The chocolate crisis is apparently not going away — here's the easy way to bake safely (plus a super chocolatey recipe)

A few specific chocolate products that tested as relatively safe by both Consumer Reports and As You Sow

By Leslie Brenner

Around this time last year, I purged my kitchen of all my favorite chocolate: organic Theo bars in myriad fabulous flavors; Valhrona cocoa powder; the Trader Joe’s organic bars that were great for baking. It was painful, but had to be done. The big question: Would I be able to find suitable replacements, or would I have to give up chocolate nibbling and baking in the name of health?

If you’re scratching your head and wondering what on earth I’m talking about, you’ve missed the alarming news of the last 13 months: Many of the most popular brands of chocolate have been found to contain dangerous levels of lead and cadmium. The dangerous products include brands favored by pastry chefs and serious home bakers.

In December 2022, Consumer Reports published an extensive article that laid out the dangers, and conducted its own tests on 28 bars. Then in October last year the publication updated that article, and revealed the findings of more testing — on cocoa powders, chocolate chips and brownie mixes. Consumer Reports’ work on the subject follows the important work  of As You Sow, a California-based nonprofit devoted to environmental and corporate responsibility. As You Sow has been testing chocolates for heavy metal since 2014, and provides to the public a searchable database of test results (scroll down on their Toxic Chocolate page to find it).

I woke up to the problem last February, when a New York Times health column asked “Do I Need to Avoid Dark Chocolate Now?” The article concluded that there’s “no reason to panic,” and quoted an assistant professor of behavioral health and nutrition at the University of Delaware as saying that if you eat chocolate often, you should consider choosing brands with lower concentrations of the harmful metals. At the same time, it reminded us that there is no established safe intake level for lead, because “even the lowest blood lead levels are associated with adverse neurodevelopmental effects in children.”

I dove in, checked Consumer Reports list of “safer” bars, and cross-referenced it with As You Sow’s test results. I then headed to the supermarket, came up with a selection of widely available dark chocolate products that tested as relatively safe, and wrote about it for the Cooks Without Borders newsletter.

At that time, it seemed pretty straightforward: Ghirardelli 100% cacao and 60% cacao premium baking bars were found by both organizations to be relatively safe. Ghirardelli also makes a 72% cacao bar — Intense Dark Twilight Delight — that Consumer Reports found to be safe; however, As You Sow’s testing showed it to have a dangerously high level of cadmium.

Cocoa powders: not so simple

Consumer Reports hadn’t yet tested cocoa powders, but As You Sow did, and it deemed Hershey’s Cocoa to be safe. (Most Hershey’s products tested as unsafe, but the unsweetened 100% cocoa passed As You Sow’s tests).

Now that Consumer Reports has also tested cocoa powders, the two organizations show conflicting results — CR found Hershey’s Cocoa to be unsafe, while it deems a number of cocoas safe that As You Sow found to be unsafe. At this point, there is not a single cocoa powder that both Consumer Reports and As You Sow consider safe.

Use a safe chocolate to make these Mexican Chocolate Situation bars, and you can safely enjoy one bar.

Safe chocolate chips and bars — with a caveat

Good news for chocolate-chip cookie lovers: Consumer Reports’ more recent testing found a number of widely available dark chocolate chips to be relative safe — including Ghirardelli 60% cacao, Nestlé Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels, 365 Whole Foods Market Semisweet Chocolate Baking Chips and chips from Trader Joes, Kirkland (Costco), Lily’s, Great Value (Walmart), Hershey’s, Enjoy Life and Guittard.

However, that comes with a caveat: What’s considered relatively safe is just one serving, about ½ ounce, or 14 grams. That’s roughly one tablespoon — about what you’d probably get in one or two chocolate chip cookies. So that does not mean you can safely use or eat these chocolate chips with abandon.

That’s also true for baking with the safer bars: Both Consumer Reports and As You Sow base test results on one ounce. If you want to be safe, do not consume more than one ounce (28 grams), even if you’re consuming one of the “safe” products. That means you cannot safely eat an entire batch of brownies made with the Ghirardelli premium baking bars. But if you make a batch of brownies that uses 6 ounces of chocolate and makes 12 brownies, you can safely eat two brownies.

