We’re gonna be honest: we did not cook a lot this year. Blame it on catching up on two years of lost time socializing, dining out, galavanting globally, and just generally being Outside. We did our best, though. Sometimes our best was calling toast with butter and jam lunch or a bag of BjornQorn dinner. Other times it was avoiding risk and making the same five recipes we’ve waxed poetic to you about for years. The rest of the time it was supporting restaurants in our neighborhoods and far beyond them (in the name of economic growth!).
All that is to say we both still think about food and spend more time in the kitchen than the average person arguably should. So here are the fudgy cakes, slurp-able pastas, sharp salads, bean-filled burritos, and chewy, crunchy cookies that fueled us in this strange year, and the recipes to recreate them at home. We’ve also rounded up our best bites of 2022. Maybe one or two will make it into your best bites of 2023. And without getting too corny in this very corn-centric year, the world is a very different place than it was in September 2020 (when we started writing Sifted), and we appreciate those of you who have been reading, and cooking, and just generally bearing with us since then. As always, our ears and eyes and inboxes are open to any and all inquiries when you just can’t seem to answer, “What should I eat?”
OUR FAVORITE RECIPES OF 2022
Gab’s Best:
Marshmallow Frosting: I never stop baking in the summer. Instead, I blast all 3 ACs and make big, beautiful birthday cakes for my friends whose birthdays fall between June and August (almost all of them). Once those big, beautiful birthday cakes are finished, I have to travel — by subway, foot or bike — to a restaurant, up the eponymous slope of Park Slope, or to another borough, making sure it stays at best, presentable and at the least, in one piece. This marshmallow frosting is the only reason I was able to do that successfully so many times this year. Super sturdy and much less sensitive to the blaring city heat, any pokes or dents can be toasted over with a mini blow torch (or lighter), or mended with a small spatula (or finger). Watching the warm egg whites and sugar whip into a sweet, silky fluff is pretty magical, and once it’s done, you have a durable icing ready to pair with an endless list of cakes: dense chocolate, buttery lemon, airy white, rich coconut.
Classic Cookies: Unsurprisingly, hundreds, maybe thousands, of cookies came out of my oven this year. The ones I think about most often, though, are these classic black and white cookies. Both the deep chocolate and lemon-spiked vanilla icings hardened delightfully despite ditching the corn syrup the recipe called for. Spreading said icings onto each delicate, cakey cookie was also simpler than I expected it to be. With a small offset spatula, they practically ice themselves. Another favorite is one you should know by now. This recipe for brown butter chocolate chip cookies yields classic but complex cookies, with Tate’s-like edges and doughy, caramel-like centers that taste deeply of butter, brown sugar and vanilla. It calls for chunks of toffee in addition to chocolate wafers, but I implore you to get creative. A combination of super bitter dark chocolate and sweet, creamy butterscotch chips, gently crumbled halva, swirls of Nutella (or this fancy version).
Dream Breakfast Burrito: Earlier this fall, I developed a breakfast burrito recipe for Heyday, a new brand of delicious canned beans. The coconut curry chickpeas are creamy and spiced, wonderful over a bowl of warm jasmine rice or heated up with a little extra coconut milk and wilted spinach. The beans that really called to me, though, were their enchilada black beans. Spicy, smoky and almost creamy — the sauce they swim in almost reminds me of mole. They pair perfectly with buttery scrambled eggs, crunchy pickled onions, lime and cilantro-specked feta, a baked corn tortilla in the middle and a stretchy, crispy flour one wrapped around everything.
Court’s Best:
Melted Pastas: It’s no secret — I won’t shut up about Carla Lalli Music’s melted cauliflower pasta recipe. The method for slow-cooking until the cauliflower is deeply caramelized and reminiscent of toasted breadcrumbs was a game changer for me, an adult baby who still struggles to find ways to eat vegetables that don’t boil down to, “okay you take one bite of veggies, then you get one bite of bread.” I put that same low-and-slow method to the test with squash, zucchini, and eggplant to great success, transforming all these generally water-logged, kind of lackluster veggies into robust, umami-filled pasta sauces I liken to Alison’s beloved shallot pasta. Speaking of pastas, this lentil bolognese was on repeat this year, as were endless riffs on JJ McFadden’s kale pesto and this miso-pesto, two fail-safe ways to pack greens into dinner without knowing it if you, say, ate toast for breakfast and BjornQorn for lunch.
Fennel & Celery Salad: Alongside all those pastas I made and remade (and remade) the Misi fennel salad, which is (unsurprisingly considering its origins) the perfect foil to heavy, cheesy pastas. Crunchy and acidic, it’s got a lovely balance of salt, acid, and richness. I use what I have in terms of nuts (hazelnuts, pistachios, pine nuts, sliced and toasted almonds all do well) and I like to add a little suprêmed citrus like orange, grapefruit, or pomelo. On their own, I don’t like raw celery or fennel, but somehow this salad builds them into something irresistibly delicious, a testament to its power. I’m also brave enough to admit that I made many versions of the TikTok green goddess salad for lunch this year—not so much the dressing as her method of making mirepoix of every veggie and scooping it into chips like some kind of fridge-cleanout pico de gallo. Even more veggie-eating sorcery to fool myself into having enough fiber to sustain my wretched gut.
