The Gingerbread Man (Honey stout gingerbread cake, honey glaze)

As the Thanksgiving dust settles, baking cakes may be the last thing on your mind, but as winter drags on, I expect that you (like me) will come creeping back into the kitchen. Call it culinary therapy. Winter demands sturdier, more substantial, more warming foods, and this month's honey stout gingerbread cake fits the bill, perfectly.    A bundt cake, this takes advantage of the pretty, fluted mold and uses a simple glaze you can just pour over the top, rather than fussing with layers and smoothing icing. Triple-spiked with fresh, ground, and crystallized ginger, it's an easy pick-me-up with just the right amount of not-to-sweet gingery fire.

Fyah

Not So Sweet (Raspberry rhubarb crumble)

Spring is the perfect season for rhubarb, among the first plants we can harvest, growing outdoors from April until September. Greenhouse agriculture also allows rhubarb production year-round, so one never needs to go without. As a child I was as obsessed with rhubarb pie as I was with all baked goods (an obsession that remains), and confused to learn that the sweet, ruby-red filling was born of a bitter vegetable related to celery. Now that I have a more adult palate, rhubarb proves a wonderful option for making desserts that celebrate that happy zone of satisfying one's sweet tooth without being so cloying they induce a toothache. These individual raspberry rhubarb crumbles deliver sweet and tart in just the right measure.

For the not-so-sweet-tooth

Holiday Cheer (Cranberry orange spice cheesecake bars)

For me, the holidays mark open season for baking. Cooler weather makes it more comfortable to blast the oven all day and subtly increases the caloric load, or at least I like to tell myself so. "I'm storing up for the long winter" is a frequent excuse I make, while eating a dozen cookies at a time. At first, I wanted to make one of my mother's requisite holiday recipes: Pecan Tassies. Like miniature pecan pies, nestled in a bite-sized tart shell of cream cheese crust, they've always been a favorite in my family. Owing to Aaron's unfortunate upbringing beside several pecan trees, however, he still suffers from perennial pecan fatigue and refuses to eat them. Seeking a different source of holiday cheer, I settled on cranberry orange spice cheesecake bars: rich, sweet-tart and 100% holiday-approved in color and flavor profile, these are an ideal nut-free treat for the bleak midwinter.

Sweet!

Pastiche of Exoticized "Other" (Moroccan lamb burgers)

The hamburger, despite owing its name to the city of Hamburg, Germany, is considered a quintessentially American food. So as the mercury spikes and grills flare across the land, I wanted in on the action. A food with such cultural iconography (and such simple ingredients) naturally lends itself to extemporization and I opted to enhance my Americana with a trip to the spice market: Moroccan lamb burgers with gingered carrots, lemon-mint goat cheese, and microgreens. The carrot component is an easy make-ahead, but the rest is ready in minutes, leaving you more time to chill in the shade with a tall glass of iced peppermint tea.

Prepare to chill

Curried Away (Massaman Curry)

To Aaron's distress, I absolutely love Thai food. Not that he doesn't, but I tend to take things to extremes. I'll recommend we order Thai takeout multiple times per week, sometimes on consecutive days (Aaron usually says no to that). I simply can't get enough. Thai food utilizes a number of flavors somewhat unique to Southeast Asia: fiery, licorice-y Thai basil, sour tamarind, darkly sweet palm sugar, citrusy notes from lemongrass and kaffir limes, and a somewhat surprising lilt of seafood from savory shrimp paste and salty fish sauce, which end up in almost everything. These ingredients combine to give Thai cooking, like many Asian cuisines, a spicy, sweet-and-sour character that was once prevalent in European cooking throughout the Middle Ages, but fell out of fashion in favor of the simply savory. One of the most familiar dishes to a Western audience will be curry - a dish decidedly lacking a Western analogue. Curries are soup- or stew-like dishes with rich flavors imparted from curry pastes or powders, themselves made from copious amounts of spices. Common throughout South and Southeast Asia, an Indian curry can often be identified by use of more dried spice powders and a thicker, richer texture, whereas Thai curry is often a bit soupier and relies more on fresh, moist seasonings (curry paste).