Use 60% cacao chocolate and 100% cacao chocolate in a 3:1 ratio to get 70% cacao chocolate.

The bars to buy, the ratio to remember

Many of us want to be safe — and to keep our children and grandchildren safe — but don’t have the time or inclination to consult two different websites each time we purchase chocolate for a recipe. Happily, here’s something that’s easy to remember: Choose those two Ghirardelli bars — the 60% cacao premium baking bar and the 100% premium baking bar — and you’ll be making a safe choice.

Use them at a 3 to 1 ratio to arrive at the 70% cacao content dark chocolate that recipes frequently call for. In other words, if a recipe calls for 4 ounces (or 113.5 grams) of 70% cacao chocolate, you can use 3 ounces (84 grams) of 60% and 1 ounce (28 grams) of 100%.

Conveniently, each square of the Ghirardelli 60% and 100% bars weighs .5 ounce (14 grams), so usually you won’t even need a scale.

Cooks Without Borders’ commitment to your safety

At Cooks Without Borders, we care deeply about health (yours and ours), and about the safety of the recipes we publish. In service of that, we examined how the results of the Consumer Reports and As You Sow findings line up with the amounts and types of chocolate we call for in our recipes, and we are in process of updating our existing recipes accordingly — including information about how to make them safe.

We have not published any new recipes that include chocolate since dark chocolate’s lead and cadmium problem came to light in late 2022. Going forward, we will mention the dangers associated with dark chocolate in the headnote of any new recipes or stories that involve the ingredient, and offer suggestions for safer brands when we do write about chocolate.

Looking for a chocolate recipe that’s already been updated? We thought you might enjoy The Mexican Chocolate Situation.

RECIPE: The Mexican Chocolate Situation

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Cacio e pepe cheese coins may be the dreamiest aperitivo snack ever

By Leslie Brenner

Tender and buttery as shortbread cookies, but savory, cheesy and rolled in cracked pepper, these “cheese coins” are the brainchild of Nancy Silverton. I found the recipe in her new cookbook, The Cookie That Changed My Life and More Than 100 Other Classic Cakes, Muffins and Pies That Will Change Yours.

Technically, the coins are probably cookies, and yes, I do feel the recipe has changed my life. Meaningfully. Aperitivo hour will never be the same — especially if it involves white wine.

They’re not hard to make if you don’t mind grating cheese; you’ll need Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano-Reggiano and white cheddar. Pulse flour in the food processor with cold butter, along with quick-to-make confit garlic cloves and garlic oil. Add the cheeses and crème fraîche, smoosh with your hands and a dough comes together. Roll into a log, chill, brush with garlic oil, roll in cracked pepper, slice and bake.

What could be more rewarding? Who needs spaghetti?

The recipe makes two logs. The cookbook says they each make a dozen coins, but in fact each makes two dozen. For me that meant one for slicing and baking right away, and another for stowing in the freezer. Just the thing for a rainy or snowy day.

Aperitivo lovers, you’re in for a treat.

RECIPE: Cacio e Pepe Cheese Coins

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Cookbooks We Love: Dorie Greenspan makes us all better bakers with 'Baking with Dorie'

By Leslie Brenner

Baking with Dorie: Sweet, Salty & Simple by Dorie Greenspan, Photography by Mark Weinberg, 2021, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $35

Backgrounder: With a career spanning three decades (her debut volume, Sweet Times: Special Desserts for Every Occasion was published in 1991), Greenspan is one of the most accomplished and trusted cookbook authors working in America today. She has won five James Beard Awards, and twice earned the International Association of Culinary Professional’s prestigious Cookbook of the Year award. She writes a column for The New York Times, whose editors chirp that “you can never go wrong with Dorie.”

Baking is her thing — it’s the subject of 8 of her 14 titles; she’s also a Francophile, and a great savory cook, too. She co-wrote one of my favorite French cookbooks, Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook (1999), and solo-wrote another fave, the monumental Around My French Table, with more than 300 recipes. (That was one of the two IACP Cookbook of the Year titles.) In 1998 she co-wrote a book with superstar Paris pastry chef Pierre Hermé (Desserts by Pierre Hermé), then in 2001 published a solo title, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé, which she followed with Paris Sweets: Great Desserts from the City’s Best Pastry Shops (2002). So yep, she knows her way around a vacherin. And this book is a stand-out.

