foursugars|fivespice

brown sugar cookies for the office! i only bake for people i like. or interns who don’t speak to each other all day… like those at the stimson center. 

Holiday baking! So happy to be back home, where hot water is dependable for the duration of my shower, I know the brand of crazy my family subscribes to, and playoff football is in full swing. Not to mention the usual late December traditions of pumpkin spice lattes, cookies and pies and breads galore, and Christmas music :)

A peaceful Saturday spent at the bakery, putting the finishing touches on the desserts for sale. Manjar was the theme of the day; we probably refilled that bowl about 4 times… and that didn’t even cover all of the desserts.

Merenguitos, cachos, queques, pastel de naranja, brazo de reina… :)

recipes lie. 2.5 hours became all afternoon as i made caramel apple cinnamon rolls for my host sister’s birthday!

chocolate cupcakes with pb frosting for a lazy afternoon cookout

first red velvet cake? check.

congrats on your engagement, ali and kealan!!

Stressed? Bake. Bored? Bake. Craving? Bake. Trying to cheer someone up? Bake. Conveying affection? Bake.

I can’t help myself.

So on my first proper day of winter break, I plunged into more holiday baking for a care package for some loved ones. On the menu were two new recipes to try out: molasses spice cookies and chocolate walnut cookies.

I love the smell of molasses, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and brown sugar all together. Few things smell more quintessentially like Christmas. And as for chocolate cookies so soft they might as well be thin slices of fudge brownies… well, who doesn’t love brownies? 

Baked some stuff up for the office for the holidays:

see that glass on the left? makeshift rolling pin. on the right? cookie cutter. this is called improvisation in a college kitchen.

sugar cookies cooling on the counter.

then brownies with caramel kisses:

there’s something so nice about melting chocolate and butter into a smooth, creamy puddle.

even if the evenly placed kisses cratered the surface of the brownies.

prepped the boxes:

a bit of a tight fit.

____

then lunch at the tombs with the office and an afternoon of work.

but then i got to see lyndsay and dan, who was all the way here from england! we took him to his first ever ethiopian dinner at dukem on u st.

about midway through.

then we demolished it.

cuties :)

____

and then because self-restraint is not one of my virtues, meghan and i made mug cakes, ostensibly to use up my leftover eggs.

total of 5 minute prep and cook time. 

but i think i’ll stick to real cakes from now on. sometimes shortcuts just don’t cut it.

david’s belated birthday celebration with some mock trial kids :)

You know it’s the holiday season when Starbucks rolls out their seasonal drinks. It’s really hard to resist the apple cider/hot chocolate/spiced lattes, so it ends up being the default place to meet up with friends during the winter breaks, and belated birthday coffee with Rachel and Kelly was no exception.

Rachel’s gift was her favorite cookie recipe of mine - cream cheese sugar cookies, which are completely (guilt-free) eatable in cookie dough form. So I baked up half with surprise peanut butter centers:

And left the other half as dough balls, the way she likes them: 

And once we got to Starbs…

… we rediscovered why we’ve been good friends for 7 years and counting.

<3