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When I was a child, my aunt made jam. Sometimes, we had her jam, and sometimes, we had a jam from a jar with “Bonne Maman” scribbled on the label. This confused me: Bonne Maman was not my aunt, who was American and named Judie, but the jars looked so similar—it had to be homemade by someone? And at the same time, I was vaguely aware that this could not possibly be right. I’d seen it in the grocery store, which seemed like an implausibly high volume for one aunt. I couldn’t parse it, which I found unsettling. Who was this Bonne Maman?  By early adolescence, I had a better grasp of brands. Even then, I understood that Bonne Maman occupies a singular place in the landscape of preserves. (It is a preserve and not technically a jam, because jams use ...

Kristen Miglore knows what your scrambled eggs are missing. It’s not butter or cream. It’s not some specialty cast iron pan forged by Swedish monks. The secret is cornstarch. “I promise you, in 15 seconds, you’ll have a decadent, magic, silky soft scramble. No need to make time for the low-and-slow method,” she says on a recent Zoom call.  This is precisely the sort of practical cooking advice for which Miglore is famous. As a founding editor at Food52 and creative director at the brand’s spin-off project Genius—a concept born of Miglore’s editorial column of the same name—she’s been tracking down and sharing recipes that contain legitimately memorable bites of kitchen wisdom since 2010. Recipes that are, well, genius. Think tahini granola that ...

When the sultry heat of late summer crashes together with peak stone fruit season, there’s only one breakfast on my mind: this refreshing peach chia breakfast shake. The combination of nut milk and chia seeds with creamy-fleshed peaches is luscious, tangy, and a little bit sweet. You can use nectarines, apricots, or plums in place of peaches—it’s the perfect way to take advantage of stone fruits at the height of their season. In fact, I wait all year to make this shake, because nothing works as well as these late-summer jewels. The post-blending addition of nutritious chia seeds not only provides a dose of omega-3 fatty acids and digestible protein, it also thickens the mixture to a luxurious texture without the added sugar of typical smoothie m...

Sticky toffee pudding is a clear communicator. The warm dessert is, yes, sticky from both dates and the accompanying butterscotch sauce. That same sauce, with its dark, caramelized sugars, is toffee in liquid form. Some may say it bamboozles with that final descriptor: “pudding.” The moist, muffin-like construction is no cousin of chocolate pudding as it is known in the United States. Instead, this is a pudding in the manner of the beloved style of British steamed dessert, those moist dense confections like plum pudding and suet pudding. A new dessert, as far as desserts go, sticky toffee pudding has none of the centuries-old nostalgia of, say, hasty pudding. Sticky toffee pudding was popularized only 50 years ago, during the 1970s, when it firs...

A fruity dessert that takes advantage of peak season produce is one of life’s greatest pleasures, particularly during summer’s bountiful fruit season. Naturally, it’s hard to beat flaky, buttery crusts filled with tender, saucy peaches—or tart, juicy berries blanketed with a crunchy crumble. But after a long day, I don’t always feel like going full pie mode. Here’s something fun to cobble together.  It’s an understated and, dare I say, high-minded dessert—with the effortless vibe of a crisp white button-down layered over a summer outfit. Apricots are coated with honey and olive oil, then quickly grilled or roasted until tender and caramelized. A mixture of cream and tangy crème fraîche gets whipped with some vanilla and more honey, dolloped on t...

“It’s hard not to feel like we’ve just become best friends,” I blurted out to Odette Williams as we wrapped up our call. The author of the forthcoming cookbook Simple Pasta laughed as the words poured out. After all, we’d only met over Zoom an hour ago. But without missing a beat, Williams said: “That should be your opening line to this story.”  Everything about Williams feels fun, casual, and uncomplicated. Conversation with her flows like honey, enveloping you in her world of any-occasion spritzes and homemade cakes left for friends on their front porch. Williams’s first cookbook, Simple Cake, explored basic cakes that can be dressed up and down for any event, from those simply sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar to instructions on how to make...

Every barista has a version of this story: You’re working behind the bar, pulling cortados or scooping ice for constant orders of cold brew, and a customer comes in to pick up a bag of coffee. They browse the shelf of choices—debating between a lovely selection from Mexico or a fresh new Ethiopian naturally processed coffee—before picking up a bag, walking to the register, and asking: “This bag says the coffee tastes like blueberries. Is it blueberry-flavored?”  Nearly every bag of coffee comes with some version of tasting notes, a short list of descriptors varying from vague flavor sensations (“this coffee is sweet!”) to obscurely specific (“this reminds me of Swiss German cake my grandmother used to make me as a child”). Distinct from flavored...

“I’ll just toss some seeds out anywhere I go,” says Tara Jensen, a baker with over two decades of experience turning milled grains into beautiful loaves of bread. “We just moved into our new house and I threw rye and wheat everywhere I could in the yard.” Jensen’s career started when she walked into Morning Glory Bakeryin Maine. Patti Smith was playing on the stereo, and it was helmed by a woman wearing all black with tattoo sleeves on both arms. Immediately, Jensen asked for a job. After almost two decades working in bakeries like Red Hen Baking in Middlesex, Vermont, and Farm and Sparrow in Asheville, North Carolina, Jensen launched her own one-person bakery, Smoke Signals, in Asheville in 2012. When it closed in 2018, she began teaching bakin...