cookie dough. Leave 3 inches [7.5cm] gaps between them.
  8. Bake for about 12 minutes****, and slide the parchment out of the pans so they can cool on the parchment right on the counter.

Notes

* Use a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle to grind the tea. Feel free to use decaffeinated tea.

** If you’re in a rush, you can get away with skipping the rest, since chilling is not the primary goal of resting the dough here (they will still bake perfectly well without chilling). That being said, pretty much all cookie doughs benefit from resting. A refrigerated siesta allows the sugar and flour to hydrate, and results in very lovely (i.e., less grainy) texture. Thirty minutes is kind of a bare minimum, but if you’ve got time, feel free to let them rest even longer. Or if you absolutely must have at least a few snickerdoodles right away, try chilling at least half the dough to bake the next day, and see if you notice a difference.

*** At this point, you can place them on a parchment lined sheet pan (with just a tiny bit of room between each one), freeze the sheet pan, and then throw the frozen dough balls into a plastic bag in the freezer for longer term storage (if you’d like). You can bake right from frozen—just give them an extra minute or two.

**** Keep an eye on them. Twelve minutes in my calibrated oven works perfectly for cookies that are chewy in the center and crisp around the edges, but yours might differ. If you like crunchier cookies, go for another minute or two.

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creamy oatmeal

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I’m not one for making big splashy statements. But since oatmeal is probably the least splashy food of all time, maybe you’ll allow me just one. The way we have all decided to cook our oatmeal is not making us happy! We have turned oatmeal into a stodgy blob, and it is no longer living its best life. If you enjoy that gloopy texture, or if you’re already a fan of creamy oatmeal, you can totally sit this one out. I am not here to yuck your yum, or to tell you something you already know.

This post is for everyone who finds oatmeal to be a constant disappointment. So if oatmeal makes you feel as though your own personal malaise has somehow manifested in a non-newtonian fluid, this post is for you. Only 6% of folks in the US consume it (4% in the under 35 age bracket). So even though you’re here voluntarily reading about oatmeal, I have to imagine you might have some reservations.

Oatmeal was never my personal favorite, until I started recreating the creamy oatmeal my grandmother makes. A lot of other Assyrian and Middle Eastern porridges share a similar texture, and the technique is always super easy:

For silky-smooth and creamy oatmeal, use way more liquid than the side of the box tells you to.

Drown your oats with water and milk and simmer until they go from watery to velvety smooth. Then pour (yes, pour! not plonk!) some into a bowl and top with your favorite fruit. With stodgy/gloopy oats, the fruit pieces tend to perch atop the rock-hard surface like ducks on a frozen lake. But you’ll know you did something right when your fruit pieces gloriously nestle into the porridge.

what’s in this post

Before I get to my recipe, I’ve got a little intro to creamy oats:

  1. I’ll talk a bit about why I think rolled oats tend to be under-appreciated.
  2. I’ll also explain why I think some folks tend to be nervous about adding extra liquid.
  3. Finally I’ll share the details of this method.
  4. Or feel free to skip to the recipe if you’re already excited to try creamy oatmeal for yourself.

first, know your oats!

There are lots of different kinds of oats, but there are three popular ones that you should know about. This post is a love letter to old fashioned rolled oats. But I’ll be referring to the other two as well, so you should know the differences:

  • Irish/steel cut oats: These are just whole oat grains that have been cut into chunks. And since they’re whole chunks of oat, they take longer to cook than the rolled variety. Steel cut oats are known for their ability to retain a chewy texture, but you can also use them to make a thinner, creamier oatmeal.
  • Old fashioned rolled oats: These are the oats that you’d simmer on the stovetop for about 10 to 15 minutes. (They’re also the kind you’d use in an oatmeal cookie recipe). They look like someone took an oat grain, steamed it, smashed it flat, and dried it out… which is actually quite literally how they are processed. Flattening them shortens their cook time.
  • Instant oats: These look a little like old fashioned rolled oats, and they’re processed in the same way. But instant oats are merely flattened to the next degree, and usually a little broken up into smaller crumbs. These oats are designed to be so flat that you can just steep them in hot water instead of simmering. I don’t love these, and don’t really know anyone who does, but they work great for backpacking and busy mornings.

