I have thought about making an olive oil cake for awhile, but turned that desire into making muffins. Basically instead of butter you use olive oil as the fat in the batter. Apparently it's fairly common practice in many Mediterranean countries. It's not something I'd do all of the time, but it was a fun experiment and made for some tasty and...

While at Trader Joe's not too long ago, I impulsively grabbed a bag of frozen berries because the bag included cherries in the mix, not your normal fare in a bag of mixed frozen berries. I figured I'd probably use the frozen fruit in some smoothies for lunch, but then I decided to whip up some muffins I saw in the Macrina cookbook Dustin bought...

I thought about making chocolate chip bagels, but chocolate chips bagels are a little plain. So instead I replaced the chocolate chips with Oreos to add a little pizzazz to the bagels. Even though the cream from the Oreos is included in the bagels, you really don't taste it much, so I guess the cream cheese you put on top counts as the cream...

A year ago we were anxiously awaiting our wedding and possibly even more excitedly the warm, tropical climate and beaches of Jamaica. I suppose now we are anxiously awaiting the beaches of Los Angeles in a few months. Until then we will savor the flavors of warm beaches in our food— like this coconut and pineapple banana bread. I'm starting to...

I read an article in one of the local magazines about how to make an amazing strawberry shortcake using ginger biscuits from a Seattle bakery, which sounded pretty tasty to me. But with my dessert list quite lengthy already, the copious amounts of baking I've been doing over the last few weeks, and the fact that this particular bakery is located...

Banana bread is so simple, yet one of my most favorite things to make (and add twists to). I love experimenting with different banana bread recipes to find the perfect, moist yet not soggy bread. I waited and waited for the bananas on my counter to ripen to the point that it was time to turn them to banana bread. Just looking at those bananas...

RIP KitchenAid Stand Mixer. We had a good run. It was great while it lasted. The mixer, passed down to us from D's parents, died a silent death as I made these rich, buttery breakfast pretzels. I was celebrating more good graduate school news and making Dustin and his coworkers a quick treat before I left on my next trip. I felt a little...

Super Bowl party hit #2. Just by the name, you could tell this was going to be good. I want to make sure Dustin gets full credit for making this bread. I do make all of the desserts around here, but Dustin makes a lot of things in the kitchen as well. A lot of times people assume that I make everything, so I get showered with praise even...

Our apartment smelled so freaking good yesterday. For hours and hours. Because of this challah recipe from Smitten Kitchen via Joe Nathan. I really think it might compete for the best challah. The texture was exactly like what I'd expect from a bakery-bought loaf— but waaaay bigger. This was one enormous loaf of bread. Slightly sweet Jewish...

Dustin and I have been creating a mutual list of cooking/baking projects we want to tackle in the near future. Most are things that we would have never thought to attempt in our home kitchen a short while ago, but we've realized if we follow instructions, take the time, and use quality ingredients, most foodie things we'd think to go to a...