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 the constant planning and writing that...

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 an attempt at a recreation after tasting its...

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I've blogged. It's not that I don't have anything to talk about. In fact, I have a huge backlog of recipes I fully intend to write about. But getting a PhD is a lot of work (in case you haven't heard). Any free time I get, I just want to veg in front of the TV, not write (I get enough of that at...

Happy Valentine's Day! We're having a lazy morning (with fresh squeezed blood orange juice) followed by a brewery visit and (apparently amazing) pastrami sandwiches for lunch. Tonight we are celebrating by going downtown to watch the Kings play win. Last night we celebrated by making the most delicious pizza we've ever created at home using some...

When we visited Boston a few months back, we toured (and devoured lots of chocolate) at this wonderful chocolate factory called Taza. In addition to more traditional chocolates, they make a Mexican inspired chocolate with a really unique, kind of grainy (but definitely not in a bad way) dark chocolate. We came home with many discs of that sort...

When I visited my parents in Indiana before Christmas, I helped my mom bake a bunch of cookies to put into holiday gift baskets for their neighbors. I chose these cookies because they are super simple (I've made them before), they remind me of brownies, and covered in powdered sugar before baking, they look like they've been dusted in snow...so...

I made this cake to celebrate my own birthday the night before. I spent my actual birthday giving my 251 research talk in front of my area's department, which is sort of like our version of a master's thesis defense. And it was the last day of the quarter for the year. Needless to say I was a little preoccupied and wanted an easy, homemade...

The very first time I made gingerbread cookies from scratch, it was quite the disaster. I randomly searched for a gingerbread recipe on the internet and decided upon this one entitled "The Most Wonderful Gingerbread Cookies." Sold. These are definitely some of the best gingerbread cookies that I've ever had. I even upped the ginger content a...

It's cookie season! I don't think I got around to baking gingerbread or sugar cookies last Christmas, so when it was time to bake for a holiday lab get-together, I jumped at the opportunity. In keeping with my theme of trying to put a spin on whatever recipe I make (even if it's just a small one), I added some peppermint extract to the dough...

Silly me has been out of my baking routine lately, so I forgot to take a single picture of these cookies. I almost thought about "repurposing" an old cookie photograph, but decided against it. Sigh. I really wish I had taken a picture because these cookies came out of the oven looking perfect (not something I can always claim). But despite my...