The Bitten Word

Thanksgiving 2015: Grapefruit Cornmeal Cake

Food & Wine (November 2015)

Imagine the moistest, cakiest, most indulgent donut you've ever had. 

Now imagine the flavors of a lemon-poppyseed muffin.

Now, in your mind, marry those bright, tart, sweet flavors to that cakey donut texture.

Now imagine it twice as tasty as whatever you're already picturing.

Ladies and gentlemen: Grapefruit Cornmeal Cake.

Thanksgiving 2015: Cherry Spice Cake Trifle

Southern Living (November 2015)

  

Clay: “Do we have a trifle bowl?”

Zach: “Have you met us? Of course we have a trifle bowl!”

And that's all it took for this Cherry Spice Cake Trifle to make it onto our Fakesgiving menu. 

This is the kind of dessert you want to tell your guests that it didn't turn out, so you can stash it in the fridge and then eat it all yourself the next day.  

It's the kind of dessert you want to crawl inside. 

It's the kind of dessert you want at your Thanksgiving table. 

The 2015 Thanksgiving Index: All This Year's Food Magazine Recipes in One Handy Place

220 Thanksgiving Recipes from 10 Leading Food Magazines

Yesterday, we were all about the trends, sharing what's in and what's out for this year's Thanksgiving feast.

Today, it's all about the recipes. Below, we've categorized all 220 recipes from the 10 magazines we're tracking this year.

Of course, the November issues of these magazines feature many more recipes than this -- in order to make this list, the recipe had to be part of an explicit feature about Thanksgiving. (If a recipe doesn't have a hyperlink, it means it isn't yet available online.) 

Explore the list and share your thoughts: What sounds amazing? What sounds too wacky for your table? What might you try for this year's feast? Let us know in the comments -- and happy cooking! 

 

TURKEYS

Porchetta-Style Roast Turkey Breast (Bon Appétit)
Barbecue Spice–Brined Grilled Turkey (Bon Appétit)
Glazed and Lacquered Roast Turkey (Bon Appétit)
Two-Hour Turkey with Gravy (Cook's Country)
Applewood-Smoked Turkey  (Cooking Light)
Brown Sugar–Cured Turkey with Apple-Bourbon Gravy  (Cooking Light)
Rosemary-Orange Roast Turkey  (Cooking Light)
Citrus-Herb Roast Turkey & Gravy (Fine Cooking)
Chipotle-Butter Turkey (Food & Wine)
Citrus-and-Butter Turkey (Food & Wine)
Porchetta-Spiced Turkey with Pan Gravy (Food & Wine)
Roast Turkey with Polenta Stuffing (Food & Wine)
Soy-and-Sesame Turkey (Food & Wine)
Maple-Whiskey Turkey (Food Network)
Classic Roast Turkey (Food Network)
Lemon-Pepper Turkey with Bacon Gravy (Food Network)
Southwestern Turkey with Chipotle Gravy (Food Network) 
Herbed Turkey (Martha Stewart Living)
Molasses-and-Cider-Glazed Turkey (Martha Stewart Living)
Tamarind-Glazed Roast Turkey (Saveur)
Slow Smoked and Spice-Brined Turkey (Saveur)
Dry-Brined-and-Marinated Smoked Turkey (Southern Living) 

 

GRAVY

Gravy-Braised Turkey Legs with Cipolline Onions (Bon Appétit)
Classic Turkey Gravy with Thyme (Bon Appétit)
Maple-Whiskey Gravy (Food Network)
Classic Gravy (Food Network) 
Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy  (Cooking Light)
Make-Ahead Gravy (Southern Living) 

 

 

Salted Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake

Bon Appétit (April 2014) 

 

"CHOCOLATE!!"

That's what Zach's sister Cassidy texted us last week, after we'd asked what sort of dessert she'd like us to make for her birthday. We were heading out to Annapolis to spend the day with her and her husband; she planned to cook dinner, but we wanted to bring a dessert to help celebrate her special day.

But here's the thing: Food magazines don't really write much about chocolate in their summer issues. July and August -- the issues we're cooking from right now -- are all about summer fruits and popsicles and ice cream. 

We were with Cassidy on this one. Sometimes, you just want a big ol' piece of chocolate cake for your birthday.

So we dove into the Bon Appétit archive and found this Salted Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake.

Blueberry-Caramel Skillet Cobbler

Food Network Magazine (July 2015)

A couple weeks ago, we wrote about our disappointing experience with a Skillet Blueberry Cobbler. We loved the idea of a cast-iron fruit cobbler, but the one we made was bland, doughy and decidedly un-special.

Then everything changed.

We went over to our friend Bruce's for a thoughtful book-club discussion of Kate Atkinson's new novel "A God in Ruins." Okay, that's a lie. We went to Bruce's for a curated screening of Ingmar Bergman's four most important films.  Okay fine, that's a lie too. We went to Bruce's to marathon season 1 of "Empire", okay? There, are you happy?