why rolled oats are under-appreciated

While steel cut oats have a pretty strong fan club, old fashioned rolled oats tend to go under-appreciated. I think that’s because folks often ask rolled oats to behave in a way that doesn’t play to their strengths. Here are a few ways I believe rolled oats are misunderstood:

1. You can’t replicate the chewy texture of steel cut oats in rolled oats:

Steel cut oats are a great idea if you’d like to really embrace the chew (though they are very versatile, and also work perfectly well in a silkier, creamier porridge). But old fashioned rolled oats are wonderful on their own terms, and are best made into a velvety, creamy porridge. Unfortunately, most recipes use way too little liquid in an attempt to create a steel-cut-adjacent texture. This results in a stodgy gloop. Best not to try to make your old fashioned oats behave as steel cut oats.

2. Overnight oats don’t deliver on their promises:

Some have tried to solve the mushy oatmeal texture problem by introducing an overnight soak for rolled oats. This supposedly retains their chew and texture. Full disclosure, the texture of overnight oats is just not for me (though again, not yucking your yum). But even if you enjoy overnight oats’ texture, you have to admit, they’re not exactly chewy. Rolled oats just can’t be expected to “retain” their chew, since they were never really chewy to begin with.

3. The ingredient ratios on the old fashioned rolled oat box are questionable:

This is the original sin, which led to the need for such interventions as overnight oats and chewy steel cut. Following the ingredient ratios on the box of rolled oats results in the gloopiest oatmeal texture ever, one that sets up even before it hits the bowl. There’s just not enough liquid.

If you don’t like oatmeal, it might just be because you’ve had it prepared this way. Again, I’m not here to tell you to stop enjoying something you love. But given oatmeal’s staggering unpopularity, as well as the entrenched status of this cooking method, I have to assume this method of preparation is not working for many people.

4. Instant oats give people watery oats anxiety, but “watery” is not the same as “smooth and creamy”:

Whenever I tell someone that I add a lot of liquid to my oats to make them super creamy, people often respond by saying “hmm, but wouldn’t that just make them super watery and mushy?” If you’ve ever had instant rolled oats steeped in boiling water or milk, you’re probably familiar with that watery/soggy texture. I’m pretty sure the soggy disaster of instant oats is the reason folks are afraid of adding more liquid to their old fashioned rolled oats. But this sets up a totally false dichotomy between watery/soggy oats and gloopy/stiff oats. There is a creamy alternative out there, which is nothing like either.

The bottom line: when cooking old fashioned rolled oats, always shoot for creamy and silky, rather than firm and chewy. When cooking steel cut oats, go for either firm and chewy or creamy and silky. And when cooking instant oats… maybe consider cracking open a box of pop tarts instead! (Save me a s’mores or strawberry one please!)

silky-creamy oatmeal

My favorite method of cooking rolled oats: 1 part oats to 4 parts liquid (by volume).

The key to perfect old fashioned rolled oats is to use about twice as much liquid as most recipes say to use. Most recipes (including oatmeal boxes) have you use a ratio of 1 part oats to 2 parts liquid by volume, but I much prefer 1 part oats to 4 parts liquid by volume (that’s about 1 part oats to 9 parts liquid by weight). Or if you don’t feel like doing the math, just follow the recipe at the end of this post.

If you’ve never made oatmeal this way, you’ll probably feel like you’ve made a huge mistake at first. Indeed, it looks like an awkwardly large amount of liquid for such a small amount of oats. It will look incredibly watery at first, like instant oats gone horribly wrong. But after about 15 minutes, its starches will swell and burst, a small amount of the liquid will cook off, and it will magically thicken into a velvety texture. It might still look slightly too thin, but it will set very slightly as it cools at the table.

