There are few things I crave more in December than cozy foods and places. Warm, twinkling lights sparkle throughout my home during the long nights of this season. The fluffy blanket is draped over the reading chair, waiting for a kid to plop down with a good book. December always leaves me feeling tired, the deep in my bones exhaustion that comes from trying to be too many things, wondering if I’ve done enough for the people and issues I care about. I do what I can to keep the darkness away and find joy in reliable places, like baking.

The first time I made this gingerbread bundt cake was for a Richmond Bakers Against Racism bake sale last year. I was never a fan of gingerbread, but the way the scent of those warm spices filled the air as this cake baked convinced me otherwise. I made it again recently, for dinner with friends, and I loved it so much that I’ll probably make it one more time before the year ends.

We have very low-key Christmas celebrations here. Eggnog waffles for Christmas morning breakfast are a must, and we make snowflake bread when we get our first snow. I’m thinking this gingerbread cake, with all its cozy vibes, needs to find a permanent spot in our December traditions.

Bundt cakes look lovely when they’re draped in a glaze, but I went the simple route with this one. A dusting of powdered sugar and a hefty dose of freshly grated nutmeg gave this cake a snowy look. Feel free to top it as you wish.

Here’s to finding and creating light and joy where we can, this season and always.

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*Today’s recipe is a special one because it’s raising money for Cookies for Kids’ Cancer. I’m grateful to Julie from The Little Kitchen for organizing this Valentine’s Good Cookie fundraiser every year. You can help make a difference and help fund pediatric cancer research by donating to Cookies for Kids’ Cancer.

It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and while I’m definitely planning to bring the chocolate this weekend (any excuse to make Nutella French toast for breakfast), I’m also planning to make fun drinks on Monday. For the kids: strawberry chocolate milkshakes. For the adults: guava pink peppercorn margaritas.

The recipe for these margaritas is my attempt at recreating the drink of the same name from Choza de Margarita at Disney World’s Epcot. Though it’s been years since I’ve had it, I think I came pretty close. The guava nectar provides fruity sweetness to the drink. Like the original drink, I used reposado tequila in my recipe. Reposado tequila is aged in oak barrels from two months to a year, and it has a hint of vanilla. Though the original drink uses grapefruit liqueur, I opted for the orange liqueur I already had in my bar.

The pink peppercorns are the real star of this recipe. They add a floral, peppery bite to the margaritas when you chew one while drinking. Pink peppercorns aren’t actually peppercorns. They’re berries from a shrub related to cashews. I found mine at Penzey’s. The original drink doesn’t have a salted rim, but I couldn’t resist adding a pink peppercorn salt rim. It gives more of that floral flavor with each sip.

Since I know a lot of people like their margaritas frozen, I think you could easily blend these with ice to make a frozen version. Add a few pink peppercorns before blending to get that floral flavor in each sip. If guava isn’t your thing, these blood orange margaritas are another festive and delicious drink.

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As we enter another year of pandemic and all the hardships that come with it, I feel almost ridiculous talking about cookies. Yes, this is a food blog. However, I don’t want any of you reading to see me sharing recipes as proof that I’m thriving. I’m holding it together as best I can, just like everyone else I know. I never thought I’d be parenting through a pandemic, which I remind myself of when things feel especially heavy. On the days it feels like too much, I find solace in baking–the structure, the rhythm, the smells.

These chewy chocolate chip cookie bars are basically unfussy cookies with the texture of blondies. There’s no butter to cream, no individual cookies to scoop, no stand mixer bowl to get dirty. (Though I have plenty of recipes for cookies if you want something more involved.) This recipe meets The Champion Quotient (minimum work, maximum reward) while giving me enough time to focus on something other than, you know, the fact that the world is burning and people are dying and our government doesn’t care. I’m still doing what I can about the causes that I care about, and baking helps me refuel mentally and emotionally. It also helps that I get to eat something delicious at the end.

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There’s no recipe in today’s post, just some inspiration for anyone who wants to make a Bluey themed cake. My five year old is a big fan of the tv show Bluey. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an Australian show. The main characters are a family of blue heeler dogs. It’s adorable, and it quickly became one of my son’s favorites in 2020. When I made this cake last summer, I hadn’t seen any cakes with the character Bingo on them. I suspect there will be a lot now that the show has gained popularity here. I’m sharing this one since some followers on Instagram asked me for tips after I shared a photo of this cake last June. (Yes, I know I’m late.)

In the months leading up to his fifth birthday, my little guy’s cake request never changed. He wanted a “banana Bingo cake with green frosting and Bluey and Bingo sprinkles.” The banana cake with green frosting was an interesting request, but I’m not one to deny my kids their cake wishes (within reason, anyway) on their birthdays. Especially during yet another pandemic birthday.

