Pastries

Moist and slightly crumbly, these scones team especially well with soups made of root vegetables—potatoes, parsnips, and the like.

These are especially good with soups containing beets, cabbage, or strong greens.

These little biscuits pair especially well with mild-flavored soups featuring cauliflower or broccoli, but they are compatible with most any kind of vegetable soup.

Tiny bits of fresh vegetables give these muffins a fascinating flavor and texture. These are particularly good with pureed soups, as well as those that focus on one primary ingredient such as carrots or squash

Tender and just slightly sweet, these are good teamed with spicy or chunky soups and stews.

Moist and flavorful, these muffins pair nicely with bean soups. Try them with Long-Simmering Black Bean Soup (page 38).

These offbeat little griddle biscuits pair well with bean soups, purees, and soups that feature root vegetables.

I can’t resist making this special tart for myself when my Duchess apple tree in Vermont is laden with the most flavorful apples I’ve ever tasted. I’ve never sprayed the tree, so, yes, there are what we call wormholes, but I peel around them or dig out the dark tunnels with the point of a knife. If you’re using a frozen portion of your own tart dough, remember to take it out in the morning and let it defrost at room temperature. If you’re making up a new batch, be sure to make extra to put away for a repeat performance.

All of us yearn sometimes for a particular remembered taste, and we want to re-create it. I feel that way about popovers, perhaps because they are associated with memories of family discussions about the way to obtain the perfect popover (they all tasted good to me). My aunt Lucy in Barre, Vermont, was thrilled when she got a new state-of-the-art stove and discovered that her popovers could go into a cold oven the night before. All she had to do was set the time and then press a button so that the oven would turn on magically and have the popovers baked in time for breakfast. But my aunt Marian, seven miles away in Montpelier, insisted that you couldn’t put popovers into a cold oven. And they had a competition that, as I remember, didn’t prove anything one way or the other. In more recent years, Marion Cunningham discovered that the secret to a high rise and a crispy exterior was to use Pyrex cups set at a distance from one another, so the heat could circulate. Naturally, a new popover pan was soon on the market based on that principle. Even more significant,at least for the single cook, was her discovery that if you prick the popovers in several places with a knife as soon as they emerge from the oven, the steam will escape and the popovers will not turn soggy—a valuable tip if you want to reheat one to enjoy the next day. But they don’t keep long, so when I’m alone I make just two in my new popover-pan cups and have one piping hot for dinner (it’s particularly good with red meat, reminding me of our family Sunday dinners of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding) and heat up the other the next morning for breakfast, to be eaten with soft butter and my own gooseberry jam. Who could ask for anything more?

I usually make these in the summer, when berries are plentiful and bursting with flavor. I gather the berries and put all the ingredients out the night before, and it takes but a few minutes to whip up the batter. Then there’s time to go for a swim and work up an appetite while the muffins bake. If you have family and guests around, just double the recipe. This more modest amount will give you a dozen mini-muffins, which I prefer, plus two regular-sized ones that I bake in small Pyrex cups. If you don’t eat them all, they freeze well.

Anyone would get right out of bed if he or she smelled these rolls rising in the oven—even on a Saturday! We believe the magic lies in the homemade caramel sauce. The caramel is rarely something we consider making from scratch, yet it is surprisingly easy to do. Double the sauce recipe and store the extra goodness in a plastic squeeze bottle in the fridge. The squeeze bottle is the perfect tool for drizzling this rich caramel over ice cream or apple slices.

We actually got this brilliant idea from our World’s Greatest Chicken Pot Pie recipe (page 48), borrowing some of its staple flavors to create an entirely new dish. The mild flavors of the tarragon and white wine sauce complement the leek mixture in this new creation. Baking the salmon en croute keeps the fish moist and seals in its natural flavors. When you find a flavor combination you love, experiment and find new ways to make it work for you!

I’m from upstate New York and we’re big deviled egg lovers. Growing up there were always deviled eggs at parties and picnics, so now, anytime I throw a party I make sure to have them, and if I don’t, I hear about it. They’re always the first thing to disappear at my parties! When I was developing my piccolini menu at Café Centro, I wanted to have deviled eggs on the menu but I had to figure out a way to make them with an Italian slant. My friend Christina suggested I put truffles in them, and to this day I kick myself for not thinking of that myself, because trust me, these are some kick-ass eggs!

This is another Jewish recipe that became an instant favorite at the bakery. I don’t know about you, but I’m a complete sucker for any and all rolled pastry. Pulling apart the layers and investigating and indulging in the different textures inside are activities I would do all day if asked. Normally, rugalach recipes call for nuts but I made them optional in honor of the allergy-plagued among us.

I often turn to unrefined sugar to sweeten my cookies because I love the crunchy texture it provides. But when it comes to whoopie pies, agave nectar works much better. The reason is simple: Traditionally, whoopie pies are built with cookies that are fairly squishy and cake-like by comparison—way more so than a typical cookie sandwich. For the filling I prefer Ricemellow Crème, the marshmallow concoction made by Suzanne’s Specialties (see page 17), but you can fill it with the Vanilla Icing (page 127) for equally wonderful results.

Who can resist a madeleine? They are so charming, so fair—so impossibly French. These Proustian delights have always appealed to the buttery fringes of my soul, and they’ve always acted as the perfect foil to the rebellious and messy attitude of my first love, the American chocolate chip cookie. Plus I get to whip out my handy madeleine tray, which I cherish wholly and completely. Get yourself one and be the envy of your baby girl’s bake sale.

Once you’ve made the Honey Buns and the Wonder Buns for the hundredth time, you are going to look at your pastry dough and say, “You know, pastry dough, I bet there’s something else I can do to you.” I fully encourage this. Below are my contributions to your endeavors.