Cold Brew Coffee

March 28, 2016April 16, 2018 by Sarah | 8 Comments

The necessity of coffee is fitting for a Monday post, yeah? Brewing your coffee at home is one of the easiest ways to save money each week. I’m so used to it that buying a cup of coffee is a luxury to me and one I really enjoy, which wouldn’t be the case if I was waiting in line day after day at the coffee shop. During the winter, I usually brew a small pot in a french press or opt for the single cup pour over method, but once March rolls around it’s cold brewed coffee all. the. way. Once I discovered this method there was no turning back.

Why cold brew coffee?

Extremely easy to make. The directions are straight forward and there’s no fancy equipment necessary.
It saves time. It’s brewed in a larger concentrated batch, so you make it once for the week, not every morning.
It tastes better. The acidity of cold brew coffee is lower because the grounds are never subjected to boiling water, which makes the chemical profile quite different than that of a conventionally brewed pot of coffee. Lower acidity makes for a smoother taste and naturally sweeter taste and in turn is less harsh on your tummy.
It’s never watery. Besides the acidity issues that arise with hot coffee and rapidly cooling hot coffee with ice cubes (iced coffee), you’ll never drink a watery cup of iced coffee again. Watery diluted coffee is awful. Less caffeine and less taste – who want’s that?
More caffeine per cup. Cold brew coffee has a higher bean to water ratio and a longer brew time, which means it contains more caffeine. I think of cold brew coffee as a concentrate and I often add water, but more on that below.

Double Vanilla Cake

March 21, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. We’re looking forward to a few months of both sweet and savory dishes using vanilla.

Right after Sarah and I picked vanilla as the ingredient of the season, this recipe for a double vanilla butter cake was published on A Cup of Jo, and I knew we had to try it! This cake is so delicious served plain, but we also enjoyed ours for breakfast with a side of berries and as an afternoon snack with a cup of coffee. Calder said that it reminded him of cakes he was served in Germany… and while I don’t have a specific example in mind, as soon as he said that, I couldn’t agree more, and was immediately transported back to my time there, having a snack on a train or stopping in to a little cafe for breakfast.

The original recipe called for both vanilla extract and vanilla paste, thus the double in its name. I didn’t have paste, and at first I wanted to make some, but after looking up a few different recipe and seeing that each one used different techniques, I felt unprepared to waste my precious beans on something I wasn’t sure about. Maybe I’ll do a bit more research and discuss vanilla bean paste in another post. Instead, I took the author’s advice and substituted vanilla extract for the paste, but then I used vanilla sugar (details at the end of the post) to dust the pan, keeping with the call for two types of vanilla.

Malted Egg Milkshakes with Vanilla Vodka

March 17, 2016April 5, 2018 by Katie | 2 Comments

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. We’re looking forward to a few months of both sweet and savory dishes using vanilla. Plus, we’re a huge fan of milkshakes, so if you like today’s post, you may want to check out our matcha tea milkshake and hazelnut liqueur shake!

I made a bottle of vanilla vodka last week, as you’ll see below, it’s super easy to do, and it’s even better than the store-bought vanilla varieties because this is made with 100% real vanilla, nothing artificial here… and then we added candy-coated malted eggs.

Truth be told, vanilla vodka has never been on my radar, but since I’ve experimented with making the tea infused and rosemary infused vodkas, vanilla and vodka seemed like an obvious pairing. It wasn’t until after I made it that I wondered what to do with it. Calder said “throw it away”. Thanks. Then I did a Google search and came upon a comment board where multiple people recommended giving it away. What’s wrong with everyone?

Sarah’s Favorite Quick and Easy Snacks

March 15, 2016March 15, 2016 by Sarah | 4 Comments

Holy heck do I get hangry. If the man and I are ever having an argument he usually pauses the fight to get me a snack. Seriously. It usually works too. Being hungry can hijack your brain and cause you to do and say crazy stuff. It’s all about survival though so before we blame our monkey brains, let’s just make a snack instead. Here are my favorite quick and easy snacks.

