Croissants

Part of 'breakfast for dinner'... these took the anticipated 3 days (including early mornings!) to make.

Almond Macaroons

With bittersweet chocolate ganache filling.

Cornmeal Lime Cookies

A grainy, cakey cornmeal cookie with lime glaze.

Caramel cake

Made in an angel food cake pan, doused with caramel, and sprinkled with toasted almonds. Perfect wintery day dessert.

Pear Croustade

Rustic pear tart with lemon pastry and toasted almonds.  Followed pork ala Apiscius.

Coffee chocolate layer cake

Three layers of cake with mocha mascarpone frosting and white and dark chocolate curls.

Mini pies and cookies

Mini pecan pie, mini apple pie, and three almond butter cookies.  To accompany an osso bucco dinner.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

One for me, and one for everyone else.

Monopoly Die

Three layers of white cake, separated by raspberry sauce and lemon curd, and finished with buttercream frosting.  Dots are Oreo cookie halves.  The custom Monopoly board was also made for the three gamenight friends (Ed, Gus, and Martin) who all had birthdays this week.

Pancakes and Ping Pong

Saturday morning bliss. No, I didn't eat all of those. Yet.

Strawberry tart

A sea of strawberries on a bed of mascarpone cream in a citrusy tart shell. Finished off with a drizzle of port wine sauce.

Carrot cake

Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, made for dinner with coworkers (Amanda, Steve, et al). This cake was one of the better recipes I've used-- crushed pineapple and sweetened coconut flakes in the batter, but no nuts.

Devil's Food Cake

Made for my brother's 32nd birthday, this cake is two layers of devil's food cake, each topped with dark chocolate ganache and white chocolate cream frosting. Finished off with some dark chocolate curls.

Pizzelles

Pizzelle cookies in a box designed especially for them, for a Christmas party at my friend Blade's.

Many Macarons

Not to be confused with macaroons, these French sandwich cookies were made to be a bite-sized snack on the table where I sold cards, calendars, and books at MIT's Artists Beyond the Desk semi-annual craft fair.

Thanksgiving Pi

Pumpkin pi, with label as requested by my nephew Jason.

Gingergread cake

Individual 'hot and sassy' gingerbread cake, courtesy of Todd English's fantastic recipe.

For art class

I took a graphic design class at MassArt, and in the middle of the semester we had a potluck party. As we had been working with Sylvia Plath's poem 'Mushrooms', I decided to make a cake with that theme. Happily, I had just received the perfect cake pan from my friend Rachel, originally designed to make a cake in the shape of a giant cupcake. Turns out cupcakes and mushrooms look quite a bit alike.

Berry Pavlova

This 'cake' is composed of 3 layers of sweet meringue disks sandwiching and topped with a mixture of whipped and sour cream and fresh berries.

Red Velvet Cake

Assembling berries on the frosting between layers.
Completed cake, frosted with cream cheese icing and topped with a pile of fresh berries.
Inside the cake, in all its red velvet glory. This cake was colored with food coloring-- it's pretty much just a vanilla flavored cake that's tinted red-- but in the early days of this cake's making, it was a small amount of cocoa powder (which was processed differently then) that gave the cake a red velvet appearance. This may also be the reason for the title "Devil's Food Cake" given to other chocolate cakes.