Gianduja Cakes: We were lucky enough to get sent a few jars of Ghia’s chocolate-hazelnut spread early in the year, and it showed in what I baked. From adding a half cup into the batter of my favorite flourless chocolate cake recipe to drizzling it on an orange-laced olive oil cake to my most recent favorite: thickening it with a tablespoon or two of powdered sugar and smearing that into Melissa Clark’s babka recipe. With hints of floral olive oil and orange zest, the lightly bittersweet gianduja filling was a welcome contrast to the frankly overwhelming cocoa crumb topping.
Shortbread, Shortbread, Shortbread: Though technically called “Cultured Butter Cookies”, I’ve riffed on this recipe time and time again and dear readers, it never misses. I’ve added teaspoons of spice blends (the Diaspora chai is exemplary here), powdered tea (matcha, genmaicha, & hojicha), and citrus zests. I’ve tie-dyed, checkerboarded, swirled, and speckled. Three things remain consistent: I always roll into little slice-and-bake logs, coat said logs of dough in sanding or turbinado sugar, and bake until the cookies are melt-in-your-mouth buttery and tender. Next on my list? Add a few teaspoons of powdered freeze-dried corn for a cornbread inspired cookie, perhaps baked in the shape of a head of corn?! When the recipe is this simple, you can afford to be extra.
BBOTY (BEST BITES OF THE YEAR)
Gab’s Best:
Via Carota’s Prosciutto & Pea Salad: All of you rep Via’s insalata verde tower hard, but I’d like us all to pay a bit more attention to its cousin, the prosciutto and pea salad. The same soft leaves wear a creamy, slightly funky dressing that according to their new cookbook, is the insalata verde’s dressing blended with robiola cheese. Between each piece of lettuce are salty slices of prosciutto, so fatty they melt on your tongue and tiny, sweet peas that burst between your teeth.
ACQ Chocolate Milk Bread: Part of being a Carroll Gardens Girl means exclusively buying your bread from ACQ Bread Co. They have a table at the greenmarket on Carroll Street every Sunday, though the line gets long early and stays that way until every loaf is gone. I prefer stopping by the actual bakery, where the smell of crusty, yeasty bread warms the entire corner. I love the chewy, seedy living bread, and their new rye-adjacent mountain bread for toasting and making sandwiches with, but nothing tops the slightly tangy milk bread riddled with hunks of both sweet milk and bitter dark chocolate. The nutty, grainy cookies are a treat, too.
Everything at Cafe Spaghetti: I’ve been a Cafe Spaghetti head since before their doors even opened. I would jog past the empty space every morning just to peek my head in and check out how construction was coming along. A tiny Italian restaurant, called Cafe Spaghetti, less than 5 minutes from my home was always going to be a treat, but said restaurant surpassing my expectations… well, that's a gift from the Carroll Gardens gods. The kitchen churns out perfectly sized bowls of silky, sweet spaghetti pomodoro, bitter spaghetti spritzes garnished with 3 fat Castelvetrano olives, bolognese that hides in the grooves of wonderfully oversized fusilli noodles and most importantly, huge chunks of cream-forward tiramisu.
Court’s Best:
Lil’ Deb’s Tamales: It was a banner year for me and tamales. Just last week I had a life-affirming one at La Super-Rica in Santa Barbara. But the best among them was the ones from Lil Deb’s Oasis in Hudson, thanks in part to the zebra-like drizzle of green & coconut sauces.
Kolaches at Yellow Rose: We ate so, so many delicious things at Yellow Rose this year but their kolaches hold a special place in my heart. Stuffed full of seasonal goodies like corn & habanada peppers and blueberries or citrus jam and cream cheese, the ethereal, fluffy dough with just a hint of sweet glaze gets me every time.
All the Ice Cream in LA: Bagels be damned, but LA has NYC beat on ice cream, especially when it comes to dairy-free. I spent five weeks in the city of angels last year eating flavors like Japanese Neopolitan at Wanderlust, Corn-Almond at Magpie’s, Turkish Coffee Chip at Ginger’s, Ube-Matcha soft serve swirls at SomiSomi, and every perfectly floral flavor of Mashti Malone’s stretchy Persian ice cream. I still dream of their Faloodeh-laced sorbets, with tart, fruity bases flecked with chewy, crunchy rice noodles. I’ll take Faloodeh over sprinkles any day.
Everything at Gaby’s Bakery: If you haven’t attended Gab’s pop up bakeries in NYC… honestly, WYD? Her pillowy, plush, buttery bites have been some of my best this year. From banana cake filled with caramelized banana jam to her inimitable cheesy scones to a ridiculous coconut-black sesame number we dreamed up together over the summer, each menu is better than the last.
