Birthday surprise for Mama

I surprised Mama today by showing up in the middle of her Senior’s Memoir Writing Class with birthday cupcakes! After dropping her off at class and secretly conspiring with the teacher, I dashed off home and baked the fastest dozen cupcakes of my life. I didn’t manage a photo of the ginger cupcakes with vanilla…

Cookies for Mama’s memoir class

Mama returned to her Memoir Writing Class this afternoon after a hiatus, and I got to walk her in and meet everyone! I made my special cherry chocolate chip cookies for the occasion and they were a hit. Though I know a couple of these smiling faces, most of them were new to me. As her…

Key lime impatience

Our lime tree is bearing fruit for the first time ever, and I’ve been eager to bake with these beauties. Though they look more like lemons on the tree, the lime flavor was crisp and tart. Since it’s apparently pie day, I made a key lime pie using this fabulous smitten kitchen recipe. We didn’t…

A cookie kind of afternoon

I made Confetti Cookies with colorful sprinkles and Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies this afternoon. The sprinkle-laden treats are a SmittenKitchen recipe I’ve made before, but adding Caramel chips to my Chocolate Chip Cookies was a new twist. All of the cookies were delicious! Now I’m eager to share the baked goodness! Today’s #OneGoodThing was a cookie kind…

Lemon Swiss buttercream

Lately I’ve been experimenting with different Macaron fillings to varying degrees of success. Raspberry jam was too runny, but then chocolate ganache was too rich. I found a recipe for Swiss buttercream from smitten kitchen (one of my favorite food blogs), and tested it out in the tiniest amount listed. I’d never made this particular…

Macaron improvements

When our friend Margo visited on Sunday, I made raspberry French macaron cookies. But they were a total fail. They tasted ok, but they just didn’t have the right texture. So I decided to try again tonight. I found the recipe from the Sur La Table class I took last spring, and it made a…

Fast, yummy cookies

I whipped up three hot, fresh cookies tonight, and it took a sum total of 12 minutes! I made cherry chocolate chip cookie dough last week and refrigerated little heaps, all ready to bake. The cookies were delicious and I washed them down with a small glass of cold milk. Yum! Today’s #OneGoodThing was enjoying fast, yummy…