[Read “Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking.’]

Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake from ‘Baking with Dorie’

Why We Love it: First, because Dorie has so many delicious and original ideas — all based on sound technique and spinning off tradition. (Pardon the informality; it’s hard for me to keep referring to her as Greenspan, as I’ve known her for 30 years.) She holds our hands, understands our fears and guides us to delicious success. Second, because the book is largely inspired by Dorie’s travels, which makes it feel very Cooks Without Borders. And third because Dorie provides lots of room to play, and plenty of choices, as with the Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake shown above. You can flavor this beauty with saffron or tea leaves, salted or unsalted nuts and orange or tangerine zest. Dorie provides directions for both stand mixer and hand mixer. I used a hand mixer, and went the saffron, unsalted nuts and orange zest route. Glazed with apricot jam (which also gets slathered between the layers), it’s insanely delicious.

The Breakdown: Dorie assigns hearts to her favorites in every chapter, starting with Breakfast (Brioche Sticky Buns! Chocolate Babka!) — but Cheddar-Scallion Scones and Breakfast-in-Rome Lemon Cake sound just as wonderful. Cakes come next, with a “How-To” intro filled with invaluable tips, followed by Cookes, a Dorie forte.

A “Two Perfect Little Pastries” chapter focuses on cream puffs and meringues, offering lots of fabulous ways to use them. It was here I found the recipe that alone makes the book worth its cover price — Gouda Gougères.

Dorie Greenspan’s Gouda Gougères, from ‘Baking with Dorie’

I’ve made thousands of gougères in my lifetime, and this recipe — which has you beating in the eggs with a mixer rather than the traditional wooden spoon — is by far the best of any I’ve tried. Enriched with aged Gouda (instead of traditional Gruyère), these cheese puffs are flavored with ground cumin, and whole cumin seeds go on top, along with flakes of sea salt. The texture is absolutely perfect and the flavor out-of-this-world. Dorie suggests making them up to the point just before you bake them, then freezing the raw puffs on a baking sheet and storing them in an airtight container. That way you have them ready to be baked at a moment’s notice. The fact that I have a batch frozen and ready for the sheet pan makes me almost weepingly happy.

Interested in a classic gougère? Dorie supplies her recipe for that, too (along with her invention pâte-a-choux cheese sticks) after the Gouda treats.

A chapter on Pies, Tarts, Cobblers and Crisps comes next, followed by “Salty Side Up: Satisfying Suppers, Sides and More.” Leave it to Dorie to end a book of sweets with something savory.

World Peace Cookies 2.0 from ‘Baking with Dorie’ by Dorie Greenspan. It was inspired by a chocolate sablé recipe given to the author by Pierre Hermé.

You Gotta Try This: I’m a sucker for a sablé, the buttery, slice-and-bake French cookie with a famously sandy texture, so I couldn’t resist the sweet Dorie calls World Peace Cookies 2.0. To tell the truth, I was a wee bit worried I wouldn’t love them, as they’re dolled up with freeze-dried raspberries, cacao nibs, bittersweet chocolate pieces and piment d’Espelette. I was so wrong — they’re incredible, with flavors that dance beautifully with the chocolate and a texture somewhere between a classic sablé and a brownie. I baked up half a batch, and the log I have in my freezer (which you leave out 15 minutes, then slice and bake) has improved my outlook on life about as much as the frozen gougères have. (I feel rich!)

Go ahead and make a batch and tell me if you don’t love ’em.

Tiny Quibble: I was really excited to find Dorie’s rethought version of Tarte Tatin — the classic French baked-in-a-cast-iron-skillet caramel apple tart. It’s a tart that has always intimidated me, perhaps because I’m not a confident caramel-maker. In the book’s introduction, Dorie calls her heart-notated innovation — which involves using a springform pan rather than a skillet — foolproof. Waah-waah; it made a fool of me. Probably it’s my own fault — I think I failed to take the caramel dark enough.

My pallid Tarte Tatin — a failure of caramel-making-skills, probably

The tart unmolded nicely, but where was the caramel? It all disappeared into the apples rather than enrobing them in burnished goodness. I saved it (ish) by making a Caramel-Cognac sauce from Chez Panisse Desserts and pouring it over the whole thing. Not terribly Tatin-esque, but passable topped with a dollop of crème fraîche.

