As a kid, I wasn’t a big fan of peaches. I didn’t care for the fuzzy skin or the way that I always managed to end up with either a tart and underripe peach or a mealy overripe one. Then, quite by accident, I came across white peaches and my opinion of the peach changed entirely. White peaches (or summerwhite peaches) have lighter colored flesh than traditional peaches and are significantly sweeter. They also can be enjoyed over a larger window of time because they come off the tree quite sweet and don’t need the extra ripening/softening time that yellow peaches do. Although I’m much savvier about picking out deliciously ripe yellow peaches these days, white peaches will always be my favorites and are the type that I used for my summer peach cobbler.

This cobbler is very easy to make. It starts with peaches (of course!), peeled and sliced. I tend to cut my peaches into quite large chunks because they are more tender than, say, apples and don’t really need as long a cooking time. I go for 6 slices per peach for a medium-large fruit. I really like the flavor of honey and peaches together, so I added a bit of honey to the peaches before topping them off. The cobbler dough mixes up in one bowl to a fairly stiff batter. It should be dolloped on top of the peaches to give the dish a traditional “cobbled together” look - hence the name “cobbler”.

Hot from the oven and plated with vanilla bean ice cream, this dish really is a taste of summer. The peaches are so tender that they melt in your mouth and the cobbler gives you a nice base to showcase their flavor. The honey is subtle, but noticeable, in the finished dish, too. Lovely.

Because honey can cause baked goods to brown more quickly than sugar alone, you can tent the cobbler with a piece of foil for the last 5-10 minutes of baking time if you feel it’s browning too much. Use a toothpick to test the cobbler dough between the cobbles (the seams, if you will) for doneness before removing the cobbler from the oven.

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Hot summer weather and cold desserts - what could be a better combination? There isn’t a simple answer to that question because it depends on personal preference (apple pie a la mode is awfully good competition!) and whether or not you have a copy of A Passion for Ice Cream, which is packed with recipes for chilly desserts.

The cookbook is all about ice cream and ways to serve it. Most of the ice cream recipes are for custard based ice creams (arguably the most traditional types) which use eggs and cream as a base and must be cooked and cooled before they can be churned. The flavors cover everything from pistachio to white chocolate, and there are recipes for sherberts, granitas and other related frozen treats, as well.

All of these can stand alone - and probably will, if you like putting your ice cream maker to work at home - but none of them have to because author Emily Luchetti has provided lots of serving ideas. Unlike some other ice cream centric books, which tend to limit serving ideas to “pair this with fruit,” “pair this with chocolate sauce and whipped cream,” or “make a milkshake,” this book takes things much further. Luchetti does include some milkshake and float ideas, but she also includes the recipes for ice cream filled cupcakes, ice cream cookie sandwiches, brownies, cakes, tarts, and just about any other baked good that could be served with ice cream. This gives the cookbook a lot of versatility and, while it won recognition from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) as the best single subject cookbook of 2007, makes it a lot more useful than your average single subject cookbook. The non-ice cream recipes can easily stand alone and, if you’re looking for shortcuts, you can always pick out your favorite store-bought ice cream and substitute it into one of the bigger recipes in the book.

I love baking for parties. Primarily this is because I like getting feedback from big groups of people, friends and family on any baked goods that I make because I often like to try out new recipes on these occasions. It’s also fun to bake large quantities of food, or to decorate extra-large cakes from time to time. The only challenge - aside from deciding what to make in the first place - is that some recipes are just too small to work well for a party. A recipe can usually be doubled, and multiple batches can be baked, but it’s easiest if you can just work from one recipe.

These mini chocolate cupcakes are easy to make and the recipe makes enough for 4-dozen mini cupcakes! At first, when you realize that each cupcake is only about two bites, it doesn’t seem like 4-dozen will actually feed that many people. After all, when you put out full-size cupcakes, each guest usually takes a whole one. The thing about parties is that people rarely eat that much dessert and, while they might take a full size cupcake, not everyone eats the whole thing. Everyone eats a whole mini cupcake (no waste) and not everyone goes back for seconds, so you probably won’t even need to provide extras.

