Chicken Thighs with White Beans and Tomatoes
One pan. One oven. Forty minutes. This is the chicken dinner I make when I want it to feel like I planned something without actually planning anything. Chicken thighs with white beans and tomatoes is the kind of recipe that looks more considered than it is. The skin comes out…
Pineapple Pecan Cream Cheese Crunch Bake
Fifteen minutes of prep. Thirty minutes in the oven. Three hours in the fridge. Then you cut into it and everyone asks for the recipe. The pineapple pecan cream cheese crunch bake is a Southern-style layered dessert bar that does everything right — crunchy butter-pecan base, juicy pineapple in the…
Old-School Chicken Fried Rice
Twenty-five minutes. One wok. Nine ingredients. Better than the takeout box. This old-school chicken fried rice is the real version — the one that actually tastes like it came from a Chinese-American restaurant kitchen. Day-old rice that fries instead of steams. Chicken that gets a proper sear. Eggs scrambled separately…
Banana Cake with Buttercream Frosting
Twenty minutes of prep. Thirty-two minutes in the oven. Two hours of cooling you'll spend regretting you can't cut it yet. Then this. The banana cake with buttercream frosting is what happens when the bananas on your counter finally go properly ripe and you decide they deserve something better than…
Hawaiian Baked Chicken with Pineapple, Peppers, and Potatoes
There's a version of this dish that my mother made without a recipe — chicken and vegetables and whatever fruit was around, covered and slow-baked until everything had collapsed into something glossy and sweet-savory and completely satisfying. She never called it Hawaiian chicken. But that's what it was. This Hawaiian baked chicken hits all those same notes.…
Strawberry Jello Poke Cake
Fifteen minutes of active work. Four hours in the fridge. One of the most crowd-pleasing desserts you can bring to a summer potluck. That's the deal. The strawberry Jello poke cake is exactly what it sounds like and it's better than it has any right to be. You bake a white cake, poke holes all over it while…
Baked Cod with Lemon and Garlic
Cod dredged in a coriander-paprika-cumin flour mixture, seared 2 minutes per side in a hot skillet for color, then finished in a 400°F oven for 10 minutes with a lemon-olive oil-butter-garlic sauce poured over. 22 minutes total. Mediterranean spiced, flaky, and genuinely better than a plain baked fish. The garlic…
Spinach Feta Egg Muffins
Wilted spinach and crumbled feta mixed into whisked eggs, poured into a lined muffin tin, scattered with diced red pepper and more feta, baked at 375°F for 16 to 20 minutes. Five ingredients, done in 21 minutes, and they keep in the fridge for 4 days. Good hot, good cold, genuinely useful…