As my grandmother would probably want me to remind you: Don’t forget that this method has fewer calories than thick gloopy oatmeal (depending on the kind of milk you use). So be generous with the serving size if you’re hungry. It’s very light, so you might want to eat a bigger bowl than usual if you like to start off your day with a big breakfast.

a world-wide love of creamy oatmeal:

This cooking method isn’t limited to just my family. When I lived in Hong Kong, I’d order porridge in cha chaan tengs, and it always shared the same texture. When my sister visited Peru, her host families all cooked their oatmeal the exact same way. In Melbourne (where I live), porridge is on every brunch menu, and it’s always perfectly silky smooth, never gloopy (and often topped with macerated rhubarb, *swoon*).

I also recently asked friends from our intersectional food writers’ facebook group, and we shared a similar experience of smooth and creamy oatmeal, having grown up in Indian, Filipino, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Korean, and Assyrian families (thanks Celeste, Nandita, Jessica, Caroline, Twilight, and everyone!).

how to top it:

The following recipe includes instructions for macerating strawberries, a really easy method for preparing a lightly sweetened fruit topping. You can macerate pretty much any fruit (especially peaches, plums, nectarines, other berries, etc.) by sprinkling them with a little sugar, and letting their juices accumulate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (more like 24 hours is ideal). Use the syrup that collects sparingly (or generously!) as a little sweetener.

I packed some macerated berries, rolled oats, and dry milk on a camping trip a couple weeks ago, and we had such a lovely breakfast of porridge and coffee. I mostly brought the oatmeal for myself, but for lack of anything else to eat, Simon accepted a bowl of smooth and creamy oatmeal with a weary smile, and ever since, it’s become his new favorite breakfast. It was a fun turn of the tables, since Simon has always loved the outdoors, and I am a city mouse who has suddenly started to love camping after being cooped up indoors all year. It’s a good time to try something new!

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creamy oatmeal

oatmeal with strawberries
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★★★★★

5 from 8 reviews

  • Prep Time: 5
  • Cook Time: 15
  • Total Time: 20
  • Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients

for the oats:

  • ¾ cup old fashioned oats (gluten free ones, if necessary) [75g]
  • 1½ cups water [355g]
  • 1½ cups your milk of choice* [355g]
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • Toppings (e.g., macerated fruit, chopped nuts, spices, etc.)

for the strawberries:

  • 8 oz container strawberries [225g]
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar [25g]
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon sumac (optional)
  • ¼ teaspoon salt

Instructions

  1. For the oats: Bring the oats, water, milk, and salt to a simmer in a small saucepan* over medium heat, stirring every minute or so. Once it comes to a simmer, reduce the heat to medium or medium-low and continue to simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid thickens and the oatmeal softens. It will start out watery, and at a certain point it will noticeably thicken (e.g., the bubbles will get bigger), while still remaining very pourable and creamy. Leave it uncovered the whole time, and be careful not to let it bubble over.
  2. Pour into bowls and let it cool off for a few minutes (it will thicken a little more after a couple minutes). Add your favorite toppings at the table (here, pictured with chopped walnuts and macerated strawberries).
  3. For the berries: Hull and quarter your strawberries, place in a jar along with brown sugar, cinnamon, sumac, and salt. Shake together until evenly coated, and place in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes, up to overnight.
  4. Spoon the berries and rendered syrup over your oats.

Notes

* Feel free to use whole cow’s milk, or any vegan milk. Coconut milk is one of the strongest tasting vegan milks, so only use it if you’d like some coconut flavor to come through (if you’re using coconut milk, use the kind from a carton in this recipe—you can use the kind from a can, but you need to water it down to turn it into something more like the kind in the carton).

** If you’re using a wide pan instead of a small saucepan, you may need to add a bit more water as it cooks (more water will evaporate from a wide pan).

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banana éclairs with orange blossom (+ variations)

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Last week I promised I’d be back in March with some new recipes. But I just couldn’t resist bringing you these banana éclairs a little sooner, just in time for Valentine’s Day. Whip up a batch, box up a few to leave on your friends’ doorsteps, and don’t forget to save a few for yourself.

