Salted Spicy Chocolate Ice Cream

One of my favorite things to sip on when it’s cold and rainy out is Mexican Hot Chocolate. The sweet, spicy and salty flavors compliment each other perfectly. But what about when it’s warm and sunny out? Turn it into an ice cream of course! Of course it doesn’t completely transfer over so I had…

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Lemon Souffle Revisited – with Limes

Awhile ago I posted a Lemon Souffle recipe that I thought at the time was pretty good. But everything around here is constantly evolving, even my go-to recipes. When I was a kid my mom used to make lemon souffle as a very special treat. We didn’t get it very often, but I always remember…

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Ice Cream

Yeah, I know. If you’re here in the Bay Area, you might think I’m a madwoman for posting about ice cream. But hey – it’s JULY. It’s SUMMER. And even if there is water falling from the sky and a chill in the wind that I can feel INSIDE MY BONES, I am going to…

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Baby’s First Brownies (no, really)

Until about a week and a half ago, I had never made brownies from scratch. Sure, I’d made layered ricotta cakes and light-as-air macarons and fresh sourdough bread and all SORTS of complicated sauces and things, but somehow I must have missed the day where I was supposed to learn the recipe for good old-fashioned…

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Basic Egg Custard

When I was in 7th grade, my parents signed a form giving permission for me to participate in a raffle put on by my science class. The prize? Tiny baby chicks from our egg-incubation study. I am sure my folks were skeptical. Chickens? We lived in suburban Santa Cruz. People didn’t have chickens in our…

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Spiced Persimmon Bread

  I wrote last week about the farmer’s market, and about how I am trying to be more responsible about using the produce I bring home before it goes bad. I am happy to announce that we have made some very good changes to our kitchen paradigm, and have significantly reduced our produce waste. I…

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Fleur de Sel (Salted) Caramels

Last year I ill-advisedly picked up on one of those “the first 5 people to comment on this will get a hand-made gift from me” kind of memes floating around facebook. The caveat, as is often the case with these things, was re-posting it on YOUR page, thus continuing the cycle of gift-making. Right. So…

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Pear-Ginger Buttermilk Scones

I love kitchen gadgets. LoveloveloveloveLOVE. The weirder and more obscure, the better. I have cabinets full of ricers, garlic slicers, mallets, weird whisks with funny bits for extra fluffy foams. I love my hand-crank pasta machine. I want an extruder. My stand mixer? We have an understanding that makes room for the boyfriend, but otherwise…

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Pears Pears Pears!!!

It’s definitely fall here (after all of what, like 17 days of summer? What gives, San Francisco?) and the pears on the tree in the backyard are filling out beautifully and starting to ripen. Yesterday as I was out feeding the ducks and tending to the garden, I noticed a few pears starting to fall…

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