Nom

Honeyed Words (Honey Cake)

As we head into September, we come ever closer to the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. While not religious or ethnically Jewish, I was intrigued by the traditional dessert of honey cake, mostly because I was lured in by the name. I like cake and I love honey, surely combining the two should be especially delicious, right? The answer is: absolutely!

Absolute honey

A Time for Teriyaki (Beef Teriyaki)

As winter plows on and buries us in polar vortices, I'm always on the lookout for fast, easy dinner recipes that can be finished quickly, without having to sacrifice flavor or quality. I've been borrowing heavily from Nigel Slater's excellent recipe book Real Fast Food, and even begun to ponder Rachael Ray's milieux in a new light. The beef teriyaki recipe I share today, however, is purely a creation Aaron and I jiggered together over much practice of laying a speedy weeknight table. A little leeway taken with a package of minute rice turns this into a quick "one pot meal," and leveraging a hot oven cooks all the ingredients at once with minimal hands-on time. The end result is tender and flavorful, with the luminous gloss that gives teriyaki its name. This recipe feeds a family with ease and can be scaled up to feed an army as needed, but the real beauty, aside from the vivid colors, is speed of assembly.

In a jiffy

Pumpkin in the Air (Pumpkin Butterscotch Blondies)

The long-lingering warmth of summer seems to have inspired especially beautiful leaves this season and I've found myself slowly ambling down the backroads around the bakery to soak in the blazing canopies of foliage. Leafer madness is in the air. Also in the air in high concentrations: the sweet, earthy squashiness of pumpkin. I chose to capture the star flavor of the season by tinkering up pumpkin butterscotch ginger blondies: tender treats that highlight the true flavor of pumpkin, while still enthusiastically embracing a curated selection of its aromatic pairings.

Aromatically delicious

Fresh Arrivals (Apricot Almond Ginger Tart)

I've waited weeks on tenterhooks for the first fresh cherries to arrive to market, but in the meantime chose to console myself with a clutch of glowingly golden apricots. I had ulterior motives. We'd also been eagerly awaiting the birth of our third nephew, Oliver, who at the time of writing this article was slightly overdue, and I figured a little light folk medicine couldn't hurt. Elizabethan England held the belief that apricots induced labor, which is why they feature in the play The Duchess of Malfi, where her nefarious brothers expose her pregnancy with a slyly offered bowl of apricots. It has no basis in science whatsoever, but might as well be worth a try. To gussy up the presentation, I decided to toss the apricots with fresh ginger, then layer them into a tart mantled in slivered almonds.

For your viewing pleasure

Carrots on Parade (Ginger Carrot Bisque)

A few weeks ago, we went to FarmAid, the benefit concert founded by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, and Dave Matthews to benefit small family farms. It was a fun event featuring terrific music and great food--only from local organic farms. Even the Chipotle chain tent sourced their ingredients from family farms. My favorite highlights of the evening were John Mellencamp's violinist, who fiddled like a woman possessed, and the photographs of produce, farming, and harvesting that played in the background the whole time. I still maintain one scene included dancing carrots.

It's harder to dance when pureed

Something Borrowed (Ginger Peach Peppermint Juleps)

This post is also available as an article in the 5/30/2012 Williamsport Sun Gazette.

Last year, during our annual 4th of July barbecue with friends Laura and Geoff, I played bartender for our taste test of potential signature cocktails for their wedding. I believe I insisted on mojitos as a contender, which everyone liked, but just didn't fit. There was also the Vodka Lola, a fruity little number spiked with elderflower liqueur. Tasty, but we agreed it was potentially offensive to the masculine dignity of some guests. After several misfires and false starts, magic happened: the ginger peach peppermint julep.

Can you see the appeal?

Snap to It (Gingersnap Crusted Lemon Bars)

A long time ago, when we lived in Worcester, we made a habit of frequenting a little grocery called The Living Earth, especially because of it's amazing local and organic restaurant: Evo. Sunday brunch was our prime target, but I have to say the ultimate treat is the lemon bars they sell in the deli. Tender, tart, sweet, buttery, heady with the fragrance of fresh lemons... sheer perfection.

Can't hardly wait