There’s a lot of technical stuff involved in éclair baking, but I’ve included all the important details in the recipe for orange blossom banana éclairs at the end of this post. So you should be able to tackle this project even if you’ve never worked with choux pastry before. It’s actually not as impossible as it seems, especially if you measure everything in grams. While éclairs do feature three separate components, each component is actually extremely doable.

the perfect éclair

Growing up, my family would routinely pick up desserts from the Swedish Bakery in Chicago (now sadly closed). They have a special place in my heart as the small business that gave my family so many of their first jobs after immigrating to the US. But they also just objectively had the best cakes, cookies, and éclairs in the city. So whenever I make a Swedish or French pastry, I do so with their baked goods in mind. In particular, their éclairs had a few important qualities that stand out:

1. A thick pastry cream:

Éclairs are usually filled with crème pâtissière (a custardy pastry cream). But the Swedish Bakery’s was significantly thicker than other éclairs I’ve tried. My ideal éclair’s creme pat doesn’t run or ooze easily, sets up super firmly after chilling, and doesn’t make the choux soggy. This banana pastry cream might seem like it has a lot of cornstarch, but it’s essential for the right texture.

2. Fudgy yet thin ganache glaze:

Éclair recipes are generally divided between those that include a chocolate glaze or icing and those that include a thick ganache. The Swedish Bakery topped theirs with a fudgy yet thin layer of ganache, which I’ve emulated here. It’s a little thinner than what you’d use to frost a cake, but a bit thicker than a chocolate glaze.

3. Crisp yet custardy pâte à choux:

Removing your shells from the oven at the exact right moment comes with practice, and it’s important to err on the side of a little more done if you’re ever unsure, lest they collapse at room temperature. Ideally, you’ll learn to time it so that they’re crisp enough to completely hold their shape as they cool, but not totally dried out inside, and still holding onto a very slightly custardy layer.

While I accurately recorded the times and temperatures in my recipe, it’s important to use your senses. Pay attention to what the éclairs look and feel like when you pull them out of the oven. They should feel hollow and brittle on the outside, and they shouldn’t have much give when you gently squeeze them. If you go much further beyond this point, they will burn and dry out. But if you pull them a few moments too soon, they will collapse as they cool.

pastry cream flavor variations:

The following recipe is for orange blossom-flavored banana éclairs. But you can easily change the pastry cream, ganache, and decorations. Just make sure you follow the following substitution guide, whether you’re replacing the banana, the orange blossom, or both:

  • For a more classic pastry cream, leave out the mashed banana and add 120g [1/2 cup] additional milk in its place. That’s a total of 720g [3 cups] milk, and no mashed banana.
  • You can also replace the 1 tablespoon orange blossom water with 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, rosewater, or almond extract. Feel free to do this with either banana pastry cream or plain pastry cream. Also leave the orange blossom water out of the ganache.
  • To decorate:
    • vanilla pastry cream éclairs: just go with a plain, undecorated chocolate glaze (omit the orange blossom water in the glaze).
    • rosewater pastry cream élciars: add 1/4 teaspoon rosewater to the chocolate glaze in place of the orange blossom water, and sprinkle some edible dried rose petals on top of the chocolate ganache.
    • almond pastry cream éclairs: sprinkle some sliced toasted almonds or finely ground raw green pistachios on top, and omit the orange blossom water in the glaze.
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banana éclairs with orange blossom water

eclairs topped with chocolate ganache, a banana slice, and orange zest
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★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

  • Prep Time: 40 minutes
  • Total Time: 2 hours
  • Yield: 12 to 14 éclairs

Ingredients

for choux pastry:

  • 235g water [1 cup]
  • 55g butter [4 tablespoons]
  • 10g sugar [2 teaspoons]
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 165g flour [1¼ cup]
  • 4 large eggs broken into a measuring cup [200g]

for pastry cream:

