What to Bake on Christmas Morning

Christmas is coming for those who celebrate — and the holiday season is already here. For many of us, there’s a drumming urge to welcome it all back emphatically. Stringing fence lights and staging trees earlier and earlier, we hope to be swept away into something larger than ourselves. One of the best ways to…

Make a Spicy Gift This Holiday Season

Even if you’ve already filled your gift tins with cookies from your oven, you might tack in a savory direction with homemade chile crisp for friends who cook, or for yourself. The Mala Market, a fine source for Chinese ingredients based in Nashville, Tenn., has assembled a kit including harder-to-find components like da hong pao…

Seasoned Cheddars That Turn Heads

Beehive Cheese in Ogden, Utah, cleaned up at this year’s World Cheese Awards, held last month in Oviedo, Spain. There were 4,079 cheeses from 45 countries in the competition, including 17 from the United States. Beehive Cheese specializes in cutely named Cheddars with rinds often massaged with flavoring elements to subtle effect. It took home…

Hot Bread Kitchen Offers Uncommon Holiday Gifts

Hot Bread Kitchen, the well-established New York culinary incubator that has been the launching pad for scores of food entrepreneurs, often women and people of color, provides easy one-stop shopping for holiday baked goods and gifts, including new merchandise like branded sweatshirts and totes that benefit the nonprofit organization. Most can be shipped nationwide. Cornbread…

Say It With Ice Cream

Forget the partridge. On the first day of Christmas your true love might give you a more tempting container of chocolate cake ice cream with brownie bites and fudge swirls. It’s the first of the dozen pints in the 12 Days of Ice Cream package from eCreamery in Omaha. Each pint is numbered. Flavors also…