For the last few years, I’ve had an occasional craving for fruit cooked in a rum sauce, but every time I’ve tried, I just get something sweet but easily forgettable (and certainly nothing that I would bother to write a recipe down for). That changed tonight.

I wanted to do something different for Easter this year, and because I can’t resist a food pun once I’ve thought of it, the Cadbury Creme Brul’egg was born.

Have you ever had a bad baking day? If you have, you’ll know that they can be as devastating as a bad hair day from hell. Most people don’t bake only for themselves. At least, I don’t. I’ve always been very aware of the people I bake for, and I firmly [...]

To finish off writing about the Christmas treats I made, here’s my last big project of the season (that I managed to get to: Rainbow Cookies from Sherry Yard’s fantastic book The Secrets of Baking.

These were hugely popular with everyone who received them. How could they not be, looking that adorably festive on [...]

At the beginning of Life of Pi, the narrator promises that it is a story to make you believe in God. So let me begin this way: These are macaroons to make you believe in coconut.

Still, I felt a little…well, like I was approaching the half-assedness I had set out to avoid in the first place. I was supposed to be spending hours and hours aggravating my poor sore wrist and shoulder with the piping. And the last time I’d tried to decorate cookies with this kind of icing in multiple colors…it hadn’t gone well. I remember thinking that those were some ugly Thanksgiving Day turkeys to be putting out on a restaurant buffet…

Ever since I first saw the picture of the cute little Mini Cranberry Meringue Pies in Martha Stewart Living a couple years ago, I’ve wanted to make them. Their photo showed one sliced down the middle, exposing the jewel-like filling and the lightness of the meringue to full effect. I never got around to it, but this year I decided to try all new recipes for Thanksgiving, and this went to the top of my list.

Tonight I made Black Bottom Cupcakes for–as the Toasty Chef calls him–Mr. T’s birthday tomorrow. I can blog about them tonight because Mr. T doesn’t know about this blog yet. Sneaky, right? We’re headed down the coast for a writer’s retreat all week, and while we’ll have a kitchen where we’re going, I wasn’t sure what equipment I’d find once I was there, so I figured I’d better come with cake in hand.