FOOD

These Brown Sugar Meringue Cookies are a perfect kind of chic sweet. On a recent trip to Des Moines on a shoot for BH&G I asked fab photographer Andy Lyons to grab a quick image of the meringues for me. I didn’t plan on the top cookie giving anyone the bird, but I’m kind of glad it did. Perfectly funny! -Libbie Summers

Green handsaw. Pink sword. Gold pistol. What prison inmate thought up these toys for Cracker Jacks, anyway? As a kid, I’d devour box after box of the crunchy caramel-coated popcorn snack, all the while questioning what kind of person came up with this “surprise inside” marketing plan. Then one day, Cracker Jacks became cool. Suddenly, my “surprise inside” was a small book of temporary tattoos, a kid’s very definition of awesome. This recipe for my grownup version has a rich, crunchy, deep molasses flavor, as well as its own “surprise inside”—a hint of cayenne to finish each bite. 

I had never seen a Scotch egg until I saw Ewen MacIntosh’s character, Keith, eat one on the BBC version of The Office. Then I became obsessed. Since that episode, I have been lucky enough to travel across the pond and sample Scotch eggs in my father’s own motherland. I found that nearly all I sampled were a perfect size for Keith’s gargantuan mouth, but way too big for the average piehole. I applied a little bit of bird-dog ingenuity and came up with the answer: Scottish Quail Eggs. A perfect fit for most mouths. The tarragon mustard sauce is...

Take everything that is good and holy in this world and roll it in raw sugar and minced crystallized ginger and you’ll experience the magic of these Jacked-up Ginger Cookies. I can eat twenty in the middle of a crowded yoga class that’s twenty days into a thirty-day “clean program”—and still feel good about myself. You will too.