Laura Rebecca's Kitchen

Tasty little buggers. Essentially, these were a vehicle to try out a bag of Nestle Chocolatier 62-percent Cacao bittersweet chocolate morsels. Shane and I tasted them along with Ghirardelli’s 60-precent Cacao bittersweet chips. Alone on the tongue, I preferred the Nestle (!!!) but in baking, the Ghirardelli still has my heart (and palate). (Shane liked […]

These candy corn-shaped cookies from BettyCrocker.com were too cute not to make. They didn’t come out as precise as Betty’s (she must have a construction grade level in her kitchen) but they are darling. Some baked up as tricks. Some baked up as treats. Some give new meaning to the term “food porn.” I found […]

Sadie’s class is traveling around the world — not literally; public school systems rarely have that kind of money… Groups of four to five kids are assigned a country, research their given topic (flora/fauna, food, culture, etc.), and present their work to the class. On Friday, the class is exploring Australia. For the food portion, […]

Retro Recipe Challenge #3 Deadline: Sunday, October 15 at 11:59pm. If you’ve ever set foot inside a bookstore in New York State, chances are you’ve spotted this iconic book: First published in 1981, Applehood & Motherpie: Handpicked recipes from Upstate New York is a collection of recipes put out by the Junior League of Rochester. […]

One of Sadie’s favorite candies — if not her favorite — is a marshmallow covered in milk chocolate. This is the cookie version of that confection. A tender chocolate cookie is topped with a soft-yet-chewy marshmallow and smothered in rich and buttery chocolate frosting. Those you share these cookies with might be surprised to find […]

Something in the air has shifted. The leaves are changing. Roadside stands are selling pumpkins and decorative corn stalks. Yellow busses are taking tiny passengers to school. Fall is here. Though my mind feels the seasonal shift seems sudden, my body fell in step easily. It gravitates toward warm sweaters in dark colors and feels […]

Lemon Sugar Cookies that were rolled and patted before baking. These cookies, from the Hay Day Country Market Cookbook and made for the WCC, are very good: buttery with a bright citrus flavor. The bottoms are bit crisp – a gentle crunch – with the insides featuring a softer and chewier texture. Having said that, […]

Earlier this year, the New York Times’ Amanda Hesser published chocolate chip cookie recipes for three different types of cookies: Thin and Crispy, Flat and Chewy, and Thick and Gooey. I’d volunteered to bake cookies for a Writers’ Tea in Sadie’s class, and thought “Hey, why don’t I try that thick cookie recipe?” They’re very […]

Taking a page from Very Good Things, I made a batch of peanut butter cup brownies. Although I love Alicat/Paula Dean’s idea of Peanut Butter Brownie Cupcakes, I was too lazy to actually fill up individual cupcake tins. Which, when you think about it, is seriously lazy. Instead, I lined a 13×9-inch pan with aluminum […]

On Friday evening, Shane & I officially put our house up for sale. A few hours later, we had two separate parties asking to see the house the next day. Saturday morning, Shane ran around like a chicken with its head cut off cleaning the house, taking stuff to storage, etc., etc., where I was […]