Spiked Spiced Cider
The taste of fall with apples, oranges, cinnamon that will leave you feel warm.

The taste of fall with apples, oranges, cinnamon that will leave you feel warm.
I am a morning person. I love waking up early before the sun rises and brewing a pot of hot, delicious, fresh coffee. The couple of weeks of where it’s transitioning from spring to summer is my most prized time and I will tell you why. In the morning it’s cool enough to open my…
Strawberry Cheesecake I work at a wine and deli restaurant, where I am the “Pastry Chef”. The reason I put quotes around that term is that I do not make fancy desserts, per se, but they are delicious even though basic in the decoration. We just are not that venue. However, every once in a…
I absolutely love fresh figs, even, more than peaches. Maybe because getting a good ripe fig or peach in Iowa is impossible. So, when shopping at the nursery for my kitchen garden herbs I came across a fig tree. I did a jig right on the spot. My husband was with me and I’m sure he…
If I’m going to get my canning equipment out I am going to make it worth it. On this jelly day I made a batch of cherry preserves and wild raspberry jelly. Now that may not sound like a lot, but after washing, pitting, cooking, jarring, sterilizing jars for both kinds of jelly; it takes all…
This cake may not look very fancy but it is tasty if you like bananas and pecans. It is super simple to make as well. Sort of a play on pineapple upside down cake. Actually, you can do as many versions of this as you can think up. I have made plum, pear, peach, and…
There are only so many ways to eat an apple or pear: pies, tarts, cakes, poached, baked, even raw; however, none of those appealed to me on this day. I had some pears that were past their prime and I like them to be almost crispy to eat them raw after a certain point it has…
I love dessert. No matter what restaurant I go to I look at their desserts. Actually, no matter what meal I eat I want dessert, just something to end the meal on a sweet note. Asian restaurants don’t really do dessert, because Asians do not usually eat dessert. They eat fruit, and also they include…
Sometimes you have to just because you can. Usually, I put copious amounts of butter and powdered sugar on my pancakes (maybe it’s a funnel cake fetish?), but on this day I was going to do it. I was going to have syrup on my pancakes. However, I do not think maple and blueberry go…
I am freaky about not wasting things; like getting the very last little bit out of the toothpaste tube, turning shampoo and conditioner bottles upside down and banging till it only spits at you, and I save the used soap that comes in the hotel rooms I stay in. Enough weird confessions, the reason I…