To make the Bingo cake topper, I used mostly modeling chocolate, also known as candy clay. I don’t love fondant. I don’t like how it feels, and I don’t like how it tastes. However, I used store bought black fondant for Bingo’s eyes and nose because I couldn’t find black candy melts or food coloring (again, pandemic). I used a mixture of copper and yellow gel food colorings to dye the modeling chocolate for Bingo. I cut the shapes by hand and gently molded them together. If you look closely in the photo below, you can see I used a parchment cake round as a size guide. Building Bingo on that helped me visualize how she would look on top of the cake.

Modeling chocolate is fairly easy to work with, though it can separate and get grainy if you overwork it. Cake Paper Party has a wonderful post on how to make modeling chocolate and fix any issues, and I highly recommend reading it if you’ve never worked with modeling chocolate before. My Bingo cake topper was far from perfect, but that didn’t stop either kid from exclaiming how much they loved it.

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December is my favorite month of the year to bake. Something about the cold, and the sense of magic in the air, makes December baking delightful. This is the time for cookies, of course, but I’m here to sing the praises of brownies.

There’s no shortage of brownie recipes on the site. I’ve got something for everyone. Brownies with nuts. Classic brownies, of course. Fancy brownies with caramel or Nutella. But of all the brownie recipes I’ve made, this recipe for ultimate dark chocolate brownies is my favorite. That’s no surprise given that it’s baked with ingredients I love–dark chocolate, bourbon, espresso, and flaky salt.

I baked a pan of these brownies last year to share with friends. It was cold, but we were still in the days of the pandemic where it felt safest to be outside. So I drove around delivering these to some of my friends that I hadn’t seen for months. We had masked conversations in their yards or patios. It was such a strange time, and baking for friends was one of the only things that felt normal.

Things have changed since this time last year, but my love of these brownies remains. They’re fudgy and decadent, with the perfect balance of sweet and salty.

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We’re approaching one year of our world as we know it totally changing. I feel it in my heart, a heaviness that feels a lot like grief. I can feel myself bracing for it, recalling the uncertainty of the last year, the struggles and losses.

Clara’s birthday was the last normal thing we did as a family last year. We had dessert at a favorite Richmond spot, and I didn’t even bake anything. I planned to bake a cake a few weeks later, when we would have a few friends over. It never happened, though, because a few weeks later we were living through a pandemic.

I’ve made this chocolate cake and a version of this whipped buttercream many times before. They’re my go-to recipes for buttercream frosted layer cakes. So when Clara asked for a “chocolate cake with strawberry frosting with pink and gold” for her ninth birthday, I knew I was making some variation of those two recipes. This chocolate cake with whipped strawberry buttercream is easily the most party-worthy cake I’ve ever made, and the irony isn’t lost on me that I made it for a non-party.

That vibrant pink on the cake? Totally natural, no food coloring needed. Instead of making a strawberry purée from fresh strawberries and reducing it so it wouldn’t break the buttercream, I decided to try freeze-dried strawberries. I pulverized them in my spice grinder and mixed the powder into the frosting. (I used dried fruit this way when making homemade pixie sticks for her fourth birthday, too.) The result was delicious! The buttercream was wonderfully sweet-tart, a perfect match for the rich chocolate cake.

Before you look at the recipe, let’s talk about shortening. Shortening is 100 percent fat, and butter is around 80 percent. When you cream shortening with sugar, it creates air pockets that help leaven cakes. Shortening, unlike butter, doesn’t have any moisture in it that would promote gluten formation. This makes the cake ultra-tender, but a cake with only shortening would lack the flavor butter provides. By using both, this recipe yields a moist and flavorful chocolate cake.

For one night, we laughed and ate and sang to my bright, empathetic girl who has rolled with every change thrown at her the last year. For a moment, I forgot about the uncertainty and heaviness. She told me it felt “almost normal,” and after the year we’ve had, I’ll take it.

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Bread is one of my favorite foods to bake. I love the process of it. Weighing the ingredients, shaping the dough, the smell of it as it bakes. In a year that has been full of unexpected changes, baking is one thing that still steadies me. Baking makes me happy. It always has. These days, especially, I’m all about available joy, and baking is one of the ways I find it.

The last almost year since our stay at home orders were first put in place has been the strangest passage of time I’ve experienced in entire my life. Time has felt simultaneously at a stand still and moving at warp speed. Our days look the same, day to day and week to week. But then I look at the kids and their outgrown clothes and shoes and am reminded that time is still moving even when it feels like the world stopped. I look at all the ways they’ve grown since this time last year. My four year old is reading, like really reading. My eight year old has handled frequently changing schedules, virtual school, and uncertainty with compassion and resilience.

I have mostly been baking my feelings from the last year, which, if you know me, is no surprise. (See: pizza wheels, chocolate muffins, and coffee cocoa cake.) Baking gives me the same feeling I get when doing certain workouts. I have to focus fully on it, so my mind doesn’t wander. Baking has always given me that feeling, which is why it’s always felt therapeutic to me.

This cheddar and black pepper bread is basically an elevated quick cheese bread. It’s a yeasted bread that yields a rustic and delicious loaf, perfect for everything from sandwiches to dunking in soups.

