Blackberry Crumb Muffins

I've always considered muffins my ideal baked good.  I'm not a fan of things that are overly sweet, and while I love cake, I don't have the best relationship with frostings and glazes (aka, I could almost always do without them). Muffins are the solution to my baked good dilemma.  They don't need to be cloyingly sweet (although unfortunately, they often are), and they don't require frosting or glaze to be considered finished.  I love all kinds of muffins, from healthy bran muffins to less healthy chocolate chip muffins because I get the opportunity to eat cake in the mornings and call it breakfast, and few things are better than that. 

While every now and again I'll get a weird, inexplicable craving for an unnecessarily sweet muffin, like a double chocolate chocolate chip muffin, my favorite go-to muffin is the simple kind that comes loaded with fruit and is topped off with a sweet crumble.  I may not like frostings and glazes, but I could never pass up on a crumble or streusel topping.  I mean, could you?  Probably not.  Crumb-topped muffins are the perfect balance between sweet cakes and acceptable breakfast treats.  The presence of a crumb topping means that you can have a barely sweetened muffin base to go along with the sweet, buttery, crumbly mess on top. 

Buttermilk, Berries, and Mascarpone Cream Cake

If you've been keeping up with my last few posts on the blog or been stalking me on Instagram, you will have certainly come across a few hints at "an awesome/extravagant/amazing/anything-but-simple/delicious" layer cake.  I'm normally a simple and easy snack cake kinda gal, but every now and then I get a craving to get totally fancy and overly-complicated and spend the better part of my day in kitchen making a single cake.  It doesn't happen often, but the mood struck a few weeks ago, and all I could think about, were layer cakes.  I became obsessed, and it was becoming problematic, because I just couldn't shake the thought.  The only way to fix the situation was to go ahead and actually make myself an epic cake, but I was holding myself back because I was faced with the same problem that always stops me from making layer cakes in the first place.  What the heck do I do with a giant layer cake once I'm done photographing it!?

I generally don't make layer cakes often simply because I just don't know what to do with them in the end.  If there's no birthday party or big family gathering happening during the same weekend, I'm stuck with a giant layer cake in my house, and that's not a good thing.  My dad doesn't like frosted cakes, my mom usually thinks 85% of the things are too sweet, and well, as much as I love cake, I don't love it enough to eat an entire cake by myself (my pants and other clothes thank me for this).  Fortunately, however, my latest layer cake craving just so happened to coincide with news that my close friends/former roommates from college were having a potluck style housewarming dinner, which for me, meant only one thing.  CAKE.  I had the perfect opportunity to make giant cake, and there would be lots of people around to eat it.  These types of occasions don't happen all too often, so I knew that my contribution for this potluck party just had to be cake.  I didn't know what kind of cake yet, but there would be cake.

Mini Coconut Macaroon Tartlets

Happy Spring everyone!  The season that seemed like it was never going to arrive finally has, and it was about time.  At least, I think it has.  It might be spring on paper, technically speaking, yet I'm still wearing a coat and scarf every time I go outside, and there's supposedly snow coming today at some point.  While the weather seems to have missed the memo about the change of season, I definitely haven't.  I'm fully ready to embrace spring!  I love spring, as I'm sure most people who don't like the winter do.  It's such a refreshing change from cold dreary days.  Now that it's spring, I'm getting excited about churning out lovely spring recipes that are simple, refreshing, fluffy, light, cute, pink, tart, lemony, berry-filled, etc, etc.

For my first spring celebratory recipe, I've made a super simple dessert featuring coconut, lemon, and blackberry. This perfectly spring-inspired flavor profile all comes together in these super adorable Mini Coconut Macaroon Tartlets.  Aren't they cute?!  I took a basic coconut macaroon recipe, which happens to be one of my favorite coconut treats, and used it to create little tartlet shells, which I then filled with lemon curd and topped with a fresh blackberry.  They're simple and infinitely adaptable, which makes them a great idea for springtime get-togethers. This recipe is being featured today on the Make and Takes blog, so head on over there for the full recipe and more photos!

Fizzy Blackberry Limeade

Hello again! In this post, I finally feel like a true food blogger.  All my fancy blogging essentials are present: fizzy homemade soda, pretty wooden boards to take photos on, and those birch paper straws that everyone, including me, seems to have become obsessed with.   I mean seriously, these birch straws are featured in nearly so many food blogs lately, that they seem to be a drink post essential.  I finally made my first (yes, my FIRST) Etsy purchase the other day, and I bought nothing more than a bunch of pretty paper straws, some in birch and some in more colorful stripes.   It was about time I jumped on the Etsy/paper straws/cute  props bandwagon and I'm glad I did.  My birch pattern straws are adorable and they make my sodas look fancy.  My paper straws make me feel like I'm one of the cool kids.  Anyway.  As abnormally excited as I am about these paper straws, I'm much more excited to share this awesome drink recipe with you guys.  Fizzy blackberry limeade.  How good does that sound? The answer, my friends, is really good. It should sound really good because it totally is.

I got the idea to make this particular soda after watching Bobby  Flay make a homemade raspberry ginger ale. It looked so simple and refreshing that  I decided I needed to make my own, but my way.  Instead of going with raspberry and ginger as my main flavors, I used one of my favorite combinations instead: blackberry and lime. Now, I know that I only recently posted another dessert using that same combination, but once I got the idea in my head to make this soda, I just couldn't see it coming together any other way.  I've always loved blackberry limeade, and for me, it really just screams summer and refreshing.