Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who's celebrating. I wish you good food, easy cleanup, and plenty of time to relax.

The Boy and I are doing ham instead of turkey for the second year in a row. We ordered it, along with a bunch of side dishes, from the local snooty gourmet market, so all I have to do is make dessert, which is the fun part. I've ( Read more... )

( GBBO neepery )

To all who are celebrating, may your next year be sweet.

I love it when a High Holiday starts on a weekend (long weekend in this case), 'cause then I have the whole day free to prepare all the tasty, tasty things. Right now I have tzimmes bubbling away in the slow cooker, the apple cinnamon cake cooling on the counter, and the challah dough waiting ( Read more... )

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I got some awesome red currants from the Russian grocery down the road. Some I put into muffins, and some I made into an awesome sauce for the pork chops we had for dinner last night. But I still have about two cups left, and I can't decide what to do with them. So, as usual, I let the internet decide for me.

View ( Read more... )

Today marks exactly 14 years since The Boy and I met for our first date, after first connecting on-line. (We know the exact date because The Boy, who is apparently more prescient than I was, saved his movie ticket from that night.)

I wanted to make something nice for us to celebrate with tonight, and I've been watching Nadiya Bakes on Netflix, so I ( Read more... )

I have the day off today, yay!

With a four-day weekend ahead and no social oligations whatsoever, I've gone into a bit of a baking frenzy. Yesterday I made dough for gingerbread cookies to be chilled overnight, and also baked some creme brulees, but haven't torched them yet -- I'll do that just before I serve them at dinner. This morning I'm ( Read more... )

I tried two new recipes yesterday, and they both came out really good. The first was the challah bread from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day book. I halved the recipe to make just one ginormous loaf instead of two, and sprinkled on both poppy and sesame seeds, and I think this was the tastiest challah I've ever made. I had to use all my ( Read more... )

Why yes, I do stress-bake, why do you ask?

Salted Caramel Cake for the Boy's birthday. This was pretty labor intensive but totally worth it for the sugary decadence. I now know how to make caramel, yay! Also, Swiss meringue buttercream is awesome, I'm frosting all my cakes with it from now on.

Pita bread:

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Today was The Boy's birthday, and since going out for a nice dinner like we'd normally do was not an option, I channeled all my stress-baking impulses into making him a fancy cake. The Boy loves caramel, so I used this recipe, which has caramel in the cake batter and the frosting, and caramel syrup poured on top. (I baked it in two 8" pans because ( Read more... )

The new season of Great British Bake-off got me in the mood for baking myself, so I checked out their website and found a recipe for citrus Madeira cake that looked promising. I used Meyer lemons for the citrus, and the result came out pretty darn nic, if I say so myself.


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