Cracking up over a salty candy recipe

I’ve mentioned before that one cornerstone food from my childhood was peanut butter. And what goes better with peanut butter than a good old reliable saltine cracker, another touchstone food of youth. In my early childhood, when our house was free of junk food like chips, Cheetos and Doritos, saltine crackers (a box . . . → Read More: Cracking up over a salty candy recipe

Cookie of the Month: ‘Butting’ in for Easter cookies

Bunny butts have weighed “heavily” on my mind for the last year or so.

Having re-entered rabbit parenting after some time away from it (adopting a colorful, fluffy, lively fellow named Zydeco), I’ve become more aware of the popularity of rabbits from their humans who post about them on social media.

One particular “ass-pect” . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: ‘Butting’ in for Easter cookies

Cookie of the Month: Loading my cookie press

Of all the cookies I’ve wanted to make, Spritz have been on my list the longest. I studied photos and recipes for Spritz as a child…I emerged from childhood, and still I was un-spritzed (I believe we had a cookie press, but it went unused). Young adulthood came and went, and still no . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Loading my cookie press

Bread of the Month: Putting parsnip in ‘Puddings’

Recently, thumbing through Donna Hay’s delightful book, “Christmas Feasts and Treats” (2018), a book I purchased a few years back and continue to peruse (whether it’s Christmas or not)… I really thought I wanted to make nearly everything in it.

The book is beautiful, so visually appealing in its offering of all manner . . . → Read More: Bread of the Month: Putting parsnip in ‘Puddings’

Downsizing holiday pies

I’ve been fond of miniatures since I was a girl, and at one point built my own dollhouse (from a kit), decorated and furnished it. The collecting of tiny, to-scale household items, particularly for the kitchen (to which I even made tiny baked goods), was a large part of my creative world as . . . → Read More: Downsizing holiday pies

Bread of the Month: Hopping away with cuteness

For me, the whole “back-of-the-bunny” (aka “bunny butt”) concept came early, at the kitchen table in marathon Easter egg coloring sessions the day before the big bunny arrived. We had our cups and bowls full of Paas egg dye and crayons to create the wax designs on some of the eggs. Our mom’s . . . → Read More: Bread of the Month: Hopping away with cuteness

Rounding up a variety plate of fudge

My late Grandma Mae was the first and one of the only people I knew who made fudge from scratch. She was more known and revered for her peanut brittle (see my blog post of December 2010), but along with her famed peanut confection,  laid out in dishes every year were also samplings . . . → Read More: Rounding up a variety plate of fudge

Cookie of the Month: Boosting flavor in a cranberry slice

I am big fan of slice-and-bake cookies. Their make-ahead and make-as-you-need-them approach makes me happy in a holiday season crowded with recipes and goody-making possibilities. I’m also a big fan of shortbread, and if the shortbread comes in slice-and-bake form (as many of them do), I’m even more enamored.

I had saved a . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Boosting flavor in a cranberry slice

Cookie of the Month: Dusting up celebratory tradition

I never needed a wedding (or any special occasion) to enjoy a Mexican wedding cookie. Just eating one of these buttery little orbs, its crumbly texture dusted with the cooling sweetness of confectioner’s sugar, was cause alone for celebration.

Long a fan of this cookie, a tradition in Mexico (and other places) at . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Dusting up celebratory tradition

Cookie of the Month: Feeling the (red-hot) love via bars

It probably sounds strange that when it comes to Valentine’s Day, I think of sugar cookies, not chocolate. Maybe I have holiday goodie dissociative disorder, but my Feb. 14 tastes run directly back to childhood, where, along with white embossed cherry suckers and chalky conversation hearts, there are sugar cookies, too, that I . . . → Read More: Cookie of the Month: Feeling the (red-hot) love via bars