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Ritz Cracker Cookies with Peanut Butter Chips

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I’m a sucker for a good recipe contest.  Cooking, for me, is already a fun and creative hobby.  So the thought of prize money is just icing on top.

One day in the supermarket, I passed a giant display of Ritz Crackers, complete with football goal posts, inflated balloons, and a nearly life-size cutout of Guy Fieri.  Drawing closer, I saw that Kraft was running a recipe contest for its Ritz Crackers.  With a grand prize of $20,000, I decided to grab a box or two, and see what I could do.

My first thought was toward a cookie. …

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Homemade King Cake

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Of all the foods characteristic of New Orleans – from pralines to muffalettas – my all-time favorite remains the King Cake (la galette des Rois).

I can remember gathering around the large loaf in grade school, eagerly holding out my plate, and wondering if my piece would be the lucky piece.  If the teacher was feeling generous that day, she might indulge our personal choices, and allow us to select that prized piece ourselves.  There were those that favored the edge pieces.  Others favored a particular color of icing – be it green, yellow, or purple – certain that good luck lay beneath it.  And others still allowed simple chance to play its part.

I don’t remember what my particular stratagem may have been, but given the importance of the situation, I certainly had one.  You see, hidden in the dough was a small plastic baby.  And whoever pulled the baby from his or piece was king or queen for the day.

In grade school, this was no mere sinecure.  …

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Cinnamon Raisin Swirl Bread

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Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Growing up, we used to devour this stuff.  I can remember my younger brother popping two slices into the toaster, waiting for that mechanical “pop,” and then throwing a slab of butter between the warm slices as he placed them on his plate.  After which, he put two more slices into the toaster.

This past Thanksgiving, I showed my youngest brother how to make scrambled eggs.  Saturday night we went to the Kroger, picked up a pan, a whisk, a dozen eggs, and a DVD from the Red Box.  After a quick tutorial, we settled down on his dorm couch to scrambled eggs, raisin bread, and The Girl Who Played with Fire.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

My mind must have wandered to that night.  That, combined with my love of bread-baking, inspired me …

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Pecan Shortbread

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The march of progress often seems inexorable, with each passing step of time yielding new ground in our scientific and technical fields.

The digital age is the embodiment of this phenomenon.  With the advent of computers, we’ve watched our lives become longer, our automobiles become safer, and our world become closer.

In the world of photography, the digital age has made film obsolete and our cameras smaller and faster.  We’ve gone from the Polaroid to the point and shoot, and from carrying buckets of film to squeezing thousands of images onto a single photo card, no larger than the size of a half-dollar.  We’ve traded film development for image software; our darkroom for a computer.

All of which makes the technical and artistic expertise of an Ansel Adams that much more compelling….

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