Bake-Me-Down Recipes

This is adorable and wholesome and needs to be seen.   Lucky editor Mary Bilyeu of the online Newsletter The Blade had the opportunity to host a community submission of family recipes to be published in one of their posts. While most of them are cannily simple and surefire recipes to ensure a holly and…

5 Vintage Recipes to (Never) Try

These recipes mark idealistically simpler times of less expectant and regularly disappointed palates, as bland an uninventive as the nuclear family function. Shortening was a cheap substitute for butter with a shelf-life long enough to outlive its relevance. Jello was a low-carb substitute for sustenance to construct a meal around, giving way to the weirdest…

Bizarre Additions to Up Your Flavors

I’ve already committed to the pun this week, and damnit, I will see it through! Coffee in Your Chocolate Working at Starbucks makes you naturally a coffee snob, which is good in this case because it offers an answer to the reason coffee and chocolate go so well together: they complement one another. Most of…

Bazar Baking

A.k.a. craft shows, fairs, charity events and the like— they’re a different breed of business, but not impossible to benefit from! This past weekend I flew up North to participate in several craft shows with my amazingly skilled mom, and it took me a canceled flight and a bout of food poisoning to get there,…

Cut, Whisk, Hand-Mix!

Welcome to the baker’s version of F*ck, Marry, Kill for any and all recipes! Here’s the lowdown on what tools to use when working with a certain type of batter and why. The pastry cutter— a.k.a. the brass knuckles of the baking world. Honestly, you could bruise more than batter in a fight brandishing a…

Baking and libraries

This is possibly one of the sweetest and most brilliant ideas I’ve seen as it pertains to libraries; the fact that it includes baking is a HUGE bonus. Despite majoring in English and taking many, many a reading class, I hate reading. With a passion. Libraries are possibly one of my greatest enemies because the…

Butter Vs. Margarine

It’s not as nuanced as it sounds, I promise.   The composition of butter and margarine, specifically their fat content, affects the texture and–to a degree–the flavor of whatever it is you’re baking. And while it’s mostly preference-based for whichever you choose to use, it’s helpful to keep in mind how either impact may impact…

3 Tips to keep away the Seasonal Scaries

We’re neck deep in pumpkin spice season, and I consider that a fairly scary theme for this week as we approach Halloween, so here are some tips to help you get through the season without flushing your blood system with pumpkin-related recipes. 1. Bake in Season! Everyone’s been having a conniption over pumpkins over the…

Pumpkin Splice Season

Yes. The pumpkin spice craze is upon us.   The screaming, nihilistic mass of Americans cried, “let there be pumpkin spice,” thus capitalism responded: pumpkin spice lattes. Pumpkin spice Poptarts. Pumpkin spice- scented candles. Pumpkin spice chapstick, pumpkin spice body spray, pumpkin spice dog treats– would you believe me if I told there was even…

The New Kid on the Blog

Foodisprettychill here! I love exploring the possibilities of recipes and challenging how well they can work in the context of certain diets (i.e. gluten free), different baking methods, and last-minute pantry substitutions. ‘Baking outside the box’ is my primary goal, aside from making the worst possible baking mistakes so you don’t have to, and honing…