Ben Starr

The Ultimate Food Geek

Category: Recipes

  • Ben’s Homemade Granola

    Granola is expensive in the store, and it’s packed with preservatives and high fructose corn syrup.  You can make your own granola for far less…it tastes better…it’s much healthier…and it’s fun!  This is an especially good project for kids. Rather than give you a strict recipe, I’m going to give you a formula of dry-ingredients-to-wet-ingredients…

  • Pumpkin Gingerbread Pancakes

    Pumpkin is my favorite ingredient.  In the autumn, you’d be hard pressed to find me making a dish that doesn’t include pumpkin, and I’m legendary for finding ways to use it in almost every dish. These pancakes have been served every morning after my annual fall dinner party for years.  They’re always a hit. 2…

  • Mama Starr’s Nutmeg Coffee Cake

    Mama Starr is my Dad’s mother.  She and Daddy Bill, who made his living as a barber and a Protestant minister, were always very formal, straight-laced grandparents (as opposed to Meemaw and Peepaw who were ornery and occasionally a tad bit crude when humor called for it).  This is a photograph from 1927 when Mama…

  • Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

    My friend Chef Dan was at my house the other day and said he wanted to make us his legendary cheesecake brownies.  When we went to the store to get the ingredients, he led me to the boxed cake mix section of the grocery store, and I steered him right back into the car to…

  • Bacon White Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Yes, yes…  I know.  “Bacon in a dessert?  GROSS!” I used to say the same thing, until my good friend Ross Strickland said on New Year’s Eve, “What we need tonight are some bacon white chocolate cookies.”  And for the past couple of years, all I hear about when I’m on the coasts is bacon…

  • Chocolate Covered Hazelnut Toffee

    A video tutorial is at the bottom of this recipe. I make this popular Christmas candy each year as easy, non-materialistic gifts. One batch will make 8-10 small present bundles, just wrap them in colored cellophane, tie it with some ribbon, and you’ve got a gift that will make mouths water with jealousy!  It will…

  • “Perfect” Pecan Pie (with NO CORN SYRUP option!)

    For those of you who don’t want the BETTER option of my Pumpkin Bourbon Pecan Pie recipe, here is a purist’s recipe for Pecan Pie, perfected: CRUST Feel free to make your family butter pastry recipe, but this is how I do it: 1 1/3 cups all purpose flour (I use unbleached flour) 1 tsp…

  • Pumpkin Bourbon Pecan Pie

    A video tutorial for this recipe is located at the bottom of the page… I love to bake, especially pies, even though I don’t eat dessert most of the time.  However, my two favorite pies in the world are pecan pie and, naturally, pumpkin pie.  My friends finally convinced me to meld the two pies…

  • Pumpkin Cranberry Swirl Cheesecake

    Cheesecakes aren’t easy or cheap to make, they are wickedly high in calories, but they hold this mystique over humans that is unmatched by any other dessert.  Of course, I have LOADS of cheesecake recipes, but this is my personal favorite.  As you’ll notice, I use the long-slow bake method for cheesecakes.  I did the…

  • 5-minute Molten Chocolate Lava Cake

    I developed this recipe based on the popular “Microwave Chocolate Mug Cake” that makes the email rounds every year.  That recipe was actually developed by a Spanish molecular gastronomist (basically a creative food scientist/chef) and was considered a “high cuisine” dessert, to make and serve tableside at his $200-a-plate restaurant, to the amusement of his…