I have been to the land of King Arthur. I visited Avalon and Camelot, and saw Excalibur from afar. I walked its hallowed halls, baked in its beautiful wood burning oven, and even broke bread with its residents. At this point, you’re thinking to yourself – Amber’s had one too many boozy Margarita Bars. But …
Desserts
When I was a kid, my dad was the king of two things: hamburgers and milkshakes. My dad could eat a hamburger for every meal of the day. And he could quite happily drink a vanilla milkshake every day too. (Not that my mother would ever let him.) The other day, James and I received …
Today marks my first post for the Secret Recipe Club, an online exchange among food bloggers created by Amanda from Amanda’s Cookin’. The idea behind this is that we’ll secretly be assigned a fellow food blogger’s site, and we must pick a recipe from that site to make for our own. Since I love finding …
Hey y’all! Today my fantastically funny and sparkly friend Kristan from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen is guest posting. Every time Kristan posts, I make sure I don’t have a drink in my hand, because I’m sure to be howling with laughter as I read, and it’s not ideal to spray the monitor with Diet …
Jamie and I “met” on twitter a long long time ago, and got to emailing when she needed a bunch of signs and business cards made in a hurry for a charity event. Being the graphic design guru that I am (well.. I can get around alright, anyway), I was happy to help her out …
It’s no secret that I’m a huge Disney enthusiast, or as my friend Amanda Tinney says, I’m simply a “Disney Peep”. One of my favorite restaurants at Walt Disney World is located at the Polynesian Resort, or as us Disney veterans refer to it as, “The Poly”. The Polynesian was created to pay homage to …
On Saturday, my nephew David turns 5. Five years ago, my husband and I had just disembarked from a cruise ship, and barely made it through customs (where cell phones are not allowed) when my phone began to ring. I answered it to hear both my mother’s tears, and Davey’s first cries too. There I stood, in the middle of a sidewalk at New York City’s cruise pier, crying my eyes out.
Four months later, I met Davey for the first time. We gathered at Canyon Lake, Texas, a place that my sister and I spent the majority of our childhood summers, spring breaks, and long weekends. Chellee and Jeremy walked out of their cabin, and put a little baby wearing only a diaper into my arms. He promptly threw up on me.
Today is Mother’s Day. I am not yet a mother, but three women who have shown me how it’s done leave me no doubt that I will be a strong one when the time comes. And when I falter, they will be there to support me.
Who am I talking about? My mother, my nanny, and my sister. Today, my post is about them. They are three of the most precious women in my life, for a myriad of reasons. I hope by the end of this post, they know how just how precious.
Hummingbird Cake is one of those recipes that’s uniquely Southern, and found nearly every springtime at someone’s baby shower, wedding, or barbecue.
Rumor has it the cake’s name comes from its over-the-top sweetness – so sweet that there’s no way a hummingbird could resist it’s sugary lure.
Personally, it reminds me a lot of carrot cake, but instead of getting its sweetness from carrots, it gets it from fresh pineapple, ripe bananas, and warmly roasted walnuts. They’re each equal stars of this show.
You might be looking at that photo and thinking to yourself, “Amber, that’s just another chocolate chip walnut cookie. Yum, but, come on! It’s been done!”. Well, my friend, you’d be right, except that that right there is a Levain Bakery chocolate chip walnut cookie, that I made at home.
The Levain Bakery is famous in this area, and honestly, beyond. It’s been the subject of New York Times articles, Food Network Shows, and many a food blogger discussion.
These cookies, they’re special. They’ve got weight. They’ve got this outer.. shell, for lack of a better word. When you bite into the cookie, the outer layer has a crunch to it, a bite. But it’s ever so slight, and gives way immediately to a texture somewhere between cake and chewy that I thought I’d never be able to duplicate.