Year: 2021

a baking dish with bread pudding

simple bread pudding with apples and cinnamon

Happy Earth Day! I’m baking again. Well, we’ve been baking since March 24. It’s hard to believe that our new stove was delivered almost a month ago, right in time for Patrick’s birthday, which was great. I was even able to bake a birthday cake, with the only problem that the delivery and installation pushed all our cooking plans late into the evening, so there were no good photos of the cake. Okay, the other problem was that my frosting didn’t turn out very pretty. So I didn’t think my first cake in our new oven was blog-worthy. It was tasty, though! Patrick had asked for a lemony dessert, so I made a four-tier mini cake filled with lots of lemon cream.  Since then, we’ve been trying to stay away from eating too many sweets in an effort to get in better shape, so it’s been a bit quiet in the baking department. We are also trying to resume our family hikes on Sundays. We started the tradition some time ago, but haven’t been very consistent. Last …

a strawberry tart

baking a strawberry tart for Sarah

It was Sarah’s birthday last week and as usual, she requested a fruit tart instead of a cake. In Marin, you can find strawberries pretty much year-round. Most come from Mexico, but already this week local strawberries are starting to show up in the market, and surprisingly, they are delicious – so sweet! I wish I had bought more. It seems like every time I make a tart I don’t have enough fruit to cover all the custard, but Sarah didn’t seem to mind. Happy kid, happy mom, right? Fruit Tart Recipe Tart dough recipe slightly adapted from my favorite book: Tartine Bakery CookbookPastry cream filling Fruit(s) of choiceJam/jelly for glazing the fruit For the Tart Shell Make sure the eggs and butter are at room temperature. Combine the butter, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer. Use the paddle attachment and mix until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, until everything looks smooth.  Add the flour all at once to the butter mixture. Blend at slow speed until just combined. …

pork with sage and capers

We’re finally having some beautiful spring days in Marin, so this weekend we decided to go for a hike around Bon Tempe, one of the nearby lakes. “Back in the day,” as Patrick likes to say, hiking was one of our favorite weekend activities. Especially when we lived in Salt Lake City, we made an effort to hike as often as we could. The views from the top of the Wasatch Mountains were spectacular, but Marin has a lot to offer as well! I have several books with Marin trail information. I am not kidding that we could hike a different trail each weekend until we are too old to hike and never run out of options. Both Patrick and I are ready to tackle the pounds we gained last year, and hiking is the perfect way to ease back into exercising more. And with these views and weather, who can complain!? Plus, it’s fun to hike together like we used to. Today, I am sharing a recipe we cooked this week. This recipe has …

knitting the diamond hat, a free pattern by anne mizoguchi

One of the first knitting projects I finished this year is the Diamond Hat, a pattern you can download for free on the Ravelry website. This was a good project to practice my colorwork technique and tension (both still a work in progress). Surprisingly, I was able to finish it super quickly, which makes it a great gift idea. One thing I noticed was that my ribbing was slanting to the left a bit. Do you see it? The ribbing is not a typical knit one, purl one. Instead, you knit the ‘knits’ through the back loops, which makes the rib be more defined. I liked the resulting rib, but the slanting edge was bugging me. That’s why I decided to block the hat. Blocking sounds scary to new knitters, but actually, it’s a pretty easy process. You need a bucket, warm water, wool soap (or baby shampoo), and a few clean towels. This pattern is easy to follow, and you can have a lot of fun experimenting with different color combinations, something I’ve been …