The point is, Bruce had made a special dessert for the occasion: a skillet blueberry cobbler. And it was absolutely fantastic.

It was perfectly sweet, with just the right ratio of fruit and crust. It was heavenly. It was transcendent.

Basically it was everything our first skillet cobbler wasn't.

We had to try it for ourselves, and for you. Because we all need a good blueberry cobbler in our lives, and we found it with this Blueberry-Caramel Skillet Cobbler. 

Skillet Blueberry Cobbler

Garden & Gun (June/July 2015)

 

[UPDATE: We tried a different Skillet Blueberry Cobbler we liked much better: Read about it here!]

 

What is it about foods cooked in cast-iron skillets that are so darn appealing to us? 

"Cook it in a skillet" is as good advice as Put an Egg On It: It just makes everything better.

Or maybe that's just our Southern showing?

At any rate, Zach's mom was here a few days ago, and the three of us spent the weekend doing what we do best: eating and chatting and eating some more. We did a bit of cooking, too, including a meal that was topped off by this Skillet Blueberry Cobbler from Garden & Gun. 

Chocolate Double-Nut Butter

Food & Wine (May 2015)

 

As a rule, we have a ban on peanut butter in our house. 

 

No, we're not allergic. And no, we're not in the middle of a feud with Mr. Peanut. 

 

The real reason is this: We are absolute peanut butter addicts, and can go through an entire jar in a day. Give us some alone time with our DVR, a fresh jar of peanut butter, two spoons, and a few hours, and you can kiss that PB goodbye. 

 

So it was not a light decision on our part to make Zak Stern's Chocolate Double-Nut Butter from the May Food & Wine. 

 

And therein lies the problem with making a delicious Chocolate Double-Nut Butter: You then have an amazing treat in your house, and it's the only thing you want to eat. 

 

 

Simple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

From the cookbook Twelve Recipes

We're avoiding new cookbooks these days like Kimmy Schmidt is avoiding her past.

Mostly we're out of the cookbook game because we're waaaay overdue for a cookbook clean-out. Truly, we are running out of places to put them and our shelves are overflowing, with books starting to accumulate on the floor. [#CookbookProblems]

But when a friend, who is paring down her own cookbook collection, offered us a copy of Twelve Recipes, the new cookbook from Chez Panisse chef Cal Peternell, we readily took it off her hands. Twelve Recipes showed up in a number of food magazines last year, and we were eager to check it out.

It wasn't just the Chez Panisse connection that intrigued us, although we do love Chez Panisse.

It was the concept of this book that had us hooked: When his oldest son is about to go off to college, a chef pulls together the 12 basic recipes that are enough to get anyone started in the kitchen.

The book, of course, has far more than 12 recipes, but it does provide 12 basics and then many variations on those (Pasta with Tomato becomes Summer Marinara, Arrabbiata, Puttanesca, and on and on). 

We read through the book this past weekend, and though there are lots of recipes we wanted to make, we decided to start with a Simple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Silky Chocolate Pudding

Fine Cooking (February/March 2015)

Months and months ago, while on a trip to New York City, we dropped into Buvette for dinner.

The meal itself, enjoyed at a cramped but cozy little table, was lovely. But we were especially enamored with dessert: Buvette's decadent chocolate mousse.

It's the kind of dessert we dream about: rich and dark, piled high into a serving dish, with two spoons ready to do some serious damage. We've since made Buvette's chocolate mousse at home, although we've neglected to photograph it so we haven't yet shared it here. 

That mousse came to mind while reading the latest Fine Cooking. The current issue features this pudding in its "Repertoire" column, which every month introduces a basic template recipe that's good to have in one's back pocket. This isn't the rich, dreamy mousse from Buvette, but rather a more straightforward chocolate dessert that's closer to pudding you might remember from childhood.

Well, our back pockets are never quite full enough (along with our bellies), so we jumped into our first homemade chocolate pudding attempt. 

Chocolate-Rye Crumb Cake

Bon Appétit (January 2015)

 

We think it's only fitting to end January -- month of resolutions, revolutions and reductions -- with a big ol' chocolate cake.

More than a year ago, a group of Clay's coworkers made the kind of resolution we can definitely get behind: The BAKE-O-LUTION. The idea is simple: Bake a new recipe once a month, and bring it into the office to share. So for more than a year now, once a month, folks show up at work with their baked goods: cakes (so many cakes!), pies, cookies and brownies galore. It's a glorious thing. And it's the perfect inspiration to do more baking.

But in the year that the BAKE-O-LUTION has been going on, we've never baked anything for it. It's not because we're anti-cake (far from it!). We just never got our act together to plan, shop and bake for the monthly get-together.

It was time to break that streak. 

So for the first BAKE-O-LUTION of 2015, Clay showed up with this Chocolate-Rye Crumb Cake, from the latest issue of Bon Appétit.