Brunch with the momma.

Baking day for a holiday Olympiad reunion. Dark chocolate cupcakes, filled with whipped cream and candy cane dust and topped with peppermint frosting. These were our concept sketches, and the real things turned out almost exactly how I’d imagined.

We were nostalgic for those competitive baking days of yore.

Lemon-cranberry bars for Thanksgiving.

Since being back at school, I’ve been cooking quite a bit. Channeling my baker energies and my unwillingness to settle for mediocre meals means I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Lots of produce. Lots of noodles. Lots of rice. But I still get anxious cooking meat. And the lighting in the kitchen is awful so capturing nice shots is tough.

I stress about the enormity of the zucchini. And then, halfway through mixing the ingredients, I realize that zucchini bread is the exact opposite way to use up lots of zucchini.

I wouldn’t say ‘famous’, but these weren’t too shabby. And I improvised a bit, as usual.

Lemon glazed cupcakes, adapted from here with a few of my own twists for dinner at the Mann’s.

Winging a blueberry crumb muffin with orange zest for Mother’s Day breakfast.

We made gnocchi.

Double layer chocolate cake with mocha buttercream frosting for the birthday boys. No measuring devices, missing ¼ of the ingredients and it was still a hall-wide hit.

I express my love in cake. Sue me.

First attempt at macarons. Filled with chocolate ganache.

Cinnamon rum linzer cookies (recipe courtesy of Food and Wine, with a few tweaks of my own) for Aboo.

Today was Black/Raspberry Muffin Sunday.