Hi. I’m Isabel, I cook and scribble. I make a lot of food and do a lot of writing, and Bread & Courage is what I have to show for it. It started as a simple food blog called TASTE but evolved into something more—a place where I express my love of food, community and the environment. Thanks for spending some time here—and be in touch!
I like to push my desserts to the edge of imperfection, cookies especially. A dough that has been taken to its richest point is typically on the verge of crumbling, fragile and delicious with the weight of so much butter and sugar. These latticed cookies are a mighty fine example of what can happen when [...]
Enough with the vegetables. As excited as the smell of roasting cauliflower makes me, there’s nothing quite as nice as the scent of dough rising—especially when I know each bite will yield a few hunks of chocolate. I had been mulling over some ideas on how to make a more interesting brownie, when last Friday [...]
Until my Aunt Lorraine brought buckeyes into our home, food was just food. Discovering the finer flavors in life doesn’t usually come via a plate of peanut butter and chocolate, but this is precisely how it went for me. As a child, I lusted for the simple, forbidden things: Lucky Charms; McDonald’s chicken nuggets; Charleston [...]
I’ve been baking a lot of cookies lately, recreating my past. It’s funny how many cookies there are out there—and which ones happen to remind me of being a small thing at Christmas. Sneaking batter from something unfamiliar, no matter how good it tastes, just doesn’t bring me back to where I want to be. [...]
This weekend I had my cake and ate it, too—in so many ways. I was having difficulty deciding whether to make chocolate cupcakes or a chocolate cake for a birthday. Since the celebrant would likely be taking his gift to the office, I was torn. There' s something not so festive about lighting candles in [...]
You read right: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, smooth and crunchy peanut butter are supplemented by chocolate wafer cookies, graham cracker crumbs and old fashioned oats to make these dense, but crunchy-topped brownies. My relationship to these squares is one of a mother to an accidental babe. At first, they seemed cursed by the seed of [...]
Most people are supportive of my food experimentation. This may be because few are actually forced to taste everything I produce, and can comfortably come and go online, peering at my haphazard creations from a safe, virtual distance.But one reader had a recent complaint: “You never make anything with frosting.”Catherine, these are for you… and [...]
If you' ve ever had François Payard' s flourless chocolate cookies with walnuts, you know what transcendent bliss feels like. If you' ve never had François Payard’s flourless chocolate cookies, get yourself one and get the Kingdom of God within you, bite by heavenly bite.
If you can' t make it to Payard in New York [...]
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. -Al E.
These evolved as the center of a ball of time. My evening of baking was like recreating the Earth in edible layers: at the inner core were the [...]
