Food Diary

Here’s the thing:  when my brain convinces me that I need a homemade doughnut, it’s not telling me that I need a dozen homemade doughnuts.  As a solo person in a houseful of cakes, I’ve come to hack desserts to half their size for my own sanity.  Remember ages ago when I made  Single Lady Pancakes ? Yup:  spot on.  I even remade them here with a massive amount of blueberries The Single Pancake . Continue reading A Recipe For Two Doughnuts at Joy the Baker.

Have you ever found a package or chocolate chips pushed to the back of your pantry and wondered how long they’ve been there? Visited a relative’s home and reached for flour only to find that the label has a much older design than the one you have at home? Over on the Craftsy blog (it’s free!), I’m sharing a handy guide that will answer the question Are Your Baking Ingredients Still Good to Use? In the post, I cover a number of common pantry-staples and go over shelf life, storage options and more. The good news is that most of your pantry items last quite a while, so you don’t need to restock frequently. It also means you’ll probably be able to use things up before they need to be replaced if you bake regularly. That being said, it’s helpful to keep track of when you purchased things and I suggest writing the date on packages (particularly those with a long shelf life or that you don’t use that often) so that you know how long you’ve had them. This way, one glance will tell you whet

Valentine’s Day is a holiday with a lot of sweets associated with it. I don’t need an excuse to enjoy some dessert, but it never hurts to have a reason and I love getting some holiday flair into a recipe. These Sprinkle-Filled Valentine’s Day Cupcakes are guaranteed to be more impressive than your average box of chocolates. The cupcakes are packed with colorful sprinkles that pour out when you take a bite or cut into the cake. I used a vanilla cupcake recipe for the base of these cupcakes. While you can use any kind of cupcake recipe to make this style of cupcake, the white cake really lets the colors of the sprinkles shine. The cake has a dense, tender crumb and just the right sweetness. I used both vanilla and almond extracts to give the cake a traditional “white cake” flavor. Once the cupcakes are baked, you will need to let them cool before you can fill them. How to Fill The Cupcakes with Sprinkles First, cut a cone out of the top of the cake using a sharp paring knife. The c

This post was created in partnership with  Stonyfield . All opinions are our own.  Now that we’re parents of this heartmelting 11 month old, we think even more about wellness. How do we keep baby well through the cold and flu season—and for that matter, his mama and daddy too? Even if you’re not a parent, beating cold and flu season is key to keeping your commitments and staying well in the winter. Last week, I got to talk to an expert: Dr. Tanya Altman, a pediatrician and author who’s all about baby and mama wellness! It was encouraging to talk to her about winter wellness and ask her all my questions. Here are some of her tips for keeping everyone healthy through the cold and flu season: Sleep is key.  Getting a good night’s sleep is key to overall wellness and fighting sickness. Shoot me an email if you want the breakdown of recommended sleep for your baby and I’ll send you the slide! Start the day with protein.  That means things like eggs, nut butter, oatmeal, and yogurt! (Th

Happy Sunday sweet friends! Welcome to another fine weekend!  I’ve had a busy week testing recipes for the blog and somehow managing to cut three of the five fingers on my left hand.  Listen… knife safety is real and sometimes life comes atcha fast.   My dear friend Cara came to visit for a few short days that we managed to pack it with a lot of food (the glorious Turkey and the Wolf included)… and a live true crime podcast taping ( SSDGM ). Continue reading Let It Be Sunday, 156! at Joy the Baker.

A pudding cake – also known as a self-saucing pudding – is a cake that bakes into two distinct layers: a fluffy cake and a rich, flavorful sauce to go with it. It’s almost like two desserts in one! These Individual Mocha Pudding Cakes are perfect for coffee-lovers like myself and are an excellent way to end a meal. The cakes are easy to assemble – imagine a much more straightforward chocolate lava cake – and always a hit when they are served. The cake batter is a thick batter made with self rising flour and flavored with instant coffee and cocoa powder to capture the mocha flavor we want. Instant espresso will give you a more intense flavor than regular instant coffee, and I like working with Starbucks Via, which is even easier to dissolve in liquids in recipes. The batter is not overly sweet on its own, as the sauce component of this cake is fairly sweet. The sauce is made with water, brown sugar, instant coffee and cocoa powder, along with a splash of vanilla to round out those m

Bear claws are always some of the most impressive pastries in the case and I know that I find it hard to turn down a good one. Unfortunately, I find that the quality of these pastries (at most bakeries, anyway) has gone down over the years. This means that if you want a great bear claw, you’re going to have to make it yourself! Over on the Craftsy blog (it’s free!!), I’m sharing my recipe for Homemade Bear Claws and I will walk you through everything you need to know to make these decadent pastries in your own kitchen. Bear claws start with a made-from-scratch croissant dough. This pastry is a little bit time consuming to make, as the yeasted dough needs to be laminated – a process where the dough is folded to create layers – before it can be filled and shaped. The lamination process is exactly the same as it is for puff pastry , just with a yeasted dough instead of an un-yeasted one.The filling for the claws is a cinnamon-spiced almond paste mixture, which is spread onto the finish

It’s a new year and instead of all the usual resolutions, cleanses and promises we have simply decided that 2018 is going to be the year that we slay weekend meal prepping. We are talking Sunday evening batch cooking, roasting, peeling and jaring – grandma style – here. We have previously been half-doing this with a more random batch cooking approach (which you can read more about in the first chapter of Green Kitchen at Home ). But we’re stepping things up now. Life with three kids is stressful as it is and this method helps us to eat well during the week, save time and be more spontanious. It also helps us avoiding those hangry (hungry/angry) kid-situations. We have only been doing this properly for the past months now but thought we’d start sharing the basics right away, in case you guys want to start doing this along with us. The Method Food prepping is a simple method and surely many of you already know the basics. The idea is that it is a lot easier to cook and eat real food d

