My grandmother, who I’ve talked about quite a lot on this site, passed away this week just a few days before her 97th birthday. She was an inspiration to me in almost every way that affects this blog: canning, gardening, cooking, and even just appreciating the delight of fresh, homegrown food. She always insisted that the best recipes were the simplest ones, and that “modern recipes” just had too many unnecessary ingredients. I frequently watched her shake her head and scoff at magazine recipes bedazzled with so many obscure herbs and spices that you’d hardly be able to taste the feature of the dish (let alone afford to make it). Since she was renowned for what she could do with food from seed to table, I usually find it’s best to heed the advice she seemed to live by: grow food, buy fresh, cook simply, and savor the resulting meal.

To honor my grandmother, I want to share with you some of the simple, basic recipes that I rely upon heavily in my daily cooking. I admit, I feel both ridiculous for sharing them and also ridiculous for keeping them from you for so long. Sometimes it’s hard to decide what to share here in this space, and I often think, “nah, they don’t wanna hear about this, it’s nothing fancy.”

But then I remember that many of these dishes have entered my kitchen in only the last few years: why should I assume that they are already in yours It seems unfair to keep them to myself. Plus, while I’m sure we all love the idea of elaborate culinary projects resulting in surprising and impressive dishes, my guess is that most of you (like me) are ultimately just trying to put dinner on the table every night without relying on a microwave dinner or a frozen pizza. For me, having an repertoire composed of simple, savory dishes is the key to making this happen.

This is one of my favorite side dishes both in flavor and style, it goes well with just about anything, and it starts and ends with a bunch of carrots. Though many of us get our carrots mostly in the form of stripped-down nubbins that appear on veggie platters at office parties, this dish uses the whole thing. For this particular dish, I like to use the thinnest carrots I can find.

In fact, I don’t even peel my carrots anymore. Like a potato or an apple, the skin of a carrot contains a higher concentration of nutrients than the rest of the flesh. A bit of strong scrubbing is usually all I need to get nice, clean carrots, and by not peeling, less food is wasted.

Aside from the carrots, you’ll only need two other ingredients: a bit of butter for cooking, and a tablespoon of brown sugar for glazing. A little goes a long way: the sweetness of the carrots will emerge as they cook, and the brown sugar bumps it up just enough to lend a truly remarkable flavor. As usual, I favor dark brown sugar, which contains more molasses and a darker, deeper flavor.

The carrots cook in melted butter for about 20 minutes, and as they cook, they will begin to blister and char. Toss and turn them to make that deliciousness go all the way around!

At the very last minute, when the other elements of your meal are ready, add the sugar. If you cook it too long, the sugar will burn and your carrots will taste, well, burned. I usually toss the carrots around in the sugar just enough to let it dissolve before removing the carrots to a serving platter or straight onto dinner plates.

These carrots go with well with just about anything. I’ve cooked them alongside steak, roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, and my personal favorite, pork chops. I make them often for just the two of us, but I’d stand proudly behind them at a dinner party, as well. They are best enjoyed while they are still hot, but trust me, they won’t last on your plate long enough to get cold.

Glazed Whole Carrots

Makes 2-3 side dish servings

10-12 whole carrots, the thinnest ones you can find
1 1/2 T unsalted butter
1 T dark brown sugar

Thoroughly scrub the carrots and chop off the stem end and the spindly root. If you can, avoid peeling the carrots. Heat a large flying pan over medium heat and add butter. Once the butter has melted and is bubbling, add the carrots. Cook for about 20 minutes, turning the carrots every few minutes so they cook on all sides. The carrots will begin to blister and char slightly.

Turn off the heat and add the brown sugar. Toss the carrots around in the sugar until they are evenly and lightly coated and the sugar has dissolved in the pan. Don’t keep them in the pan for too long at this point or the sugar may begin to burn and will give your carrots a bitter flavor. Remove carrots from the pan and place on a serving dish or directly onto dinner plates.

Serve immediately.

It’s June! And this first day of June is many things!

1. The first day of June, which is exciting enough on its own
2. The first day of National Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Month
3. The first day of National Accordion Awareness Month (who knew we even had that Consider yourself aware.)
3. Mah birthday!

I’m spending the day doing what any sensible girl would do. Reading on the balcony, possibly getting a pedicure, re-organizing my spices in tiny matching jars (!!!!!!), taking a stab at cooking crème brûlée, seeing a movie with friends… it’s a lovely day off! Full of little birthday presents to myself.

My birthday present to you, however, are these cookies.

Last year around this time, we talked about carrot cake. I was never a particularly big fan in the past, but I now frequently find myself craving those tender bites of spice-filled, textured cake topped with a healthy dollop of tangy icing. Plus, the carrots in my garden are now bursting from the soil (okay not bursting, they actually require rather a lot of coaxing to come out of the ground), and my experiment with a curious variety put carrot cake on the top of my list to make.

