love forever

Jin Patisserie

I am still in LA and loving every minute of this amazing weather!  I know that we New Yorkers are supposed to hate LA but I really like it here. My only complaint is all the driving; I just don't think I could ever get used to it. I like my cities to be walkable. Thankfully, I had the very fabulous Cathy of California to drive me around and show me the sights. She even rescued me from the bus stop one day after I had the audacity to try to use the LA public transportation system!
Anyway, over the next couple of days I am going to blog about some things that have inspired me over my trip.

Jin Patisserie in Venice makes beautiful sculptural pastries, chocolates and cookies. We were drawn in by the idyllc garden out front and left with a delicious box of macarons in flavors like yuzu, ume and violet cranberry. I am happy with even the most mediocre of macarons (that's how much I love them!) but when they're good, I'm  in heaven.

Conversation Hearts

These conversation heart cookies from Martha's February issue are killing me with cuteness. I think I might have gasped when I turned the page and saw them.
Despite my dislike for the typical commercial trappings of Valentine's Day, as a stylist I love the look of Valentine's Day. Do you know what I mean? Hearts, red, pink, lace and doilies? It's all so deliciously over-the-top. Mr. Love Forever and I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day but I think that I am going to do some baking and give a few things to friends.
What do you think about Valentine's Day? Love it? Hate it?

Gourmet cookies

Every month, I eagerly await the arrival of my issue of Gourmet magazine. I read every single issue cover to cover and the holiday issue does not disappoint. Their collection of cookies is absolutely breathtaking. Just look at these photos!

And if that's not enough cookie for you, Gourmet.com is featuring a favorite cookie from the last 68 years of holiday baking. What people cook and bake is often a really good barometer of what's going on in the larger world, so it's really interesting to see trends come and go and tastes change. There's the alcohol-soaked Palets de Dames of 1952, the very rich Mocha Toffee Bars of 1987 and the comfort-food-gone-gourmet Mini Black and White Cookies of 2005 to name a few. Delicious.

Looking forward to Thanksgiving...

and absolutely loving these inky indigo blues and from this month's issue of Gourmet.

Just gorgeous.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas?

It's 90 degrees out, I'm wearing a sundress, drinking an icy cocktail* and...making gingerbread cookies for a photo shoot. That's right, it's the beginning of holiday season for photo stylists and my apartment is looking very confused. There is a giant pile of holiday themed decor parked in my kitchen on its way to a shoot this week.

In more seasonally appropriate news, I just bought my plane tickets for San Francisco. I am so excited about Renegade!

*Oh and the cocktail? Whiskey, lime and San Pelegrino Limonata equals the most delicious summer drink ever. I swear.

Best cupcakes ever

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows that I have a thing for cupcakes. Some of this love is purely aesthetic- let's face it, most cupcakes are a lot cuter than they are delicious. If it's not the too-sweet icing it's usually the too-dry cake.

However this weekend at the Brooklyn Flea, I think I found my holy cupcake grail: Kumquat Cupcakery. Made in perfect two-bite sizes in delicious flavors like Mango Coconut and Lemon and Lavender, these cupcakes are totally sublime. Sublime!

As you can see, Mr. Loveforever was also a fan. He ate his Red Velvet cupcake so fast, I didn't even get a chance to have a bite!

At this time, Kumquat Cupcakes are available at the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene and Artists and Fleas in Williamsburg. They can also be delivered to certain areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn. They are the perfect thing to keep you going over a long day of flea marketing!

Macaron frenzy

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably know about strange attraction to French macarons, not the big heavy coconut laden cookies but the airy meringues filled with sweet jams or pastry cream. They're pretty hard to come by in New York so I was excited when I heard that Parisian pastry shop Ladurée recently opened a branch in London's Harrods. Most of Harrods is flashy in that Vegas showgirl sort of way but Laduree is pretty, sophisticated and oh-so french. It's so pretty in fact, that we based a concept on it a few years back at Anthropologie.

I ordered two boxes of them and had them gift wrapped, even though they were for me! The gift boxes were so pretty I couldn't resist! I think my favorite flavor was lemon, followed by salted caramel and rose.

Here are a few links to more information about macarons:

An introduction to French macarons

Macaron Flickr group

Some delicious macaron recipes

An ode to gingerbread

One of the drawbacks to trying to write a book over the holidays is the lack of time to do, well, anything else. Anyone who knows me knows what a sucker I am for holiday spirit: cookie baking, ornament making, I am into it all.
Making gingerbread is what usually gets me into the holidays the most. I mix up a huge batch of dough, turn on the radio and have fun rolling, baking and decorating. My mom and I have made several houses, life size stockings, girls, boys and an animal or two. I even recall someone in my family (ok, my stepfather) making a Christmas trout from rolling up leftover gingerbread dough into
a fish shape.

Here's a picture of my brother and I posing in front of one of my mom's gingerbread masterpieces. Don't tell her but we used to sneak little pieces of icing off from the back so she wouldn't notice.

This year I had no time to make my usual gingerbread cookies but I am having fun looking at all the others baking and house building around blogland.

My absolute favorite is this modern house available on Red Envelope (found via Black Eiffel). I love this idea so much that I am putting it in "Things to try next Christmas" file. If you're wondering, of course I actually have a file like that. So does my mom and my aunt Bean.
Some other gingerbread foodstuffs I am loving:

*Totally delicious ginger caramels from Apartment Therapy's The Kitchen
*A very sweet gingerbread house from The Black Apple (and family).
*Whimsical gingerbread stars made by Alicia on Posie gets Cozy
*Some great photos of gingerbread houses made by Diane and her mom.
*These little houses made from gingerbread cake are pretty adorable.
Here's a collection of photos of extreme gingerbread houses. Pretty amazing.

Cake baking, or how to get out of a funk

Yes, I admit it, I've been in a little of a funk lately. It could be the headache that just won't go away, or the intense knot in bewteen my shoulder blades or maybe it's the 672 freelance projects I have hanging in limbo but I have been in one nasty mood.

The only cure for this mood that I am aware of is baking and so I am baking a cake. There's something about the concentration involved in baking that makes me forget about my bad mood. Luckily this cake had a destination because, while I am pretty good at baking a cake, I am not so good at eating it.

Last night this cake went off to celebrate the Brooklyn Kitchen's one year birthday celebration and Bodega Challenge. It was lots of fun and I had planned on taking lots of pictures but my little camera, who has been very lonely and neglected since I got the big camera, apparently wasn't charged. Oh yes, did I mention that my head is in too many places at once?

If you live in Brooklyn, definitely stop by the Brooklyn Kitchen. It's an amazing store and they are a great asset to the neighborhood.

Edited to add: The cake is the Apple Cake with Butterscotch Cream Cheese Frosting from More from Magnolia cookbook. The actual cake was divine but I think next time I will try a more subtle frosting.

End of summer plum cake

I have to admit that i have been obsessed with food blogs lately, Actually, no, i have been obsesed with food: reading books about it, listening to podcasts about it, eating it even.

<img src="http://thisisloveforever.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/plumcake1.jpg"

This plum cake seems to be making it's way around the blog circuit of late and it makes sense: plums are all over the farmer's market right now. I first saw the plum cake over here, then over here and last night, I ended up making the latter.

It was really good, not too sweet and the orange zest added a nice flavor. I sprinkled mine with powdered sugar because it just seemed like the right thing to do.