i'd rather be baking

Sunday night I had a serious craving for cookies. It was quite a week and what can I say? Some cravings just won’t be denied.

I may have thrown pretty much everything I could think of into the mixing bowl. I’m not going to lie, I contemplated adding both cereal and marshmallows. It wasn’t exactly my finest hour.

Read more »

I have a confession to make. I’m not proud to admit it, but I sometimes cheat a little.

I’m all about the well-placed shortcut, but usually there’s a limit. My organic-eating, CSA-joining, homemade cleaner-using self typically bristles at and certainly tries to avoid things like this:

I know, I know. Preservatives, processed sugar, and ingredients I can’t identify? They’re all in that box. I’m slightly ashamed even now. What was I thinking?

I’ll tell you what I was thinking: orange cupcakes, now. You see, it’s been one of Those Weeks. I started the week with a to-do list (that at least felt) longer than my arm, full of those nit-picky things that never seem to get done. Appointments to schedule, phone calls to make — you know the drill. One thing proceeded to add to another and suddenly it’s the week that will not end. Seriously. It still isn’t over.

Read more »

As discussed last week, we had ourselves a little bake sale here in the SLC. Which was actually part of a big bake sale for a great cause. I knew I wanted to make cookies for the sale, and that these crowd-pleasers were a must.

Since reading this recipe via Smitten Kitchen a few years ago, I’m proud to say that these cookies have been embraced, drooled over, and baked many times by both sides of our sweet family. Now, how often does one find a recipe like that?

Read more »

Pretty much any recipe with “grandma’s” in the title has to be awesome, right? I can’t vouch for them all, but I can definitely vouch for this one. I’ve been eating it for approximately 22 years, I’d say.

My sweet grandma has been making these my entire life and it’s a safe assumption that I’ve been eating them since I could chew. They are a staple at every family function and the favorite cookie of my grandpa, my sister, and myself. And we really, really like cookies.

Read more »

I think that if, by some cruel trick, I had to discard my growing cookbook collection and keep just one, it would be this one. Without much of a contest. America’s Test Kitchen knows their stuff and never ceases to provide inspiration.

Their recipes also provide great hacking potential. Now I know, that sort of defeats their entire purpose – they like to work the kinks out of a recipe so that you can prepare it exactly as written, with great results. That’s all well and good, but sometimes I get bored.

These tiny, flavor-filled strawberry cakes were born of an entirely different recipe, for a moist, coffee cake-like thing filled with blueberries, that I’ve made a zillion times. It’s always delicious, but guess what? It’s not blueberry season.

Read more »