I like that the blueberries are added last and that you can use frozen blueberries without turning the entire dough blue-grey. This was a very interesting way to work the butter by grating frozen sticks halfway, leaving the handles to be put away for another use. I am not always a fan of citrus peel, but I liked the addition of the grated lemon peel here. I cut the long rectangle into 3 perfect 4” squares instead of 4 - 3”squares so I ended up with 6 very large scones. This dough was too soft for me and it would have turned out OK if I had used my scone pan. My next mistake was to remember that I had not brushed the tops with butter and sprinkled on the extra sugar after they had been in the oven for 1-2 minutes. I thought it would be all right to pull the pan out and do this, but apparently the dough had already warmed up so that the final product looked awful, spread out and leaking butter. But they still disappeared in a hurry and there was a little fighting over the leftovers in the freezer. I will look forward to making this recipe again and doing it right – there are still a lot of blueberries in the freezer.

We used a double recipe of this marinade on a charcoal-grilled butterflied leg of lamb (for that grilling technique see The New Basics Cookbook – Butterflied Leg of Lamb P 469). It has all the flavors I want when cooking lamb – garlic, fresh rosemary, also fresh thyme and olive oil. This turned out to be the best tasting leg of lamb we ever had. The flavor really penetrates much more than all of those times I spent forever sticking slivers of garlic into a leg of lamb. I wanted to review this recipe before I forgot (again) where it came from because that would be tragic.

I had extra cream on hand and these were the easiest scones that I have made in a long time. I was happy to have the currents on hand that the recipe required; they gave just the right amount of sweetness to the scones. This was a very wet dough and once again I was saved by the scone pan forming 8 perfect scones. This is a perfect recipe to whip up in a hurry if you have cream and currents on hand.

I was curious to see how these compared to the Barefoot Contessa’s. I am hoping to find some oatmeal recipes that taste OK with rolled barley (mine is rather thick) as a substitute. Unfortunately I forgot to omit the sugar, but was craving maple, so threw in the maple syrup anyway. I was very grateful that the recipe only made 8 scones and also that I had a scone pan (King Arthur) for the gooey dough that resulted. I managed to make a circle of dough, cut it into 8 triangles with a pizza cutter using just a little bit extra flour for the spatula and pizza cutter. The recipe was not clear on the maple-pecan variation on whether or not to glaze and add the 1 TLBS of sugar since there was a maple glaze applied after baking and cooling. I added the milk/cream/egg glaze but skipped the sugar and the maple glaze. I needed to cook them longer as with the wet dough, it took longer to get done in the middles of the larger scones. The end product looked like scones thanks to the scone pan, but tasted more like muffins. The maple flavor was not pronounced without the maple glaze. Regardless, they did taste excellent and may be the best tasting product with the rolled barley substituted for the oats. I think if you took the option with quick oats, it would be a drier, more manageable dough. I was a little worried about the extra toasted rolled grain on top, but the wet glaze added on top seemed to soften them up just enough.

The best part of this recipe was that the spiciness of the cookie meant that I was satisfied with only one! The ginger flavor was nice and strong, I used unsulfured molasses, so that flavor did not overwhelm, and the ground black pepper added to the spicy note. I found it easier to shape the cookies by dropping the dough directly into the container of sugar from 2 spoons without first rolling it around on my hands as it was a very wet dough. A third spoon was used to make the transfer to the cookie sheet. You were admonished not to overbake and so I underbaked them as directed, but thought that they tasted too raw in the middle. It could be the humid Florida factor. This is a flavorful, pretty cookie and I will bake it again.

Very good peanut butter cookies, but they were more soft than chewy. The directions were excellent. I did not have extra-crunchy peanut butter, so I decreased the peanut butter from 1 cup to 2/3 of a cup and increased the roasted salted peanuts that you grind up from 1 cup to 1 ½ cups. My son thought they were the best peanut butter cookies ever. I made them smaller than suggested and was able to get away with not dipping the fork into ice water every time.

OK, so it took me 6 ½ hours of near constant activity to produce one pan of totally amazing pecan rolls. The first time I made this recipe using the cookbook for that year of the TV show, I went out and bought the pan specified, a tall sided non-stick 9X13” metal pan. Making these for a bake sale was not one of my better ideas as you will want to keep and eat them yourself after all of that work. In addition to making the dough, filling and caramel glaze for the pan, you also make the pecan topping separately. Unfortunately I let them over bake a little and then went to sleep after turning them out of the pan and so they did not get covered on a timely basis, and so were a little dry. But these were still quite spectacular with all of that sticky caramel and crunchy pecans on top and they brought a very good price individually at the bake sale. Well worth the effort if you hanker for an amazing pecan roll experience.

I made this hot, curry paste and coconut milk dish for my family, knowing that it would be so hot I would not even be able to try one bite. They absolutely loved it, fighting over the leftovers. I liked that it was full of vegetables and the fresh lime juice, basil and mint added at the finish were appreciated.

Chocolate satisfaction in every bite. I made this straight forward elegant cake for a special teenager’s birthday. (I hate making frosting and icing cakes.) You just have to schedule enough time to bake the first layer, then enough chilling time for that and the subsequent mousse layers. My only problem came with unmolding. It had chilled enough, but my springform pan doesn’t have as much give as I would like and whichever direction I used to get the cake through was the wrong choice. I had unsightly streaks through all of the layers (on the outside). It was a real disappointment to me that it did not look like the picture, but everyone seemed to really enjoy it.

This is my favorite wilted spinach salad. I like the dressing, it is minimal and brings the only problem to the salad; I never get enough wilting. This may be exacerbated by my tendency to sneak in more spinach. I think the solution is to add the spinach to the dressing in the pan. By the time I scrape all the dressing out of the pan and onto the spinach, it has already cooled quite a bit. I also have one boiled egg per person if you are having this for a meal.