• Hey (Dutch) baby!

    So, Christmas is over. We braved the mall and ran in the snow and tried (and failed) to work off all that Christmas ham and macaroni and cheese and cranberry sauce (3 miles in the pool so far this week). But the holidays aren’t done yet! Even if you had to go back to work […]

  • Bourbon brown sugar shortbread

    We have a lot of bourbon in our house. It’s in our bar, in our pantry, on display and even in a painting on our wall. Apparently that’s normal for someone from Kentucky whose family runs a distillery… but it still seems a bit strange to me. I try to embrace it, though. I’ve made […]

  • Triple chocolate cookies with sprinkles

    OK, so it’s almost Christmas and I haven’t posted any cookies yet. I’m really sorry. I do have some fabulously delicious cookies for you today, though. I have made them twice, once with rainbow sprinkles and once with red, white and blue sprinkles. Red and green sprinkles would make them perfect for Christmas. Even though […]

  • Red velvet whoopie pies

    If you watched or read about Saturday’s game, you’ll know that “sad” is an understatement for how I feel. Crushed, perhaps? Forlorn? This piece hits the nail on the head, but if you’re looking for a shorter summary: It was a fantastic game, and Georgia was amazing. Then, when we were less than five yards […]

  • Frankencookies

    I had this great idea: Chocolate chip cookies with candy corn. Yum, right? And there are recipes and photos out there of such a cookie. Then I realized they might be overly sweet, so I decided to add some crushed potato chips for balance. Um… it didn’t work out quite how I planned. The cookies […]

  • Halloween baking

    So… we haven’t even bought Halloween candy yet. We should probably get on that (when the stores reopen). But I can offer some suggestions for Halloween baked goods! For an orange and black(ish) treat, try the orange-chocolate chip cupcakes pictured above. If your Halloween plan includes a trip to Hogwarts, try some butterbeer and pumpkin […]

  • Tomboy cake

    I was super excited when I got the October 2012 issue of Bon Appetit with “best-ever layer cakes” on the cover. But not all of them looked that exciting, honestly. Then I signed up to help Zach and Clay of The Bitten Word with their cover-to-cover project — in which readers made every dish in […]

  • Ahoy, it’s a boy!

    You may recall that my former neighbor, Joanne, has asked me to make cookies for a few wedding showers she’s hosted. Well, apparently the cookies went over pretty well, because a guest at one of those showers asked me to do cookies for a baby shower she was hosting! I had to make A LOT of […]

  • Cotton candy cloud cupcakes

    After I decided to bake cupcakes for DC Cupcake Camp, I had to decide what kind to make. It wasn’t an easy choice. First, I made a long list of ideas. Then I asked some friends for their input on the options and tested out three of the top options. This was the third one […]

  • DC Cupcake Camp

    You may recall that Toby and I went to something called “Cupcake Camp” in Baltimore last year. It was low on organization, but high in cupcakes. This year, since we moved to Alexandria, I thought we’d try DC Cupcake Camp instead. It’s kind of hard to describe cupcake camp, because it isn’t actually camp-like at […]