No matter, I would still purchase Baking with Dorie a hundred times over, and will certainly give it as a gift to cooks and bakers I love. There are so many things in it I still want to make, and the Gouda Gougères, Apricot and Pistachio Cake and World Peace Cookies 2.0 that will forever figure in my repertoire.

Still Wanna Make: Lemon Meringue Layer Cake; Copenhagen Rye Cookies with Chocolate, Spice and Seeds; Pistachio-Matcha Financiers; Chocolate Eclairs; Mulled-Butter Apple Pie (more my speed and skill level?!); My Favorite Pumpkin Pie (that one will be soon!); Parisian Custard Tart; Candied Almond Tart; Asparagus-Lemon Quiche. And still more besides!

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do.

Buy Baking with Dorie from Bookshop

Buy Baking with Dorie from Amazon

RECIPE: Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake

RECIPE: Dorie Greenspan’s Gouda Gougères

RECIPE: World Peace Cookies 2.0

Cookbook Review: Roxana Jullapat's 'Mother Grains' has all the makings of a new classic

By Leslie Brenner

Mother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution, by Roxana Jullapat; photography by Kristin Teig, 2021, W. W. Norton & Company, $40.

As we begin to break through to the liberation side of The Great Confinement, finding the silver linings of what we’re leaving behind feels like a sunny way to try to make sense of the world and what we’ve been through.

One of those silver linings is that as a society, we seem more able to take some control of our food choices, and we are moving on from long-held assumptions about the foods available to us. Sourdough obsession illustrates that in microcosm. People couldn’t get great bread. They dove in, devoted themselves to the science and feeding of sourdough, to the baking of bread, and figured it out. It has been transformative for many.

Related to that phenomenon is a new interest in grains: where they come from (geographically and historically), who farms them, how they’re milled and how supporting, purchasing, baking or cooking with and eating them can improve lives all around and in many ways.

I’m not a frequent bread baker, but when I do make my occasional no-knead, Dutch-oven number, it is always whole grain. During pandemic I became hooked on the heritage flours offered by a local(ish) miller, Barton Springs Mill. Outside of baking, I also became obsessed with the heirloom corn sold by Masienda, the Los Angeles-based purveyor that sources its dried corn (and masa harina made from it) from small-scale farms in Mexico. That has been life-changing for me, as I no longer have to settle for tortillas made from commodity corn and bread made from commodity flour. The flavors and textures I’m enjoying are so much better — as is the way I feel about supporting the farmers and millers who make it all possible.

Both Barton Springs Mill and Masienda are part of a larger “grain revolution” — which is the subject of Roxana Jullapat’s outstanding new cookbook, Mother Grains.

Spelt Blueberry Muffins with streusel topping, from Roxana Jullapat’s ‘Mother Grains.’

Jullapat, the renowned baker and co-owner of Friends & Family in Los Angeles, became inspired by the grain farmers and small mills whose products she worked with back when she and her husband, chef Daniel Mattern, had a restaurant called Cooks County (it opened in 2011). “I began using whole grains in our breads and pastries and, for the first time, paid attention to how these new ingredients could transform the way I baked,” she writes in the introduction.

Born in Orange County, CA to immigrant parents — a Thai mother and Costa Rican father — Jullapat lost her mother when she was just two years old; her father moved the family to Costa Rica and remarried. She grew up there, then studied journalism in college, contemplated grad school after getting her degree, but wound up returning to California and attending the Southern California School of Culinary Arts. There she met Mattern, and they both wound up working at Campanile, Nancy Silverton and Mark Peel’s celebrated restaurant. Jullapat went on to serve as pastry chef at two other wonderful restaurants — Lucques and A.O.C. (Mattern was chef de cuisine at A.O.C.)

After she and Mattern closed Cooks County in 2015, Jullapat took two years to experiment with heirloom grains from all over the United States and around the world — and to travel. “I went to Bhutan,” she writes, “where I tasted Himalayan crepes thin and thick and sampled earthy Bhutanese red rice. Then I headed to Turkey, where whole ancient wheat berries are common in savory dishes . . . . Back in Costa Rica, I discovered heirloom blue corn grown organically in the northern region of Nicoya.” Between trips, she visited Southern California farms that were leading the local grain movement.

