Two Thousand Twelve: Thank You For Everything!

2012 was a fabulous year full of exciting projects and many changes, personal and professional, that I truly loved sharing with you. I am constantly grateful for all of your support and input—you made this year very special for me, so thank you! I cannot wait for what's to come in 2013. In the meantime, here are the F&F posts you liked best in 2012. Have the happiest New Year, my lovely friends!

Candy-letter cupcakes.

How-To Make: DIY crepe paper flower crown.

My new favorite cookies: Cookies-n-Cream Cookies!

My 50 favorite recipes from Food Network Magazine during my time there as an editor.Birthday cake–flavored Jell-o pudding packs!How-To Make: a miniature pom pom garland! How-To Be: Giada De Laurentiis for Halloween!  How-To Make: (neon pink!) mini doughnut muffins!Coolest professional moment in 2012? My frosting color chart in Food Network Magazine (plus me in the editor's letter)!How-To Make: Cupcakes taste like peach gummi rings! My ice cream cake "steak frites" in the magazine! Modern gift packaging!  Glitter tape and wax paper.What to eat when you visit New York City (as a flowchart)!  How-To Make: mini marbled cheesecakes! Eeks! My strawberry pie cake in the magazine. How-To Make: Zombie cookies!Everything you need to know about cooking naked...Kitchen Cure: homemade vanilla sugar lip scrub for your smoocher! And the best M&M cookie recipe, like, ever!

How To Make: The Best Homemade Limoncello Ever!

We sipped a bit of the ice cold limoncello we made for gifting this year to toast a holiday season well done—and my goodness was it delightful! Boozy, tart and just-sweet-enough, I'm very thankful we saved a bottle for ourselves. Here's how you can make it at home...

HOMEMADE LIMONCELLO
MAKES: about 2 to 3 dozen servings

1 (750 ml) bottle vodka (cheap stuff is totally fine!)
Zest of 10 to 12 lemons, peeled in wide strips
2 cups granulated sugar

1. Put the vodka and lemon zest in a tightly sealed container and set aside at room temperature for at least 1 week or up to 2 months, shaking the container occasionally. 
2. Strain the lemon-flavored vodka into a clean pitcher or container; discard the zest. 
3. Heat the sugar and 2 cups water in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolved. Cool completely. 
4. Gradually stir the simple syrup into the lemon-flavored vodka until you reach the desired sweetness. Transfer to a tightly sealed bottle and store in the freezer for months!

Note: I decided to try Martha Stewart's fabric-wrapped wine bottle technique for packaging the limoncello. I really liked how they came out but boyfriend still argues they looked like molotov cocktails...

On The GHRI Blog: 11 Ways To Doctor-Up Hot Chocolate Mix!

I hope you all had such a lovely holiday with your friends, family, whomever! If you're tucked in for the afternoon, like we are, head over to the Good Housekeeping blog and check out my 11 favorite ways to doctor-up hot chocolate mix! It's easy to mix up flavors like dulce de leche, pumpkin spice (or bourbon-pecan, for the adults) and it definitely feels like a night for cocoa, don't you think?! xo

Best Holiday Appetizer Ever: Beet-Pickled Deviled Eggs!

Two worlds collided today when I spotted my dear friend Ian Knauer's beet-pickled deviled eggs on one of my favorite blogs ever, Cupcakes & Cashmere, by Emily Schuman! She did such a beautiful job making them, didn't she!? Emily chose Ian's pink-tinged eggs because they're a high-impact appetizer that aren't that complicated to make—and good lord are they tasty! Head over to Emily's blog or Epicurious for the recipe.

(And if you're still in need of a perfect last-minute gift for the food-lover in your life, snag Ian's gorgeous cookbook from your local Barns & Noble or online, here!)

[Photograph by Emily Schuman for Cupcakes & Cashmere]

On The GHRI Blog: 31 No-Cook Appetizer Ideas!

Incase you missed it, here's a link to my latest post for the Good Housekeeping blog: 31 No-Cook Appetizer Ideas! I've been completely obsessed with flipping through our magazines and cookbooks from the 50s, 60s and 70s (they're all archived in the test kitchen office). You'll never guess what crazy (and surprisingly delicious!) appetizer recipes I dug up! Take a look, here. 

xo
Erin

How-To Make The Best Bûche de Noël Ever!

I made my first bûche in the seventh grade for our French class Christmas party. It was a disaster—cake wouldn't roll, burnt the meringue mushrooms, frosting melted. Ever since, the whole process has been super intimidating to me. That is until I found Martha's genoise recipe and manned the heck up! 

Good Housekeeping's Signature Sour Cream Coffee Cake Recipe!

Our test kitchen opens up for public tours the second Friday of each month. Groups come in, we show them our kitchen and we feed them coffee cake. That's the drill. The coffee cake recipe is always the same and it's delicious—other editors from around the institute always come by for scraps in the morning after we trim and cut the cakes. The original recipe calls for pears (as seen below) but we'll use whatever seasonal fruit looks best.

