Baking and Books

Feast-Worthy Buttermilk Biscuits (Plus, 30 Thanksgiving Recipe Ideas)

Ari — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:17:31 +0000

Quick announcement: My Apple Cobbler recipe (the one the won my husband's heart even though I set his kitchen on fire) is among the many delicious entries in Bon Appetit's Holiday Bake Off contest. Would you vote for it in the Miscellaneous Dessert category? In order to submit your vote simply log into Bon Appetit (or create a free account if you don't have one) then click here to be taken to the voting page. Thank you! :)

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and for me that means two things: lots of baking/cooking and watching holiday movies on infinite loop. Holiday films are something of an addiction for me from late November thru New Years Eve, and luckily my husband finds it more amusing than annoying when I watch Elf or Home Alone for the umpteenth time. I can't help it. Buddy the Elf cracks me up when he writes a note to his father that says, "I'm sorry I ruined your lives and crammed eleven cookies into the VCR," and when he tells his dad that plans for the day involve making snow angels for two hours, ice skating, eating a whole roll of Tollhouse cookie-dough as fast as they can and then snuggling.

Outrageous Chocolate Cookies

Ari — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:04:15 +0000

Do you dunk your cookies in milk? I don't, but my husband does, and though I've never given much thought to this tiny difference in tastes it was all I could think about last night while we were enjoying the outrageous chocolate cookies shown here. With only 81 days left (!) until our due date I couldn't help wondering whether our baby, once he's old enough, will prefer to dunk cookies like his daddy or eat them separately like me. Then this morning, as I was eating cereal, I thought about how I eat my cereal right after cold milk is added to the bowl, lest I lose an ounce of crunch. My husband, on the other hand, lets his cereal sit for at least 10 minutes so that it has a chance to get mushy. Personally I think his treatment of cereal is a little scandalous - but what if our son one day shares this proclivity? I'd be outnumbered in the crunchy vs. mushy food debate that's been raging in our household for the past eight years.

Pumpkin-Apple Muffins (Plus Book Giveaway)

Ari — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:25:13 +0000

I know this doesn't hold true for everyone, but I really can't get enough of pumpkin flavored goodies - especially in the Fall. In fact, I'm so enamored with pumpkin that I made the Pumpkin-Apple Muffins shown above not once, not twice, but three times before the recipe was just right. When it comes to pumpkin my determination knows no bounds and I just had to have a morning like this one, where I could munch on a moist, tender, autumn-spiced pumpkin muffin while sipping on a decaf honey-vanilla latte.

Pumpkin Scones with Autumn Spiced Glaze

Ari — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:34:42 +0000

I've been a little obsessed with pumpkin lately, making things like pumpkin muffins, pumpkin spice lattes (decaf, of course) and pumpkin spiced pancakes whenever I have a free moment. My husband jokes it's like I did a search in the Baking and Books archive for the keyword "pumpkin" and then just made everything that came up in the results... and he'd be right if I'd made the vegan pumpkin currant cookies I posted back in 2007. But I didn't. So he's not. :)