Cinnamon brown sugar latte (vegan or no, choose your own adventure!)

How much do you love lattes? A lot, right? Me too. How much do you love paying $4-5 a pop? Yeah, not so much.

I saw a recipe for the dreaded (at least, for me) pumpkin spice latte and figured making myself a cinnamon brown sugar latte at home couldn't be too hard. It would also save me from dropping serious money at Starbucks every time I get a craving. 

Okara carrot muffies

As my many donut and dessert posts can attest, I'm not what you'd call a "clean eater." I don't ascribe to any particular diet, but I can appreciate vegetarian and vegan things. I'm still a little iffy on what exactly the Paleo diet is, but, (insert some sarcasm here) thank goodness, there are a bajillion websites that I can visit in order to get a better grip on it, if I feel so inclined.

Chocolate ganache

Ganache is one of the easiest things you can do to class up a plain cake, pretzels, or some less-than-stellar strawberries. It's just chopped chocolate with scalded hot cream poured over it. Use whatever kind of chocolate you like, though let's be real: white chocolate is NOT OKAY (if you're trying to feed me anyway). In this recipe, I used a mix of Ghiradelli Twilight (72% cacao), Trader Joe's 72% dark chocolate, and one cup of Hershey's semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Victoria sponge (yellow cake)

There are so many yellow cake recipes out there, but I've found many of them to be disappointing and kinda wasteful for what you get. EIGHT egg yolks?? Are you joking with that? Maybe if I had some angel food cake to make right after and needed the egg yolks, but man! I'd already sacrificed six egg yolks to the custard and I didn't feel right using only half of eight more eggs.

I searched high and low for a good yellow cake recipe and guess what? The Brits are lousy with them! But you wouldn't know it, because the crafty devils call it "Victoria Sponge." Hmph. Even worse, they don't slather it with chocolate buttercream like any DECENT American will normally do. They eat their cake with jam. JAM, I TELL YOU.

Vanilla pastry cream

For backstory, see my post about Boston cream pie.

I trust Dorie Greenspan more than any other cookbook writer/chef. Her recipes have never let me down. I own two of her cookbooks, Baking: From My Home to Yours and Around My French Table. I've used Baking way, way more than the other book, but everything I've made has been delicious so far. Given my current transient state (most of my stuff is in storage!) both cookbooks are packed away somewhere, so I had to go searching online to find her pastry cream recipe. Thankfully, there are many, many Dorie devotees online, who love her as much as I do.

Feast: Boston cream pie for my brother's birthday

My brother's birthday is this month and I wanted to make him something impressive. Not, like, "foie gras truffle oil blah-de-blah I'm so snooty" impressive, but something that he loves that he doesn't get to eat very often because it's not a typical dessert you find everywhere. And if you do find Boston cream pie, oftentimes it's composed of vanilla pudding, boxed yellow cake, and a gooey chocolate stain of a ganache. Okay. Now I'm getting a little snooty. There's nothing wrong with Jell-o vanilla pudding or boxed cake mix. I grew up eating (and loving!) these things because my mom really had no interest in baking.

But, I've cleared several levels in the game of life, baking-wise, and I've progressed beyond cake mix when making a birthday dessert for someone. If I can, I'm going to make it from scratch. Settle in, dear blog readers, as I embark on a quest to create a Boston cream pie worthy of my serious, cynical, funny, meticulous, caring, science-loving, occasionally petty, mostly awesome brother.

Kale, sausage, and potato soup (forager's minestrone soup)

Sorry for the absence! I came down with a late summer cold, which was the worst. I mean, I'm given to frequent fits of hyperbole, but seriously. Being sick when it's sunny and 90F outside and all you want to do is lie huddled under blankets in a darkened room is just . . . the pits. I'm coming back to the blog now, with a restorative soup, meant to warm you up with its slightly spicy, earthy goodness.

The season for soups and stews is almost upon us and I have the perfect soup for you to try out. This recipe came out of a desire to make a hearty lunch without having to go to the grocery store first.

All of my photos of this soup were kinda blurry and awful, which is such a disservice to this tasty soup!

Crispy chickpeas, two ways (forage)

At the job I had before grad school, my friend Lenore (who has a food blog too!) introduced me to the concept of "mouth-bored." You know that feeling you get when you're not really hungry and gum just won't satisfy, but you still have the compulsion to eat? Yeah, that's mouth-bored. She'd eat carrots (sometimes peeling them at her desk!) or green peppers and I'd usually have some kind of stash of stale crackers and a small tub of peanut butter with which I could make do. It was a sad state of affairs.

I thought about this as I looked into my pantry last night. I like to munch on a little something when I'm in between meals and/or when I'm mouth-bored. It was lookin' a little lean, snack-wise. I did have two cans of chickpeas just hanging out and I knew that roasting chickpeas was a thing (just google it--you'll be buried in recipes) so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Crank up your ovens, y'all! It's time to make some crispy chickpeas!