Matcha, and more specifically, matcha cookies, have been traveling through cyberspace and uniting people around the world. All starting with a common recipe, and a goal to make something special for friends and family.
I posted the recipe for our green tea (a.k.a. matcha) tea sweets last June, and since then I have been watching […]

Andrew loves pecan pie, and I try to make it for him each year on his birthday. When I first started this blog in 2005, I wrote about a pecan pie that I made for his birthday that came out well, but wasn’t our favorite. I got the recipe from Bon Appétit, and it was […]

Amai’s Green Tea Sweet recipe is a finalist in the Best Bakery Recipe category for Pastryscoop.com’s Golden Scoop Awards. The three finalists in the category will compete in a blind taste test on June 14, and the winner will be announced on June 18, 2007 in an awards ceremony at the French Culinary Institute. I […]

The secret ingredient to the recipe that won the Betty Crocker Baking Contest was…chips! Anna Ginsberg of Austin, Texas won the $5,000 grand prize for her Chocolate-Topped Peanut-Toffee Bars, a sweet and salty cookie bar made with a pouch of Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix and potato chips as a “secret” ingredient. It may […]

I received the new Scharffen Berger book, The Essence of Chocolate, last month and have been looking forward to trying a chocolate recipe for Valentine’s Day. The book’s images, stories and selection of great chocolate recipes are quite impressive. It has everything from fondue to three-bean chili (with cocoa, of course), all contributed by well […]

Two of my favorite things to do in the winter are: 1) Eat pudding and 2) Get out of New York and visit California. It’s even better when I can combine these two wonderful things, like I did last year at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. This neighborhood bakery specializes in classic French desserts, but […]

Beyond the classic apple pie, nothing says “America” like chocolate chips and peanut butter. The chocolate chip cookie was invented in the 1930s by a woman named Ruth Wakefield who ran the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts (Nestle later bought the rights to the recipe). Peanut butter, usually passed up by the rest of the […]

Hazelnut cake for me!

A list of quick and easy holiday drinks.

Champagne Brownies are truly a dark chocolate treat.