Bran Muffins

March 14, 2016April 6, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

This recipe is not necessarily part of our Cooking with Kids series, but it could be! I include just a couple of ideas below. And if you are interested in getting your kiddos in the kitchen, this post has many of our tips and tricks.

There’s nothing like a good breakfast (and a strong cup of coffee) to get your week off to a great start. Do you agree? Somehow/somewhere a few months back, my breakfast routine completely vanished. I wasn’t interested in my spiffed-up bowls of oatmeal, eating cereal didn’t fill me up and tasted a bit too sugary (we all make bad choices in that aisle!), and I didn’t have the time or patience to scramble eggs. So I just didn’t eat, which is the worst plan when your mornings start with a bang and you’re running after two kids.

It took me some time to identify the problem. Maybe I did a little of the five whys? Alex definitely does a whole lot of the 500 whys every day now. Anyway, I realized that I needed to find a healthy breakfast that I could pick up and go. I’m definitely not a fan of processed bars, and I don’t even like that a “grab-and-go” option is what my breakfast urges are calling for right now, but if it fills me up, it’s better than a hangry hangover.

Sarah’s Jambalaya

March 10, 2016April 6, 2016 by Sarah | Leave a comment

Guys! I almost dropped the ball on posting today, it’s so nice outside and I have a couple of gigs to run off to, but then these jambalaya pics appeared out of nowhere. This recipe was begging to be shared and for good reason. This jambalaya is a fan favorite and it’s a one pot meal. How can a home cooked dinner be any easier? Chop a few things, add a bunch of spices, set it and kinda forget it, cause it will be done before you finish one episode of House of Cards.

Kombucha! or Kombu-what?

February 23, 2016February 23, 2016 by Katie | 2 Comments

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. While we love a traditional cup of tea, we also enjoy spicing it up with a masala chai and adding rose petals for a floral touch.

Kombucha seems to be a drink that can divide a crowd. People either love it or hate it. Sarah and I are strongly in the love camp! I drank my first bottle about a decade ago, knowing nothing about it, but being drawn in by the cute bottle (and wanting to taste anything named “Wonder Drink”!). The flavor of that first bottle was odd, yet addicting, and ever since I’ve loved trying new flavors and brand.

Fast forward all these years, imagine my delight when I was biking down the bike path in Boulder and sidewalk chalk signs pointing me toward’s Rowdy Mermaid‘s kombucha taproom! During Sarah’s first visit to Boulder, we stopped in to sample the goods. Fast forward a year, and during another of Sarah’s visits, we were introduced to Upstart Kombucha while walking down Pearl Street. We’re partial to Upstart’s rose bud variety, but will take any bottle in a pinch! Needless to say, kombucha culture (haha!) is going strong here in Boulder. We’re lucky to have some many local brands at our fingertips and love them all! Even so, we couldn’t help but get in on the DIY kombucha craze, and the nudge to do so came when our mama gave us this book for Christmas.

The internet is full of information about kombucha, including many sites and youtube videos that walk you through the process of making a batch at home. Consider this post an introduction to kombucha and a starter brewing guide. If you have questions and/or comments, please get in touch!

Tea-Infused Vodka

February 16, 2016January 17, 2023 by Katie | 4 Comments

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. Looking for another cocktail with tea? Check out our Garden Gin. And want to experiment with more infused vodkas? We love this hazelnut liqueur and this rosemary vodka.

Today we’re here to provide a warning : tea-infused vodka may be an acquired taste… and we haven’t quite acquired it yet, but we’re trying (I’m drinking some as I type!). On a scale of 1 to 10, we’re giving this one an “ehh”.

So, the idea is simple, take some vodka, add some tea, let it sit, then strain, and then make a cocktail. But for how simple it is, and for how much we love tea and vodka, somehow we aren’t loving the results. And this isn’t some crazy idea schemed up by us, Absolut sells a tea-flavored vodka!

Black Sesame Cupcakes with Matcha Frosting

February 15, 2016February 23, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. We’re using that as an excuse to sit down more often and relax over a cuppa’. If you like combining matcha with your desserts, check out this milkshake!

