Passover Brown Butter Almond Cake

I was determined to try a different recipe for WG’s birthday cake this year. His birthday fell during Passover and he keeps the holiday rather strictly. I didn’t want him to miss a birthday cake, though. We asked him what kind of cake he wanted, but he left it up to us. Grandma and WG [...]

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Spring Has Sprung

I am sittling here at my computer and the sun is streaming into the window. I can see birds and bees flitting around the blooming trees. How did this happen? How has time flown by so quickly? L turned thirteen last week, and we celebrated her bat mitzvah as well. What a tremendous milestone. The [...]

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Seafoam Frosted Birthday Cake

Sounds awful doesn’t it? Seafoam frosting? What the heck, I don’t think it is meant to look or taste like seafoam. Bad marketing, I guess. Because the reality of this frosting is that it is incredibly delicious and luxuriously creamy, but fat free. Compared to most frostings, this one is actually not completely horrible for [...]

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Chocolate Cupcakes

A while ago, a friend of mine gave me a few recipes that she got from her Uncle Merv. One recipe was for chocolate cupcakes. My friend raved about these cupcakes and I was surprised to find, when I made them, that they were made with no eggs or milk – totally vegan. So incredibly [...]

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On to a New Decade

Luckily, I was in pretty good shape by the end of December so that S & I could host our annual New Year’s Eve dinner. While this year’s menu was not as elaborate as last year’s feast based on luck (hmmm, can’t decide if that one worked or didn’t), longevity and prosperity, we did have [...]

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Home and Home Cooking

After a week and a half away, S & I returned home on Friday…exhausted. We were in New York, for my parents 50th wedding anniversary, and in Washington, D.C., for a grand tour. Before returning home, we sent the girls off to camp for the summer. We came home kid-free and slept-in on Saturday, which [...]

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Frenzy and Family

I have some leftovers and lots of great memories of a wonderful weekend with S’s family. Given that we live closest (by more than 800 miles) to Grandma, we were the locus of the activities for this past weekend’s celebration of her 80th birthday. Family started to arrive last Monday (scrambled eggs for dinner day) [...]

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Naked Coffee Cake

I haven’t drizzled the delicious maple icing onto this coffee cake yet, but it still looks great donning just its streusel topping. Ina Garten’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake is an easy, impressive, rich and delicious cake to serve any time.  I made it on Friday and put it in the freezer for removal for our [...]

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The Never Ending Paella

It serves me right for not using my usual Paella recipe. I figured that I’d wing it with no problem. Didn’t even look at the timing or the quantities, if only for reference purposes. That is why we didn’t sit down to dinner tonight with Grandma and WG until 7:30. More than an hour after [...]

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Baked Out

This has truly been a week of cooking. I’m usually not this busy, but, boy this has been a week. The teacher snack – o.k., I could have bought everything, but that is just not my style. No one cares but me. If there are cookies, do they need to be home made to be [...]

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