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.

Chocolate Shortbread Hearts

I've been banned from my kitchen until Valentine's Day.

It's gotten to the point where I have to ask permission before baking, because if not I'd be filling the fridge with fattening foods all day.  So I've requested permission to make cupcakes for Valentine's Day, and that means this will be a quick post with a recipe I made a few months ago.

Cowboy Cookies

It's finals week at my school, and it's incredibly stressful on everyone - teachers included.  I have had several teachers this year that have been simply wonderful, and I wanted to make them something to show that we students really do notice and appreciate all their hard work.  The first is my health teacher.  She has a great sense of humor and always keeps our classes entertaining, but she also very clearly cares about all her students and is extremely understanding and willing to help with whatever she can.  The second is my physics teacher, who has been absurdly patient with our class this year; we're pretty noisy, to say the least.  However, he has walked us through every conceivable type of problem, tutored us in the morning, delayed tests, and helped with homework, all without once freaking out at us.  Which definitely deserves a batch of cookies, if not a medal.