We had our first dust of snow this weekend. Technically, it was more ice than snow and resulted in a totally uncalled-for 2 hour delay this morning. But hey, I’ll take it.

I’m coming at you today with a cake you may have seen before. God knows many have made this cake from Nigella Lawson over the years, but I haven’t had a chance to try it until now.

This is an odd ball cake to be sure. Making use of the entire clementine is curious but also a touch brilliant as it tones down the oranges’ sweetness and lends a superb and not bitter flavor. For the almonds, I used pre-ground and packaged almond meal from Trader Joe’s and it worked just fine.

The cake is surely excellent just as Nigella makes it, but since I love chocolate and chocolate-meets-orange, I couldn’t resist tossing in some chocolate chips. And in a nod to the dusting we got this weekend, I finished the cake with a dusting of powdered sugar and squiggle of orange peel.

Intensely moist yet also airy-light, this cake would make a nice addition to a brunch spread or also with a cup of afternoon tea and this week’s episode of Downton Abbey.

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were wild and wonderful like ours. I am, as usual, suffering from the post-holiday hangover and have spent the week attempting to scarf down as many veggies as possible/avoid opening a new bottle of wine nightly. The veggies I’ve mastered. The wine? No comment.

Let’s get back in the swing today with a quick cookbook review and recipe. A few weeks back, I received Milk by Christina Tosi as a graduation present from my brilliant mother-in-law.

For those unfamiliar, Christina Tosi is the mastermind behind Momofuku Milk Bar, the bakery offshoot of David Chang’s Momofuku restaurant in New York City. She has become infamous for her retro-chic, yet inventive child-at-heart recipes including crack pie, cake truffles, compost cookies, among others.

Other than the bangin’ recipes (and the fact that Christina is a Virginia girl), there are two things that I really adore about this cookbook:

1) Essays: Christina scatters her insights into restaurant life and stories of her childhood throughout the book. They add such depth and personality that is all-too-rare in cookbook land. Milk is cookbook meets mini-memoir.

2) Weight & Volume Measurements: Weight measurements are the preferred choice of professional and savvy at-home bakers thanks to the precision and easy scaling (up or down) options they provide. However, Christina also includes standard volume measurements for the not-there-yet home baker, which makes this cookbook truly user-friendly, regardless of your baking level.

The only note of caution I will add is that some of the recipes call for special ingredients that you will likely not find in the aisles of your neighborhood grocery store. But the book includes an entire section on ingredients and the best places to order them, often easily on the internet.

This book really is a must-buy or must-gift for every Big Kid in the kitchen. And to prove it, here’s a little recipe sneak peak of Christina’s confetti cookies, which I made for New Year’s this year. These cookies are like birthday cake meets sugar cookie and will please all you funfetti devotees. Enjoy!

Hi gang – I’ve got a story in EthnoTraveler this month about a Tuscan truffle hunter that I met, and hunted with, this summer. You can read my story, and more great travel essays in EthnoTraveler here.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a recipe and cookbook review. Until then!

Here I am, at long last. Despite my best efforts and a suitcase full of Christmas presents purchased weeks ago in Bali, our life has still fallen victim to the customary pre-holiday nuttiness.

But, guess what? I fixed my mixer! Thanks to a healthy dose of frustration and a good hammer wackin’ with my eyes closed last weekend, all is right with the world again. I am by no means condoning widespread mixer violence, but one thing is for sure: my mixer now knows who’s the boss.

And it ain’t Tony Danza.

Let that be a lesson to the refrigerator, stove, and recently cracked microwave handle.

Now, on to the food at hand. I’ve had this recipe hidden away far too long. And to be honest, I have no good reason for keeping it from you other than sheer neglect. My b.

This is one of those desserts that’s ideal for the entertaining season. You can assemble and stow away the entire thing on a slow Sunday afternoon and have it at the ready for unexpected visitors or weeknight holiday parties. Not to mention that it would be a fantastic and cool-with-a-caffeine-kick conclusion to Christmas dinner.

So go forth: wine, dine, and finish off Santa’s cookie plate with that early morning cup of coffee. Wishing all of you a wonderful Christmas, Chanukah, and Festivus! xoxo, Martha

…a time when the house smells of pine and the floor is covered in needles. Cookies fly out of the oven at the speed of light and the dishwasher is on its tenth load of the day. It’s exhausting and chaotic and a whirlwind and I love it. Until it all came to a screeching halt.

It started with a scraping noise, the sound of the beater clawing at the bowl, a sound that we bakers know means something ain’t right.

So I got out my screw driver and adjusted the beater’s level, which is needed occasionally for ongoing maintenance.

But then came the bobbing, the lobbing, and the verging-on-violent rocking. And when I tipped the mixer head back to inspect the problem further, this happened:

The horror! It's like looking at a photo of my own severed arm.

The metal rod, which keeps the mixer head in place, had worked its way out. I tried my best to get it back in. I jimmied and wedged. Sweated and groaned. I pushed hard and tapped gently with a hammer. None of this worked.

I begged. I pleaded. I yelled and called it abusive names. I cried out to Zach for help and then promptly told him, “Oh, just let me do it!” I was — this close — to a full-on Christmas baking meltdown before realizing how stupid and small of me that would be.

So I gave up for the day. I put my poor, wounded mixer back on its lonely shelf and began to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. The dishwasher that less than a week later, would go on to eat 2 of my best spatulas and 1 strainer before, much like my mixer, giving up on life forever.

