I love making homemade candy. It is really easy if you have a candy thermometer and it is a great way to make people’s eyes light up. Candy making is one of those old fashioned skills that has gone the way of making your own butter, bread and cheese. Hopefully it will make a comeback!

I think it is a fun thing to make because it is so completely unnecessary. Cookies, cakes, breads, dessert, and the like are all fillers. You can say, “Yeah, I made these brownies to help fill the kids up”. With candy? Not a chance. Everyone knows …read more

 
Yes, I admit it.  I am meandering through cookbooks that I have not picked up in awhile.  I am a messy cook (ha! Understatement) and the books tend to get messed up. I waver between thinking that it is worth it to sacrifice the book in the quasi-anthropological quest for vintage recipes AND thinking that by the time I am finished the book will be compost.

 
Deviled Eggs. You know you have to have them. With 4th of July coming up I am whispering one word to my chickens to get them in egg laying overdrive. Cacciatore.

Here is a sad story with a happy ending..so stick with me.
I went to the grocery store. They had white peaches…RIPE AROMATIC white peaches on sale. I grabbed 13 of them, one for everyone in the house. I mean, who can resist a perfectly ripe peach?
I rarely buy fresh fruit like that. Honestly we can’t afford it. The peaches cost me 12.95. Yeah..just under a dollar each. But they were ripe. right?

Sometimes I feel that I have no time to cook. I really hate that because I love cooking but my life right now is just so busy that cooking seems to take a back seat.  I know I have been scarce in visiting your blogs…blame it on a huge amount of writing assignments and Chris being home…both good things!
Even my photography seems to be BLAH.

I never did get the recipe for these posted last week. Things got hectic, what with Daring Bakers and then Amada’s kindergarten graduation and then Chris coming in…Today is Marc’s birthday…
This summer is certainly starting off to be a party! I am not sure I have partied this much since the late 70s!
These cookies are crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside.

I have looked at these a number of times in one of my vintage cookbooks and just passed over them..They seemed too simple, too average, too mediocre. A little flour, a few eggs..some butter…yadda yadda yadda.
But something whispered to me the other morning and I thought that I would. I mean, why not? So what if they were mediocre. Some families eat cheerios every morning, surely mine could limp along on mediocrity in the form of a muffin, right?

 
Lemon snaps are an easy old fashioned cookie that you really don’t hear much about anymore, and that is a pity.  They are crispy on the outside, tender on the inside and lemony sweet throughout.  There is just nothing that compares with them for an old fashioned treat…unless it is gingersnaps…or molasses cookies…or…

Crumbcake. A muffin but not.
Usually when you see a recipe for crumbcake it will be baked in a square pan. I like to make them in muffin cups; little individual bites of WOW. By doing it this way you can

Mexican Wedding Cakes are not cakes at all. They are somewhat like a short bread cookie but not. And sometimes they are called Mexican Wedding Cookies.
Are you confused?
They are a delicate cookie that has a delicate, yet definitely there flavor..vanilla, butter…nuts…
But where did Mexican Wedding Cakes come from?