Today marked my first attempt to make French Macarons. They definitely turned out much better than I expected and were delicious. We even achieved the feet. Definitely need to keep trying to get the tops a little bigger, but I think this was a fairly successful first attempt.


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Any breakfast pastry with cream cheese in it is fantastic in my book. For instance, I used to love those coffee cakes that came in the little paper box at the grocery store -- the ones with a big stripe of cream cheese filling right down the middle and stripes of fruit filling on either side. You know the ones ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago I went strawberry picking with a group of lovely food bloggers in Charlotte. It was my first time picking berries, and it was a lot of fun -- perhaps mostly because of my company! I managed to get a lot from the experience and wrote all about it in a post on Willow Bird Baking (see link below ( Read more... )

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 i gots me some feets!


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I'm a little delirious, having just driven 9 hours to Orlando, but apparently not too delirious to tell you about apple tarts. Or maybe writing a blog post about apple tarts just now proves that I AM too delirious. I can't decide ( Read more... )

I made these petit fours for my sister's Secret Garden Surprise Party in June.

The cake flavors were delicious (raspberry glaze over a moist almond-flavored cake), but my poured fondant recipe stayed gloppy at best (and therefore too sweet over the cakes) -- and, um, that wasn't the exact color I was going for. Nevertheless, we enjoyed them! ( Read more... )

I just posted a (late) Mother's Day tribute to my mama, and a thank you for this gorgeous birthday cake she made me ( Read more... )

This Raspberry Almond Braid has everything I love in a recipe: it's easy, comes together quickly, tastes amazing, and looks pretty! Hard to find recipes that meet all of those criteria!

I was actually looking around for a raspberry cream cheese coffee cake. All the recipes either seemed too fussy for a Monday morning or not quite the taste/ ( Read more... )

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