The book offers a wealth of knowledge about the eight ancient “mother grains” that inspired the title: barley; buckwheat; corn; oats; rice; rye; sorghum and wheat. Did you know that rye is a newer grain — only 2,000 or 3,000 years old — and that it originated in Anatolia, near modern-day Turkey? That it thrives in cold, damp climates, which is why it’s ubiquitous in Scandinavia, Russia and Eastern Europe? Or that buckwheat is a pseudograin, like quinoa, which means it comes not from a grass but from a leafy, flowering bush?

Did you know that flour — especially whole-grain flour — is perishable, and that purchasing from artisan mills or local distributors is a great way to ensure freshness?

Spelt, I learned from the book, is probably the best-known “ancient” wheat, the one Jullapat considers a “gateway” for bakers starting to explore ancient grains. (Other ancient wheats are einkorn, emmer, also known as farro, khorasan wheat and durum.)

Want to discover spelt’s charms? Treat yourself to Jullapat’s Spelt Blueberry Muffins. I did, and they turned out to be far-and-away the best blueberry muffins I’ve ever tasted.

In fact, Jullapat’s recipes are generally spectacular — which is why I think her book deserves to become a classic. I’ve marked dozens of pages of recipes I want to try, and nearly all of the seven I’ve made so far have been exceptional.

The Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies that Jullapat has baked “every day since opening Friends & Family opened in 2017” are a case in point. Brown butter and barley flour give them a wonderful depth, but don’t worry — they’re rich and decadent enough to charm all comers, including kids.

Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies, from ‘Mother Grains’ by Roxana Jullapat. Jullapat writes that she has baked them ‘every day since opening Friends & Family in 2017.’

They’re baked in a round cake pan, “ensuring that each piece has a chewy, toasted exterior and a soft center.” Jullapat points out that because they’re so easy to make, they keep for a few days and they travel well, “they’re an ideal homemade gift you can ship to friends and family all over the country.”

Not all the recipes are sweet. In fact one of my favorites is a savory: Buckwheat Blini with Dungeness Crab Salad.

Blini, as you may or may not know, are leavened pancakes that are traditional in Russia. There, they’re topped with sour cream or melted butter and treats like smoked salmon, whitefish, herring or caviar. According to Anya von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, blini are saucer-sized, “never cocktail-sized, and these days people prefer wheat to the archaic buckwheat.”

That’s fodder for another story, one about blini culture. In any case, I so loved the archaic buckwheat mini-blini in Jullapat’s book that I’ve made them twice in two weeks. Or maybe we could say four times: Her recipe makes enough batter for about 3 dozen blini, and both times I made them, I saved some of the batter to cook blini the following day. They’re so good — and so much fun to make — that I’m contemplating making them again tomorrow.

On the subject of the topping, Jullapat suggests that if you’re not a West Coaster, and don’t have access to Dungeness crab, using whatever is locally available. I used defrosted frozen lump blue crab, and that was fine, but I know it would be spectacular with Dungeness. I have also topped these with a smear of crème fraîche and a bit of smoked salmon or smoked trout, a squeeze of lemon and a sprig of dill or snip of chive. So good.

Buckwheat blini with crab salad, avocado and dill, from Roxana Jullapat’s ‘Mother Grains’

We do need to end with a sweet though, and Mother Grains’ Chocolate Dynamite Cookies are winners. Called “dynamite” because of Jullapat’s observation that they elicit explosively positive reactions in those who try them, the fudgy, brownie-like cookies are wheat-free (made with dark rye flour) and completely whole grain. Pretty astonishing for something that tastes so indulgent. Jullapat promises that if you make them, you’ll be invited to “every potluck, picnic and dinner party.” I’m sure she’s right!

I did have a small problem with them the first time I baked them, though I can’t exactly say that it’s the recipe’s fault. The cookies turned out as wonderfully as promised, but I lost my favorite Oxo mixing bowl in the process, thanks to some quirk of physics in which a vacuum was created by the chocolate-melting set-up Jullapat prescribed. I had to throw away that bowl and the pot to which it became permanently and irrevocably adhered. My adaptation won’t get you into that quandary, because I tweaked the melting method, substituting one favored by chocolate expert Alice Medrich.

