food

Guys. Baking french macarons is addicting. It reminds me of running a bit, which is kind of weird, but hear me out. Before I ran my first half marathon I thought, I just want to do it one time to see if I can do it, but as soon as I crossed the finish line, I knew I was going to have to run another to see if I could get a better time. Baking french macarons is going kind of the same way. The first batch was just to see if I could pull them off, and now I have to keep trying to bake a better mac. It would probably be better for losing the baby weight if I could get more into that running addiction than the macaron addiction I'm falling into now. Probably. Anyway. I've made a few flavors of french macarons since the varieties I made for my daughter's tea party, and these little ladies ... [Read More]

When I was planning my daughter's fancy tea party birthday, I knew that I wanted to make some pretty, colorful treats. Preferably something I hadn't made before. I decided I was going to brave the french macaron. Is there any baked good prettier or more intimidating than a french macaron? I'm really not sure. But. Guys. They are not impossible! Seriously. I still haven't produced a perfect macaron, but I've made some that are pretty nice looking and tasty, in my nonprofessional opinion. I'm sharing my adventures in french macaron experimentation in hopes that it may help other curious newbies like myself. I started off with a little internet research, picked a recipe (one with volume measurements because I don't have a scale), and just jumped right on in. Here's the result of ... [Read More]

One thing I really enjoy doing with my kids is baking. They love it. They learn some useful skills. We all get a yummy treat. Win, win, win. I am always looking for recipes that have good jobs for little hands. I had pinned these soft almond sugar cookies a while ago, and thought they would be a good project for me and the kiddos to tackle. These sugar cookies are rolled in raw sugar before baking, which is the perfect job for little helpers. You can get the recipe at Confections from the Cody Kitchen. I had to make a few changes to the recipe to work with what I had on hand. I used all butter (instead of butter and shortening) and replaced the cake flour with all-purpose flour. My cookies didn't end up as quite as thick and fluffy as the originals. That could have been because of ... [Read More]

Almost every Sunday, my family and I go over to my mom's house for dinner. And pretty much every single one of those Sundays, my mom makes some delicious variety of cupcake--peach cupcakes, Oreo cupcakes, S'more cupcakes--good stuff, people, good stuff. What I'm trying to tell you folks is that I have a decent amount of cupcake eating experience. And, guys, in my expert opinion, these little strawberry cheesecake cupcakes might actually be the VERY BEST. I actually made these back in February for Valentine's Day, but they are a perfect summer BBQ treat too. Get the recipe here at Dollhouse Bake Shoppe. Here are my tips: Feel free to substitute your favorite cream cheese frosting. Don't be tempted to replace the cake batter with some other white cake recipe. Seriously, this ... [Read More]

I el-oh-vee-ee (that's LOVE) blender pancakes. That's right, blender pancakes. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about the number one way I use the many boxes of wheat I have stacked up in my closet. [Side Note: Why do I have boxes of wheat stacked in my closet? Because it is healthy, has a super long shelf life, and helps my family be self-reliant. You can read more about that here, if you want.] The basic idea is you throw whole wheat berries into your blender with some other ingredients, and whip up some pancake batter. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy. Some of my favorite things about blender pancakes: They are WHOLE wheat. Like, seriously. The whole wheat berry. They are quick. I only have to wash the blender and one skillet. The blender is perfect for pouring ... [Read More]

Last week, my brother came home from Afghanistan. Yay! It is so good to have him back home. I wanted to make some pumpkin cookies for the welcome home dinner, and decided to try out a recipe I had found on pinterest: Let's Dish's Pumpkin Cookies with Caramel Frosting. Mmm mmmm mmmm. These are good. They are certainly NOT low calorie, but so good good good. I used Danelle's tip to flatten the warm cookies with the bottom of a glass, and that worked out perfectly. I used half and half instead of cream because for some reason I thought that would make the cookies healthier. (I mean, after three and a half sticks of butter, I don't think the half and half is making much of a difference, but I guess I live in a make believe world.) And the frosting seemed a bit runnier than it should ... [Read More]

This little blog has been a bit neglected lately. Poor thing. What have I been doing? Well... visiting with family, cuddling my babies, and eating peaches, mostly. All good things. I love summer fruits and berries. My neighbor and I got a few cases of peaches recently and spent some time "putting them up." I wanted to try out this strawberry peach jam recipe. It is yummmmmmmy, but it just did not want to gel for me. I cooked the stuff for nearly an hour and then decided I was okay with runny jam. It ended up not being too too runny, so we'll call it a success. Mmmmm... tastes like summer. If you make 16 jars of jam, you really need to give some away. No one needs 16 jars of jam. Right? And if you are going to give jam away, you probably need to stick some cute ... [Read More]