Love to give homemade gifts, but don’t have time for a lot of last-minute baking? Well, that’s where canning can come in really handy! Over the past few years, I’ve started doing a lot of canning and preserving throughout the summer. One reason is that I love to save the best of each season to…
A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that I had never made a pumpkin pie from scratch… In fact, I’m not sure I had ever really made a pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie is a Thanksgiving staple, but usually either my mom or my grandmother makes the pumpkin pie. I’ve never really had a reason to…
When I was making doughnuts a few weeks ago, I was reminded of how much I don’t like frying. I love doughnuts, but I hate frying. So, I knew I needed to start working on some new techniques for making doughnuts. I’ve been seeing a lot of baked doughnut recipes using those fun doughnut pans… I…
For this week’s Works for Me Wednesday post, I thought I’d share one of my best secrets for great tasting foods… Herbs and spices!
That may seem a bit obvious, but I’m often surprised by how little some of my friends and family use herbs and spices in their cooking. Even when they do use a dried herb or a spice to flavor their food, they use so little of it that it hardly makes a difference (granted, there are some flavors where a little goes a long way, and I realize that!).
This weekend, I finally got back into the kitchen… I’m not just talking about reheating soup and tossing salads (which is what I had been doing for most of last week). I did some serious cooking and baking!
It all started on Friday with a lack of inspiration for dinner. I had no idea what I wanted to make, and frankly, I didn’t really feel like cooking at all. I hadn’t really gotten back into the kitchen, and I was finding the whole transition somewhat difficult. Instead, I called our favorite restaurant to see if we could squeeze in a reservation, but they were booked for the night (no big surprise, but it was worth a try). I had to make dinner, and it was too late to go to the store for groceries, so I had to use what I had on hand – sweet potatoes.
I love to make a variety of cookies each year for the holidays. It’s probably no real surprise that my favorites are the ones that I get to decorate. It’s just not Christmas unless I do some cookie decorating!
I am a fan of the standard sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies, and I make them every year (including this year). But, last week I decided to spruce up my sugar cookie recipe a bit with some fun holiday flavors. I was thinking about eggnog, which naturally led to thinking about rum, which, of course, meant that I had to add some butter rum flavor to the cookies I was already in the process of mixing up. While I was at it, I threw in some spices, too.
I have professed my love of the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte many times. I love all things about autumn, and I wait all summer for the first cool day when I need to wear a jacket. So, when the first pumpkin spice lattes grace the menu at my local Starbucks, I’m there. As much as I…
All week I have been taunting you with my pumpkin spice cupcakes… It wasn’t very nice, and I’m sorry. But, I think they are worth the wait! The thing is, I have been working up to the completed cupcakes all week long. They were a combination of a few components, and if I had thrown…
Yesterday, I planned to bake some whole wheat bread. When I went to the pantry to get out my spare bag of whole wheat flour, it turned out that it was a bag of granulated sugar instead. How could this happen? I never run out of whole wheat flour! Last week, I ran out of…
You may remember that I picked 20 pounds of peaches last weekend. Yes, it may have been a bit excessive on my part, but deep down, I enjoy a bit of excessiveness in the kitchen… Especially when it comes to fresh, local produce! I knew that if I picked 20 pounds of peaches, I would…
