It’s Easter! Wait, It’s June Already? Crap.

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So, back in April, when Easter actually occurred, I was at home in San Francisco.  I had the baking bug real bad, and so I begged my mom to let me take care of the main dish for breakfast, as well provide the something sweet: a newfangled invention I’d just discovered called Monkey Bread, which basically means cinnamon-sugar-butter-biscuitiness.  Trust.  OMG.

Spring is... still springing!

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Spring is being a bit coy around these here parts.  One day it's sunny and gorgeous, and the geese are parading their fluffy babies all over the canal:

And the next day, we're having friends over for brunch, doors flung wide open to let in the... oops, and now it's pouring.  But at least the food was a hit!

Little Lemon Drops of Heaven

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I love the internet.  I never really got into 'surfing' the net until I moved to London and started trying to find new ways to keep from writing my book, but now that I'm into it, I spend most of my time hating myself for spending my life online instead of outdoors.  Except.  Except when a startup headhunter finds my old coffeehouse review page and contacts me.  Except when my old babysitter who I haven't seen since I was 10 reconnects with me on facebook.  Except when I stumble across an amazing recipe for Lemon Drop Cookies.  Have I mentioned that I love the internet?

How on earth could I miss such a sweet, little succulent recipe?!

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You have my sincerest apologies for the graininess of these pics...  vacay photography was sorely lacking.

It can't be true.  It simply cannot be that I have never shared my famous banana bread recipe with you!  How could I possibly have missed the opportunity to post the recipe that made me the baker I am today (on a good day)?!

My banana bread is what I was known for in high school.  It's better than anyone else's, including yours.  Sorry, but it's true.  And in high school, before my parents began the insane remodel that has consumed all our lives for the past 10 years (I kid you not), we had an amazing old gas stove/oven from the 50's, which used to make the tops of the loaves all chewy and sticky.  Heaven.  God, I miss that stove.

Working with what I've got: giant vanilla sugar cookies from Joy the Baker

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Lately I've been obsessed with food photography.  I recently discovered all those foodporn sites you all probably had bookmarked months (years?!) ago– foodgawker is my favorite– and I'm suddenly realizing just how sub-par my pics are.  Not just compared to SK and Joy, either– all the other amateur food bloggers out there are blowing me out of the water too!

My pretty new cake stand!

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Maybe now I'll have a slightly more photogenic setting for my pics!

Dairy-free baking: I love a challenge!

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I'm on a roll lately with the homemade recipes.  This week has been a bit of a baking ringamarole, due mostly to my classmates and my end of term baked-goods promise; one of them requested butter cookies with royal icing (not the easiest job!), and another can't have dairy so I had to throw something else in the mix.