Season's The Reason for Spices and Seasonings (And Lots Of Cake)

On the last day of the year 2015, I'm trying to play catch up with the baking I've done since my last post. This will be kind of a no-frills update, so bear with me. I baked quite a lot this holiday season. Not that this is any different from the last few holiday seasons; I just like being able to say it because it's something that brings me a lot of joy. Most of my baking was, as per usual (which makes me exceedingly happy) for my family. I shipped...

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Seckel Selections (Or: It's All Gone Pear-Shaped)

A few months ago, I found, at the farmers market, a variety of pears I'd never seen before: New to me. Seckel pears. They were so cute that I had to get bunch even though I had no idea what I was going to do with them. When I told Michele about them, she said she used to get them all the time as a kid. Pretty much everyone I spoke to about them that day made similar comments. "I see them all the time!" "My family has them every season." "I grew...

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Pie-saster 2015

So, this happened on the evening of December 4: Whoops! It was supposed to be an apple pie for my Birthday Tea guests on Saturday. I'm not sure how it happened. There was some molten filling spitting, skin burning, pie plate sliding, don't grab the four-hundred-degree ceramic thingy action. Why the pie plate didn't shatter is beyond my capacity to explain.  Then following morning (my actual birthday), I screwed up the mint chocolate...

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Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

An Opening Declaration: In keeping with my original mandate for this blog, that being to write about my failures as well as my successes, I present below a recounting of the former. Not all is perfection and grace in my kitchen. An Opening Declaration Ends. I hate it when my oven picks a fight with me! Invariably it does so when I'm baking for company. I suppose I should have expected it; the danged thing had been behaving much too well for much...

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The Great Cobbler Caper

In a previous post, I mentioned that I love peach cobbler. You wouldn't know it from the number of times I've had peach cobbler. When I was a kid, it was offered every so often at family gatherings, and if you bought your lunch at school, they served it as dessert sometimes. I decided I didn't have enough cobbler in my life, so I set out to make some of my own. Early in the summer, though, the peaches just weren't very good so I started with apples....

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October Birthdays...Celebrated Via Courier!

"Via courier" sounds so much more romantic and exciting than "by the mail carrier," don't you think? This is just my way of saying I shipped a few things made of flour and sugar across the country this month. My little sister's second-oldest daughter, two friends in Seattle, and my big sister all made October quite the month of celebrations! And how better to celebrate birthdays than with cake? There was just one problem: I really suck at cakes!...

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California Baking...On Such An Autumn Day (With Apologies to The Mamas and The Papas) - Part The Second

Once we finished devouring the biscuits Denise and I made, I had several hours to contemplate my second San Diego baking adventure: teaching my nephew, Robbie, something about baking bread. I'd chosen this recipe from King Arthur Flour, which is turning out to be quite the resource for me. Again, this was a recipe I'd never made before, so I was taking a chance using it to teach Robbie about bread baking.  Truth be told, though, all I really...

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