Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookies

It’s week two of December and time for another round of Christmas cookies. These next ones are the perfect sugar cookies for cutouts. With the use of an actual vanilla bean to make the dough they have lots of flavor as opposed to the plain sugar cookie cutouts you’re probably used to.

Sandwich Cookies for Christmas

Warning: If you make these cookies you’ll probably end up making them every year for the rest of your life.

Double Layer Stout Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

Apparently, November 26th, is National Cake Day. Who knew?

I have no clue why and I am especially unsure why they would put this holiday anywhere near Thanksgiving, but that’s no excuse for not participating. And if you do, make this cake.

Apple Cake

I knew my mother was setting the bar high when she said someone proposed to her over this cake.

It was something of a joke, tossed out as “I will marry whoever made this cake”.  Regardless, it should be taken as a sign that 1) my mom is amazing baker and 2) this is a damn good cake.  So while no proposals emerged from my production of this cake, it still received lots of high marks from my friends for being moist and yet crunchy on top.

Quinoa Casserole

I could eat quinoa every day. Seriously.

Ever since I discovered quinoa when I was in college, I’ve been unable to get enough of it.  This fact makes it shocking to me that I don’t have more recipes that use quinoa on this blog.  Maybe it's because I gobble it down before it can be photographed, I’m not sure, but this post is here to fill the gap with the tastiest quinoa you’ve ever had, hands down.

An uncommon post

The beautiful garden leading away from the event in Ala, Italy (Photo Credit: Michael Babich)

Though I typically writes posts about food, I felt like writing a post about wine after going to a great wine tasting last weekend so I apologize to any of my readers who are sad there are no recipes in this post.  I'll get back to the recipes soon, I promise!
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Through a strange set of coincidences, having nothing to do with the fact that I work in wine, last weekend I found myself at a wine tasting in Ala, Italy, a short train ride away from Trento where I’m currently living. More casual than most of the wine events I’ve attended, (read: I didn’t have to stumble around in heels at this one) it was still one of my favorites for several reasons. First off, it was free (need I say more?). Second, the quality of the wines at the event was top notch.  Third, I finally got to enjoy some wines from Trentino Alto-Adige, a luxury I have not been able to afford since coming to Trento because of the expensive price of wine.

Orange Sour Cream Cake

It was an important evening for the Memeoirs crew.  After months of hard work at the Tech Peaks accelerator, they’d finally released the newest version of their amazing site which allows you to create a book from your emails.  If you’re an emailer, or know one, definitely check it out (www.memeoirs.com)!

To celebrate the new release we were having dinner at Ivan and Simone’s place (other Tech Peakers) and I knew that I should make a dessert.  I had some oranges on hand, leftover from something I’d wanted to make but never got around to, and decide to repurpose them for this recipe.