Bon Appegeek

As I see it, the problem with nature is that it’s natural. It’s hot, humid, and contains insects. For instance, there’s this shiny black bug that looks like a cross between a spider and a housefly. It twitches, skitters in circles, and jumps on you for fun, but only when you’re on [...]

You’ve probably read about the cookies by now. Perhaps you have questions.
Should I?
Yes.
When?
Now.
How many?
As many as possible. You know how many Cookie Monster might bake? Like, double that.
Eaten with what?
Are you a commie? Everybody knows that you eat chocolate chip cookies with ice-cold milk. Cow is traditional, but yak, goat, [...]

JOB SEARCH. These are two of the most miserable words in the English language. They make your stomach ooky and keep you from posting to your food blog as much as you used to. Before I started my job search, life was more idyllic, and the two most miserable words in the [...]

Today is Bon Appegeek’s second anniversary. I’m marking the day with a long post that has taken more than two years to write. There’s a recipe at the end. I promise.
After several years of on-again off-again reading, I finally started volume 4 of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (À la [...]

Sometimes creative baking can hurt you. Sometimes the Swedes can hurt you. And sometimes, sometimes, both can hurt you.
Let this be a lesson to us all.

Actually just deer antlers, not reindeer antlers. I thought reindeer antlers sounded more, oh, Christmas-y. At least until we get to the part where we eat them.
Several years ago I bookmarked a Gourmet recipe for Drommar, or Swedish Dream Cookies, because it called for coconut, which I love, and ammonium carbonate, which piqued [...]

Oops. I did it again.
Before I get into another fruitcake story, a reminder that Menu For Hope ends this Friday and we’ve already raised $44,000. Or rather, we’ve only raised $44,000. We can do better! Go! Go and bid right now! Just don’t go and bid on what I [...]

I like fruitcake, but not just any fruitcake, no, I only like—
Wait, what am I saying? I like all fruitcake. All fruitcake. If you ever wonder who buys those stale cakes at the grocery store every year, that would be me. If you spit out fruitcake because of the artificially-colored cherries [...]

This is a conversation with my brother half a year ago, shortly after he and his fiancée asked me to bake their wedding cake. Keep in mind that I am not artistic, had never baked professionally, or really decorated a cake. My cake specialty up until then had been pound cakes baked in [...]

I had planned thousands of words on the ordeal of making a wedding cake for the first time, but now that it’s over, my brain is in a state of quiet, transcendent peace. Or…I’m sleep-deprived and loopy from the marathon of baking, bridesmaid duties, and dealing with hordes of family traveling into town for [...]

I’m sorry that I’ve been neglecting the blog. Several planned posts flew out the window when my brother recently announced that he will marry this fall, wants us to help commemorate his new life with a wonderful woman with whom he’ll have children and grow old, yadda yadda. The point is that the [...]

Like many people trying to lose weight, I went through a dudstitution phase. This is a tragic period when you do things like take a perfectly innocent recipe for chocolate poundcake and replace the butter with applesauce, the chocolate with pureed prunes, the sugar with Splenda, the sour cream with nonfat yogurt, the white [...]

I have a friend who loves to watch movies and exhorts me to watch them too, adding lots of helpful advice such as, “Make sure that when you see the handkerchief you realize it’s a symbol for the war ’cause I didn’t know that and was confused when the carnie ate the turducken, and at [...]

Let them eat perilla seed cake.
— Marie Antoinette Kim
I’m predicting the Next Big Thing. In a year or two, big restaurants will pounce on deulkkae and turn it into the trendy new food ingredient of the decade. Why wouldn’t they? It tastes like nothing else, few in the west have heard of [...]

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when out from the kitchen
Came the crashing of cake pans and loud plaintive bitchin’;
The oven mitts hung by the oven with care
But cream, milk, and salt were spilled everywhere.
The egg shells were nestled all snug in the trash,
While I hastily gift-wrapped toy trains and some cash.
The cookies are filled now, [...]