The Butcher's Block & Baking

Parmesan muffins

Simple flavors work for weekday mornings and snack muffins. Spelt flour gives a slightly different flavor compared to regular wheat.

Banoffee Cake

Ingredients for Caramel

White chocolate pistachio cookies

White chocolate is added in chunks to the cookie dough, along with salt to balance its sweetness. The finished cookies are decorated with melted white chocolate, crushed pistachios, and a small pinch of pink salt.

Vietnamese Steamed Layer Cake with Pandan and Mung Bean Paste (Banh Da Lon)

One of my favorite Vietnamese desserts is bánh da lợn, a colorful green and yellow steamed layer cake. You can easily spot this dessert at a Vietnamese bakery by its beautiful alternating layers of yellow and green.

Chicken bites with bacon and smoked scamorza filling

Lucuma meringue cake - Pilar Hernández's Chilean Kitchen

This recipe already existed on the blog, but over the years I've learned little tricks to make it look better and show off this lucuma meringue cake, which is not difficult to make at all.

Pizza with homemade yeast dough

Pour water into a measuring cup. Crumble in the yeast and mix with the sugar and salt. Let it stand for 10-15 minutes. 250 ml water, 1 tsp salt, 1 pinch of sugar, 1 cube of yeast.

Lemon yogurt polenta cake

This lemon spring cake stays moist and juicy for a few days. The secret to the texture is in the Turkish yogurt and polenta grains.

Khaliat Nahal: Yemeni Honeycomb Bread

Khaliat Nahal in Arabic translates to “beehive.” Baked closely together in a round pan, pollinated in the center with a dollop of creamy cheese, and sticky with honeyed syrup, these Yemeni buns bake into a honeycomb pattern. I stumbled on this delectable treat in Dearborn, Michigan, the promised land for Arab American foodies. I was on tour promoting We Are La Cocina, a collection of stories and r