Merengues Suaves de Café

No one in my family is crazy about meringues. Or, I should say, no one in my family is crazy about typical meringue cookies. We all find them too dry and kind of boring. But my mom does remember a kind of meringue from her childhood in Madrid that she loved. The meringues she describes weren't really cookies, nor were they pavlova or a soft meringue topping. They were very typical goodies found in nearly every Spanish pastry shop, and they were soft and gooey on the inside, with a crisp outer shell. Which sounds awfully promising.

Macarons For Beginners

So, macarons. Those notoriously tricky footed French cookies. Everyone agrees that they're moody, difficult, and often refuse to cooperate.

Knowing this, guess what I've been fixating on for the past few weeks.

Yankee Cornbread

When I was in elementary school, I never bought lunch.  My mother, suspicious of the school lunches (and rightly so - they were horrible) would pack me a lunch every day before I got up.  But there was one item on the menu I would go for: cornbread.

All of my first grade class looked forward to what were unofficially known as Cornbread Fridays.  Our teacher, Doctor V, was a very kind and very patient instructor, but she was known as the strictest of the elementary teachers.  She always wore a blue button-down shirt monogrammed with her initials, with the starched collar turned up.  Everything had its place, and everything had its certain way of being done in her classroom.  But there was one thing Doctor V went wild for, and that was Cornbread Friday.

How To Make Marzipan Hearts

Come visit me on Flickr at SteelCityFlan!

We didn't have school yesterday.  We don't have school today.  And we won't have school tomorrow.

I'm loving all this time off, but I think I'm getting a little cabin fever from not being able to leave the house/neighborhood at all.  So what have I been doing?  I've been filling up our fridge with fattening baked goods.  Yesterday I made some teeny tiny almond paste hearts, smaller than the ones from the last post.  I'm planning to use them on mini vanilla versions of the Haiti bake sale cupcakes.  They're about the size of lentils, and they're so, so cute.

And lucky you, you get a tutorial on how to make them!

Bake Sale For Haiti: Chocolate Cupcakes With Buttercream Frosting and Marzipan Hearts

My school is hosting a bake sale for the earthquake victims in Haiti this week.  When I first saw the posters for it around school, I knew I was making something.  I already had some Valentine's Day cupcakes planned for my class, and I thought that I would make another batch for the bake sale.  I firmly believe that cutesie colors and tiny hearts are appropriate at any time of the year, and even more so when they're for a good cause.

Plus, my mom let me back in the kitchen seeing as these are going to charity.