Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes

When I started this blog in 2009, I didn't plan on being drawn into the Cupcakean Nebula. I never had anything against cupcakes, they were just too trendy.

For as accommodating as I am, I can also be quite contrary. I cut my hair super-short after someone said they didn't like girls with super-short hair, If someone says "You're a good mood!", it puts me in a bad mood, despite the fact that I consider myself a realist, I believe in the idea of soul-mates, and I like knee socks with just about everything, including shorts. So when the world became obsessed with cupcakes, my automatic response was to avoid them, at all costs.

Thankfully, that didn't last very long. :D

the Bucket Brownies

Since I'm an on-again, off-again, pseudo vegetarian, I look to peanut butter as a source of protein. (That's a good excuse for stealing a few spoonfuls here and there, right?) Well, apparently yesterday was National Peanut Butter Day...and I didn't even have so much as a piece of toast, or smear of jam to mark the occasion.

Lime Chiffon Cake

So far winter has been on the mild side. I haven't had the usual angst-ridden longings for sunnier weather. (Watch what happens as a result of writing that down.)

Even though I haven't felt the urge to bury myself under 300 blankets while inhaling Meyer lemons for the next two months, I still crave the warm, summer-drenched ambiance of citrus. Any form of citrus. Yes, even a tangerine-vanilla martini (or two).

peppermint patty + cream cheese-swirl brownies

For some reason my friends don't always just come right out and ask me to bake something. Instead they leave clues, ninja-style, for me to find in the morning.

I can take a hint (when I'm not in a contrary mood).

Pinckney Cookie Cafe Cookies

It's no secret that I Love cookies. (In all honesty, who doesn't?) I became a cookie snob when I was about 7 years old...right after my first batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies were lovingly removed from the oven. Since then, my taste-buds will only dance for cookies that are lush with natural, made-from-scratch, taste and texture. Nothing compares to homemade cookies.

So it was a lovely, delicious, wonderful, fabulous, surprise when Michael, of Bellevue Washington's Pinckney Cookie Cafe, sent me a box containing his 4 signature chocolate chip cookies.

Michael knows his baked goods. Each variety is as decadent as the cookies I've made at home!

Walnut-Oat Caramel Shortbread

My convenient, digital kitchen scale rarely gets to play in the world of grams, so why start now? For this recipe, I dug out my mom's old-school kitchen scale. (The kind that has to be at eye-level in order to get an accurate read on the thin, wobbly needle.)

Pretzel & Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies

Everyone has a favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe, right? After extensive research on the matter (and by research, I mean eating), my top pick is The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie from Cook's Illustrated. Nipping at its crumbs, in close second, is the infamous Jacques Torres incarnation.

All's fair in love & cookies. And since I've made the Cook's Illustrated and Jacques Torres recipes more than once (I won't give out actual number), I thought I should also revisit the 3rd runner up, Alton Brown's The Chewy...with tango of salty pretzels + sweet butterscotch chips.

Chocolate Mocha Cake with Raspberry Cream Filling

As some of you may know, since I blurt it out at random like an obsessed parrot, I love citrus. For New Years Eve, I was convinced that I was going to make some incarnation of a perky-tart lemon pistachio layer cake...until I saw This, on Country Living.

I am not a chocoholic. (Every time I say that, it feels as though I'm confessing to a crime.) And after my sister requested a chocolate on chocolate cake for her birthday last March, I didn't want to look at chocolate again. Ever. But this recipe has something spectacular, something that brought me back to the valley of chocolate cakedome, something called raspberry cream filling.

Kids' Thumbprints

Happy New Year! I hope the first few days of January have been kind. Even though I never make any resolutions, a new year feels like a crisp, fresh sheet of paper sitting beside a typewriter at a desk in a sunlit room. There's a calm, clarity of thought that allows us to write a new story without the burden of a year's worth of worries.