I figured that I would finally come out of my hive and talk about the sourdough bread I spent a week working on while I was snowed in before Christmas. As you may have inferred from other posts here, I’m basically cooking my way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which I think has to [...]

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.

I had more people to give gifts to, so I made another round of Christmas cookies this week. I wanted to do a half batch of the icing and tried to wing it with the corn syrup and milk measurements so as not to dirty more dishes, but it didn’t set up quite as [...]

Printable Recipe
Last time on As the Fondant Liquefies, we made cherry-flavored fondant and dipped maraschino cherries in it, in preparation for dipping them in chocolate. Really, that’s the hardest part of the whole process.
I decided to make another batch of cherries after the ones I documented in the original post and test the theory [...]

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…

Test Cherry: Day One
Originally uploaded by the other tiger
As I was dipping a second round of cherries yesterday, I had three lose their stems and become “test cherries” or, in other words, the cherries I get to eat before they’re ready without feeling guilty for wasting one I could be giving to someone else, [...]

Printable Recipe
Heading into my senior year in college, my mom and I realized that I was going to most likely be moving not just across town but out of town after graduation and my wedding the next summer, ending the days of having just a short trip on the freeway between us. I’d been [...]

In Seattle, snow is as rare as rain is common. Possibly more so, seeing as our reputation as a rainy city is partially true and partially a fable told and retold to Californians in an effort to keep them from moving to the area (judging from the traffic–and the fact that I’m married to a [...]

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.