Carbonara with Mushrooms and Basil

I had the most delicious lunch ever today. I used some leftover egg yolks from my macarons, and made this lovely carbonara. We had this absolutely gorgeous pasta…I mean look at it?! Isn't it marvelous…

This good quality pasta made this dish, so if you can get your hands on some, I recommend it.  I also went to the farmers market today and got some fresh cherry tomatoes and basil, which made two great additions.

Carbonara with Mushrooms and Basil:

Cilantro Hummus

If you all don't already know, I love fresh herbs. I swear they are the answer to all of life's problems. Just spice a boring dish up with some parsley, or some dill, and bam, food suddenly becomes exciting. 

Today we are going to do just that with some cilantro and hummus. Now I'm not saying regular homemade hummus is boring, I just felt like making mine a little green tonight. 

*If you're not a fan of cilantro, you could always do the same with parsley. 

Cilantro Hummus:

Macarons with Blueberry Mascarpone Filling

Hey everyone, guess what.

I did it.

I made really yummy macarons!!!!!!!

So the story starts back when I went to NYC a few weeks ago and had some macarons from Ladurée.

Ivan Ramen Yakisoba

This is exciting...the first main course savory dish for the blog! Although it seems like this is solely a baking blog, we really love cooking and want to include savory recipes too! 

Anyway, for Father's Day I got my dad the book Ivan Ramen by Ivan Orkin. This book details Ivan's life and journey of becoming a ramen chef, and because my dad is always trying to perfect his own ramen, I figured this would be the perfect gift. Not only does this autobiography/cookbook have Ivan's famous 35 page ramen recipe, but it also has other Japanese recipes. Tonight I was inspired flipping through the pages and decided to make his breakfast Yakisoba, for dinner. 

Cherry Bomb Pie

The short cherry season is passing and I just got the tail end of it. Last Saturday I went to the farmers market in search of fresh tart cherries to turn into a scrumptious pie. I found one vendor with only a few cartons left, so I snatched them up! One of my good friend's mother passed from cancer recently and what better thing to cheer her up than a homemade pie made just for her?  I got the recipe from the cover of the June Bon Appetit magazine. The crust is one of my favorite and easiest crusts I have ever tried. It stayed together very nicely but still had the flakey texture to it. 

5 Yolk Lemon Curd

I am taking on the task of making macarons. If I ever become happy with how they turn out, I will post the recipe and many many pictures. Because I have used 10 egg whites already throughout my endeavors, I had to find ways to use the yolks. I decided to make Sara's favorite: lemon curd. She already posted a wonderful recipe for lemon curd when she made her Rosemary Lemon Cake filling, but I decided to post this recipe because it only uses yolks.

Mr. B's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies

We are headed back to the old school classic kid dessert: a wonderful soft and chewy chocolate chip cookie. This is still my twenty-year-old brother’s all time favorite dessert ever since I first made them. Growing up we would simply follow the cookie recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip bag, but these are a huge step up from those cookies. I discovered these cookies from one of my good friend's father; he would always make them for Christmas and I would go coo-coo over them. So naturally once you fall in love with a baked good you will do anything to track down the recipe. It took some finagling but I finally got the recipe out of him and it was from Cook's Illustrated. (Which is a really awesome magazine and website, foolproof recipes!) The major differences I noticed from this recipe to more traditional recipes are that the butter is melted, the brown sugar to granulated sugar ratio is different, and instead of two eggs you have one plus an egg yolk. Once you have these cookies though I guarantee that you will never try another recipe.