Lately I’ve come across so many dessert recipes that combine the flavors of black sesame and green tea, and I’ve been so intrigued. As you may know, I’m already a fan of having my matcha green tea as a dessert rather than as a hot tea, so extending that passion to cakes seemed like a no-brainer. And since we liked the chocolate chip cookies with tahini so much, I was excited to experiment with another sesame-flavored baked good. It only took me a week and an embarrassing number of hours to hem and haw over recipes before deciding on these black sesame cupcakes with matcha green tea frosting.

In this post Molly Yeh provides a roundup of beautiful black sesame/green tea combinations (the subject of that post happens to be a green tea cake with black sesame frosting – the opposite of what we have going on here today!)… and if that weren’t enough, both of today’s recipes come from Molly’s site. What can we say, we’re fans.

Extending our search farther into the interwebs, the black sesame-matcha combination is nothing new. From what I’ve learned it originates in Japanese cooking, where you’ll find many desserts that use flavors not extremely common to American treats, think beans, seeds like this sesame, and sweet potatoes.

Garden Gin

February 9, 2016February 23, 2016 by Katie | Leave a comment

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. We’re using that as an excuse to sit down more often and relax over a cuppa’. Check out the entire tea archive. This post, in particular, is another one that calls for the use of Earl Grey (in ice cream sandwiches!).

I can’t believe that it took us two months to combine tea and alcohol, but the day is finally here! Today we’re sharing our take on this delicious cocktail from Sugar & Charm. As you’ll see, this drink is a complex mix of a variety of botanical flavors. The Earl Grey tea provides a dark tannin-filled foundation, and then it’s layered with lavender, lime juice, and just a hint of citrus, both from the tea and a sliver of zest. Honey adds just a touch of sweetness. Needless to say, this drink is far from the Long Island Iced Teas we all had one too many of in college.

I mentioned that the drink gets a hint of citrus from the Earl Grey tea. Traditionally, Earl Grey is a black tea that is scented with the addition of bergamot essential oil. The bergamot orange is an extremely sour fruit with a rind the color of lemons. It is not considered edible, but with the addition of sugar can be turned into marmalade. Earl Grey tea was first produced in England in the early 1800s in an attempt to reproduce the flavors of more expensive Chinese teas. Perhaps surprisingly, combining gin and Earl Grey, as we do below, is not a unique idea. Although it’s not as fashionable today, it was common throughout the UK, particularly in the late 1800s.

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Category Archives: recipes

Cold Brew Coffee

Double Vanilla Cake

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. We’re looking forward to a few months of both sweet and savory dishes using vanilla.

Malted Egg Milkshakes with Vanilla Vodka

Vanilla is our ingredient of the season. We’re looking forward to a few months of both sweet and savory dishes using vanilla. Plus, we’re a huge fan of milkshakes, so if you like today’s post, you may want to check out our matcha tea milkshake and hazelnut liqueur shake!

Sarah’s Favorite Quick and Easy Snacks

Bran Muffins

This recipe is not necessarily part of our Cooking with Kids series, but it could be! I include just a couple of ideas below. And if you are interested in getting your kiddos in the kitchen, this post has many of our tips and tricks.

Sarah’s Jambalaya

Kombucha! or Kombu-what?

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. While we love a traditional cup of tea, we also enjoy spicing it up with a masala chai and adding rose petals for a floral touch.

Tea-Infused Vodka

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. Looking for another cocktail with tea? Check out our Garden Gin. And want to experiment with more infused vodkas? We love this hazelnut liqueur and this rosemary vodka.

Black Sesame Cupcakes with Matcha Frosting

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. We’re using that as an excuse to sit down more often and relax over a cuppa’. If you like combining matcha with your desserts, check out this milkshake!

Garden Gin

Tea is our ingredient of the season this winter. We’re using that as an excuse to sit down more often and relax over a cuppa’. Check out the entire tea archive. This post, in particular, is another one that calls for the use of Earl Grey (in ice cream sandwiches!).