March seemed to fly by, but not so fast that we didn’t savor the slow thawing of the earth and the promise of warmer days to come. There is something marvelous when the color of budding leaves makes its appearance on the trees, seemingly overnight. All of a sudden, there is an abundant chirping of birds and cacophony of frogs too. A striking shift that creeps in unawares. It never ceases to surprise.
Read MoreI love breakfast, but 90% of the time I don’t eat it. On the weekends we’ll cook up a big breakfast...sausage, bacon, potatos, eggs, pancakes, waffles, crepes... But that’s when we have the time to make and enjoy it.
This bread is pretty dreamy. The chocolate flavor is pretty intense, amped up by the addition of some espresso powder. The toasted coconut adds a wonderful texture. And despite the ample amount of banana in the bread, the crumb remains pretty tender and not at all squidgy. It’s good for dessert, snack, or … yes … breakfast.
Read MoreThis isn’t exactly a recipe per se, but it’s a dessert our family often eats on special occasions, and so I felt like we really ought to share it on the blog.
When I first set out to write this post over the summer, I decided I’d do some googling to see if I could find out the history or origin of the “St. Croix Sundae.”
Read MoreWe wanted to start a new series where we share recent bakes and cooks we made throughout the month. What we loved and why. So on this last day of September, here are some things we made:
Read MoreA moist chocolate cupcake, filled with a crunchy chewy mixture of dulce de leche, toasted coconut, and pecans, topped off with a pile of rich and thick chocolate buttercream.
Why reversed? A classic German Chocolate Cake uses a coconut pecan frosting. These cupcakes rock the nutty duo on the inside (which is, I may add, an aesthetic win). The flavor profile is jacked up a notch by toasting the coconut and pecans, subbing out the evaporated milk mixture for dulce de leche, skipping over the traditional cake recipe, which uses sweet German chocolate, in favor of a deliciously deep and moist cocoa cake, and sweetening the deal with pretty swirls of chocolate frosting.
Read MoreAs promised, here is a sweet sourdough bread recipe: coconut, chocolate chips, and coffee all come together for a yummy treat. Special enough to make me smile when we have some for breakfast, but not too sweet to make you feel like you're making an excuse to eat dessert (I'm not the only one, right?).
Read MoreBoy, have a got a cake for your memorial day weekend!
Picture moist but light, not-too-sweet layers of vanilla cake kissed with coconut essence, sandwiched around a delightfully red strawberry jam and artfully smeared (a la royal wedding) with a fluffy blue ombre vanilla buttercream. It's summer appropriate, perfectly festive, and a tad more updated than your typical cookout fare (hello, red berry flag cake!). It's got a low-key blue and white vibe with a surprise dash of red inside.
Read MoreThe coconut topping gets caramelized during baking and creates a sweet, buttery, chewy topping. The browned butter adds depth of flavor and the cake is moist and tender. It's like the dressed up sister of banana bread. Plus, it passes for dessert and is still totally acceptable for breakfast.
Read MoreI've lived in Southwest Florida for eight years now, and not once have I made it down to the Keys. We had plans to make a family trip there over the summer, but things happened (like, I had a baby).
Much of Southwest Florida is filled with constructions built in the last few decades. So whenever I stumble upon anything in Florida that dates earlier than this century--anything that has the merest wisp of historicity about it--I am eager to soak it in. One of the places I have my heart set on visiting is Ernest Hemmingway's home. Sure, he may have been a less-than-admirable and deeply flawed character, but his prose defined a new style in American literature and his stories, though often troubling, are filled with an aching beauty, a longing for something beyond. Also, his home is worth visiting in itself, having been built in 1851 by marine architect and wrecker Asa Tift out of limestone he excavated directly from the site.
Read MoreWe've all been there before: rice was on the menu for dinner and you simply made too much.
I don't know why, but rice is one of those things I find nearly impossible to estimate right. Sometimes it forms a main component of a meal (think rice & beans) and we find ourselves scraping the pot clean. Other times, it's the flavorless and forgotten side. It ends up packed in a container and stowed away in the fridge, waiting for the day it's discovered again and promptly tossed in the bin. Because, let's face it, microwaved rice really stinks.
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