I also tweaked the mixing instructions for cooks who, like me, do not own a stand mixer, but have a hand-held mixer instead.

Which brings me to the one small wish I have for the book. Because I’d like it to stay in print forever — finding a wide audience and passionate fans — I’m hoping that a future edition will get a fresh round of closer editing than it got the first time around. Among the 7 recipes I tested, nearly all lacked helpful info — particularly about what size bowls to use for various tasks — requiring more guesswork and/or extra dishes to wash than is ideal in a classic cookbook.

There is also a significant error in the book — of the sort an attentive editor or copy editor should have caught. A recipe for Vegan Pozole Verde calls for “2 cups, or 170 g.” of dried hominy. In my kitchen, 2 cups of dried hominy weighs more like 300 g., while 170 grams is 1 generous cup. I prepared the pozole using 170 g. rather than 2 cups, which was the right guess.

In any case, these are small flaws, easy to fix on the next go-round, should that come to pass. The important thing is Mother Grains is a wonderful book, one whose surface I have barely scratched. There are so many more things I want to try: Nectarine and Blackberry Crisp made with rolled oats. Grapple (grape and apple) Pie made with Sonora Wheat Pie Dough. Semolina Cookies with Fennel Pollen. Oatmeal Date Cookies. Crepes Suzette with Blood Orange and Mascarpone.

I could go on and on.

Want in on the deliciousness? Try one or more of the recipes we’ve adapted here at CWB. If you love them as much as we do you’ll want to buy Mother Grains lickety-split.

But wait; there’s more! You’re invited to join us as we host Roxana Jullapat, along with our favorite artisan miller, David Kaisel — founder of Capay Mills in Northern California — at a live video event, part of our new Cooks Without Borders Makers, Shakers and Mavens Q & A series. Attendance is free (limited to 100 people), and we know you’ll want to be there with your questions for Jullapat and Kaisel.

Cooks Without Borders Makers, Shakers and Mavens: The Grain Revolution with Roxana Jullapat and David Kaisel
Thursday, May 27, 3 p.m. PST, 5 p.m. CST, 6 p.m. EST

Sign up now to reserve your spot!

RECIPE: Roxana Jullapat’s Spelt Blueberry Muffins

RECIPE: Macadamia Brown Butter Blondies

RECIPE: Buckwheat Blini with Crab Salad

RECIPE: Roxana Jullapat’s Chocolate Dynamite Cookies

The blueberry muffins in Roxana Jullapat's new 'Mother Grains' are seriously the best I've ever tasted

By Leslie Brenner

“It’s time to give the classic blueberry muffin a makeover, swapping out all the refined white flour for whole-grain spelt” writes Los Angeles baker Roxana Jullapat in her new cookbook, Mother Grains. Music to my ears!

I’ve always loved blueberry muffins — or maybe loved the idea of them, as I’m inevitably disappointed, finding them too white-floury, too cottony, too sweet. They stick unpleasantly to the roof of your mouth.

Because I love sneaking whole grains into baked goods whenever I get away with it, I was excited to learn of Jullapat’s book, subtitled “Recipes for the Grain Revolution.” It is scheduled for publication on April 20, and I’ve been cooking through it with plans to review, but you need this recipe now. It is far and away the best blueberry muffin I’ve ever eaten in my entire life.

Having a Easter brunch? It’ll be smashing on your table. Or on any weekend morning table.

The recipe, which has you top the muffins with a light and crunchy spelt streusel, is quick and easy — just 15 or 20 minutes to get the batter into the tin. The muffins bake for about 25, then need to cool for 20.

Their crumb is gorgeous and light, and the whole-grain spelt — which I had never baked with until I made the muffins this morning — gives them a mildly earthy flavor without clobbering you with an overly rustic texture or punitive health-food taste. Spelt, writes Jullapat, is “perhaps the best-known ‘ancient’ wheat.” She considers it “a gateway for bakers starting to explore ancient grains.” If I had money, I’d invest in a spelt farm.