I like this recipe because the cupcakes turn out very moist with a good, deep cocoa flavor to them. If your oven won’t hold the pans to bake all the cupcakes at once, or if you don’t have enough mini cupcake pans to make 48 cupcakes at a time and need to wait for a pan to cool before reusing it, don’t worry about it. The batter can sit around for a little while without adversely affecting the cupcakes’ ability to rise in the oven. The first batch might be a bit poofier, but some down time (as long as you don’t play with the batter while it’s sitting around and get it overmixed), shouldn’t hurt it one bit.

Cream cheese frosting is always a hit and it’s easy to work with, so that’s what I used for these cupcakes. Feel free to use any other kind of frosting that you’d like, however.

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Conventional wisdom says that if your rolling pin is sticking to your dough - whether it is bread dough or cookie dough - you should lightly flour the pin and press on, adding more flour as needed. Adding small amounts of flour to a dough is rarely a problem in terms of altering the recipe’s ratio of dry-to-wet ingredients and, unless you use tons of flour on your rolling pin, your results should not be affected. That said, it is usually best to add as little additional flour as possible to ensure tenderness in baked goods. A rolling pin cover is an easy and efficient way to do this.

Have you ever spilled flour on a shirt or onto a pair of jeans? Have you ever noticed that it’s almost impossible to get all that flour out (unless you go so far as to remove the article of clothing and toss it in the wash)? These rolling pin covers are made of a pastry cloth that works in the same way. Flour sticks to it and, while a small amount will come off, it essentially serves to de-stick the rolling pin. You use minimal flour and your dough gets rolled out perfectly. The covers are washable and reusable, too.

During the summer, I tend to eat a lot more salads than I do during other times of the year. Veggies are fresher and tastier (and, if I’m lucky, some are even home-grown) and it’s usually hot enough that I don’t feel like cooking hot foods - let alone like eating them. Cold salads are refreshing, as well as tasty, and they’re just ideal for hot weather in my book. One thing that I will bake, no matter how hot it is, is a batch of homemade croutons to accessorize my salads. They add a lot of flavor and a great crunchy texture. I also appreciate the fact that they will use up a leftover loaf of bread, since loaves don’t seem to keep as well in the summer as they do during the cooler months.

They’re easy to make. All you need to start off is a loaf of your favorite bread. I often opt for french bread or sourdough, unless I have something homemade on hand that needs to be used up. I slice the bread and rub each piece with a cut clove of garlic, then spread them on a baking sheet, spritz them with olive oil and sprinkle with salt before baking until crisp.

If you like really buttery croutons, or want to add additional spices and can use the extra sticking power, you can brush your bread directly with melted butter or olive oil. I find that they crisp up well with just a spritz or two (I have an olive oil mister). You can cut off the crusts before cubing the bread if you find that they get too hard for your tastes when the crust bakes. Personally, I always leave them on, both for the texture and the rustic look.

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We all try to be as careful as possible when working in the kitchen. Hot pans, ovens, utensils and often boiling water are everywhere and can easily cause the occasional (or more than occasional) burn. Even if you have hands of stone, a burn is never fun and should be avoided at all costs. Potholders and dishtowels can help to protect your hands from most hot surfaces, but often the accidental burns are the ones that are most difficult to avoid. I’ve burned myself on the inside of my oven door before and a potholder wouldn’t have helped, nor would it have helped on the occasions my wrist has come in contact with a hot oven rack when I’m trying to fiddle with an oven thermometer. These Oven Rack Guards, on the other hand, definitely would have.

The guards are fabric and fit over the exposed edges of just about any oven rack, putting a barrier between the rack and your skin at a place where they are otherwise likely to meet. The fabric is DuPont Nomex, a flame-resistant fabric originally developed for (and is still used by) firefighters back in the 1960s. They’re washable and can be left in the oven for all normal use, although they should be removed when the broiler is being used or when you are running he “clean” cycle on the oven.