Whether you’re looking for breakfast ideas before the kids head off to the bus stop, back to school treats to pack in their lunch boxes, after school snacks for kids, or a treat to wrap in a care package for your college student, I’ve got ideas for every palate (yes, even the most persnickety will find something here!).
It’s 90°F in the shade and I just can’t bring myself to fire up the oven today. So, the only reasonable thing to do is make a 4th of July Baked Alaska with homemade ice cream and top it with flaming meringue. If you don’t want to make your own ice cream, then just get your favorite store-bought brand and layer them up in a loaf pan. I used strawberry, coconut, and blueberry ice creams to create the red, white, and blue stripes. Okay, they’re pink, cream and purple, but the intention was right and I say close enough.
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I went to LA and met someone I have admired for years on instagram, not only for his beautiful photos of delicious food, but also his generosity and quickness to laugh and enjoy himself while he works. Donal and Sofie Skehan are even more delightful, funny and inviting in person than they appear on instagram, which is a nearly impossible statement. We chatted like old friends as their adorable son, Noah, smashed strawberry, after strawberry into his eager mouth. We then set out to create a Lemon Curd Fool with Summer Berry Salsa. First we went into his yard to pick the lemons off the tree, as one does in LA. I had so much fun and at the end we got to eat our delicious dessert together. Such a wonderful visit and you can watch Donal and I FOOLing around in the kitchen on his incredible YouTube channel (video below) and I’ve shared the lemon curd fool recipe there as well.
The perfect popover is crisp on the outside, tender and airy on the inside and at its very best when served right from the oven. This is a super easy and yet very impressive recipe, that even a first time baker can master and feel like they’ve made magic.
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This is an updated post from one of my very first blogging efforts back in 2007. The recipe is wonderful, but my photos were a bit rough back then. You can see them at the end of this post, I kept them because I am sentimental and a reminder of how far my photos have come ;). This Holiday Sugar Cookies recipe is perfect for simple cut-out cookies and for building a more intricate house. I live in a big house that makes me think of a wedding cake. I have been meaning to create it out of cookies since I moved in and I finally did. It was so much fun, I think it will become an annual tradition and I imagine I’ll get more and more detailed with every try. I am lucky to have the original blueprints for the house, which made it easier to trace the outline of the house.
My cookie house was featured in Architectural Digest, which you can see here.
2007 Post: My aunt Kristin is a great collector of recipes. She sends me packages of them, often! The recipes come from magazines, books, cooking shows, gourmet grocery stores, and various people she meets. They are far too numerous to try all of them, but I use them as a constant source of inspiration. This past week, just in time for Christmas she sent me a sugar cookie recipe by Dorie Greenspan she had clipped from Bon Appetit, and a set of snowflake cookie cutters. I am always searching for the perfect sugar cookie. I’m not sure yet if this is THE ONE, but it is really great. The flavor is not too sweet, slightly lemony (because I added the lemon zest) and the texture is crisp but not at all tough.
I decorated the holiday sugar cookies and house with royal Icing made with lemon juice, which is tasty, quite stunning, and strong enough to hold up as the glue for the house. I’ll admit that I love the fussy work of intricate decorations on sugar cookies. It is the closest I will come to ever using my BFA from college. If you don’t share my enthusiasm for precision piping then sprinkle them with colored sugar like my boys did and they are delicious and festive!
Obviously, this recipe and technique are great for Valentine’s Day, Easter, and any other holiday or special occasion when you celebrate with sweets! Which means every day…
See my Instagram video for baking, decorating, and assembling tips.
Read MoreLooking for video tutorials? Check out my Cake Basics series on YouTube! You’ll learn how to trim and slice, how to fill a layer cake, how to crumb coat and how to decorate!
This Honeycomb Banana Layer Cake is inspired by Cadbury Crunchie Bar candy my husband ate as a child growing up in Montreal. He’s been asking me to recreate the chocolate covered honeycomb (sponge toffee) candy and I am finally getting around to it. Now that I’ve had it, I regret not making it decades ago. I made this banana cake with a coffee flavored honey meringue buttercream, the honeycomb candy seemed just the right garnish for the top. The name comes from the honeycomb look of the candy and not because honey is in the ingredients. I added a touch of honey, just because it seems like it should be in there, but that’s not the traditional way Cadbury Crunchie Bars were made. You can watch me make this cake and honeycomb candy in my instagram video.
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