Currently viewing the tag: "lemon"
it’s a scone…it’s a shortcake…. it’s a supercookie!
this poor, poor cookie. see, i baked it over a month ago and have been depriving it of its place in the spotlight! i imagine it happened at some point while i was preparing for my trip, or just wrapped up in a crazy work and social schedule, but regardless, it is a MUST try. Continue reading »
it was sheryl’s turn to have the potluck at her house, and i decided to go with a recipe my mom had suggested for a pesto pasta salad. in the process of making this, i realized that i apparently didn’t own a steamer (shame on me). although i dirtied just about every pot in my kitchen, the pasta salad was very easy to make and came together quickly. i wanted to also bring a dessert since i think it is expected of me anywhere i go, so at the request of the host, i went with blueberry bars. they are so easy to make and everyone (including me) loves them.
Continue reading »
you may be wondering why it would seem that i have named this muffin vincent. in reality, i didn’t, well, at least not until i began writing this post.
Continue reading »
there has been a recurring theme surrounding me lately, so i felt the need to touch on it… the whole “you never know til you try” thing. with the exception of ridiculously stupid things that you should know better than to try (for example, lighting my hair on fire– pretty sure i know how that would end without trying it), this can be inspirational; might as well try if failing won’t cause much harm! i was having a conversation with my mom a week or two ago about trying new recipes and baking from scratch, when i asked her what the worst thing that would happen was, she agreed that having to throw it out wasn’t so bad. i mean, sure, i feel really guilty wasting food, but the chances of it being so bad you have to throw it out are pretty low.
Continue reading »
initially i was going to make these as creamsicle cupcakes, but since some of my health problems were acting up i would be delivering these cupcakes on monday rather than sunday (which is when i was baking) i figured buttercream icing would be better than fresh whipped cream icing, so i think they might be just orange cupcakes…. either way, they were delicious! the birthday girl is my friend liz, who was also celebrating having run her first half marathon–
Continue reading »
we all know that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade… but what if life can’t even manage to give you some lemons to make lemonade out of? what’s a girl to do on a beautiful spring day, looking for a refreshing treat?
Continue reading »
after the marathon baking session tuesday, i decided to keep it to just a few things on wednesday to avoid falling asleep in a bowl of batter– sugar cookies and some more cupcakes. the vanilla cupcakes (the amazing perfect party cake from the amazing dorie greenspan)were such a hit that i decided to modify them and put out two varieties of those instead of going with a new recipe. since they already had lemon in them i wanted to do a lemon raspberry, and for the other i went with peppermint. i was a little reluctant to mix lemon with peppermint but let me just tell you…. i took one bite and i was in love. no, seriously, best cupcakes ive ever made. EVER.
i made my rounds again, hitting the departments and friends i had missed the day before, and came to the realization that i am pretty much the opposite of the tooth fairy. i can live with that.
as i have mentioned before, i have a full-time office job and baking is what i do on the side to relax, spread some joy, and perhaps earn a little extra money. usually the balance is very heavily weighted towards my day job and baking is relegated to two or three days a week for an hour or two at a time….. but the holiday season, oh the holiday season….
yesterday i was wonder woman. around lunch time i went to the store to buy some more boxes, bags, cupcake containers, and of course a cart full of ingredients. when i returned home, i was working like a well-oiled machine–while the each item was in the oven i was preparing the next one. actually, i was a slightly in need of oil machine around 8pm, almost quite literally. while my friends andy and danielle were on their way over to grab some treats (on their way home from the gym, of course), i had to quickly run to the store to re-stock. if i saw myself in the store i would have been staring and most likely laughing– i was in flour covered oversized sweatpants tucked into my knee-high fake uggs, a henley covered in enough things that if i baked it a cake would pop up, and carrying about 4 lbs each of butter and powdered sugar. i was lucky that what not to wear and one of those eat healthy shows weren’t there to intervene…they just wouldn’t have understood. …and yes, i do own several aprons, but after a while i just conceded that i was going to be messy and took it off.
i was a bit more ambitious than time allowed so i had to save some of it for tonight or another day, but i managed to make: brownie truffles, sugar cookies, creme de menthe pudding cookies, peppermint bark, muddy buddies, vanilla cupcakes, peanut butter chocolate cupcakes, peppermint chocolate cupcakes, and a HUGE mess. by the end of the night my legs were aching from standing for so many hours (i even ate dinner standing up, in the kitchen), my arms felt like they were going to fall off from making icing, and i was mentally exhausted. i am a neat/clean freak for the most part, but i just had to clean up the big stuff and let it be. i threw as much as i could into the dishwasher and figured i would deal with it today. surprisingly, as exhausted as i was, i could not sleep. at all. i honestly don’t think i slept for more than maybe an hour at the most, and i only say that because i managed to have a dream. the good thing about not sleeping is that you don’t oversleep! i got up early, cleaned a bit, broke up the peppermint bark that had been firming up overnight, emptied the dishwasher/put the next load in, and arranged my packages for distribution. i even managed to get in to work early!
i distributed my goodies to a number of departments that have helped me and my team out this year and deserved some joy, plus my boss, and the ceo of the company. i am pretty secure in my belief that i bake well, but i have to admit i was a little nervous when sharing with the ceo! all in all, everything came out well and i have gotten rave reviews on just about everything!
maybe it is that i had ravioli for dinner three days last week. maybe it is that i am italian. maybe the folks that published this recipe don’t know the difference between what a pillow looks like in comparison to what ravioli look like. whatever the reason, these pillow cookies look a lot more like ravioli to me than they do pillows.
Continue reading »
*disclaimer: back to horrendous lighting, as it was a gloomy day… these look much better in person than these pix*
Continue reading »
