The cookie crumbled slightly under her touch, leaving a spray of dust across the table between them. Adam picked up a second one from the plate, turning it around in his hand. It was thin and flat and as wide as his broad hand with the crinkled look of a very good molasses cookie. It was chewy and crisp at the same time—the slip of paper under the plate read simply miso, brown butter, rice flour. The other lines were equally intriguing: graham flour, rum, thyme and candied fennel, tahini, caramel.
Read moreCORNMEAL MOLASSES ROLLS
It’s the hottest day of the summer so far. It’s so hot that the surface of the pool is turning warm, the first few inches as tepid as bathwater. She doesn’t have the energy to get up and dive into the cool depths of the deep end, but instead stretches out on a chair, her entire body limp from the heat. She can almost feel the sunburn prickling across her skin. Later that night, she’ll step into the outdoor shower and gasp when the water hits her back, as sharp as needles against the angry pink flush of her shoulders where she was too lazy to reapply sunscreen more than twice.
Read moreMORNING GLORY-ISH MUFFINS
The air is cool, the heat of the day diffusing into the canopy of trees overhead. A breeze drifts in from off the river, ruffling the leaves of the quaking aspen that ring the campsite. Jack is stomping through the low bushes in the distance, his arms full of sticks for kindling. He drops the pile next to the fire pit and brushes the dirt from his shorts. His t-shirt is a soft faded navy with the words CHARLIE DON’T SURF emblazoned across the back. (Because she’s never been a fifteen year old boy, she doesn’t get the reference to Apocalypse Now.)
Read moreFUDGY CHOCOLATE CONDENSED MILK COOKIES
The market is part farmstand and part gourmet food store: a classic Hamptons dichotomy. The low-slung building is white and pretty, with a forest green awning on one end and large white cotton umbrellas standing sentinel over the picnic tables out front. Inside, strands of tiny globe lights criss-cross from the wooden rafters. The cool cement floor is painted a dusty moss green. Tables hold baskets of produce: shiny purple fairytale eggplant the size of your thumb, knobby heirloom tomatoes striped red and orange, bunches of carrots—still streaked with dirt from the ground—propped up at jaunty angles.
Read moreDOUBLE STREUSEL COFFEE CAKE
It’s only 10 AM when she gets back to the apartment, but there’s music coming from the end of the hallway. It’s Martha and the Vandellas, which means Hadley’s in a particularly good mood, because Motown is her happy music (followed by reggaeton and anything by the Rolling Stones). She drops her keys with a clang in the glazed ceramic Astier de Villatte bowl that sits on their entryway table and sits down on the rattan bench to untie her shoes and peel off her socks.
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