Tara O'Brady
Tara O'Brady is a freelance food writer and author of the award-winning cookbook Seven Spoons: My Favourite Recipe for Any and Every Day (Ten Speed Press), named after her former site of the same name. She is a contributor to Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail and host of their cruise program. She has written for Saveur, Kinfolk magazine, Jamie Oliver, and others, with additional work with The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and various television projects.
Recipes
Classic Vanilla Bundt Cake
This vanilla Bundt cake can be eaten out of hand as you head out the door or just as easily dressed up with whipped cream and fruit.
Recipes
Fluffy Coffee and Walnut Cake With Mocha Buttercream
This light and fluffy coffee and walnut cake recipe is inspired by the classic British cake—but the mocha frosting takes it over the top.
Recipes
Basque-Style Sweet Potato Cheesecake
This subtly spiced, sweet potato-based marvel borrows from the Basque cheesecake tradition. It's baked until its exterior is a deep copper, with a pale interior.
Recipes
Coconut-Cardamom French Toast With Raspberry-Rhubarb Compote
Layered with a rich coconut filling, soaked in velvety custard, and topped with a raspberry and rhubarb compote, this French toast is perfect for any celebration.
Recipes
Banana Pudding Cheesecake Bars
An easy press-in Nilla wafer crust cradles a silky layer of fresh banana cheesecake, which gets topped with a light and fluffy sour cream whip.
Recipes
Bombay Masala Chile Cheese Toasties
Melty, cheesy, crunchy, spicy: These sandwiches, a street food favorite in India, check all the boxes.
Recipes
Blueberry-Ginger Slab Biscuits
These pillowy tray biscuits are perfumed with blueberry jam, citrus, and candied ginger, but you can use any combination of preserves, dried fruit, or nuts that you have on hand.
Recipes
Spinach and Cheese Slab Biscuits
These pillowy biscuits are stuffed with spinach and cheese, but they work equally well with any other vegetable you care to throw at them. Swap the spinach for up to a cup of roasted squash, charred poblanos, or other cooked vegetable, and sub the Gruyère with any other cheese you like (if you choose a more intense cheese like feta or blue cheese, use ¾ cup instead of the full cup).
Recipes
Stone Fruit Custard Tart
This new tart from Tara O’Brady has an easy press-in pistachio crust and a few pounds of peaches, plums, or apricots coddled in a supple layer of custard.
Recipes
Tahini-Walnut Magic Shell
A thick pour of magic shell over ice cream is simultaneously creamy and crackly, both smooth and shattery. But the real mind-blowing thing about it? It's a snap to make at home.
Recipes
Double Ripple Ice Cream Cake
This cake is a tie-dyed composition of textures and flavors that starts with a tahini-enriched blondie base and continues with vanilla ice cream layered with seedy maple syrup and bands of cooked plums.
Recipes
Homestyle Dosas with Tomato Chutney
As with any fermented food, timing will depend on the ambient temperature (the hotter it is, the faster it will go). Indoor temperatures were about 68°F—72°F when we developed this recipe and that’s what our time range reflects, so use it just as a guideline. If possible, 82°F is ideal. Most important though will be checking for signs that indicate the batter is ready (bubbly, airy, and sour).
Recipes
Swirl Spice Cake
The layer of streusel in this marbled loaf cake gets a complex punch of flavor from a coffee spice blend that includes dried orange peel, cardamom, and fennel seeds.
Recipes
Savory-to-Sweet Coffee Spice Mix
Use this coffee spice mix as a dry rub on chicken, steak, pork chops, or carrots for dinner, or fold into chocolate chip cookies, coffee cake, ice cream, and more for dessert—it plays happily on both sides of the field.
Recipes
Sesame Pork Burgers with Sweet and Spicy Slaw
These pork burgers—inspired by Southeast Asian dumplings—are an ideal weeknight meal. The sweet and spicy mayo acts as both a dressing for the slaw and a sauce for the burger.
Recipes
Braised Leeks, Peas, and Lettuce
When you warm lettuce in butter and wine it gets velvety and rich—a perfect foil to the pop of sweet peas. Serve this spooned over quiche for brunch.
Recipes
Deep Dish Quiche with Garnishes
Made with crème fraîche and chives, this quiche is good enough to be eaten plain. But a buffet of garnishes—smoked salmon, avocado, braised leeks—make this Easter brunch truly memorable.
Recipes
Pistachio-Rose Shortbread Squares
A coating of crushed, freeze-dried raspberries and pink sanding sugar adds color, sparkle, and crunch to these festive cookies.
Recipes
Molasses Sandwich Cookies With Coffee Cream
Adding ground coffee to both the cookie dough and the filling turns these cookies into something deeply more interesting than your average holiday spice treats.
Recipes
White Chocolate Fruitcake Bars
These cookie bars are studded with the best parts of traditional fruitcake (orange zest and dried fruit) and spiced up with lots of fresh ginger.