I never intended for my mini s’mores pies to be my last blog post for almost a year.  But suddenly, I felt burnt out.  Not necessarily from baking in general (although grad school started consuming more of my life and made me want to veg in front of the TV instead doing anything else), but rather from…

Apparently last Monday was National S’mores Day. It seems there is a national day celebrating each and every kind of food that you can possibly imagine. This post is a bit late for this “holiday,” but better late than never, I guess. These mini s’mores pies were a big hit with Dustin after a long…

Making a delicious crumb topping has never been a baking strength of mine, but I feel like I finally nailed it. This is my go-to crumb topping from now on. This cake is sweet enough to be a dessert, but could also be eaten for breakfast. We consumed it under both circumstances. I’m currently a bit…

Levain Bakery’s massive chocolate chip walnut cookie was one of our must-haves when we visited New York a few years ago. It was almost delicious enough to convince me to go to Columbia for grad school instead of UCLA. A labmate of mine went to New York for a conference earlier this year and requested…

Lavender honey ice is the perfect complement to a blackberry thyme crostata. There’s definitely a floral essence to the ice cream, but it’s not overwhelming. The flavor is beautiful in it’s simplicity, and it sure is a nice change of pace from your standard vanillas, chocolates, and strawberries. Even though it is simple and pairs…

There is a Los Angeles chain that we might have mentioned before called Lemonade that serves fresh vegetable-focused dishes, and you guessed it, lemonade. But not just plain lemonades grace the menu. Blood orange, pineapple coriander, and watermelon rosemary are a few of the flavors to be had. Before we moved last year, Lemonade was…

There’s a local ice cream shop called Coolhaus that creates really unique ice cream flavors including fried chicken and waffles (which we have tasted) to “Netflix” ice cream which consists of a white cheddar popcorn base and Doritos (we haven’t tried it). Not all of their flavors are quite that crazy, and you can even…

Wow has this been the best cocktail discovery in our lives. We’re both huge margarita fans, so when we picked up a bottle of mezcal from our local liquor shop and were wondering what cocktail to craft with it, our minds turn there. Margaritas. Smoky and spicy, with a sweet lime finish, these are hard…

Awhile back we bought a mozzarella and ricotta cheese making kit from Williams-Sonoma. It’s been sitting in the cabinet, but we finally made our own homemade cheese. I read mozzarella was more difficult, so for our first go around we made ricotta. We needed some uses for ricotta, both sweet (brioche toast with ricotta and nectarine…