Love those fat little tummies. Mmmm. Nibble those tiny feet and bite off their spicy gingerbread heads. Dark, moist ginger babies are irresistible and the perfect holiday baking project for kids of all ages.

Santa’s impending arrival has the kids in my family bouncing off the wall so I keep them busy in the kitchen making memories. Sammy, five, loves to cook and got right into mixing and stirring the batter. As I measured the spices and flavorings, he adventurously sniffed each and discovered to his chagrin that individually, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and cardamom are bitter and don’t always smell good. Black pepper makes him sneeze. Worst of all molasses—the one ingredient that makes gingerbread divine—was pronounced “sninky… yucky… disgusting!” Imagine his delight when he realized that mixed up into batter, everything tastes “amazing!” and fills the kitchen with the sweet smells of Christmas that he knows and loves.

Pouring the spicy batter into the molds can be tricky; little kids are hilarious with their tongues hanging out of the sides of their mouths in deep concentration. Sammy carefully filled several dozen molds and proudly passed them to me—”ta-dah.”

Cousin Jackson, also five, joined us at the kitchen table to decorate the cooled ginger babies. I’d set out small bowls of brightly colored buttercream frostings, tubes of red, green, orange, pink and white icing for drawing, and lots of sprinkles, edible fairy dust and my favorite cinnamon red-hot candies.

The little chefs proudly showed off their masterpieces, then settled by the fire with hot chocolate and treats, giggling as they bit off spicy gingerbread toes and heads. Could live be any sweeter?

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Print copies of Ginger Babies and Buttercream Frosting for your convenience.

Oh, but it’s smelling really good in my kitchen today. Come on in and meet my great friend, Leela Manilal who’s here from New Delhi, India for the next few months. Leela is our Beyond Wonderful International Home Chef, India and we’re preparing lots of sumptuous curries and beautifully spiced vegetable dishes for the website.

Leela and I have cooked together both in India and the Bay Area for over 25 years, uniting our families, friends and readers through the simple pleasures of our food. No matter where we cook, we require lots of fresh, seasonal produce, so we always head to local markets for all our ingredients. This trip, I wanted Leela to meet our produce expert, Dan Avakian and experience his open-air market in Alameda. Leela and Dan were familiar with each other’s work on Beyond Wonderful and soon became fast friends, sharing their vast culinary knowledge.

While my two friends got acquainted, I grabbed a cart and started stocking up on the basics of our Indian kitchen; onions, garlic, ginger, chiles and cilantro. We also needed potatoes for aloo dum (potatoes in a spicy yogurt sauce), so Leela examined all of the different varieties to find one that closely resembled what she uses at home. She finally held up a small red roasting potato and said, “Barbara, we need two pounds of the tiniest, most uniform ones you can find.” I started bagging what I thought was small and she quickly stopped me. “Tiny, we want tiny. These are too big.” As I worked, I wondered who was going to peel these little suckers.

My attitude improved significantly when Leela told me that these potatoes can be substituted for paneer (Indian cheese) in a wonderful spiced spinach dish that she taught me to make last spring in New Delhi. Funny how fast you can find two extra pounds of “tiny potatoes” when inspired.

The autumn citrus displays at the front of the market caught Leela’s eye. Even though they weren’t on our working list, neither of us could resist the juicy red grapefruits, fragrant oranges and lemons. Leela was especially taken with the large, loose-skinned Mandarin oranges because they reminded her of the ones in India. Dan peeled one and gave it to her as she told how her family loves eating these oranges in her Delhi garden on sunny winter days.

I always learn a lot when I hang out with Dan at his market, and love the recipes he offers as we talk produce. Today, he suggested a citrus salad using one grapefruit, two oranges and two Meyer lemons—sliced or segmented. “The dressing is easy: mix some of the citrus juice with best-quality extra virgin olive oil, toss and sprinkle freshly ground black pepper over the top.” Simple. Delicious. Seasonally economical.

As I packed the car with our bounty, Dan handed me a bag of Mandarins for his new friend “to remind her of home.” I smiled, knowing that she would always think of Dan when eating Mandarins on sunny Indian winter day.

Today, my very pregnant friend, Shefali Manilal sits at my kitchen table coring, peeling and slicing apples for a baked fruit crumble. It’s a homey, old-fashioned scene; except that Shefali’s happy face appears in the square frame of my computer. We often talk laptop to laptop—Paris to Sausalito via SKYPE video calls while we cook. Shefali feels so close that I want to reach out and touch her—or start prepping the fruit myself.

Shefali and I both love crumbles and serve them year-round using just-harvested fruit and berries that celebrate the seasons. Often there is no specific recipe: it’s what’s on hand—or the cook’s whim. While cobblers are super simple by nature, I sometimes fancy-up the flavors with a shot of fruit brandy like pear or Calvados (French apple).

Family and friends at both our Paris and Sausalito tables go absolutely nuts for the crumble topping made from a mixture of flour, sugar, butter and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Every now and then we vary it with crushed cookies, oats, chopped nuts, even fresh bread crumbs. My family fights for every last spicy crumb, so I make sure to cover the entire fruit surface with topping. Shefali indulges her group by lining the baking dish with the crumbly mixture, then layering the fruit and finishing it all off with a decadent second layer of topping.

