Mascarpone Tart with Cranberry Cider Compote & Pecan Crust

  This Thanksgiving is a little strange. Back in the day, I'd be going to one of my grandparents' house and feasting with my family and crazy sisters. But now there's only one set of grandparents, and this year half of my family isn't even going there/doing anything for the holiday. I could be making the trek, but instead I'm going to my significant's Thanksgiving...

  I guess that's the thing you do when you've been dating for a spell, but it's my first holiday away from "home", if you will.

Just a Li'l Wedding Cake

  Emma and I didn't have the smoothest of sisterhoods. Remarkably different personalities and behavior traits when we were young caused a good amount of clashing—especially when we shared a room. Her walls were always painted black, mine had every color under the sun. She liked the dark light-blocking curtains, I liked lava lamps and was outside as soon as the sun was up. God, I bet she hated me for that.

Roasted Tomato Basil Soup

  There's something funny about this past August. Things were all topsy-turvy, and somehow things were also just the same. Right now it's averaging 70 degrees and things are weird and chilly in my drafty li'l apartment.

Chocolate Stout Cake with Caramel Swiss Meringue Buttercream

  I'm tired. I got my wisdom teeth yanked, I work 6 days a week, and I helped my significant other with moving all the things last week. I have approximately zero social energies. Things have just been one thing after the other here, and this lil cake is right in the thick of it.

Cinny Buns

  Cut, wrap, stamp, repeat.  Spending 5-6 hours every day watching everyone else around me bake, this is what I would wake up at 6:00 AM to do.  Package the goods.

  Everyone has to start somewhere, obviously, especially in any kind of kitchen.  I didn't have much on my resume, besides some gaping semesters in my post high school career and some caramel apple and fudge experience.

One-Bowl Cocoa Brownies

  It had been a bad day.  If I remember rightly, there was rain and cold and the dreariness of another schoolwork-filled day.

  Mid-afternoon, I shoved aside algebra and flipped onto my back, staring at the delicately painted ceiling of our family room.  Hands digging into the plush green carpet.

Blackberry Soufflé for Two

  I can't believe how little I've dabbled in the souffle world.  After my first experience with it in this old blog post, you'd think I'd be trying a new recipe every week or something.  But yeah, no, 4 years have gone by and I totally forgot that souffles/puddings/puds were even a thing.  Mistake, you guys, big mistake.