muffin

i promise i baked this year

kdavis Leave a comment

i knew this year was busy, distracting, exhausting, etc., but i failed to realize just how LITTLE blogging i did this year. it’s been nearly 365 days since my last post. my heart hurts just writing that! well, as they say, some things are better late than never, and i suppose a blog about baking can fall into that category.

to start, my final bake of my year-of-bakes was a lemon meringue pie. i’m not very experienced with homemade pie crust and have never tackled meringue, so it felt like a nice challenge to wrap up that journey and put my skills to the test. in looking back at the pictures, i remember being a little disappointed in the crust, mainly in that it just wasn’t very symmetrical. i guess that just enhances its homemade-ness. 🙂 and even though my curd might not have set as much as it should have, that meringue on top was quite a sight! fluffy stiff peaks and a tart filling made for a tasty bite in the end, and if someone requested a pie like this for a special occasion, i think i could manage.

i also baked some other new and familiar things throughout 2025, including…

  • my friend liz’s famous pumpkin cookies
  • banana chocolate chip muffins my friend giselle swears by
  • some of the tastiest classic cinnamon rolls you can find (kudos to my sister-in-law jessica for sharing the recipe)
  • chocolate chocolate mini muffins requested by our oldest nephew bode (he said i can make them anytime!) that remind me of the otis spunkmeyer ones i used to get in the omhs cafeteria
  • and pumpkin cinnamon rolls suggested by clarky boy for thanksgiving (they were so good i sent him home with a couple on his flight back to chicago)

what should i tackle in the new year? i’ve gotten into sewing and am wondering if maybe a new small craft/pattern every 1-2 months might be a good way to ensure my bernette sewing machine (thanks, mom!) gets some good use. time will tell! i pray you and yours have a happy holiday season and joyous new year.

february 15th – nyc

kdavis Leave a comment

monday in new york arrived a little quicker than we probably would have liked because monday meant we were halfway through our trip – oh no!  well, even though we’d spent the last couple of days lounging in bed until the early afternoon, we couldn’t allow ourselves to just sit around on our hands three days in a row.  no, sir!  not while in new york!  so phillip and i bid au revoir to natalie for the morning and, you guessed it, hit up hot & crusty for more bagels!  i think at this point our bagel count was nearing ten.  um, should we be embarrassed?  wait, on second thought, let’s all keep our comments to ourselves regarding our bagel consumption on this trip.  yes, i think it’s safer that way and at the end of the day we’ll all still be friends.  🙂

we ordered more fresh baked bagels and hot coffee and, because we couldn’t resist, a boulder-sized chocolate, chocolate chip muffin.  well, if we’re gonna be bad, we may as well do it right!  phillip and i leisurely munched on our treats at a table inside as we people watched all the locals in their monday morning routine.  a gentleman to my left with lox and the newspaper, a couple beside him sharing a croissant, the local delivery man stopping by to get to-go bags (i’d bet good money one of them was for natalie!).  through the window we saw gentle snow flurries beginning to fall, so we figured if we were going to do some walking we’d better get to it.

it turned out that phillip and i pretty much had the whole day free to ourselves.  as much as i would love to have gone to the public library to curl up with a book, we decided to stay in the area.  since we’d already gone to the met on saturday, we decided to venture to the west side of town to see what we could see.  now, despite the fact that the snow was beginning to pick up, phillip convinced me to take a stroll with him along the sidewalks of iconic central park.  i must admit it was quite a lovely idea.  we saw several bundled pups dragging along their owners, couples arm in arm, and joggers aplenty.  the grounds were mostly quiet and although it was getting colder with each step, the scene was nothing short of picturesque.

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