Death of a patio set…

January 30, 2008 by · 38 Comments

When I got my very first apartment one of the first things I bought was a little patio set. Two chairs and a table with a very French Bistro look. I had some fantasy of me sitting out there in the morning drinking coffee and eating fresh homemade pastries from my kitchen. And then it hit me. I live in Phoenix. I am overlooking a parking lot. It is too stinking hot to be drinking coffee and the air is too stinking bad to be sitting outside inhaling it in. And the pastries? Don't even get me started. My first year of living on my own was pretty much a diet of Strawberry Frosted Pop Tarts and Stove Top Stuffing....and then running to my parents house to eat dinner every night. My crappy oven baked everything uneven(though the apartment complex assured me nothing was wrong with the oven) and so very few things came out of it. My mother was not a fan of me cooking in her kitchen, or anyone for that matter. I bought myself a toaster oven, not exactly my dream appliance but it at least … [Read more...]

Filed Under: baked goods ·

Zest for life….

January 28, 2008 by · 112 Comments

If you were to scour my site you would have a pretty hard time finding a pie recipe. I'm just not a pie girl. I'm not sure if it is because I didn't really eat them growing up or what. We were more crisp or betty or grunt people. I much prefer the crumbly top of a crisp to that of pie dough. So I will admit some disappointment in the choice of Lemon Meringue Pie for the Daring Bakers Challenge this time around. Jen(The Canadian Baker) chose this pie, and for good reason, most people actually like Lemon Meringue Pie...I'm just not most people. I chose to make  mini tarts. Which probably was not the best idea. They would have worked much better if they were just a tad larger than what I made them. Not much room for the filling. Many a Daring Baker complained about running lemon curd. I didn't have that problem, I think because of the size of my tarts, they were easier to set up. The problem I did have was the meringue. For some bizarre reason mine would not get brown and so I had to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Daring Baker Challenge, dessert, fruit ·

Keeping the peace….

January 25, 2008 by · 47 Comments

The problem when you have a picky eater for a husband is that he doesn't eat 90% of the things I make. And since I refuse to have a blog solely dedicated to all things peanut butter and chocolate, from time to time he gets annoyed. He gets annoyed that when he comes home and asked me what I baked today I have to usually tell him, “something you wont eat.” In my defense his list of things he wont eat is much larger than his list of things he will eat. So last week when I was in a frenzy of baking all things he doesn't eat, I got the sad puppy dog eyes and the ever popular, “did you make anything I can eat?” So in order to appease him I went looking for something with chocolate and peanut butter. I have seen many a time on many a blog the World Peace cookies. They have been done and done again and so I wanted to change them as I felt there was no need to beat a dead horse into the ground. Staring into the pantry was a half a bag of peanut butter chips and so I … [Read more...]

Filed Under: baked goods, chocolate, peanut butter ·

A little ray of sunshine….

January 21, 2008 by · 55 Comments

  It's that time of year in Seattle. The time of year where basically 4 months of seeing little sun has made most people(not me, I love the weather here) a little stir crazy. This is the time of year when my friends are booking their trips to Mexico and start working on their fake tan. I will say one of the things that fascinates me about this area is amount of tanning booths. Pick up a rock and throw it and you will either hit a tanning booth or a coffee shack. I decided that I would make a cake that would add a little sunshine into the Seattle area even if the real stuff wasn't shinning through. A few weeks back, one of my favorite bloggers and all round spectacular person, Jen of Use Real Butter made a gorgeous and involved Zebra Torte that she had made(and now recreated) at a pastry skills course she took. Now, I am not one usually to run out and do something from another persons blog...at least not right away. But this was too fun not to make. Being that she just posted … [Read more...]

Filed Under: dessert, fruit ·
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