Snack

I admit that the first time a customer requested hamentaschen I had to go to the local kosher bakery to see what the person was talking about. But then I recognized them immediately and I quickly fell in love with every variety of light pastry stuffed with jam. Use any preserve or jam in the center that you like, but I’ve included a recipe for my favorite blackberry filling. You can sub in a different berry without trouble, with the exception of raspberries, which tend to be very watery and don’t, for the most part, thicken up all that well.

This one earned a higher place on the BabyCakes Piece of Cake scale simply because it requires pastry assemblage, which always complicates matters. It might take a little while for you sophomores to get your rhythm down, and your first few straws will probably look more like craggy witch fingers, but it’s all going to pay off if you stick with it. Once it does, you should host a dinner party and set these out early by the pintful.

This is one of my absolute favorite snacks—a perfectly refined marriage of competing flavors. Whatever you do, do not put these in a big bowl by the couch and dig in for a reality-TV marathon while pretending to write a cookbook on a windy, rainy spring day like I did. You will lose that productivity battle, I assure you. Instead, make a big batch and divvy the balls out into individual air-tight sandwich bags for on-the-fly enjoyment throughout the week.

Like bubble-gum ice cream, Sno Balls were one of those grocery-store items I coveted as a very young girl. All I knew was that they looked like Barbie food and that was precisely what I wanted and needed. And then I tried one. Absolutely awful. Like, terrible. I wondered how something so pretty could taste so wretched. And then, when it came time to write this book, I decided, No, something so adorable need not be so incredibly foul-tasting. So I reworked them. In the process, I stumbled on a new bakery favorite. What’s more, you get two recipes in the process of making a batch of these; head over to the recipe for Bread Pudding (page 102) and see just one idea for what you can do with the unused part of a cupcake.

Heads up, beginners and cheapskates! This recipe is so easy you don’t even have to turn on the stove (melt the coconut oil in the microwave!), which makes it ideal to make with kids or frugal old folks. If you want to reduce the fat in this recipe, you can omit the coconut oil, but be warned that the blocks won’t be as buttery. All the ordinary tricks you learned from your mom as a child apply: Chocolate can be added on the top or throughout, colored rice cereals are in play, even dried fruit or nuts can be tossed in to frighten or entice your young ones.

I don’t think I’m alone in my ever-so-slight embarrassment about being a fan of the Nilla Wafer. They are like the frozen burritos of cookies: You don’t particularly crave them, yet every time you’re checking out at the grocery store, there they are. They get eaten. And not because they’re the only things available; it’s because they are sneakily delicious. This is a tried-and-true cookie icon, no matter what anyone says.

Until Bob’s Red Mill came up with a totally affordable gluten-free oat, you would never have seen these in the bakery. Thank all that is holy—once again—for Bob’s! Today these cookies are a best seller in both New York and Los Angeles. If you hate raisins (I do . . . sorry, raisins!), try subbing in chocolate chips or dried cherries instead. If you’re some sort of oat maniac, you can dump in as much as another 1/3 cup of oats and be just fine.

Ah, the Stevie Nicks of cookies—all spun around, precious, and ethereal! A couple tips for making this recipe all your own: Try cutting back on the flour sometimes and ramping up the sugar at other times. In doing so you’ll learn what proportions make a soft cookie and what proportions give you a chewy version. You’ll also perfect the fine art of the crispy edge. If you’re a brave soul—and surely by now you are—try to assemble a few cookie sandwiches with your favorite glaze or icing in the middle.

Who can resist a madeleine? They are so charming, so fair—so impossibly French. These Proustian delights have always appealed to the buttery fringes of my soul, and they’ve always acted as the perfect foil to the rebellious and messy attitude of my first love, the American chocolate chip cookie. Plus I get to whip out my handy madeleine tray, which I cherish wholly and completely. Get yourself one and be the envy of your baby girl’s bake sale.

