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Posts Tagged ‘dessert’

Orange, Almond, and Olive Oil Cake

Orange, Almond, and Olive Oil Cake

There comes a time when you come to understand the red flags that your body uses to get your brain back on track.  In college, pulling all nighters was no big deal.  Coffee sweetened with Coke for extra caffeine?  No problem.  High sugar content late night drinks?  Bring it on.  Hung over?  A Sunday morning [...]


Bourbon and Chocolate Cherries

Bourbon and Chocolate Cherries

I can’t lie to you guys.  2011 was quite the blogging fail, on my part. For the past week or so, I’ve been walking around, lounging in my house, and chatting at bars about how I needed to write something for this post.  


Cute Girl Discount, and a Chocolate Tart

Cute Girl Discount, and a Chocolate Tart

  I could probably still drive the route from my parent’s home in Los Angeles to my Santa Barbara beach houses of choice with my eyes closed.  No, I wasn’t allowed to have a car while I was in college in Santa Barbara – that was a strategic move on my parents’ part in bribing [...]


More cookies.

Hello, reader. My blogging was on hiatus — night classes are to blame. But I thought I’d return with a treat. I’m actually on a flight from Los Angeles to Washington at the moment. I had taken a short trip to visit with family and friends, and to run my first half-marathon. I did it! [...]


Almond and Honey Granola

Almond and Honey Granola

I never realized how beautiful my balcony floor boards are.  Look!  That muted wood just turns out beautifully in photos. Discovering new things in the house I’ve lived in for a year now is something I look forward to every time the seasons change.  The nutty aromas that seep through walls take me back exactly [...]


Salted Caramels

Salted Caramels

I ate chicken feet today.  Well, chicken foot.  I only had one — but I would eat them (it) again.  I was at dim sum; the food kept coming, and I really just couldn’t eat that much. I hate to admit that I was one of those little kids that hated vegetables.  My parents still [...]


Acoustic Guitar Cookies

 I thought I’d post photos of my most recent feat — the guitar cookies.  I recently stumbled across an acoustic guitar cookie cutter, and I had to have it.  And there they are.  The recipe for them can be found here.  Just beware — the necks of the guitars kept breaking.  These cookies are fragile, [...]


Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I don’t think I took a single breath at work on Friday morning, between 9 AM and 3 PM. It wasn’t the first time that happened at my new job, but it was literally a rush until we had things wrapped up.  So naturally, I left the office and stuffed my face at We the [...]


Blueberry Muffins

Hello, world. It’s been a while, for which I apologize. Life has been hot, humid, and busy. I’m leaving my job at the federal government! It has occupied almost a year of my life, and the vast majority of my post-undergraduate career. And I’m moving into the non-profit sector, for an international development organization that [...]


Fireworks Cupcakes

Fondant is surprisingly easy to make, but also surprisingly difficult to work with.  It’s sticky, takes incredible clay-sculpting skills, and patience.  It took me about an hour to decorate seven or eight cupcakes.  This chiffon cake is also one of my favorite recipes because it’s a light, moist cake — and I tend to dislike [...]


Engagement Cupcakes

Life has been busy and exciting — and the food has been delicious, as always. Here are some cupcakes I made for a friend who just got engaged.  I’ve never been a big fan of cupcakes, but she obsessed over them (and a cupcake truck in DC), so I thought I’d give a special recipe [...]


Fresh Mint Chip Ice Cream

When I first started using the ice cream maker, I was obsessed with sorbets — I don’t know why.  But at the request of my friends, I switched to ice creams, starting with last month’s almond flavor.  The response was extremely favorable, reaching the point at which we even ordered almond-flavored ice cream at specialty [...]


Two Balsamic Salads: One Sweet, One Savory

Summer. It’s hot. And humid. And the thought of heating up my oven seems unbearable on those hot summer days. So we opt for the easier meals in summer — salads, smoothies, fresh fruit, and so on. How can we blame ourselves? The farmers’ markets are all open, the sun is shining, and all of [...]


Imperfect Oreos

Writer’s Block.  Enjoy the photos and recipe =) WHAT YOU NEED (recipe derived from the decorated cookie): for the cookie dough:1 cup (2 sticks) softened, unsalted butter1 cup sugar1 egg1 teaspoon vanilla extract         2 cups flour1/2 cup dark chocolate cocoa powder1/2 teaspoon baking soda1/2 teaspoon saltfor the filling:1/2 cup (1 stick) [...]


Almond Flavored Ice Cream

After much fluctuation, it seems that the warm weather is here to stay — I’m writing this on my balcony, after wasting my beautiful Saturday in bed, sadly, under the weather.  Nothing beats having a south-facing balcony in a Dupont row house.  This balcony serves as the background for most of my food photography, has [...]


Light and Airy Chocolate Waffles

Light and Airy Chocolate Waffles

When I first moved to Washington, I had no expectations — coming from the other side of the country, I really couldn’t.  Honestly, I had been flown to the district one weekend over summer to interview for a job in Tampa.  I purchased my one-way ticket to Washington two weeks after I returned home to [...]


Apple Pie with a Lemon Zested Crust

Today is my roommate Jonathan’s birthday. He has expressed an interest in apple pie before… one of his favorites. But with my recent running schedule and a couple of UCLA friends visiting me in Washington this weekend, I wasn’t quite sure how plausible an entire apple pie would have been on my agenda. So last [...]


Royal Icing and Sugar Cookies

I have been battling my limited walking-only relationship with Washington in search of basic food dye for months.  What would have been a simple task in Los Angeles (with a car) turned into a four-month struggle between searching every grocery store within a three-mile radius of my home and decidedly talking myself out of any [...]


Sea Salted Dark Chocolate

The one thing I love more than cooking itself might just be observing peoples’ reactions to my cooking.  For instance, today, I put out a plate of dark chocolate shards I had broken apart — it was laced with sea salt.  One of the roommates ate some, and while reclining on our couch, exclaimed “Ooh, [...]


Mini Pound Cakes with Raspberry Whipped Cream

I know I’m from California, but I secretly love snow days — and I’ve had a thrilling blizzard-filled winter to kick of my life on the East Coast.  Washington is currently being pelted with about three feet of snow… so beautiful!  Sometimes it’s nice to have an excuse to not leave the house.  Today, we [...]


Snickerdoodles

Apparently, snickerdoodles are everyone’s favorite type of cookie.  A while back, a close friend of mine suggested I make them.  He immediately scanned the recipe he uses, and emailed it to me — so I tried it.  For some reason, the first batch didn’t turn out so well, as far as my snickerdoodle standards go [...]


Glazed Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

Yesterday, the temperature broke 35 degrees.  I’ve never been so excited about weather below 70 degrees in my life.  Laugh all you want, but the past two weeks have been unbearably cold — I didn’t leave my house without two pairs of stockings, pants, layers of shirts and sweaters, and my unbelievably heavy coat.  It’s a [...]


Orange-Clove Cupcakes with Vanilla Spice Buttercream

I’ve never been a big fan of cupcakes–or cake, in general. But using certain spices in cakes can throw my sweet tooth into bliss. Cinnamon happens to be my favorite, but since it was snowing outside, I thought I’d put a little citrus twist on my normal recipe. I had decided to make cupcakes because [...]


Walnut Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies

It’s Christmas cookie season again. Which means I’m pretty much baking non-stop. Honestly, I’m not going to want to even look at cookies for the next two months… so enjoy this while it lasts. This is a personally altered twist on Dorie Greenspans’s best chocolate chip cookies. I have little to say, other than they [...]