This recipe is made with Pomona’s pectin, which allows us to use about half as much sugar as most traditional pepper jelly recipes. That said, it still uses a good amount of sugar, because otherwise all you’re really tasting is peppers and vinegar. It’s the sugar that brings it all together and mellows out the vinegar too.

(Don’t miss the free printable labels available at the bottom of this post!)

Let’s be clear: this is not a spicy raspberry jam recipe. This is a true pepper jelly first and foremost, with a hint of raspberry second.

I did a similar twist on pepper jelly a few years back with my Cranberry Pepper Jelly (add it to your Thanksgiving menu and thank me later). The fruit adds such wonderful nuance to the pepper jelly, especially since peppers on their own are mostly spice with not a ton of underlying flavor.

I actually think this same process would work for blackberries, blueberries, or even strawberries too!

Every baker should have a go-to classic banana bread recipe, even if it is only used as a foundation for countless mix-ins and variations. This recipe is exactly that: with a moist crumb and robust flavor it is more than satisfying on its own, but oh so easy to add mix-ins like chocolate chips or nuts to make your own perfect loaf (which is undoubtedly different than my perfect loaf or your aunt’s perfect loaf or… well, you get the idea).

My recipe archives have been missing a basic banana bread recipe for some time now (or as Taylor would say, plain a$$ banana bread). This brown butter banana bread is about as close to basic as you’re going to get (you’re welcome).

The key to this banana bread’s simple perfection is (obviously) the brown butter, which adds a rich and nutty and almost caramelized flavor that compliments the banana beautifully. It’s also well balanced, with enough sugar to keep it moist and tender (too little sugar = dry dry dry), and also a dollop of full fat sour cream that adds moisture and body (too little fat = even drier).

The sour cream is an addition inspired by my sour cream coffee cake and also sour cream chocolate cake; I figured, if it works that well for ultra-moist coffee cake and chocolate cake, it should work equally well for banana bread too! I first tested this theory in miniature in my banana bread muffins, and now it’s incorporated into my full size banana bread recipe as well.

Passionfruit is one of the most intensely flavored fruits, with a tart acidity that rivals that of any artificially flavored ‘sour’ candy (love Sour Patch Kids? Then you’ll adore these!) Made with just a few simple ingredients including passionfruit pulp, sugar, and pectin, these passionfruit jellies have a natural passionfruit flavor that is bold and bright and will send your tastebuds flying.

Pâte de fruit is a sugar-based confection that relies on pectin for its setting power rather than gelatin, which gives these candies a unique, jammy texture that practically melts in your mouth (unlike the “bouncy” chewiness of a gummy bear, for example). That also means that, unlike gelatin-based gummies, pate de fruit is entirely vegetarian (and, if you buy organic or vegan sugar, also vegan!)

Pectin-set candies are a bit more involved than gelatin-based ones, as you do need to cook the sugar and fruit mixture to a very specific temperature to achieve the ideal texture. That means pull out your most accurate digital thermometer (psst, have you calibrated it recently?)

You’ll also need to carefully manage the pH (acidity) of your fruit mixture, as we want the pectin to set, yes, but only at the end when it’s reached the appropriate temperature (otherwise you’ll just end up with a pot full of molten gloop). This is achieved by buffering the pH with baking soda, cooking the mixture up to temperature, then adding citric acid to bring down the pH back to where we want it for the pectin to set and for the passionfruit flavor to pop.

But the final result, when you bite into that first sugar-dusted square, is a bright pop of tropical flavor that will tickle your tastebuds in all the right ways. It’s intensely tart and perfectly sweet, with a satisfying texture that’s delicate and jammy and effortlessly melts onto your tongue.

These eye-catching black sesame amaretti cookies might look colorless, but they are certainly not flavorless! With an intense roasted black sesame flavor that’s supported by the nutty almond, this Asian-inspired twist on a classic Italian cookie is both surprising and satisfying, not to mention visually stunning with dark gray crackles peeking through a snow white powdered sugar coating.

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve published a new amaretti flavor, and dare I say this one might be my favorite yet?

I’ll be honest I didn’t expect them to be quite so good the first time I made them. Usually my first go at any recipe is like throwing spaghetti at the wall, just to see what happens. It started with a spark of an idea that came to me while looking at the various nuts, seeds, and powders stashed in my pantry that made me think, “what if I swapped out some of the almond flour with finely ground black sesame seeds?” In this case that hunch that turned into a munch (we devoured the first batch in no time!)

With a deep and nutty flavor from the brown butter, a hearty kick of banana flavor, and studded with a mix of semisweet and dark chocolate pieces that melt into luscious puddles of molten chocolate in the oven, these lengthily-named cookies will become a fast favorite.

So we’ve done BBCCCs (brown butter chocolate chip cookies), but what about BBBBCCCs (brown butter BANANA BREAD chocolate chip cookies)? Indeed, adding a banana to my favorite cookie recipe makes for a cookie that tastes like a perfect mashup between chocolate chip cookies and banana bread.

The idea for this recipe came about when Taylor — who has a banana every morning for breakfast — somehow wound up with an extra banana that quickly turned (let’s just say he likes his bananas medium rare, even a speck of brown and he won’t touch it). I couldn’t very well let that sad, lonely banana go to waste, but given that it was just a single banana, it wasn’t quite enough to make a loaf of banana bread or even my banana bread muffins, at least without more math than my morning brain was willing to do.

But I figured banana cookies sounded pretty good, so why not?

Turns out you can’t just go adding banana to cookie recipes willy-nilly though. Since bananas have a high water content, simply adding banana will lead to puffy, cakey cookies. And I, for one, am not a fan of cakey cookies (whoopie pies being the one and only exception).

To make up for the extra water content, I removed the whole egg, leaving just egg yolk, and removed the splash of milk as well (the banana more than makes up for the water lost while browning the butter, which is why the milk is there to begin with). A single egg yolk combined with the equivalent of one small banana is enough to give these cookies a fudgy, toothsome, and borderline-gooey texture that is anything but cakey.