One of the best things about baking a crumble is the amazing warm, spicy fragrance that fills the kitchen. As we continue our on-screen chat, Shefali keeps one eye on the oven and can’t resist taunting me: “Barbara, it smells very good. Want some?” Wicked girl!

Shefali and I differ on what to serve with fruit crumbles. Personally I love a scoop of best-quality vanilla ice cream slowly melting over the warm dessert, but Shefali prefers a generous dollop of velvety smooth
English clotted cream. “It’s not as sweet as whipped cream and does not melt like ice cream”, she explains. I agree to buy a bottle of the cream at the local market and try it on my next crumble.

With perfect timing, Antoine arrives home with a kiss for Shefali and a sweet pat for his baby. While they say their hellos, I sign-off and go freezer-diving for my stash of Hagen Daz ice cream. With spoon in hand, I dig-in and realize that the only negative to our electronic visit is not being able to eat the oven-fresh crumble in Paris with my friends. But hey, the ice cream’s not so bad all on its own. Want some? 

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Print out our illustrated step-by-step
How To Core and Peel Apples for easy reference.

Lustily devouring a ripe pear as fragrant juice runs down my chin brings on deep, pleasurable moans. Spooning warm chocolate sauce over a perfectly poached pear makes me positively giddy with anticipation. So why do so many home cooks sigh and turn away from these beautifully versatile autumn treasures in the markets?

It’s because all the pears are rock hard. But wait! Hard pears are not the rejects you might think. While summer stone fruits are best picked fully ripe and eaten soft and tender, pears should be picked before their prime (when hard), then allowed to soften just slightly on your counter at home. In fact, a soft, yielding pear on the grocery store shelf is already overripe and will likely disappoint with a mealy, grainy texture.

“How then” you ask, “does one know how to select a good pear?” Off to the market and grab a one. Place your fingers on its neck and apply gentle pressure; the pear should be quite firm. Now, check the bulbous area for equal firmness.

Congratulations, you’ve found a good pear. But now what? The fruit is still hard and inedible. Pears are easily ripened at home on your kitchen counter or in a fruit bowl for several days. They’re ready to eat when they yield just a bit to gentle pressure. Don’t wait for the fruit to truly soften or change color, or you risk it becoming overripe and mushy. Trust your instincts and take a bite. Perfection!

Store pears in the refrigerator to extend their shelf life—ripe fruit will last 3 to 5 days.

There is one more major thing you should know about pears before heading to your kitchen. Not all varieties can be heated—that is, poached, baked, grilled and sautéed. The firmer varieties such as sweet and juicy Anjou, Bosc and Concorde hold their shapes well even when cooked. Bartletts (red and yellow), Comice and Starkrimson are best saved for eating fresh.

Take a look at some of these recipes, then head to the market and select your fruit with confidence.

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Print these recipes and illustrated, step-by-step how to cooking techniques for your convenience.

Butter Lettuce with Pears, Spiced Pecans, and Blue Cheese

Frangipane Tart

Poires Bell Helene (Poached Pears with Chocolate Sauce and
Crème Chantilly)

Pear Clafouti

How To Split and Scrape a Vanilla Bean

How To Poach Pears

Have you noticed all of the fruit-laden blackberry brambles growing wild along the local trails and roadsides? Grab your buckets; it’s time to start picking. Juicy pies and cobblers a la mode are scrumptious this time of year, but nothing beats the simple pleasures of warm blackberry jam, generously spooned over golden yam biscuits.

These lightly spiced biscuits are easy to make, and the jam offers a great reason to gather the kids and head outdoors in search of plump, juicy berries. Little Sammy and I made a day of it, first baking the biscuits then loading up in his trusty red wagon for a bumpy ride to my favorite berry patch.

Dwarfed by the huge bushes, Sammy looked around a bit alarmed. “Do you know to get home? Are we lost? Reassured that I knew the way home, he relaxed and worked his small hands past the thorny brambles searching for ripe berries. “Hey how come mine are red and green and yours are black?” I giggled and explained that it took a tall person to reach the top branches where the sun ripens the berries first.

As Sammy and I munched our way along the trail, he bit into a half-red, half-black berry, screwed up his face and yelled, “yuk—it’s sour. Are all the red berries in the basket bad?” I explained that actually, those unripe berries would be helpful, supplying the pectin needed to thicken our jam.

Today we had just enough berries for a small batch of jam. There would be no sterilizing of jars and lids, wrestling with bushels of fruit and rushing off to the market for commercial pectin. No, today we chose an old-fashioned recipe: one cup of fruit to one cup of sugar plus freshly squeezed lemon juice. Since ripe blackberries are low in pectin, we got ours from Sammy’s tart red berries, which contain more of this natural thickening agent.

Sammy helped me measure and slightly crush the berries to get the juices going. I took over at the stove and within 15 minutes we had the most fragrant, mouthwatering blackberry jam that couldn’t cool fast enough for either of us.

When the jam finally cooled, we found a cozy corner dug in. “This is awesome!” he said. “We make good things together, huh.” I had to agree, and knew that the only thing sweeter than fresh blackberry jam would be the memory of sharing it with Sammy.

Get printable copies of Blackberry Jam and Yam Biscuits for your convenience.