This silky, slightly sweet soup with a kick makes any rainy day feel cozy.

There's something so cheerful about cupcakes, right? And luckily, it's really not that hard to make gluten-free cupcakes successfully.

I've gone back to the basics –– these cookies are adapted from The Joy of Cooking.

Instead of making a dozen different kinds of cookies this Christmas, I'm only making these. And I'm not sending tins of them to friends, making an epic trip to the post office to show off my baking skills. We're just going to be munching some in the next few weeks, enjoying every bite.

These are only slightly sweet, in anticipation of the thick rich frosting waiting to sugar them up even more. If you want to eat them plain, I'd bump up the sugar even more. They have the soft bite of snow under boots, the flakiness of that snow first falling, and the ephemeral pleasure of the first storm of winter. (Snow is on my mind. The Chef misses it, terribly.)

We made a little simple syrup for the top and dusted them with powdered sugar. But buttercream frosting and the green sprinkles from our childhood would be fabulous too.

SERVINGS
Makes about 15 to 20 cookies, depending on the shapes.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup potato starch
1/2 cup sweet rice flour
1/2 cup amaranth flour
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch fresh nutmeg

PREPARATION
1. Place all the flours in a medium-sized bowl. Whisk them together. Slowly, sift them through a fine-mesh sieve into another bowl. Add the xanthan gum, baking powder, and salt. Whisk together. Set aside.
2. Stir the butter (or let the beater attachment of the stand mixer do it for you). Add the sugar and cream them together until they are just combined. Add the two eggs and vanilla extract and beat for a couple of minutes more. Throw in the pinch of nutmeg and stir one last time.
3. Sift the dry ingredients into the liquids, one cup at a time. When the entire mixture is combined and well integrated, you are done. It should be a thick batter, not entirely stick to the touch, but not as stiff as traditional rolled cookie dough. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.
4. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature. Don't let it reach complete pliability. The dough should still be rather stiff from the refrigeration. Preheat the oven to 375°.
5. Roll out the cookie dough between two pieces of parchment paper (saves on gluten-free flour on the board). This dough doesn't go paper thin, so you'll have cookie with a bite to them. Cut out with your favorite shapes.
6. Bake for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on your oven and how crisp you like them. Let them cool for 10 minutes before eating them. I know. Try.

Packed with nutrition, sweet with dried fruit, and compact for the hand, power bars and granola bars have taken over the land. However, most of the commercially packaged ones have gluten in them. And other kinds of bars, while mostly good, grow bland after awhile.

So I set out to learn how to make my own. While the Chef held the baby and played with her, I set up in the kitchen: all ingredients arrayed out; saucepan, casserole dish, and big bowl waiting; good music on the player. While he's home, I sometimes take my space and make the kitchen my own again. Half an hour later I was dancing to Bill Frisell and patting down the last of the granola mix into the pan. Life felt good in that moment.

There are so many ways to make granola bars. I was inspired by Heidi Swanson's recipe in Super Natural Cooking and a dozen more I found on the internet. This is really only a template. Find the fruit you like best. Play with cereals and grains. Use honey instead of agave. Just find a way, as I did, to make these. They're sweet and nutritious, crunchy and chewy at the same time, and really quite addictive. And with their density preventing me from eating more than one at a time, they'll be around for a bit, waiting for me in that emergency situation where I have to eat now, but there's no time to eat.

SERVINGS
20

INGREDIENTS
2 cups rolled oats, certified gluten-free
1 cup hazelnuts
1 cup agave nectar syrup
1 cup muscovado brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup brown rice cereal
2 cups mixed dried fruit (here I used mangoes, raisins, and cranberries)

PREPARATION
1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Line a small casserole dish with parchment paper. (If you want thick granola bars, use a small casserole dish. For thin ones, choose a larger casserole dish).
2. Slide the oats and hazelnuts onto a baking sheet and into the oven. Let them toast, turning them once in a while, for about ten minutes.
3. While those are toasting, put the agave nectar syrup, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, and sea salt into a saucepan. On medium heat, bring the syrup to a slow boil. Set aside.
4. In a bowl, combine the toasted oats and hazelnuts, the sunflower seeds, brown rice cereal, and dried fruit. Pour the syrup over this concoction and stir it all up, making sure everything is evenly coated.
5. Pat the mixture into the casserole dish, on top of the parchment paper. Smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Put the dish into the oven to bake.
6. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how crunchy you want the bars to be. Allow them to cool for at least an hour before cutting them up into bars. (You'll probably have to hack at them a bit. These aren't soft granola bars).

Slightly Cakey, Chewy and Moist, Chocolate Arriving in Melted Chunks

Dark as lava, as moist as the ground in Seattle in November, and rich in chocolate goodness, these cupcakes are addictive. Add some coffee ganache frosting, and you're pretty much in heaven.

Who needs to feel deprived this holiday?

I remember my mom making biscuits from scratch some evenings. Now, I realize she used Bisquick as the base. What does that matter?

