I’ve had a lot of adventures with baked goods–the time I strapped chocolate mousse cups on the back of my bike, the (many) times I’ve pulled half-assembled cakes out of my bike bag at work, the cakes on a plane–but this weekend saw a new first: coat-checked cheesecake. This cheesecake accompanied my friend’s birthday party
Pancake cooking: spotty or smooth?
Although the stereotypical giant diner pancake has a smooth, evenly-browned color, I tend to prefer the abstract art of uneven browning on my pancakes. It’s all about your pan and your fat, so it’s choose-your-own-adventure time, pancake edition. Throw a knob of butter in the pan, swirl it around, and top it with pancake batter–you’ll get that uneven
Whole wheat pancake mix
There’s just something about pancakes that shouts weekend! with a little burst of confetti and maybe a couple of short trumpet blasts. My usual weekday morning involves breakfast eaten at high speed between running and heading to work, watching the clock the whole time and knowing that I’m behind schedule, so taking the time to
Vermont: icicles and beer
It was going to hit -40 degrees that weekend anyway, and at that point you may as well just embrace it. Right? Going with the theory that winter becomes less terrible if you just give in to the snow and cold, two friends and I drove up to Vermont for the second annual it’s-Presidents’-Day-not-Valentine’s-Day skiing
Grapefruit Meringue Pie
Happy Pi Day! Last year, Pi Day fell about four weeks after I started my new job at Chew. Our CEO hadn’t heard of the holiday and didn’t know me well enough yet to realize I would absolutely go through with my pie talk, so he was slightly shocked when I showed up with this
Belgian brownies
I’m on my way to New York right now, spending a weekend with friends in Brooklyn before heading up to New Jersey for an exhilarating week of pilot plant trials. After spending most of January in and out of a not-particularly-enticing area of the garden state, I figured out that the best way to make
Belgian brownie cakelets, revisited
If you’ve met me for more than about five minutes, you probably figured out that I love chocolate kind of beyond reason. And if we talked for more than 10 minutes, you likely know that I want nothing more than to spend my weekends in the kitchen trouble-shooting recipes. So when I saw these Belgian brownie
Sponge cakes
Much as I love a good roll cake, I’m not the biggest fan of its usual base–the sponge cake. It’s essentially a lot of whipped eggs and little flour baked into a beautifully light, perfectly roll-able cake that, unfortunately, comes out weirdly chewy and has no flavor. Strange that I don’t love it. So I
Roll cakes: attempt #3
It’s real, you guys. Roll cakes are happening. It’s a source of great amusement to my friends, who do nothing but make fun of me—and then devour the cakes. Laugh all you want, you know they’re delicious. I’m taking all celebrations now as excuses to roll up a cake of some sort, so a coworker’s
Chee’s cheese muffins
Our whole office packed up early the Tuesday before Christmas and headed out to our holiday celebration, centered, appropriately enough, around food. Over a never-ending procession of tiny, flavorful, Middle Eastern dishes, we kept talking about our favorite subject: except for the heated debate about global warming that I intentionally tuned out, we mostly discussed