Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids

Christmas Tree Bread

This delightful tree is simple to make, and the kids will love rolling the balls of dough and making the tree shape with them. Instructions, and my quick spicy adaptation for any sweet roll recipe over at kitchenMage: How-to shape Christmas tree bread

Wordless Wednesday: Happy Halloween!

Butternut Squash Spice Cake Recipe at kitchenMage.

Personal Pavlova Recipe

The Pavlova is one of those bits of food magic that everyone should make once. While it may look intimidating, at its heart it is as simple as strawberry shortcake. You're not afraid to make strawberry shortcake, are you? I didn't think so.

This combination of meringue, whipped cream and fruit is a classic dessert in Australia and New Zealand where it was created as a tribute to the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. (Imagine a ballerina in a white tutu floating across the stage.) There is a bit of a kerfluffle brewing at the moment over whether bragging rights for the pavlova belong to Australia or New Zealand, but truth be told, I don't care a bit. 

Pavlovas combine some of my favorite things: the lightly crunchy exterior of the meringue that gives way to an almost marshmallow center, barely-sweetened whipped cream, and fresh berries. Sweet. Simple. Perfect.

And easier to make than you may think.

Eat Pie Cookies! (with recipe)

Contrary to what the corporate media would have you think, not all kids grow up without a clue about cooking, some even get lots of hands-on time early on. I was one of those lucky ones, as is the monstrrr in these pictures. Let's call her awesomeGrrl, because she is awesome (the kid speaks three languages already...oh, and American Sign Language...geez!) and she's learning all about being an awesome cook and baker from a very young age.

awesomeGrrl is also the star of the book's video, which you can see at the Amazon page:

Picture Yourself Cooking With Your Kids

awesomeGrrl's Aunt Marcella came to visit recently and they baked Marcella's Pie Cookies. These cookies are the cupcake of pies: tender sour cream pastry and a rich date filling shaped into tiny little puffed flowers. In the family since the turn of the last century, the recipe for these cookies was passed to Marcella when she was about nine years old, which would have been quite a few years ago, since Marcella celebrated her 80th birthday a while back by throwing herself out of a perfectly good airplane, but that's another story. As you might guess, Marcella is a bit of an awesomeGrrl herself; more than a few of women in the family point to her as who they want to be like when they are 80.