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Food is a feeling. My closest friend, who pretty much sees straight into my soul, told me that recently. I was trying to explain what it means to me to feed people, but it starts with a complicated story that I never figured out how to tell. Like always, she knew what I was saying before I could find the right words.

Food is a feeling. It’s why, when our entire world was turned upside down in March, I grabbed onto the thing that’s kept me steady since I was child – feeding the people I love. I’ve been doing it, one way or another, for almost my entire life. My story began out of necessity. It started with muffin mix, the kind with canned blueberries that stained my fingers and everything they touched, as a nine year old on a weekend morning. Taco kits were my go-to in middle school. In high school, I usually made chicken tenderloins nestled in a casserole dish with bags of flavored rice. I made pots of taco soup and boxed Funfetti cakes for my friends in college. Eventually, I was baking from scratch – everything from cookies to baby shower cakes and even a wedding cake for friends.

I started cooking because I had to. I kept cooking because I wanted to.

Food is a feeling. It’s my favorite way to take care of people. I said the same thing this time last year when I wrote about my favorite double chocolate muffins, and it’s never been more clear to me. Full belly, full heart. That’s what I hope I give when I make food for someone. Not every meal at my house is some magical moment where it feels like I’m nourishing my kids’ hearts, but over time? Yeah, I am. Baking for candidates or surprising friends with cookies on their doorstep? It’s the best way I know how to say, well, all the things that are easier said with food than words.

Food is a feeling. So when my daughter came home from school on a Thursday in March and never went back, I did everything in my power to be unshakable. Pizza Fridays were a fun tradition we began a couple years ago, but suddenly they were the most reassuring thing during this season of uncertainty. I’ve got two and half years worth of Pizza Fridays in a highlight on my Instagram. There’s one from early March, when nearly everything felt out of my control, and Pizza Friday was one thing I could give myself and the kids to hang onto. These pizza wheels have made regular appearances on our Pizza Fridays for years, and my kids ask for them as often as they ask for this white chicken and herb pizza.

Food is a feeling, and I hope the feeling that my kids get when we cook and eat together is “I am loved. I am safe.” I hope it feels like a hug when I bake for my friends. And, if you make these pizza wheels, I hope you feel the same joy my family feels when we make them.

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Like many of you, my family has been isolated at home for several weeks now. The whole globe seems to have descended into chaos, and so many people have had their lives completely upended. Since we’re grocery shopping far less than usual, I’ll be using this space to share recipes highlighting pantry staples and ones that call for few ingredients. I hope you and yours are safe and well. I also hope the recipes I share here will be a useful resource for you during this uncertain time.

With so many people baking bread for the first time, I’ve had several requests from friends for bread recipes. I have three recipes for loaf breads that I adore (light wheat, whole wheat, and brioche), but they call for ingredients that may not be in abundance, like eggs, or that most people don’t keep in their pantry, like dry milk and wheat germ.

This soft wheat sandwich bread recipe uses the most basic ingredients – flour, yeast, salt, milk, butter and honey. America’s Test Kitchen calls this bread “the quintessential American sandwich loaf,” which is exactly what it is. It has a perfectly brown crust and a soft crumb. Since I’m nearly out of bread flour, I followed the variation, with a couple slight changes, to make it wheat bread. If you’re new to bread baking, this is a perfect beginner recipe. And if you’re looking for a great bread-baking book, I can’t say enough good things about Bread Illustrated. It’s organized so that each chapter increases in complexity, but all the recipes are highly approachable.

I find solace in the kitchen, and cooking and baking provide me a sense of normalcy when everything else feels like it’s falling apart. My hope is that we all find something comforting as we learn to cope with this new normal. Be gentle with yourselves and each other, friends.

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The holiday season makes me think a lot about traditions. I didn’t really have them growing up, so I get to create them for (and with) my little ones. Our Christmas morning always starts off with eggnog waffles, and now we start the new year with this bread. It was the most delicious way to start 2019, and I’m eager to start 2020 the same way.

My daughter kept calling this (cinnamon star bread) snowflake bread, and the name stuck. It’s fitting, really, with the generous dusting of powdered sugar and the frigid time of year in which we make it. Earlier this year, I made a couple loaves of this for some of my favorite legislators. I meant it tongue in cheek, and I also wanted to make something other than chocolate muffins. I’ll be back at the General Assembly next month to lobby Virginia’s new gun sense majority. I’m still deciding what to bake.

This is a pull-apart bread that’s reminiscent of cinnamon rolls. Unlike cinnamon rolls, which stay soft and fluffy throughout, this cinnamon sugar filling in this bread caramelizes on the outside, giving it a crunchy exterior. When you pull it apart, you get to the soft and fragrant interior. For me, making this with my kids is the perfect way to spend a snow day or holiday morning, and despite how it looks, it really isn’t hard to make.

Sending warm wishes to all of you for a joyful holiday season.

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