Treats for appetites of every size
This weekend I decided to bake something exciting. I had the time. I had a book club (which meant it would disappear quickly). I hadn’t made a cake in far too long. Also, Cate made it a couple weeks ago and I got jealous. So I pulled out Ottolenghi’s Sweet cookbook and found the most colorful, interesting looking cake I could: Lemon Berry Stripe Cake.
The last of the Christmas cookies: candy cane whoopie pies. If you read my blog often, you know that for family events with my mom’s siblings, I try to make something gluten free. Usually, this means flourless cake or haystacks or something of that sort, which on their own don’t have flour, but this year I decided to try to use an ingredient I see pop up a lot in gluten free recipes: xantham gum. This stuff is supposed to help mimic a recipe that would otherwise call for flour, so if you want to make something recognizable as a …
This week, SMiLes by Meg was in Philadelphia! Often, new kitchens can be frustrating to bake in (largely because I firmly believe where I keep things are the only places where those things belong), but this weekend’s kitchen was a dream.
I’ve been at my summer job for two weeks and haven’t brought in any baked goods yet. Last week I was baking for a cookout. The week before I baked for school friends who were still around. This week, I’m finally bringing something into the office: Coconut Cake.
Things that happen when you have a big paper due on Monday morning: you push off your blog post until past 10pm. But I’m yet to skip a Sunday entry since starting law school, and I refused to let a little assignment get in the way.
Full disclosure: this is the earliest I’ve started celebrating Christmas in recent memory. Most years, I have a strict no-Christmas-until-after-Thanksgiving rule, but desperate times and whatnot.
Halloween is a weird holiday. As a kid, you’re all about the fact that you can dress up in costume and go door-to-door taking candy from strangers. Then, in middle school, you go through this stage where you are just way too old/cool for Halloween and you want nothing to do with it. Fast forward to college and you realize how great it is to have an excuse to dress up in costume again – so great that you decide Halloween should really be extended into a multi-day event.
I am not usually a spontaneous person. I live by my planner. I love to make lists. Baking is a very orderly habit. But this weekend, on a bit of a whim, I am on a trip to Maine with a group of friends from my law school class. We have this unbelievable house on a lake. I spent today canoeing, playing games, and generally enjoying my life. It’s really exactly what I needed.
Thursday marked the end of my two year commitment to Teach for America. These two years have been far more challenging, meaningful, and transformative than I possibly could have imagined at the front end. There were days that I just wanted to go home and forget by watching hours of Netflix. There were other days that I couldn’t contain my excitement to the point that I had to call three separate people to tell the story before I could finally calm down. But most of all, TFA was amazing because of the people I met.
I think I figured out how trifle was invented. We’ve all been there. You promise to make a cake for some event. You decide to wait until the day of said event because you obviously don’t want to bring stale cake somewhere. You follow the directions for making the batter to a T. And then you get cocky.