A cookbook on a shelf looks so matter of fact. Here I am, here are my recipes. From the outside, it looks like everything was perfectly planned and executed. But the back story, that’s where it gets interesting: smeared and splattered kitchens, spreadsheets, late nights, nixed recipes, and lost sleep. What’s it like to produce a 100 recipe, full-color photographed cookbook? It’s a total LABOR OF LOVE. Oh yeah, and Alex and I brought home a newborn baby in the middle of all that (!). With a few days until our new Pretty Simple Cooking cookbook launches (February 6!), we’ve been reflecting on a few things we learned from writing a cookbook, having a baby, and surviving to tell the story. **Order it now!  Pretty Simple Cooking . 1. It takes a LONG time. Cookbooks published the traditional route—with a publisher, not self-published—take a long time. Years. This is something that Alex and I didn’t fully appreciate until we entered into the process. It’s been four long years  from th

As most of you regular readers will know, I am a big fan of coconut in desserts. The buttery, tropical flavor of coconut is delicious on its own, but it also pairs well with a wide variety of other ingredients. Citrus with coconut is one of my favorite pairings, as the bright acidity of citrus fruits contrasts very well with the richness of coconut. These Lemon Lime Coconut Bars pair up these ingredients beautifully and, if you’re also a fan of the combination of citrus and coconut, it’ll be a hit with you, too. The bars start with a tender shortbread base that – to be completely honest – is very delicious all on its own. It comes together very quickly and the filling can be poured on top while the crust is still hot, so there is not a lot of down time in this recipe. The filling is a lemon and lime curd that is mixed with lots of shredded coconut. While the filling is baking, the coconut rises to the top of the bars, creating a macaroon-like crust on top of the velvety curd. I like

Scones are always a welcome addition to my breakfast table and I will frequently whip a batch up to go with a freshly brewed pot of coffee on a quiet morning. Scones are easy to make and come together very quickly – two features I like in my breakfast foods. These simple Hazelnut Scones are a good example of a breakfast option that won’t take much time, but are absolutely delicious. The dough starts with the same basics as most other scone recipes – flour, baking power, sugar and butter – and gets a generous handful of toasted hazelnuts thrown into the mix. Since hazelnuts are so often included in chocolate bars, the nutty and rich flavor of the nut feels very dessert-like. I coarsely chopped the nuts in my food processor, along with the rest of the dry ingredients, then pulsed cold butter in to ensure I god a flaky dough. After the butter was cut in, I emptied the food processor into a mixing bowl and stirred in the vanilla and heavy cream to form a stiff dough. Heavy cream makes th

I still lose my way sometimes. Big time.  I’ve been in New Orleans for, what is it… four years now? It just takes one unexpectedly closed road (and it happens all the time) and all of a sudden I’m thisway and thatway and all sorts of turned around. The only way out is through, right… because I refuse to use navigation at this point. I’ve also found that another way out is to find your way home, dig out your old cookbook, and make your simpliciest most satisfying recipe. Continue reading Browned Butter Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats at Joy the Baker.

This is magic green juice—and it will change your life. It will make you skinnier, healthier, and glow from the inside out. Your back side and front side will be tighter. Your friends will idolize you and your enemies will want to be you. It may cause you to come into unexpected sums of money. You’ll achieve a sense of inner peace. OK, I kid. But sometimes, doesn’t it seem like people marketing “healthy this” or “healthier that” make it seem like their product can do all those things? And there’s a part of us as humans—a tiny part of us—that wants to believe it. If I could just make myself XYZ, I’d be skinnier, healthier, and tighter. That elusive magic “answer” will solve all the difficulties to self-care and eating well. You can probably see where this is going. Unfortunately, there is no magic green health tonic that will cure all your worries and make healthy living easy . However, there are  things you can do to make eating nutrient-filled, immunity boosting foods easier and mor

It is very disappointing to put a tray filled with cupcake batter into the oven only to watch them sink when you pull them out. There are quite a few reasons that cupcakes can sink during baking, unfortunately. To describe the baking process very simply, little pockets of air in the batter expand and force the cake to rise when cupcakes are baking. The heat of the oven should set the cake at maximum volume and it should stay in roughly the same shape as it cools. When a cake falls significantly during baking or during the cooling process, and there are quite a few possible reasons: Too much liquid in the cake batter. While too little moisture can have an impact on the batter, as well, too much liquid can make the cake heavier than its dry ingredients can support. It could be a poorly written recipe, but factors like incorrectly measuring the dry ingredients and the ambient humidity can also affect the outcome of a recipe (esp. in very humid places with very sensitive recipes). Ove

I’d like to introduce you to our friend Gena. Some of you may remember her writing a post on A Couple Cooks a few years ago called  5 Tips for Balanced Eating . It started like this: “ My name is Gena. I’m a food blogger, a vegan cookbook author, a nutritionist, and an RD-to-be. I’m also recovering from thirteen years of on-again, off-again anorexia and orthorexia. ” Powerful words. In the years since then, Gena Hamshaw has become a dear friend. She’s the face behind the food blog The Full Helping , and author of three vegan cookbooks. At the same time, she works as a nutrition counselor and is completing her master of science degree in nutrition and education. (Talk about rockstar!) I admire so many things about Gena: her ability to excel in so many things, her generous spirit, and her grit to persevere through professional and personal trials. But one of the things I admire most: her fearlessness and vulnerability to speak out about important topics to help others heal. Gena’s cour