This year I decided that I would have a New Year's resolution that I could stick to. I thought about it for a while and eventually landed on baking. So with my trusty mixer and collection of pans, I set off on a 52 week baking adventure. It's been a fun journey and there have been some ups and downs, but we've finally arrived at week 52. This week I had a bunch of bananas slowly rotting on my Read more

This year I decided to pick a New Year's resolution that I could stick with, and that's how I ended up on my 52 weeks of baking adventure. We're 51 weeks in, and I've surprised my friends and myself with some interesting baked goods. It's definitely been a challenging experience; I've had some inventions that came out better than anticipated, as well as some downright disasters. Overall it's been Read more

This week, with all of the gingerbread and holiday baking, I thought it would be nice to make a simple cake to pair with coffee. Many folks have friends and family staying at their house this season and a coffee cake is something that whips up quickly and is perfect to have on hand. It works as a simple breakfast, and is delightful with an afternoon cup of tea. This particular recipe is a Read more

CasaSugar and I recently got into a debate over who could make the best gingerbread house. I hadn't actually made one from scratch ever, and was about 10 years old when I last put one together. However neither of these things stopped me from talking up how great my house would be. I had the best plans and great ideas; only problem was I didn't have a recipe and didn't know where to begin. So I Read more

This week my family has been throwing around a barrage of bad lawyer jokes. Why? My sister passed the bar and was officially sworn in as a lawyer! When I found out the good news, I thought it would be fun to celebrate by baking up something special. At first I tried to find a cake that screamed "Counselor" or "Esquire" to me, but then the obvious choice came to mind. One of her least favorite Read more

There are only a few weeks left in my 52 weeks of baking resolution, so I'm trying to find things on my "I can't believe I haven't made these before" list. Cream puffs were near the top of that list, but after last night, I'm officially able to cross them off. I found a pastry recipe that looked simple and yielded a large haul of puffs. However, instead of a traditional custard cream — there Read more

I don't know about you guys, but after a week of cooking and prepping for Thanksgiving, I am looking forward to a few days of rest and relaxation. That said, I've decided to cheat a little bit on this week's baking project. I wanted to figure out a way to use all the turkey leftovers, without causing a lot of work. So, instead of making my own pastry crust, I decided to pick up two premade crusts Read more

I originally thought I'd make a classic Thanksgiving pie for this week's baking project. However, as you may know, pie crust tends to thwart me. So instead of struggling about, I started thinking about ways to make a pie without making a pie. Eventually, I landed upon the idea of a pecan pie cookie and after a bit of googling, I found a recipe that sounded just right. The result — a thumb-print Read more

I've been out of town for a while and haven't had much time for baking. That's why this week's baking needed to be something wonderfully simple. However, I also wanted it to be Thanksgiving friendly. Luckily, while flipping through the pages of the most recent issue of Cook's Illustrated, I came across this recipe for the "Best" Drop Biscuits. They looked simple, sounded great, and best of all, Read more

I was searching for a final cookie recipe to round out National Cookie Month when I stumbled across one that looked like caramel apples. They were so cute and seemed like the perfect Halloween treat, so I headed to the store and grabbed a bag of caramels. The cookies themselves are pretty simple to make; they're basically a dyed sugar cookie dipped in caramel and put on a stick! To get the recipe Read more