Notes about Recipes in this book

• Banana streusel muffins

  • Priya on December 11, 2010

    Made 12/10/2/10. Followed recipe exactly including nuts. Quite delicious! Make again. Sweet enough without streusel. Might be good with addition of chocolate chips

  • Frogcake on February 09, 2018

    These are my dream banana muffins. So delicious with the caramel-y brown sugar streusel - I can’t stop thinking about them. I made six jumbo muffins, which baked 40 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Blueberry nectarine buckle

  • Rachaelsb on July 11, 2022

    Very good but never having had a “buckle” before texture of fruit and moist cake felt a little funny. Next time will add more fruit.

• Blueberry sour cream muffins

  • LaPomme on April 25, 2011

    These muffins rose much more and had larger tops than the blueberry muffin recipe in the Essential New York Times book.

  • Frogcake on February 24, 2019

    A great blueberry muffin recipe! Agree that they rise beautifully. The tops are crunchy-yummy- you don’t need a streusel for these. I used plain yogurt in place of sour cream with good results.

  • Frogcake on April 27, 2019

    One of my favourite muffin recipes! I substituted one cup of AP flour for red fife and raspberries in place of blueberries. What the heck - made streusel with pine nuts, rye flakes, flax seeds and turbinado. So good!

  • Rachaelsb on June 04, 2022

    This cookbook never disappoints! The lemon adds a great acidity to batters sweet tanginess. Definitely adding to the rotation-as good as Deb Perelman's blueberry muffins, which I never thought could be outshined. I supersized these (6 instead of 12) and added about 12 minutes to cooking time. ALso used 1/2 sour cream and other 1/2 whole greek yogurt. Sooo yum!

• Chocolate chip oatmeal coconut cookies

  • Frogcake on March 17, 2018

    Great cookies! I replaced the choc chips with chopped walnuts. They didn’t last very long - will be making these again.

  • Frogcake on May 24, 2020

    I forgot about these great cookies until today. Wonderful as I noted before! I threw in spelt flakes instead of rolled oats as well as a few tablespoons of flax seeds. So happy to have rediscovered this recipe!

• SoNo brownies

  • Rachaelsb on February 07, 2014

    Incredibly quick and easy to make, perfect texture, great chocolate taste--my go-to brownie!!!!!

• SoNo chocolate ganache cake

  • Rachaelsb on October 15, 2015

    Hands down....best chocolate cake ever. One word of caution...careful taking cakes out of tins-make sure well cooled as can easily crumble.

• The best lemon squares

  • vickster on January 07, 2013

    I think they may be - The Best Lemon Squares that is. I was craving a lemon dessert, trying to use some of the many Meyer Lemons I am fortunate to have on my tree. The shortbread-like cookie base is deliciously buttery. And the filling is wonderfully lemony. I definitely will be making these often!

• Zucchini, carrot, and cranberry muffins

  • LaPomme on April 25, 2011

    Substituted the cranberries for walnuts, and baked as a loaf. It took roughly 45 min to bake through as a loaf. The result is very moist, and not overpoweringly sweet.

  • Frogcake on April 21, 2018

    The combination of carrot, zucchini and cranberries works well in this recipe. They turned out moist and yummy. I’ve also used this recipe as a foundation to make pear, apple, cranberry walnut muffins, substituting white sugar for dark brown and one cup of all purpose for equal amount of whole wheat. Jumbo muffins baked for 30 minutes in my oven.

• Fine Cooking

  ...offers more than 100 of his best-loved recipes. They’re all winners... Along the way you’ll glean heaps of excellent advice that will help you bake better than you ever thought you could.

  Full review