Tag Archives: Baking

Cranberry Orange Sweetbread

Home Cooking, , , , , ,

Name: Corinne Morgan
Class Year: 2013
Country of Residence: United Kingdom

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

This is a recipe that was created by my great great grandmother and has been passed down through my mother’s side of the family, which has not had a son in 5 generations, so this recipe has always passed from mother to daughter. I made this recipe for a recent board gathering for the Mount Holyoke Club of Britain, where it was very popular. Upon telling my mother and grandmother about the great reaction to the recipe, they laughed and admitted to it also being their go to recipe whenever they needed to bring a food item to a gathering. Hopefully, this recipe can one day become your family’s old reliable as well.

Continue reading Cranberry Orange Sweetbread →

Maple Syrup Sweetness Overload Pie

Regional/Traditional, , , , ,

Name: Anita Pion Selec
Class Year: 1988
Country of Residence: Bosnia Herzegovina

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

This pie is known as “sugar pie” to French-Canadians and it gives baklava a run for its money with sweetness!  This recipe has been in my family for over a hundred years.  There are many versions of this made in French-Canadian homes.  This is the simplest and the sweetest.

Continue reading Maple Syrup Sweetness Overload Pie →

Cheesecake with Fresh Berries

Home Cooking, , , , , , ,

Name: Silvia Maulini*
Class Year: 1980
Country of Residence: The Netherlands

* Silvia is one of this competition’s judges, so this recipe will not be considered – it’s simply delicious, and needs to be shared!

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

I have always found most (American) cheesecake recipes rather daunting and alarmingly rich in fats and cream. A few years ago, my daughters and granddaughters gave me a wonderful new cookbook by Cees Holtkamp, whose patisserie in the center of Amsterdam is a true monument to high quality pastries and cakes. His simple, not exceedingly fat and apparently foolproof recipe for cheesecake immediately caught my attention. It seemed too easy to be true, but Cees’ cheesecake turned out to be amazing and it has now become a classic at our family birthday celebrations. This is the cake that has been requested by all family members for our first physical gathering after the lockdown period: I can’t wait to bake a few of them!

Continue reading Cheesecake with Fresh Berries →

Wilma Flinestone’s Chocolate Cake (and/or the Paleo Cake)

Home Cooking, , , , , , , ,

Name: Rossella Di Palma
Class Year: FF 1999
Country of Residence: Italy

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

I wanted to make a cute cake for a friend’s birthday: it had to be good looking, easy to make, unusual and easy to personalize. Its flat shape was ideal to place, on the top, a printed image of his dog.  At the party, people were originally suspicious about the cake ingredients, but everybody ended up enjoying it. This cake is grain free and gluten free.

I adapted a recipe I found in “Il Libro d’Oro del Cioccolato” which suggested 300 g of carrots and 150 of sugar.

Note: adding a bit of fresh ginger might be interesting.

Continue reading Wilma Flinestone’s Chocolate Cake (and/or the Paleo Cake) →

Homemade Bread (with kefir based sourdough)

Home Cooking, , , , , ,

Name: Rossella Di Palma
Class Year: FF 1999
Country of Residence: Italy

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

Since the lockdown started, Italians began baking bread at home. This quickly made impossible to find brewer’s yeast and high quality flour. I do not normally eat bread, but since my mother does, I wanted to try to make bread at home, with a bread machine first and baking it in the oven later.  Given the fact I could not find any yeasts at the supermarket, I decided to try using the kefir I grow daily.

Continue reading Homemade Bread (with kefir based sourdough) →

English Muffin Bread Loaf

Home Cooking, , , ,

Name: Georgia (Smith) Regnault 
Class Year: 1964
Country of Residence: The Netherlands

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

I am FROM the USA, living  IN the Netherlands and IN LOVE with Europe. But ever since I lived here (55 years), I have missed English Muffins, Thomas’ to be exact. Have tried making them a few times when I was a newlywed, but never very successful.  Just recently during this coronavirus lockdown, a friend sent me a recipe for English Muffin Bread Loaf – and this is almost as good, in fact it is excellent. This is for all the English Muffin lovers in Europe!

Continue reading English Muffin Bread Loaf →

Chocolate Heath Bar Crunch Cookies

Home Cooking, , , , ,

Name: Victoria Breck*
Class Year: 2008
Country of Residence: Belgium

* Victoria is one of this competition’s judges, so this recipe will not be considered – it’s simply delicious, and needs to be shared!

Why is this recipe great? What’s its backstory? 

This recipe originally started some years ago on the back of a bag of heath bar bits. So simple. But I started playing around over the years, adding spelt flour to make them fluffier and melt in your mouth, and scaling back on the sugar, and up on the cocoa. Now they are a masterpiece! You can either eat them plain as cookies, or at a dinner party they make a fun dessert when they are still slightly warm, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If you don’t like heath bars you can substitute whatever other chunks you like (white chocolate chips, chocolate chips, nuts, etc.) Warning… they will not last long.

Continue reading Chocolate Heath Bar Crunch Cookies →