When I lived in South Korea, I was a bit of a hoarder. The store that sold cocoa powder was more than an hour's drive away. And I had an irrational fear of running out. There was a time that I actually had TWELVE little plastic jars of cocoa powder. 12 . In my defense, this was also Christmas time. And at Christmas time they sold Nestle's cocoa powder instead of just Hershey's cocoa powder. And I had never tried Nestle's cocoa powder in the cookie recipe and I had this idea that Nestle's cocoa powder was going to be even more amazing. And that I would be devastated if I couldn't buy more of it for another year. As it turned out, I couldn't actually tell the difference between the two cocoas. I don't have a super refined palate. I just like chocolate cookies. And happily, I was able to make those chocolate cookies for a very long time before needing to buy more cocoa of any kind. And then I moved back to America. And I lost all hoarding tendencies...

  It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Actually, it was just a surprise half-birthday party time. And there was a cake that needed to be made. And someone had to make it. And I was kind of hoping that person wouldn't be me because the last cake that I made was kind of a huge, colossal failure and it was super important that this one didn't turn into a huge, colossal failure again. Because I'm actually not that good at failures. I don't even like them. And I'm pretty sure they don't like me either. We are what you call " not best friends forever." If I had a birthday party and my mom said I could only invite 7 friends because she didn't want to pay for the whole town to go ice skating, Failure would NOT be on my list. I would rather invite Rain than Failure. Or... even better, an actual person.  Preferably one that wouldn't ruin my entire pile of self confidence with one surprise half-birthday cake.  I spent a lot of time ...

I made a cake. It was kind of a last minute thing. Which...as it turns out...works pretty well for me. I'm kind of into that whole "instant gratification" thing. So a lot of what I make doesn't require hours of planning and preparing and thinking and...you know...whatever else people with lots of patience and exactness do when making cakes and cookies. The flower was a bit of a challenge though. Flowers need time to dry so they don't look wilted when you put them on a cake or cookie. Its a good thing I had just made those cameo cookies. I had a bag of white chocolate chips just STARING at me from the counter while I was standing there wondering how in the world I could make a flower in only a few minutes. In the end...I just rolled up the petals and dipped the back in melted white chocolate. Instant flower. And in other news...Easter candy is on sale. I don't know what is wrong with me. I walked past that rack 4 times. I rifled through the candy and reali...

design inspired by Janice Morris

inspired by Sharon Zambito