The Youngrens | San Diego Photographers

‘Tis the season of baked goods overload – pie madness, cookie overkill, brittle surplus, and candy, candy, candy. Everyday has brought a new package to our doorstep from friends and family filled with more sugary goodness. My poor stomach muscles don’t stand a chance. But I’m totally adding to the madness – we’ve already sent bushels of homemade peppermint brittle out the door in brown paper packages tied up with strings (no literally – they were wrapped in brown kraft paper and twine), and I’ve been posting nothing but baked confections for the past month on Recipe Sunday. I promise…

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I have the WORST luck when it comes to baking with yeast. There’s always something that goes wrong – too hot, too cold, too much flour, too much water, too much kneading, not enough rising – sheesh. So high maintenance. In fact, it was after yet another batch of rock solid potato rolls in our first year of marriage that I gave up baked goods altogether and decided to really learn how to cook, which is so much more forgiving than the exact science of baking. I mean, baking skills definitely come in handy at the holidays, but pumpkin scones for…

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For the past month or so here on Recipe Sunday, I’ve been raving about my favorite holiday foods – mostly stuffing, stuffing, and more stuffing. But there’s one food that was never on that ‘favorite’ list. Because I hated it. Yams. Ick. Icky, ick, ick. They were always way too sweet or way too bland or just too ick. But then again, that was when I was still growing up and my poor undeveloped 8-year-old palette didn’t even like tomatoes. Soooooo, yeah. It wasn’t so much the yams fault that I thought they were the devil, it was more that…

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