Baked Sunday Mornings: Light & Lemony Jelly Roll with Raspberry Cream Filling

Consider the lemon. A humble fruit that cannot be eaten out-of-hand, it often resorts to playing wingman to other flavors in cooking: lemon chicken, lemon hummus, lemon-white wine sauce. In the pastry world however, lemon gets its chance to shine: lemon meringue pie, lemon bars, lemon pound cake, and in this Light & Lemony Jelly Roll with Raspberry […]

St. Patrick’s Italian Escapade: Irish Tiramisu Trifle

I hope the leprechauns behaved and rainbows shone bright for everyone last week on St. Paddy’s Day! As an Irish-adjacent wife, I wanted to make something festive and green to celebrate the occasion, but despite the bounty of mint, pistachio, and lime St. Patrick’s Day treats on the internets, none of those flavors are truly Irish. […]

Baked Sunday Mornings: Blood Orange Tiramisu… & Recipe Testing!

Does there exist a more iconic Italian dessert than tiramisu? The mingling layers of mascarpone cream and espresso-soaked ladyfingers dusted with cocoa powder conjure memories of sipping cappuccino at Italian cafés and digging into my very own petite square of deliciousness. (And no, I’m not partial to sharing.) A good tiramisu has a certain ethereal quality, […]

Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Texas Sheet Cake with Peanut Butter Frosting

After quite a stretch without much chocolate in my life (wha?!), sanity has returned this week. I really have no rational explanation for the two months or so that I wasn’t craving chocolate—basically since the holidays. The exorbitant doses that I consumed from October-December may have caused me to reach some sort of hitherto unknown […]

Adventures in French Pastry: Blonde Chocolate Tarts

You guys… YOU GUYS. You know how sometimes you need a little time or distance from an important experience before you can truly understand it or reflect on it? That’s how I feel about these dreamy Blonde Chocolate Tarts. I haven’t fully grasped the magnitude of these little tarts, since it was just a few days ago; […]

The Stuff of Valentine’s Dreams: Vanilla Bean Cake with Pomegranate Buttercream

Some days I’m wrapped up in daydreams of fluffy, buttery, happy, vanilla-scented cake. On some of those days, I’m also enthralled with thoughts of creamy swirls of tart, fruity, billowy pinkness. Today is one of those lucky days. A good vanilla cake is remarkably challenging to get right, though it sounds like such a simple thing. However, I’ve […]

Baked Sunday Mornings: Toffee Coffee Cake Surprise

Sometimes in life, we’re asked to do things we don’t want to do; other times, the requests aren’t so bad. In the category of “HELL YES”: when Baked Occasions tells me to put toffee in a cake, I listen. Toffee Coffee Cake Surprise was one of the recipes that I was very curious about when I first got my eager paws on the […]

Channeling Sicily: Blondies with Salted Pistachios & Lemon

When I saw this recipe for Blondies with Salted Pistachios & Lemon in December, my first thought was, “This screams January,” so I tucked it away for after the holiday madness; it feels so far removed from the gluttonous chocolate, peppermint, and gingerbread that we were happily stuffing in our faces just a month ago. Then, lo […]

The Polar Espresso: Stumptown Shorties

I feel like an Ovenly fan-girl– I just can’t say enough about their magical little cookbook. Every recipe I’ve tried (here and here, plus Eggnog Sandwich Cookies) has been terrific; not since BAKED have I crushed so hard on a particular bakery’s treats. Brooklyn bakeries have captured my heart! One of the best things I had when I visited the […]

Baked Sunday Mornings: Hair of the Dog Cake

Happy 2015! As usual, it’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone, and that the whirlwind of the holidays is behind us. This holiday season was chock-full of baking for Christmas, Chanukah, and plain ol’ winter joy; there were all manner of cakes, cookies, bars, and candy– for once, I baked pretty much […]