With Coconut Cream Cheese and Fresh Fruit In the past few days, I have spent a lot of time with myself, as I know most everyone has. It was scary at first—questions, loneliness, the looming unknown. We humans need one another in times like these, but of course…six feet apart. That hurts. And in the…
Lemon Thyme Chocolate Shortbread
Cookies are the smallest and simplest of desserts. There is not much to them—a swift baking time, basic ingredients, and little patience or intuition required. They are found in abundance at bake sales and in Christmas tins. You can buy boxes of them at the store. And yet no one takes a cookie without a…
Sourdough Anise Banana Bread
Banana bread is divine. Nothing is better than warm banana bread fresh from the oven with butter and a sprinkle of sea salt (all breads are good this way, even sweet ones.) It is a scent that reminds me of my childhood, when we would make banana bread and pumpkin bread in the winter. I…
Chocolate, Orange, and Olive Oil Babka
The concept of “soul food” belongs more to Louisiana than Appalachia. It draws up steaming bowls of shrimp n’ grits, crispy fried chicken, great pots of okra gumbo, and delicate beneits with heaping drifts of powdered sugar. But if I were to choose one food that spoke to my soul—even more so than grits (because…
Chocolate Rosemary Spice Cake
When I close my eyes and think of winter, I think of rosemary. It is a breath of frigid air, boots crunching over a crust of frost and fallen pine needles, and leaning into the tree to hang an ornament—it is all of that wrapped up in a little herb. The mountains here are known…
The Appalachian Artisan 