Treats for appetites of every size
Yesterday, I got back from a 10-day vacation in Italy with Erik. Last week, I promised a recipe for amaretti cookies, which I thought I’d be making while I was there. We did lots of fun things (biking, hiking, exploring new cities, making pizza dough…), but amaretti baking was not one of those things after all. However, a promise is a promise, and my mom insisted that I should make something with an “Italian flair”, so here’s an amaretti recipe anyways!
If you’re reading this on the Sunday it’s supposed to appear, it means that my posting from Italy worked! I’m actually typing it on Tuesday, the day Erik and I leave for a bike tour through Piedmont. To say I’m excited is an understatement. It has been far too long since I’ve been able to go on vacation and not even think about bringing my laptop with me – my only electronics will be my phone, my kindle, and a camera.
Law school is over! And as we always do when finals are over, Erik and I spent the weekend off the grid in the mountains, camping and hiking. That means I had to get something made before I left, since I wasn’t sure when I’d be back today. I came up with (yet another) Ottolenghi recipe, though this one didn’t go so well.
When I’m baking in my mom’s kitchen, I usually take a break from my normal cookbooks and use one of hers that I like: The Farmhouse Cookbook. What I found out this week is that as cute as the cookbook is, it doesn’t actually have that many dessert recipes. I was flipping through it, trying to decide on something, and thought lemon blueberry bread pudding sounded like a great dessert for the meal my mom was cooking. Almost 5 years into this blog, I decided it would be a good idea to check before starting it. Turned out I had …
Finals is for procrastibaking. In the last 24 hours, I’ve made 3 different Ottolenghi recipes: banana bread, cauliflower cake, and these cookies. It’s important to take some (read: most) time to destress when you’ve got your last final exams ever coming up. I also am determined to get on Ottolenghi’s Instagram account, where he occasionally posts things people have made of his, but I haven’t had any luck so far. My only chance is to keep baking my way through Sweet!
Barrister’s Ball (aka Law School Prom) feels like the beginning of the end of law school. We have one more week of classes, then exams, then we graduate, and I’ll never be a student again. Which is pretty crazy. I’ve made it almost 27 years into my life by being an almost perpetual student. So you’ll forgive me for getting sappy over the next couple of weeks.
Another week, another of Ottolenghi’s Sweet recipes. This time, in looking for something fittingly sophisticated for a book club meeting, I settled on a cookie that looked rich in spices and like it would pair equally well with tea or red wine, depending on what road the night took. Plus, the contrasting colors make for an impressive display, which never hurts when you’re laying out a spread of food for guests.
Happy Easter! After a wonderful day with family out in Duxbury, I’m still not quite ready to go back to school work, so blogging it is! This year’s Easter recipe evolved quite a bit from its original idea, and strangely went from more adventurous to more traditional, rather than vice versa. Every year, my mom and I think it will be a good idea to make some big and beautiful Easter dessert, and every year we all get too full on brunch to actually eat dessert, leaving full cakes untouched. This year, I wanted to be cognizant of that.
What do you do when your boyfriend asks you to pick up his root vegetable CSA? Google carrot recipes, thinking you’ll be able to get through them quickly, and realize that even carrot-based recipes don’t use enough carrots to make a dent in your bag of produce. Guess that means I’ll have to make carrot cake for Easter! (Also, if you can think of any other carrot recipes, any at all, please send them to me. Doesn’t have to bae a baked good!)
This week’s recipe is inspired by Zoe’s, a diner in Cambridge, and some sweet potatoes I needed to get use. Zoe’s has sweet potato pancakes, which they serve with brown sugar butter, and which are amazing. Erik and Emil, though, have a waffle iron, so I thought I could try something a little different from the breakfast item that inspired these. Over breakfast, we did have a lengthy discussion about the pros and cons of waffles vs. pancakes. While I agree that pancakes are the superior breakfast food (someday soon I’ll post my dad’s recipe – they are the best …