Aren’t these neat I wish I had taken pictures of them straight out of the earth, their brilliant fuschia dims slightly within minutes: they are easily the most intriguing vegetable I’d planted so far. And what fun would it be to use purple carrots for carrot cake?

But I couldn’t just make carrot cake. I couldn’t convince myself that re-making my carrot cupcakes with purple carrots instead of orange merited a new post, and I wasn’t in need of a new recipe, as I love the one I have beyond compare. So what else could I make Perhaps, I thought, I could find a carrot cookie recipe instead. Makes sense, right I set forth, found a recipe that seemed reliable, and started my project.

Surprise! Upon grating my first carrot, I discovered that in fact, I wouldn’t have purple carrot cookies at all! This variety, I learned in a hasty Wikipedia search later, contains more antioxidants than other carrots that manifest themselves in a thick purple skin concealing a brilliant orange carrot inside. So no, they wouldn’t be purple, but they would sure as hell be delicious.

I made one sample cookie before cooking the whole batch: I’d fiddled with the recipe significantly, and I wanted to make sure they weren’t going to be gross. Or spread all over the pan. Or gross. But oh, my fears were allayed with the first bite. A thin crispiness on the outside, but tender, almost cake-y fluff on the inside, and bursting with little flecks of carrots, pieces of pecan, and hearty oats.

Yet there was still something missing.

What carrot-y sweet is complete without just a bit of cream cheese icing?

This one is really more of a glaze: it pipes easily, but could also be spread onto your cookies. But this baker pipes, so there you have it.

And then it’s time for dessert! Nay, breakfast! Pretty as can be, these little cookies were easy to make and disappeared in a flash. And no, they aren’t purple as I’d not-so-secretly hoped, but one bite in, and it didn’t even matter.

I’d go buy some carrots if I were you.

Carrot Oatmeal Cookies with Cream Cheese Glaze
Adapted from Baking Bites

For the Cookies:
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 c white sugar
2 T brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 1/2 c grated carrots
1 c old-fashioned oats
3/4 c chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 °F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and egg with the back of a spoon until thoroughly combined and creamy. Add vanilla extract, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, carrots, oats, and pecans and mix just until dry ingredients are all moistened.

Use a spoon to drop dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheet about two inches apart. Bake at 350 °F for 13-15 minutes. Remove from oven when tops begin to brown but still look slightly gooey. Let rest on cookie sheet for 2-3 minutes, then remove to cooling rack. While cookies cool, prepare glaze.

For the Glaze:
4 oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 c powdered sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla
dash salt
2 tsp milk

Beat cream cheese for 2-3 minutes or until cream cheese is smooth and fluffy. Add powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt and beat until smooth. Add milk 1 tsp at a time to desired consistency.

Pipe a narrow squiggle of icing on each cookie or spread thinly with a knife.

Spring has most definitely sprung in North Carolina. And from the looks of Facebook statuses from friends across the country, it has sprung in many other places, too. It’s a time for swapping socks for flip flops, coats for t-shirts, and huddling in a blanket for lounging on the balcony.

But I also love the rainstorms. The thunderheads that roll in over the afternoon and burst into lighting and rain as night falls.

These nights call for cozy. These nights call for soup.

Soup is pretty easy cooking. Some of my meals literally seem to use every one of the dishes in my kitchen, but soup pot’s got my back. It’s totally cool with me spending the rest of the evening watching West Wing instead of cleaning up from dinner. The cutting board, on the other hand, gets quite a workout.

I first fell in love with broccoli cheddar soup when friends introduced me to Panera in college, and I’ve been trying to find a satisfactory homemade version. This is, by far, the closest thing I’ve found, and may even be better.

For one, it’s chock full of veggies. The last of my winter broccoli, almost the last onion (I think I still have one more), and a bunch of carrots that are actually still flourishing here.

And the cheeeeeese, oh the cheese! I found a block of super sharp — not extra, not sharp, super sharp — cheddar at the co-op, and I couldn’t resist giving it a try in this soup. Boy-o. What a win. And just for fun, MORE cheddar. Sharp and white. Amazeface.

And here we are. A great meal to transition out of winter and into spring. Plus, another hunted recipe that can be quickly and succinctly crossed off my list!

Such are the simple pleasures.

