• Baking Recipes,  Christmas & holidays,  Lemon Obsession,  The Breakfast Bin,  Yeasted breads

    So I bought a pack of marzipan, Part 2

    I have mentioned plenty of times before how much I love making bread. There’s just something therapeutic and exciting about it at the same time. Baking is wondrous in how it turns something colourless and shapeless into a piece of edible art, and I think this magic is more evident in yeast breads. It starts out as a sticky piece of dough that somehow has a life of its own thanks to the yeast. You wait patiently as it rises and grows and puffs up, and once you shape it and put it into the oven it bakes into perfect little breads with beautiful crumbs. It sometimes pays to sit back and just appreciate the transformation from dough to bread.…

  • Baking Recipes,  Cookies,  From the books,  J'adore macarons,  Lemon Obsession,  My favourite things

    A semblance of Lemon Macarons + I need a new oven

    I’m officially obsessed. I want to make every macaron flavor in the Universe– every odd, outrageous, and wonderful flavor known to man– and file all the really memorable ones into my repertoire. But right now I have to experiment with recipes and techniques to find the ones that produce consistent results for me. And then I have to master them. And I also seriously need a better oven, but more on that later. Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours of hands-on application to become an expert at anything. And I know this is only my second try at macarons, but the improvement in knowledge from my first to my…

  • Baking Recipes,  From the books,  Layer cakes,  Lemon Obsession

    Lemon cakes and well wishes

    It was an incredibly dreary day when I made this, and yet I could not allow it to permeate the purpose of this cake. The summer weather has been odd, abruptly throwing rain in the middle of heat waves whenever it felt like it, like a child throwing a tantrum, or maybe a person splashing water into the face of another in the heat of an argument. Either way, the clouds had caused the sun to cast a dark gray sheen over everything, but thankfully not on our moods. Jason was holding my camera as I messily assembled his birthday cake. ‘Hurry up, will you!’ He told me as he…

  • Baking Recipes,  Christmas & holidays,  Cookies,  From the books

    Looking back and tapping into my Christmas Spirit

    Can you believe it’s the last day of November already? I certainly can’t. This was probably the fastest year yet for me, and I don’t even feel like I accomplished anything particularly special this year. I always try to do at least one thing I consider epic- like something that goes toward a personal goal, or something to slash off my bucket list- each year. I don’t feel like I did any of that this year. Sometimes I feel a little like I’m living in limbo for the rest of the year, but when Christmas comes knocking at my door, I let it in and let myself bask in the…

  • Baking Recipes,  Lemon Obsession,  My favourite things,  Spoon desserts & puddings

    A lesson on looking beyond the surface

    Young people are naive. And I don’t say that to sound old. I am still quite young myself, but the older I grow and the more my mind opens up to new and different perspectives about life, the more I realise how true this is. A lot of young people seem to think they have their own minds- all the statements made about being unique- but almost always it’s as if they (or we) have been brainwashed with concepts of which things are more “worthy” of time and attention than others. At some point during my younger years, I was one of those teenagers who were quick to judge the…