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING SOUR CREAM COFFEE CAKE

SERVES: 10 to 12

FOR THE STREUSEL

2/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

4 tablespoons margarine or butter, softened

2/3 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

FOR THE CAKE

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups sugar

6 tablespoons margarine or butter, softened

2 large eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups sour cream

3 firm Bosc pears (about 1 1/4 pounds), peeled, cored and cut into 1-inch pieces

1.     Preheat the oven to 350˚. Line a 13-by-9-inch baking pan with aluminum foil; grease the flour and dust with flour.

2.     Prepare the streusel: In a medium bowl, mix the brown sugar, flour and cinnamon with a fork until well blended. With your fingertips, work in the butter until evenly distributed. Add the walnuts and toss to mix; set aside.

3.     Prepare the cake: In another mediun bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.

4.     In a large bowl with a mixer on low speed, beat the sugar and butter until blended, scraping down the bowl often with a rubber spatula. Increase the speed to high, beat until creamy, about 2 minutes, occasionally scraping down the bowl. Reduce the speed to low; add the eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.

5.     With the mixer on low speed, alternate adding the flour mixture and the sour cream, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, until the batter is smooth, occasionally scraping the bowl. Fold in the pears with a rubber spatula.

6.     Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, spreading evenly. Sprinkle the top with the streusel mixture. Bake the coffee cake 40 to 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool cake in the pan on a wire rack 1 hour to serve warm, or cool completely in the pan to serve later. Makes 16 servings.

[Recipe from Good Housekeeping. Photographed by me!]

Cookie Decorating Tip: Decorate Christmas Cookies Anywhere!

 

Have you guys seen the December issue of Food Network Magazine? Besides it being totally gorgeous obviously, I learned a super helpful trick while creating the cookie gift tag on page 26 (below). It was summer and my schedule was jam-packed, so finding time to sit down and decorate Christmas cookies was difficult. My solution: Pack up plain cookies and royal icing in un-snipped pastry bags to take on the go. When I found time to decorate (during the downtime on a photo shoot), I just snipped the tips of the bags and piped on the embellishments. This would be a great way to bring decorating supplies to a cookie swap, right?! Or maybe to a school holiday party? Ooh! Or it could just be a fun, edible craft to pack for littles this time of year. What do you think? Are you stressing about cookie decorating, too?

Gift Guide 2012: The Best Gifts for Your Boyfriend!

1. Pinecone air fresheners (from the Pacific Northwest) / 2. Norse Project 100% deerskin leather gloves / 3. Apothecary dopp kit / 4. Wood flashlight / 5. Sir Jack's fox head jigger (just like the one at his parents' lake house!) / 6. Best Made maple syrup / 7. Field notebooks from his favorite jean store / 8. Saucy body wash that smells like cedar & ginger / 9. Sea salt soap / 10. His own stoneware growler for brining home fresh beer / 11. Super cozy orange socks from the south / 12. His own champagne saber—nuff said! / 13. Travel alarm clock for an upcoming trip :) / 14. Pappy

Edible Gift Idea: Snowy Mini Almond Pound Cakes!

Hi there! How are you all holding up? I don't know about you but I've been stressing a bit about my gifting list. There are so many people I 'd like to give a little something to for the holidays but my present-buying-fund is already stretched thin! Edible gifts are the obvious answer but they can be kind of cheesy, right? I mean, how many times have you given/received cookie-mix-in-a-jar?! 

I'd rather get/give a little something that's simple, beautiful and really well made—like a treat you'd get as a parting gift at a très-chic restaurant here in NYC. These mini almond pound cakes come to mind. We made them for a big meeting here at the magazine but I think they'd be perfect as a little Christmas love token as well. What do you think?


ALMOND POUND CAKE 
Adapted from the Good Housekeeping Great Baking Cookbook 

2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
Sliced almonds and confectioners' sugar, for decorating (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 325˚. Grease and flour a 9-by-5-inch metal loaf pan (or grease small disposable loaf pans, as seen in the photo—about 5 per recipe). 
2. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Beat the butter with a mixer on medium speed until creamy. Add the sugar and beat until light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Reduce the mixer speed to low, add the flour mixture and beat until just combined.
3. Spread the batter evenly in the prepared pan; sprinkle sliced almond on top. Bake 1 hour or until the cake pulls away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a small knife around the sides of the pan to loosen and invert to remove. Cool completely. Dust with confectioners' sugar.

Gift Guide 2012: The Best Gifts for New Parents & Their Tinys!

1. Sophie The Giraffe / 2. Play Food Breakfast Set / 3. Crocheted Fox or French Bulldog Pillow 13" / 4. Graziella Fairisle Baby Cardigan / 5. Toy Race Car / 6. J.Crew Airplane Spoon / 7. Baby Fortune Cookie Booties / 8. Giggle Dot Baby Blanket / 9. Striped Mittens / 10. Wooden Toy Camera / 11. Baby Bunny Hat