Summer brings long days of sunshine and with it a great excuse to concoct frozen treats. This month’s sweet recipe does just that, with a focus on the ice cream fanatics among us. It comes from Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook by the folks from the eponymously named ice cream shop. Their flavors are amazing, and this recipe for Strawberry Honey Balsamic Ice Cream with Black Pepper blends into wonderful layers of rich sweetness with a touch of acidic tang and peppery spice.
There are those among you who swear the best damn lemon cake is The Best Damn Lemon Cake. I thought so too…until this recipe was sent to me by my daughter, Toni, who lived on East 62nd Street when she began to make it. When I sent this recipe to my friend Craig Claiborne, he printed it in the New York Times. It became amazingly popular. Devin, the young man who took care of our swimming pool, once even baked this cake on his charcoal grill (he didn’t have an oven). It came out perfectly!
Honey enhances the earthy sweetness of carrots and makes for a dense, moist cake. Serve this flavorful cake unadorned or gild it with cream cheese frosting—or simply drizzle with honey and top with chopped nuts.
These rolls make a decadent brunch, served warm from the oven, with a pot of good strong coffee on the side.
Patrick Thibault, our gardener, is the James Underwood Crockett (erstwhile Victory Garden host) of Montreal; he dutifully tends to the daily greens and produce we harvest from the Vin Papillon and Joe Beef gardens, while also leisurely providing the end-of-season greens we might use to create a torte like this one.
For much of my childhood, this was my mom’s go-to cake. Each sponge cake layer is mixed with a different ingredient (poppy seed, prunes, walnuts), and then basted with sweetened condensed milk and left to soak. She just called it “three-layer cake”—so I pressed her for its actual name:
Burned Bread Pudding | Kazandibi
Region: İstanbul, Marmara Region
This is a gorgeous old-fashioned family dessert that separates into two quite distinct layers when it cooks—it has a lovely fluffy top and a creamy lemon base, provided it is not overcooked.
There’s nothing quite like a fresh, ripe fig. This recipe uses my favorite fruit, simply dipped in melted chocolate (dark or milk—equally good, the choice is yours) and dusted with crushed pistachios and rose petals. The end result is as gorgeous as it is tasty. These figs are lovely paired with wine and cheese or served on their own when you feel like indulging.