My kitchen has ZERO Christmas spirit.

But have no fear! I’ll be back with a new recipe next week, a new dishwasher (Zach and I’s sexy Christmas gift to each other this year) and a re-thunk strategy for a sans-mixer holiday. Until then, I suggest devouring The Post’s amazing cookie feature, especially Jenna and Stephanie’s killer Nutella thumbprints.

When it comes to the holidays, I’m an unabashed traditionalist. I like the same food, the same traditions, and a predictable routine. Every year, voices in my favorite food magazines and online try to convince me otherwise with new-fangled turkey techniques and razzmatazz stuffing recipes. And frankly, I want nothing to do with all that fancy talk. That is, unless we’re talking Christmas cookies.

I, of course, have my family cookie favorites that have always held an honored place on Santa’s plate, but each year I love tackling and trying potential new favorites. I may be a holiday traditionalist at my core, but when it comes to cookies, there is no need for boundaries. The more the merrier.

Thanks to Lisa Yockelson’s much-talked-about new book, Baking Style, I’ve found one of my new favorites this year– minties. As I’ve said before, I’m a sucker for chocolate-meets-mint, and these puppies take the cake in the cookie department.

Baking Style is a beautiful and comprehensive book perfect for any baker on your gift list this year. If, like me, you happen to be the most obsessive baker you know, there is no shame in gifting a copy to yourself. And if you’re feeling a bit guilty, just follow one of my family’s unspoken holiday traditions: Wrap it up, write “FROM SANTA” on the tag, and act wonderfully surprised when you find it under the tree.

Happy Almost-Turkey Day! Zach and are out and about in the South Pacific this week, but I wanted to share one more last-minute recipe.

Readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with my affection for my grandmother’s rolls and this week’s recipe is a twist on that old favorite. Aside from the added perks of cheese and seed, these rolls are ideal for Thanksgiving due to their petite size.

On a packed Thanksgiving plate where real estate is at a premium, these wee rolls have a lot to offer. Not so big that they take over too much valuable stomach space, but ample enough for soppin’ up those last intermingled bits of gravy, potatoes, turkey, and cran.

As for Zach and I, we’ll be hard-pressed to find turkey and cranberry sauce in Indonesia, but we all have to make sacrifices now and then.

Zach and I will have a decidedly not-traditional Thanksgiving this year. Tomorrow morning we board a plane bound for Seoul and then somewhere around 4am, another bound for Bali.

While having a family is definitely on my life “to-do” list, being young and childless has its advantages. Work travel over a major U.S. holiday tends to be problematic for a boss with young children.

Enter one Martha (and a Zach).

I may be without mouths to feed, but I’ll be damned if I’m going around the world without a little company. Luckily, Zach was happy to oblige.

But all of this isn’t to say that the flavors of Thanksgiving and the holidays haven’t been on my mind. For the first time in years, I haven’t been part of the obsessive meal-planning and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve missed it. So over the past week, I’ve been researching and testing recipes, like these muffins, that allude to my favorite American day.

These muffins would make for a great Turkey Day breakfast or, for those of you traveling, a hostess gift nestled in a big basket with some coffee, jam, and fruit. I’m a big fan of breakfast as hostess gift since I can’t think of anything nicer than giving those exhausted Thanksgiving cooks the next meal off.

Alright, I’m off to attend to some last-minute packing panics and mentally steel myself for 20 hours in a coffin (read: coach seat.) Look for a killer dinner rolls post next week, then I’m back with a bang in December to talk (what else?) Christmas cookies.

I wish you all a Happy, Gut-Busting Thanksgiving!

Me: “There’s a lot of bad crust out there.”

Ash: “Uh, yes. Yes there is.”

This sums up a recent phone conversation between my sister and I, and the tenor of most of our conversations really. I called her to boast about this delicious pie and while she was happy for me, she also reminded me once again that she doesn’t like pie. Yes, you heard that blasphemy right: MY SISTER DOES NOT LIKE PIE.

Cobbler? You bet. Crisp, crumble, slump, or buckle? Sure thing. Pie? Forget it. The crust, “especially the bottom,” she says, is a soggy waste of space.

We often discuss these life-or-death matters with each other. Zach is usually an innocent bystander or fly-on-the-wall, offering an eye roll or a head shake in reply to our mincing of words and textures.

But I say:

- One person in a room ranting over pie crust? A lunatic.

- Two people? Like-minded colleagues engaging in civil debate.

- Writing about it on a blog? Undecided.

My defense of the sanctity of pie is simple. There is a lot of bad crust out there and it’s giving pie a bad name. We’ve all eaten it. Gummy verging on glue. Undercooked verging on raw. Tough verging on shoe leather. It’s out there and innocent people are subjected to it every day.

But it doesn’t have to be, because a good pie crust is so so simple and practically dummy-proof. And thanks to Michael Ruhlman’s 3-2-1 dough, it’s also easy to remember and execute no matter what your skill level. A version of this recipe appears in my aforementioned CIA baking notebook, but Ruhlman downsized it for the home cook to make it even more accessible.

So get over your crust phobias and make this pie for Thanksgiving. Because this simple, flaky crust paired with tart apples and a healthy kick of  boozy cranberries just might convert those pie-haters in your life.

Maybe even my sister.