Liz Denys

I grew up on pumpkin muffins. Every fall, without fail, my mom would make them by the dozens in her heart-shaped muffin mold, and I'd eat them for breakfast, sneak them into my lunchbox, frost them for dessert after dinner, and snack on them off courts at tennis meets.

But I live some nearly 800 miles away from my mom now and autumn isn't marked with heart-shaped pumpkin muffins morning, noon, and night anymore.

My pumpkin muffins are close to her recipe, but with butter instead of canola oil and brown sugar instead of white, I end up with something a little richer, sweeter but drier, subtler. They don't work well with frosting, but also don't want any. And if I'm forced to compare, this muffin makes a little more sense with my morning cup of coffee than my childhood mug of hot chocolate.

My version of Mom's pumpkin muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (my mom uses canola oil)
• 3 cups brown sugar (my mom uses white sugar)
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 15-ounce can pumpkin
• 3 cups flour
• 2 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine butter (oil) and sugar in a stand mixer and cream together.
3. Add eggs and mix until combined.
4. Add milk and pumpkin and mix until combined.
5. Add dry ingredients until incorporated. Be careful to not over-beat.
6. Fill greased or paper muffin tins until they are 2/3 to 3/4 full and bake for 25-30 minutes if making normal size muffins. If making miniature muffins decrease time and watch carefully. Bake until lightly browned.
7. Remove from pan and serve warm. These can also be frosted when cool if desired and eaten as a treat.

Yields 2 dozen muffins.

I went most of my life without having fennel. Then one day I had it roasted, the next raw, and I was in love. Surprising, given that I'm not very partial to anise flavoring.

While fennel is very versatile to cook with - you can boil, braise, fry, grill, roast, sauté, or steam it - my favorite way to eat fennel is raw. It makes spectacular salads:

Fennel, edamame, and onion salad

Ingredients:

• Raw fennel bulb, stalk, and leaves, raw and chopped
• Edamame, cooked and out of the pods
• Onion, raw and very finely diced
• Olive oil
• Freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Kosher salt

Preparation:

1. Combine all ingredients to taste. Let combine for at least an hour before serving; the longer you wait, the better the flavors will mesh and the less pungent the onions will be.

This salad is even better when you add in chopped raw mushrooms.

Last September, I baked a grumpy fuzzball cake for SIPB. That grumpy fuzzball cake was frosted primarily with rolled fondant, a dough-like frosting that is made with gelatin, food-grade glycerine, and the usual frosting suspects. But I don't love the taste or texture of fondant. And I really hated working with it.

So when I decided to make another grumpy fuzzball cake for SIPB, I opted to use only buttercream:

I like to think it turned out much better than its predecessor. The random fuzz looks more cohesive and even grumpier, the cake is rounder (okay, that has nothing to do with my frosting choice and everything to do with the fact that it's a five layer cake), the eyes look and cut better in buttercream than white chocolate, and the frosting tasted better because it was texturally lighter (and made from butter). The contrast of the plain, smooth white shoes with the chaotic black fuzzball turned out exactly the way I wanted it to.

What all went into this grumpy fuzzball? Five differently-sized sour cream chocolate cake rounds, two miniature white cake loafs, raspberry filling, about 2 quarts of black dark chocolate buttercream frosting, about a quart of vanilla buttercream frosting, and more than a handful of hours of labor. But completely worth it.

I made the graphic with the GIMP, and the typeface used is Helvetica Neue.

Remember how I was craving chocolate chip cookies not too long ago? Well, the ricotta chocolate shavings cookies didn't satisfy that craving for long - probably because I was craving deep dark chocolate in a rich buttery dough.

Normally, I make chewy chocolate chip cookies that I expect to stay moist for a couple of days, which is a couple of days longer than the expected amount of time before they disappear. But yesterday morning I woke up wanting something with more of a crunch - and the comforting scent of freshly baked cookies to help me wake up.

So I took my normal chocolate chip cookie recipe, increased the sugars and decreased the flour and number of eggs. Due to these changes, the dough looked and felt significantly less firm than a typical chocolate chip cookie. But this softness helps the cookies spread so that they bake thin and crispy, so whatever you do, don't chill the dough! If you do, they won't melt down and spread as evenly, which results in burnt edges.

Crispy thin chocolate chip cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter softened (you shouldn't use melted anyway, but you really cannot cut corners and use it here as dough will definitely not come together)
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (I actually used vanilla bean paste)
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon (I love cinnamon in chocolate chip cookies, but if you're not used to it, I'd use a lesser amount to start)
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 2/3 cups good quality dark (yes, darker than semisweet is my favorite) chocolate chips

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. This temperature matters oh so much, and your oven really needs be preheated.
2. Cream together butter and sugars until light.
3. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.
4. Add flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg and mix until well combined.
5. Fold in chocolate chips by hand so that they are evenly distributed.
6. Place golf ball sized balls of dough on a parchment lined cookie sheet. These cookies do spread, so you probably only want 6 to a normal cookie sheet. Do not chill this batter first - it will spread out too slowly if you do. Bake for about 10-12 minutes or until golden brown on the top rack only. Rotate halfway through if your oven does not heat very evenly--these cookies have a very high butter and sugar to flour ratio and are thus very temperature sensative. Let cookies rest for a couple minutes before transferring to a wire rack for cooling.

Yields 30 three-inch cookies that are rich, thin, and crispy.