Anzac Biscuits

These Anzac Biscuits are a popular egg-free Australian sweet biscuit with oats, golden syrup, and coconut. Perfect for holiday shipping and gifting!

Anzac-Biscuits-1-120217

Anzac-Biscuits-2-120217

I’d almost given up on writing about Europe when we hit the crazy pre-holiday season at my new job a few weeks back, but just thinking about that summer adventure brings a goofy smile to my face and makes me slow down as I get used to working life. I don’t think I’m ready to write about work yet anyway, so now I’m determined to keep writing about Europe even if it kills me takes a few more … Read more

XL Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

These bakery-style chocolate chip cookies are perfectly chewy in the middle, crispy around the edges, and filled with delicious semi-sweet chocolate morsels. Extra-large and certainly as good as–if not better than–the cookies you’d find in your neighborhood bakery!

Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies 1--060617

Bakery-Style Chocolate Chip Cookies 3--060617

Like any good baker, I have been on a perennial quest to discover the BEST chocolate chip cookie recipe out there.

I’ve shared these perfect pudding chocolate chip cookies and my self-proclaimed favorite thick, chewy chocolate chip cookies, but I have yet to meet a cookie that fits the “bakery-style” bill quite as well as these do. Crispy edges, perfectly chewy … Read more

Slice-and-Bake Heart Sugar Cookies: How to Celebrate Valentine’s Day (on a Budget You’ll Love!)

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #Doingthe99 #99YourValentinesDay #CollectiveBias

Slice and Bake Heart Sugar Cookies 13--012917

Slice and Bake Heart Sugar Cookies 4--012917

Love is in the air–and so is the aroma of these adorable slice-and-bake heart sugar cookies!

Last weekend, about 20 of us squished into my tiny apartment to eat dinner and bake Valentine’s Day cookies together. Since we needed a lot of dough (but had very little to spare from our wallets), I nipped over to 99 Cents Only to pick up flour, sugar, and all that jazz that I needed that night for our baking/dinner party! They have my … Read more

Top 10 Recipes of 2016

A few weeks ago, I posted some of my very favorite photos from this year. Now that it’s the last Thursday of 2016, I’m throwing back to some of this year’s most popular and viewed recipes!

top-10-recipes-of-2016-collage

10. Copycat Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits

copycat-red-lobster-cheddar-bay-biscuits-5-121913

If you secretly make trips to Red Lobster just so you can stuff your with their famous, melt-in-your-mouth buttery Cheddar Bay Biscuits, here’s some good news for the new year: now you can make (and enjoy) them in your own home! (Recipe here.)

9. Slutty Cheesecake Bars

slutty-cheesecake-bars-8-051913

A thick layer of chocolate chip blondie, … Read more

Super Chewy Molasses Ginger Cookie Bars with Cheesecake Filling

ginger-molasses-cookie-bars-2-122216

ginger-molasses-cookie-bars-4-122216

Growing up in California, my Christmases were never filled with real snowdrifts and cups of hot cocoa over a crackling log fire. Christmases were thin flyaway scarves on nippy sun-soaked mornings and Chinese sticky rice served in a large rice cooker. They were elaborate piles of wrapped presents under a tree, but they were also eggnog-free, booze-free, cookie-free celebrations of time together with family. Until a few years ago, I never even considered what it meant to have a conventionally Western Christmas: to build floppy houses made of real gingerbread, to squeeze into an abhorrently amusing ugly holiday sweater for … Read more

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting 1--102616

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting 4--102616

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting 3--102616

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting 6--102616

There are no “foodies” in Italy–there’s simply food. As I quickly learned during my week-long stay in Putignano, food is a way of life, not simply a packaged bar of high fructose corn syrup that you snatch while dashing out the door for work. While food has always been a central part of my Chinese family and culture–think lazy Susan’s groaning under the weight of 15 or 20 dishes, chopstick wars over the last piece of fried tofu, literal battles between relatives over who is going to pay the bill–being in Italy felt like landing on an entirely different … Read more

Scottish Shortbread

Scottish Shortbread 1--092116

Scottish Shortbread 4--092116

Scotland: land of the kilts, castles, and sweet mother of Mewtwo best shortbread ever!!!

My first blissful taste of Scottish shortbread happened in a cozy two-apartment AirBnb nestled just outside Edinburgh city center. Our hosts, Alicia and Mauricio, were a lovely couple from Venezuala with an adorable beagle and the best advice on what free shows to see during our four days at the Fringe festival. In true host fashion, they had also stocked our room with a variety of local munchies, ranging from biscuits and candies to–of course–the famous Walkers Scottish shortbread. I ate most of the Read more

Strawberries ‘n Cream Cookies {+ A Few Thoughts from a PokéTrainer}

You know those incredibly frustrating people walking around on the streets and into traffic and over cliffs and right smack dab on top of your newly-polished dress shoes because they’re too busy playing Pokémon GO?

I have a confession to make.

Strawberries 'n Cream Cookies 1--071816

I am one of those incredibly frustrating people playing Pokémon GO.

I apologize if I ever trampled over your dog in my haste to catch an Arcanine. It was (probably) an accident, unless you just happened to be in my way while a Squirtle is loose nearby and a mad, mob-mentality stampede that would make any Black … Read more

White Chocolate Cookie Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #BiteSizedBitsOfJoy #CollectiveBias

White Chocolate Cookie Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies 2--060616

My favorite phrase of the year: oldies but goldies!

As the de facto ancient dinosaur/matriarch of every one of my friend circles–I’m officially like a 22nd grader or something this year–I now love this phrase because it makes me feel…classic. And let’s be honest here: some things really do get better with age. Wine, cheese, dad jokes…my students’ end-of-year evaluations, which from now on I will only read while I am double-fisting these gorgeous White Chocolate Cookie Butter Pecan Shortbread Cookies, … Read more

Chocolate Chip Toffee Walnut Cookies

Raise your hand if you’ve ever gone grocery shopping at an absurd hour of the night. Say…..4 AM? No? Anybody?

Chocolate Chip Toffee Walnut Cookies 2--033016

I realize that there are a lot of things that I take for granted as an unmarried, mostly unemployed, highly mobile grad student. Free pool access, on-campus groups, friends living within walking distance, and yes–spontaneous 4 AM grocery shopping trips, apparently. Which may or may not be coupled with–ahem–the 5 AM baking sprees that yielded these chewy, amazing chocolate chip toffee walnut cookies.

On Sunday night, that’s exactly what I did. My friend and I had stayed up … Read more