I saw fresh yuzu in a local market and I had to buy some - even though I didn’t really have a plan for what to do with them and they were definitely on the expensive side. But I have never seen it available fresh before here.  So I grabbed a few without a clear plan, it smelled amazing, like a fresh, floral mild lemon. My sister had recently made an excellent lemon bundt cake from Claire Saffitz’s What’s for Dessert, and I was inspired to try it with the yuzu.

These cookies are so bright, fresh and sunny. They are stuffed full of tart lemon curd, and slightly vegetal from a good amount of basil pulsed into the sugar. I know it’s September, but it’s the perfect time to get all the end of summer produce while you can - your garden or farmers market is possibly still full of amazing tomatoes, incredible, fragrant basil, beautiful raspberries. These use fresh basil (don’t be tempted to substitute dried basil here), and zingy lemon curd and they taste exactly like summer.

It’s fresh apricot season. I think apricots are often overlooked, or only considered as a dried fruit. I enjoy a dried apricot, but fresh apricots are such a special fruit. I love how they are so smooth and kind of have a glowy, blushy colour from yellow to deep orange with little washes of rosy red. I love how they look like tiny, cute butts. They are fuzzy like peaches, but the fuzz is so much shorter and softer. They are mild and sweet and taste like summer. Stone fruit generally goes really well with almond, and I thought it would be nice to make an apricot crumble with smashed amaretti cookies to give the crumble a hint of almond flavour.

I’m not always a big fan of American buttercream. It’s really sweet, and I think on a cake it’s often just so overwhelming and cloying. It can also be slightly grainy in a way I don’t usually love. But there is something about frosted sugar cookie bars that makes me love American buttercream. I absolutely wouldn’t use any other sort of frosting for these cookies. I like how it crusts over slightly so you can just break through the surface when you bite it. The flavour and texture work with these chewy, vanilla scented bar cookies. The frostings’ normally cloying and over the top sweetness feels just right for these sprinkly cookies that would look and taste right at home at a child's birthday party.

This dip has tangy, peppery, fluffy goat cheese topped with a mound of jammy roasted tomatoes roasted with plenty of garlic. It’s a quick , easy appetizer, and it would be great to take to a picnic or barbeque with some really nice bread. I also firmly believe that dip is a meal, especially when you have it with some bread and vegetables. 

It’s still rhubarb season for a little bit longer. I was thrilled to see my modest little rhubarb plant emerge this year. I would love to have a rhubarb patch and harvest lots of rhubarb, but we don’t have room for that, so I planted just one rhubarb plant last year in a large planter in our teeny back yard. It produced just a bit this year so I only pulled a few stalks to make this cobbler. I’m crossing my fingers that it will be more robust and plentiful next year. I combined it with some rhubarb from the market and some raspberries, fresh or frozen would both work.