  • 600g milk [2½ cups]
  • 130g granulated sugar [⅔ cup]
  • 15g orange blossom water [1 tablespoon]
  • 2 large eggs [100g]
  • 1 egg yolk [20g]
  • 50g cornstarch [¼ cup + 1 tablespoon]
  • 1 large ripe (not overripe) banana, mashed [140g]
  • Salt

for ganache and decoration:

  • ½ cup heavy cream [115g]
  • 3.5 oz dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa) [100g]
  • ½ teaspoon orange blossom water
  • Salt
  • Banana chips and orange zest for decoration (optional)

Instructions

for the choux pastry:

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F [205°C].
  2. Place the water, butter, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan, and bring to a low boil over medium-high heat. Once the butter has melted and you see a few big bubbles, remove from heat and immediately dump in the flour. Stir together until it forms a firm ball. Move the ball to a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Turn the mixer to medium-low for about 15 seconds just to break it up and help it cool down. Once it stops steaming momentarily, turn the mixer back to medium-low and add the first egg while it’s running. Once the first egg has incorporated into the dough completely (about 30 to 45 seconds), continue adding one egg at a time, waiting to let each one incorporate between additions. Once the eggs have been incorporated, the pastry should drop from the tip of the lifted paddle in a distinct v shape. Transfer it to 1 large or 2 small piping bags.
  3. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper. Cut the tip of the piping bag to leave an approximately ½ to ¾-inch diameter opening. Place a small dot of pastry under the 4 corners of each parchment sheet to help it stick to the sheet pan. Pipe 4 to 5-inch-long straight lines, leaving a generous amount of space between them (they will approximately double or triple in size).
  4. Move to the oven and bake for about 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 350°F [180°C] and bake for about 20 more minutes. Let them cool at room temperature for at least 15 minutes before cutting open or piping.

for the pastry cream:

  1. Combine the milk, sugar, and orange blossom water in a large saucepan or small stockpot. Set over medium heat and let it come up to a simmer.
  2. While it comes up to a simmer, separately mix the eggs, yolk, cornstarch, and banana together in a medium mixing bowl until there are no raw cornstarch lumps.
  3. Once the milk is just simmering, remove from heat and slowly dribble it into the egg/banana mixture while whisking constantly. Return the egg/banana/milk mixture to the saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly. It will thicken as it comes to a simmer.
  4. Once bubbles break the surface, continue to cook for about 1 more minute, then remove from heat to cool.
  5. Once it’s not piping hot, move to a pastry bag (ideally fitted with a large round tip, but if not, just fill the bag and snip it when you’re ready to use it. If you’re not using a pastry tip, it’s usually best to slice/pipe/sandwich instead of fill, otherwise it can be tricky to get the plastic tip to insert into the end of each eclair). Pipe it while it’s warm or at room temperature.

for the ganache:

  • When you’re ready to dip, bring the cream to a bare simmer over medium heat in a small saucepan. Once the cream is barely simmering, remove from heat and add the chocolate, orange blossom water, and a pinch of salt. Swirl to make sure the chocolate is completely submerged. Let it sit for about 1 minute, and then whisk it together until it’s thickened and completely homogenous. Do not reheat, and dip within about 5 to 15 minutes of making.

to assemble:

  • Once the shells cool, slice the eclairs open along their length or poke a hole on one end. Pipe or spread pastry cream into the middle (then sandwich them back together if you sliced them open). If you’re met with resistance halfway through piping, feel free to pipe from the other side as well. Make the ganache at the last moment. Dip the eclair tops in the ganache. Decorate immediately with banana chips and orange zest, if using (go easy on the orange zest, otherwise the delicate orange blossom flavor will get lost in the shuffle).

Notes

Storage: Store éclairs the refrigerator after filling and decorating. They will be best after about 1 hour of chilling, they’ll stay very good for several more hours. Try to make them within about 12 hours of serving if you’re making them for guests, but keep in mind that they’re still very tasty for a few days afterwards (they just might start to get some condensation on the ganache, and their shells will soften slightly in texture, but they shouldn’t become soggy). They generally keep for about 2 to 3 days before they decline significantly in quality.

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