Just Baking

Warning:
You shouldn’t make or even read this recipe if you are a Vampire, a mosquito, a dog or a cat (garlic apparently causes anemia in cats and dogs), Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Silvio Berlusconi, or if you are on your way to a job interview, a meeting or a club.
Side effects may include: dependence, happiness, […]

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, an excitement fills the air. People are preparing their most impressive green outfits, planning meals of “traditional” corned beef and cabbage (bleh), and most importantly, stocking up on the libations. You don’t need much of an excuse to drink around here, but this holiday seems like the perfect reason to […]

In the March edition of Foods Matter, a magazine for food allergies and intolerances, Lucinda Bruce Gardyne shares a very detailed article on ‘Making gluten-free bread.’  Lucinda is a skilled ‘special-diet’ cook – see her new book, How to Cook for Food Allergies - but her speciality is in fact, making gluten-free bread.  Though you will […]

Talk about bad luck; Baking up a storm with less than a day standing between me and the ice cream party in Brooklyn, and disaster strikes. It’s a long story, but let me just tell you that I found myself with a sink full of glass and one less baking dish in my pantry. Flooded […]

Chocolate in our household is a staple, not a luxury.  It seems like my husband needs hourly fixes of bite-sized dark chocolate, or simply a handful of chocolate chips.  In the past I have purchased him an assortment of chocolate for special occasions, but it really isn’t met with much enthusiasm, to him, chocolate is […]

As the resident baker of my friends and family, it suddenly became my job to make the cake any time a holiday or special occasion arises, and that means I make a whole lot of birthday cakes. Multi-layered masterpieces, humble 6-inch rounds, and of course those ubiquitous cupcakes, each request was as fun to […]

My husband and I spent the holidays in British Columbia with his family.  Every day of the visit we would make our pilgrimage to the Whole Foods (a whopping ¼ mile from his parents house) for a jumbo muffin with tea.  Now, the muffins in Vancouver are quite unlike those we see at Whole Foods […]

As sorely tempted as I was to bake my heart out in the form of holiday cookies, time simply slipped away while I wasn’t looking, leaving me to watch on in green-eyed envy as everyone else I knew pull tray after tray of golden dough from their ovens. Besides the time commitment involved, I […]

Flipping through the pages of innumerable baking catalogs that all feature the same immaculately clean kitchens, state-of-the-art appliances, and flawlessly decorated cookies, even a five-year old could tell you that these images are all fake. Staged, meticulously constructed down to the very last crumb; Those cookies that look so incredible on the page could […]

Quickly piling flour, sugar, and spices into the mixing bowl, cranking up the oven, and doling out paper liners at the speed of light, I had no time to stop and think about what I was really doing- Baked goods were expected to appear at a party in just a few short hours! Deciding […]