This is a perfect example of using the exalted Sugar Cookie as a launching pad. Once you’ve fussed around with it enough, you begin to understand its dormant qualities. What if you asked your brain what would happen if you had the foresight to roll a butter-taste-based batter around in a cinnamon-sugar mixture before baking? If your brain, schooled in the ways of the Sugar Cookie, answered that you’d get a wonderfully wrinkly explosion of the Snickerdoodle variety, you and your brain are well on your way to total cookie enlightenment.

For the longest time, I might have been the only person in the tristate area completely oblivious to the beautiful oversize black-and-white cookies found in every bodega from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Have you had one? Me, I was never allowed because of my food sensitivities, of course. So when I went to the kitchen and started brainstorming ideas for iconic cookies, this was one of the first ones I tackled. Prepare to be bathed in the sweet comfort of vanilla-chocolate overload.

I’m a lady who unabashedly prefers her cookies thin, chewy, and intoxicatingly buttery. If I want a hunk of cake, I go for the cake section. This isn’t to say, however, that the preeminent cookie of my youth was not the mighty and comparatively meaty Chips Ahoy! And not those late-issue, M&M–flecked monstrosities, either. I’m talking the real-deal original flavor, in all their dry and crumbly wonder. This is my version of that wonderfully named cookie.

Not everyone has time to sit down to a plate of waffles or crepes made from scratch every morning. Before you ask who would even want to do such a thing, I will go ahead and say that I would, actually. But I hear what you’re saying. Granola is a wonderful alternative to a proper sit-down breakfast—a naturally light and easy choice that is as satisfying as any other baked breakfast item. When traveling, I pack this in a little baggie so I don’t starve to death when the flight attendants clink down the aisles offering sodium-soaked chips or dried-up cookies.

Honeybees get most of the attention, but squash bees do the most work. These busy bees crawl out of their underground nests and get going a good half an hour before the honey team when the squash flowers are in full bloom. Both the male and female squash bees set to the field work gathering nectar from blossoms, but only the females do double duty collecting pollen. Bees transfer pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers. The first several flowers of a plant are male and will not produce any fruit. By midday the squash blossoms begin to close and the bees return home. Get to work early like these busy squash bees and pick your squash blossoms early in the day. Squash blossoms filled with herbed goat cheese and fried with a crisp batter are an annual summer event thanks to the hardworking squash bees.

Fry these up and stuff them in a big roll with shaved cabbage and mayo for your vegetarian friends. They deserve big po’boys of fried things too! Or serve them as a side or even a party-food popper.

I don’t think people think of making their own crackers much, but homemade crackers can make store-bought dips and spreads set out for parties a little more personalized. A batch will last for a month stored in a tin and, when paired up with a hunk of good cheese, makes a very nice hostess gift.

Most crawfish bread recipes are made with a hollowed-out loaf of French bread. Here the crawfish filling is enrobed in a tender ricotta dough, making these more like turnovers. Whether you make them small for pick-up party food or a more substantial calzone-like size, these are perfect for tailgating or game-day parties.

The Jasper County village of Bay Springs, twenty miles from Laurel, Mississippi, was named in 1901 for an artesian spring flowing from the trunk of a bay laurel; it flows still to this day. I always think of that town when I make this dish. Introducing freshwater crawfish to leaves from a bay laurel, traditional pickling spices, and tarragon vinegar prepares them to sit on top of salads and toasts.

In most bait shops throughout the South and beyond, big gallon jars of pink-tinted pickled eggs sit on counters next to smoked summer sausages. Here these two favorite fisherman’s snacks are brined up together and make a perfect take-along lunch for a day out on the lake for the angler gourmand.

Born out on Cabanocey Plantation in rural St. James Parish in 1946, a young John Folse could probably never have imagined that the foods of his Louisiana upbringing would propel him around the world as a culinary ambassador. From humble beginnings and a belief in and commitment to the preservation of classic Cajun and Creole cuisines, Chef Folse has grown his culinary enterprises into a world-class operation. Since 2006, he has grown Arbequina olives on White Oak Plantation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Arbequina olives are the source of most California and Spanish olive oil. When the small, flavorful olives are ripe and cured, they are deep purple.