She still put them together with her capable hands, cut through the pillowy dough with an antique cutter given to her by her mother, and pulled the golden warmth from the oven to our oohs and ahhs. I remember standing beside her in the kitchen one day, when I was about seven or eight, and watching her hands make biscuits. They seemed so sure, so reassuring. I wondered if I would ever be that strong.

Sometimes, it doesn't have to be complicated. On Monday morning, the chef made us breakfast. We both felt so indolent. We didn't have to rush to be anywhere. Our muscles had started to relax.

He emerged from the kitchen with roasted potatoes, melted Drunken Goat cheese, eggs over easy, and this little flourish on top.

"What's that?" I asked, excited.

One of those slow afternoons, I came home and peered into the refrigerator. Glimpsing my latest creation, I grabbed the crème fraîche and decided to make something up with it, on the spot. My tastebuds remembered a lemony crème fraîche sauce over chicken I had made many times before, based on something I read first on Luisa’s site. In the first weeks of our relationship, I made some for the Chef, and he approved.

But I didn’t want chicken. I wanted pasta.

When They're Covered in Goat Cheese and Herbed Olive Oil, How Could The Gluten Free Girl Not Learn to Love Beets?

At first, you might think this dish sounds strange. Who makes potatoes with pasta? Let me tell you, I will, from now on.

The Chef kept saying, “Wait until you try this salad.” He was making some French concoction, with frisee and bacon and a poached egg. (I’m a poached-egg girl, which he didn’t even know then.) He asked me to sit down on the couch, and wait. So I did.

I love sweet and salty together. Time was I went to the movies and bought a tub of popcorn and tossed in a carton of Milk Duds. Strange, but fabulous. But now, I can't have either one for the gluten. And I'm probably better off for it. But still, I love that taste combination.

So all day, I was dreaming up this blackberry sauce atop sauteed salmon. I had it all planned in my mind for dinner.

I know I'm not supposed to say this, because I'm the one who made up the recipe, but my god that was good. It needed a little time to rest and thicken up on its own before putting it on the fish. But it exploded in my mouth with joy, just the way something with blackberries should.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 pint of fresh blackberries
1/4 cup of water
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup of brown sugar/less of high-quality honey (like the chestnut from Tuscany)
two teaspoons of cornstarch
pinch of cayenne pepper (for punch)
splash of balsamic vinegar

PREPARATION
1. Cook the blackberries and water in a saucepan until the berries are soft and starting to fall apart. Take off the burner and put the blackberries into a sieve. Push through until you have extracted all the liquid.

2. Put the liquid back into the saucepan and bring to heat. Throw in the lemon juice, the cornstarch, the sweetener of your choice, the chili pepper, and the tiniest splash of balsamic vinegar. (I'm going to try the fig balsamic vinegar on my shelves.) Heat until it's thickened, slightly, and you sense it's done. Immediately spoon over sauteed salmon.

It doesn't get easier than this recipe for rich peanut butter cookies.

A few weeks ago, when I was on Vashon with my nephew Elliott, he looked at me and said, with real glee: “Let’s make fruit salad!” Apparently, he and his mom have been cutting up fruit and throwing it into a bowl, and calling it fruit salad. This entices Elliott to eat more fruit - it’s mixed up together!

So I stood in the kitchen with my brother, and Elliott standing on a chair, cutting up fruit into uniform pieces and putting it all in a large, plastic bowl. Andy and I both cut, quickly. Elliott’s sole contribution was to reach into the bowl, grab a piece of banana or orange, and say, "Can I eat this?" By the time we were finished, we only had half a fruit salad, because Elliott had eaten the rest.

These brownies are adapted from one of the best brownie recipes in the world. That is, if you like a fudgy brownie, unadorned with any fillers. These have a crackly top, with a discernible texture as your teeth bite down. And beneath them? Pure, smooth chocolate, as rich as flourless chocolate torte. These are rich, and only to be indulged in once in a while. (In fact, when I made the one-year anniversary dinner for the Chef and me, I made these brownies instead of flourless chocolate torte. He didn't mind.)

We believe in celebrating. This celebratory lemonade was inspired by a stroll through the farmers’ market with Tea. After a long talk over paper plates piled high with groundnut stew and braised collard greens, we sauntered through the stalls, admiring the produce. She said, “Where is everyone getting the lemonade?” We saw little glass bottles with milky yellow liquid in every kid’s hands. The stand for Woodring Farms had a blue cooler filled with ice and little bottles. We had to buy one.

A few weeks ago, I took a little jaunt to ChefShop, one of my favorite food resources in the world. A fabulous online store, ChefShop is physically located in Seattle, just five minutes from our home. That makes me one lucky girl. Among the other delectables and goodies I found on their shelves, I spotted a Sorrento lemon olive oil from Italy. When the knowledgeable staff member put it into my hands, and began to tell me the story of how the olives and lemons are crushed together, my brain snapped to attention.

Lemon olive oil cookies.