Smitten Kitchen

While I’m not from a cheesecake family — it is never unwelcome, but we are more deeply devoted to things like pastry creams, chocolate pudding, and stellar coffee cakes — I married into one, which means that even though this site’s cheesecake archives are very well-populated, not a single peep of protest could be heard as far as my apartment walls reach (to be fair, a short distance) as I tinkered with these bars over the last few weeks. Read more »

If there’s anything that’s been consistent about this site in its near-20 years of beaming (babbling?) hypertext to servers and back to you, it’s that I’m very bossy when I get into something new, especially cocktails. When I fell in love with Porch Swings, I wanted you to as well. Ditto for Blood Orange Margaritas (but only when in season), a Perfect Manhattan era that spanned over a decade, Boulevardier that has been woven into almost every year since, and a Slushy Pape

I’ve been pining for a springy way to combine leeks and lentils in an unfussy, one-pot, weeknight-friendly meal but would get stuck on one thing: how annoying leeks are — and I say this from a place of adoration! I think leeks are one of the most stunning vegetables, an ombre of chromatic ringlets from buttery yellow to pea green and back to a pale shade of lima. They look exactly like spring (even though it’s climatically July outside but will be March again next week), and ta

I was in Paris* last week — no, I cannot believe I get to utter sentences like that so casually, either, pinch me — and it was really, truly, and surprisingly spring. The magnolia trees at the Jardin du Palais Royal supplied us with a lace curtain of fluttering pink shadows, the daffodils and hyacinth were popping up from the ground like they’d missed us, and everyone was outside and stayed out until after midnight and this energy climbed inside me, evicted all of the seasonal

Somehow, despite how impossible it seems (to me, a person who has neither aged nor matured a day), it’s been almost twenty years since I first told you about my family’s favorite coffee cake. It’s tall, plush, crisp with a flaky layer of cinnamon sugar on top, studded with a quilt of chocolate chips and is downright, well, adorable when cut into cubes because they’re a little wobbly. When one tumbles, it shakes off a little pfft of cinnamon sugar, like a pup coming in fro

How do you cook when your kitchen isn’t available for kitchen-ing? On a Sunday last April, I awoke at the crack of dawn jet-lagged from an (excellent) trip to Amsterdam* to an email from my apartment building that ConEd had found a gas leak in the main line to the building and had shut down service for safety. With this, I was indoctrinated into a society of New Yorkers I previously hadn’t known existed, as NYC is apparently riddled with tales of people who lived without gas for (wha

If you want a homemade pizza that requires no kneading, no special flour, or long wait time (because who among us has ever said “what I really crave is pizza that will be ready 1 to 3 days from now”), you should really, really be making more pan pizzas at home. You might even consider it a worthwhile addition to your 2026 cooking bucket list. Read more »

I’ve craved this specific salad all month and finally caved. Read more »

It’s been 17 months since I first questioned whether anyone even needed another recipe for a basque cheesecake — the burnished, custardy and uncluttered kind that hails from San Sebastián, Spain — and concluded that in fact, I did. Read more »

My strongest opinion on Thanksgiving sides is that whenever possible, they should come in a casserole dish (or its chic French cousin, a gratin). I don’t mean that your sides should be limited to things that swim in cream, cheese, butter, or a happy combination of all three — although one dish in this category is highly welcome on my table — I simply mean that sides like this, that is baked in dishes with walls, tend to excel at holding up to resting times, reheat well, and sta

Unless you’re living your life better than me (probably!), I bet it’s been way too long since you last had a baked potato for dinner — or, as they’re more charmingly called across the pond, “jacket potato.” And it’s a crime because they’re so cozy and uncomplicated to make, we could fix this right now. Read more »

Friends, it’s snickerdoodle season. If you didn’t know that snickerdoodles had a season, let me paint a picture for you: you’re coming inside on a blustery and colder-than-you’d-expected October day so you hadn’t dressed for it and you can’t wait to announce what my kids always laugh at me for saying when I walk through the door: “Well, that’s enough doing things for me today!” and forswear things like “being outside” and “h

Although spinach gnudi — soft, pillowy cheese dumplings fried in browned butter and sage — are traditionally more of a spring or summer food, I’m here to make the argument we should eat them right now, in prime soup-and-sweater weather. Because did you hear the part about warm cheese? the puddle of brown butter? the earthy sage? It’s a symphony of delicious fall things and if you tell me you don’t want to curl up on the plate and take a nap in it, fine, I’ll b