Anyway, back to the recipe. Jullapat calls for a half-cup of frozen blueberries, adding that you can use fresh ones as long as you’re careful folding them in. I used fresh ones, and couldn’t help but wonder if the muffins might benefit from more berries than that. I made half using her exact recipe, and added more berries to the other four.

The muffin halves on the right were made according to Jullapat’s exact recipe; the halves on the left have extra blueberries.

I loved the extra berry version, while my husband, Thierry, preferred the less berryful original. In any case, the extra fruit did not compromise the recipe, so feel free to play with that.

Both ways were outstanding, though. I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten more than one muffin in a sitting in my life, and I had one and a half. I could easily have eaten three. Can’t wait to hear what you think — if you’d be so kind as to leave a comment.

[Did you notice we have a much more friendly new commenting system? We’d love to have you dive in!]

RECIPE: Roxana Jullapat’s Spelt Blueberry Muffins

Dorie Greenspan knocks it out of the kitchen with books about baking and French cooking

By Leslie Brenner

Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

[NOTE: This story was updated Feb. 16, 2022.]

Cookbook author Dorie Greenspan / Photograph by Heather Ramsdell/Food Network

It seems fitting to lead off our series with an appreciation of the woman who launched my own food-writing career: Dorie Greenspan. In the early 1990s, Dorie was the editor of a stapled-together newsletter from a cooking organization that had only been created a few years earlier: The James Beard Foundation. Dorie gave me the opportunity to write for that flier, called “News from the Beard House.”

Dorie was a wonderful editor to work with back in the day; in the decades that followed, she has proven again and again that she’s a splendid story-teller, and a great cook. Her recipes work beautifully, and they’re always delicious.

Dorie’s cookbooks include (among others):

• Around My French Table

• Baking with Dorie

• Baking Chez Moi

• Baking: From My Home to Yours

• Dorie’s Cookies

• Everyday Dorie

Around My French Table is one of my favorite French cookbooks — as is Café Boulud Cookbook, which Dorie co-wrote with chef Daniel Boulud.

An apple-Calvados cake adapted from a recipe in ‘Around My French Table’

A couple weeks ago, I thought about an apple cake I love in Around my French Table, swapped the rum in the recipe for Calvados, and we were all sweetly rewarded.

This quick, easy cardamom-pumpkin spice bread is just the thing for lazy holiday or weekend mornings

I’m neither a big breakfast eater nor a frequent baker, but on lazy holidays (and regular lazy weekends) I do love to nibble on a cakey bread with my morning coffee.

The sight of an unused post-Thanksgiving can of pumpkin purée in our pantry and a recipe in Karen DeMasco’s 2009 book The Craft of Baking inspired this one, which we’ve been enjoying since Christmas morning. (Damn — it’s almost gone!)

DeMasco, in case you don’t know her, was the opening pastry chef at Tom Colicchio’s Craft in New York, as well as at Craftbar and ’wichcraft; she won the James Beard Award in 2005 for Outstanding Pastry Chef. “It is great toasted and spread with a thick pat of nice salty butter,” she wrote in the headnote. We didn’t get that far at our house: Each slice has gotten quickly gobbled.

Our version is slightly different than DeMasco’s original. I’m always looking for ways to use more whole grains, so I thought I’d try subbing out half the white flour in her recipe for whole-wheat flour. (It worked!) I also cut the white sugar by half, from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup, suspecting that with the 1/2 cup of brown sugar also called for, it would be sweet enough. (It was!) And finally, I added freshly ground cardamom into DeMasco’s pumpkin spice mix — probably because cardamom always seems so alluring this time of year. (And anytime, really!) Success again — it added something aromatically delightful.

The result is lush, moist, warmly spicy and delicious. The whole wheat flour adds a wee bit of wholesomeness without turning the bread cardboardy or punitive; and even with the reduced sugar, it was definitely sweet enough for Thierry (who has been been successfully taming his sweet tooth), and of course sweet enough for me. A touch of turbinado or demerara sugar sprinkled on top before baking gave it a light sugary crunch (I cut that by a third as well). Best of all, it’s a snap to make.

We’ve enjoyed this cakey bread so much, I’ll be keeping cans of pumpkin purée in the pantry well into the winter. Hope you like it too!

RECIPE: Cardamom-Pumpkin Spice Bread