Chocolate-Raspberry Glass Cupcakes

Chocolate-Raspberry Glass Cupcakes

Chocolate-Raspberry Glass Cupcakes with Buttercream Icing

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. I love its spookiness, as this allows me to embrace morbid concepts in fun ways. For example, these chocolate raspberry cupcakes play on hyelophobia, or fear of glass. The sugar glass–its jagged edges covered in red food coloring–looks very much like broken shards of glass smeared with blood. The buttercream icing with red swirls further plays on this theme.

Chocolate Raspberry Glass Cupcakes with Buttercream Icing

Glass Cupcakes Topped with Buttercream Red Swirl read more

Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier

Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier

Chauncey Creek Lobster Pier in Kittery Point, Maine

I love traveling and exploring different parts of the world, learning about cultures and experiencing the uniqueness and beauty of a given place. Traveling expands your mind and changes your worldview. Mark Twain once said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” read more

White Truffle Oil Mac and Cheese

white truffle oil mac and cheese

White Truffle Oil Mac and Cheese with Rosemary

My first experience with truffle mac and cheese was at Clusters & Hops, an excellent restaurant in Tallahassee that features unique dishes like Parmesan-crusted ostrich filet and espresso-crusted filet mignon with wild mushrooms and Cognac caramelized onions. But my favorite dish of theirs (and one of their signature dishes) is truffle mac and cheese. A blend of cheeses and truffle oil–the exact varieties and proportions of which they jealously guard–gives it a silky smooth texture, a wonderfully intoxicating truffle taste, and leaves you craving more as soon as you take the last bite. read more

Coconut Cupcakes with Chocolate-Sriracha Ganache

Coconut Cupcakes with Chocolate-Sriracha Ganache

Coconut Cupcakes with Chocolate-Sriracha Ganache

I love cupcakes, but not as much as my sister Sadie. She’s a cupcake fiend! She visited me in Miami over the Fourth of July weekend, and there were two things that she absolutely had to do before leaving Miami: go jet-skiing and make cupcakes.

Jet skiing was an adventure—at some points I wasn’t sure that we were going to survive! I’d never driven a jet ski before, and at first it was scary. It’s easier to steer at high speeds, but to go that fast is intimidating. So I started out really slow, which made my steering horrendous. read more

Apricot-Glazed Corned Beef with Kimchi

Apricot-Glazed Corned Beef with Kimchi and Potato Crisps

Apricot-Glazed Corned Beef with Kimchi and Potato Crisps

I really like authentic dishes that represent their native lands. But, I also like it when chefs fuse two disparate cuisines and pair them in an exciting way. This apricot-glazed corned beef with kimchi does just that.

I took the classic Irish-American corned beef and cabbage dish, and gave it a Korean twist. The corned beef is roasted slowly in the oven with ½ cup of kimchi juice (the red liquid that accumulates inside the kimchi container). This infuses the kimchi with a hint of spiciness; it’s subtle as corned beef has a very strong flavor on its own. If you don’t have easy access to kimchi, you can still make the apricot-glazed corned beef; just substitute water or beer for the kimchi juice. Slow-roasting the corned beef at a low temperature in the oven ensures the meat will be nice and tender. read more