Double Cheddar Broccoli Soup
Adapted from Mangio da Sola

3 T butter
3/4 c onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c flour
1 1/2 c milk
1/2 c heavy cream
2 c chicken stock
8 oz fresh broccoli, chopped into small florets
2-3 medium carrots, chopped into thin slivers about 1″ long (about 1 cup)
6 oz super sharp cheddar cheese, grated
2 oz sharp white cheddar, grated
salt and pepper to taste
dash of cayenne pepper

Chop all vegetables and set aside. In large pot, heat butter over medium heat. Sauté onions and garlic until onions soften. Add the flour and stir quickly until combined. Add milk, cream, and chicken stock and heat just until boiling.

Add broccoli and carrots and reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir in cheeses and let simmer for an additional 5 minutes. season with salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste. Serve immediately.

I’m not exactly sure when I made the transition from thinking I hated carrot cake to eyeballing it with lust at bakeries. It seems to be one of those desserts with distinct factions: the lovers, the haters, and the folks who are mostly there for the cream cheese icing. I was somewhere in between those last two.

But whatever triggered this change in taste has permanently embedded carrot cake on my list of desserts to make whenever carrots find their way into my fridge.

For some reason I’ve always strongly associated carrots with fall harvests, not spring ones. Perhaps it’s because they are orange and fit oh so nicely into the autumn palette. I’ll be honest, there are lots of “when food grows” ideas that I’ve had to re-address after moving here. We arrived last August, and I kept waiting… and waiting… and waiting for carrots, storage onions, and potatoes to appear. A couple of vendors had carrots for about two weeks in early November, but that was it.

Recently, however, tables at the market have buckled under the weight of carrots so fresh the dirt still clings to them.

There are SO many recipes for carrot cake out there. Some with pineapple, some have apple sauce, some with a wide range of semi-exotic spices. I decided to try a family favorite from one of my dad’s cousins. It’s simple, but according to my mom it’s “soooooooo good!” Direct quote.

And she is absolutely correct. The cake is moist, earthy, not too sweet, and provides a satisfying crunch from the pecans nestled within.

And that’s not even the best part. For really, what is carrot cake without a sizable heap of cream cheese icing on top I thought about using the icing recipe that was coupled with my cousin’s carrot cake, but I’ve been looking for an excuse to try this maple-sweetened one from Smitten Kitchen for some time now. It’s like heaven in a piping bag.

A tip: I grew up eating room temperature cupcakes, but after a summer job working at a bakery, I discovered that they are even more delicious cold. Don’t know why. They just are. Keep these in the fridge, or if you want a real treat, the freezer. Freezing cupcakes without icing is also a good way to stretch their life so that you don’t have to force yourself to eat two dozen cupcakes in one week. Quite a bother, I’m sure…

So if life is giving you carrots, make carrot cake. No meaningful metaphor intended. Just a Cinderella story of a humble root vegetable transforming into a decadent dessert. Or breakfast. You decide.

Carrot Cupcakes
Adapted from Frances H.

Makes 12-18 cupcakes
A note on the yield: This recipe is supposed to make 12 cupcakes. I’m not entirely sure why I got 18. Maybe using really fresh carrots brings more moisture (and content) to the batter. Ideas, anyone?

Another note on the yield: This is actually half of the original recipe. But as I mentioned, I didn’t need a daily diet of all carrot cake all the time, so I split it and had plenty. Double it back up if you want.

1 c all-purpose flour
1 c sugar, scant
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 c finely chopped/grated carrots (I used the base of a food processor, but a medium-fine grater should work fine)
2 eggs
1/2 c roughly chopped pecans
3/4 c oil

Prepare 18 cupcake wrappers in your pans. Blend all ingredients together and beat for three minutes on high. Batter will be thinner than you expect. Fill each cupcake wrapper half full if you want a flat cupcake, three quarters full if you want a crown. Bake cupcakes at 350 ºF for 20-24 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove to a cooling rack and let cool completely before icing.

Maple Cream Cheese Icing
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

This will yield a generous topping of icing for your cupcakes and will leave you a little bit extra for… whatever. I’m confident you’ll find a use for it.

If you prefer less icing on your cakes, slice the recipe in half and you should still have enough to ice 18 cupcakes.

two 8 oz packages of cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 unsalted butter, room temperature (equal to 1/2 of a stick)
2 c powdered sugar
1/4 c maple syrup

Tip! Sift your powdered sugar before adding it to your mixer. You can use a standard sifter or a fine mesh strainer. This removes the clumps and will produce a smooth icing with minimal graininess.

Blend all ingredients and beat a medium speed for 5-8 minutes or until fluffy and smooth. Place bowl with icing in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to chill.

Ice your cupcakes however you want. Be creative! For toppings, I tossed a little coconut in a bowl with a drop each of red and yellow food coloring to tinge the coconut. This technique also works with white sugar, though my co-worker proposed that it looked like fish eggs. Live and learn.