The first time I tasted cardamom, it was the spice that scented sweet breakfast bread that a friend had baked. I was twenty-four, living in a fourth floor walk-up apartment on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. My nearest neighbor and close friend Char and her husband, Rob, lived  next-door. Our kitchens opened onto the same fire escape.

Char had a way with spices. She brought whole cloves, allspice and cardamom across the fire escape and into my kitchen. When my apartment was filled with the smell of burned popcorn, Char suggested that I simmer a tablespoon of mixed pickling spices in a saucepan of water to get rid of the smell. She served hot tea with lime slices that were dotted with whole cloves. Slow cooked, steel cut oats topped with heavy cream and brown sugar tasted even better when she sprinkled freshly ground allspice on top. I have whole cloves, allspice and mixed pickling spices in my pantry and use them all, but it was the scent and flavor of cardamom that made me remember Char when I made a batch of cardamom buns last weekend. Here’s how I did it: … read more

This has been vanilla week in my kitchen. Often, vanilla is used as an adjective to describe something that is plain, ordinary or uninteresting, but vanilla week has been creative, exciting and tasty. I’ve made vanilla sugar and vanilla extract to give as gifts this Christmas. They both need time for the flavor to develop so the timing was perfect.

Vanilla begins as the seedpod of an orchid native to Mexico. Conquistador was my sister’s favorite word, and I remember when she told me that it was a conquistador, Hernan Cortes, who brought both chocolate and vanilla to Europe in the sixteenth century after observing Montezuma drink a mixture made with cocoa beans, vanilla and honey.

Vanilla grows as a vine with white flowers. The Melipona bee, the only insect that pollinates vanilla, is native to Central America, and so when grown in the tropics anywhere else in the world, vanilla must be pollinated by hand. Vanilla flowers last only one day and growers inspect their plantations every day for open flowers. The beans, actually seedpods formed by the pollinated flowers, are harvested by hand and then cured in a four-step process. The first step, wilting the vanilla beans, is done either by a quick dip in hot water, by freezing, or by heating in an oven or in the sun. Step two, sweating, consists of wrapping the beans in woolen blankets and baking them in the tropical sun. The beans are then dried to prevent rotting and to lock in the aroma. The final step, conditioning, is achieved by storing the beans in closed boxes for a few months. The intensity of labor required to grow and cure vanilla makes it the second most expensive flavoring after saffron.Vanilla sugar brings flavor and aroma to coffee and hot chocolate, is delicious when used to sweetened oatmeal, can be sprinkled on fresh berries or on fruit before it is baked. It’s an easy way to add flavor to meringues, marshmallows or custard and is a gift that makes both cooks and non-cooks happy. The six jars I made will be ready by Christmas. Here’s how I did it: … read more

When I was a child, a red and white aerosol can of Reddi-wip often appeared with dessert. White fluff spurted out when I pushed the nozzle. It was fun to dispense it directly from the can into my mouth, it was great ammunition in a food fight and its appearance promised that dessert would be either an ice cream sundae or a slice of pumpkin pie.

Invented in 1948, it uses nitrous oxide as a propellant for a mixture of cream, sweeteners and stabilizers and was a definite step up from its predecessor, a cream substitute made with vegetable oil, called Sta-Whip.

The chocolate whipped-cream cake I chose from an upscale bakery for my seventh birthday was my cream epiphany. It was covered with real whipped cream, without nitrous oxide, corn syrup, artificial flavor, monoglycerides, or carrageen. I’m not implying that at seven I was an informed foodie, however, even then I knew that heavy cream, beaten until stiff with was sublime.

Since that birthday, if a chocolate cake isn’t frosted with real whipped cream, I don’t think it deserves to be called a birthday cake. As a young cook, the birthday cakes I made began as a cake mix, but as a young mother I decided that my sons deserved birthday cakes made from scratch. Our family’s traditional birthday cake is a rum infused, dark chocolate cake, slathered with whipped cream. The cream is still whipped by hand, but now I use a wire whisk instead of the hand-cranked mixer I used as a child.

Sunday will be my younger son’s birthday. If Matthew were living on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, I would make his birthday cake rather than sending this to his wife.

Dear Alison,

Here’s the recipe for Matthew’s birthday cake: … read more

A jar of caramel sauce is an investment in a sweet future.

It’s great on vanilla ice cream, luxurious on apple crisp, divine on top of chocolate ice cream and under whipped cream, and irresistible on a spoon right out of the jar. Here’s how I made it: … read more

Once I had mastered peanut brittle, I moved onto what I called caramel custard.

Years later, I learned that Julia Child called it creme caramel and in Mexico and Spain it was called flan. No matter the name, the process is the same. Here’s how I made enough for four people: … read more