As the temperature drops, you find yourself running from class to class bundled like a sherpa, only to take your seat and spend the whole class trying to get the feeling back in your fingers. Or you are home for break and want to get your drink on, but there is no way in hell you are going out in the snow.

If the stress and the chill start getting to you, or if you just want to curl up with something steamy, nothing takes the edge off quite like a warm, holiday-y cocktail. They are the liquid version of comfort foods; kid’s drinks full of your favorite rich, wintry flavors, spiked with booze for that extra ahhhhhh factor.

The best part? The tastiest ones are also the simplest, so you don’t have to go buy some of those random liquers you’ll use once every ten years (Kirsch? seriously?). Here are a few of my favorite ideas for defrosting from the inside out. Best for apres ski… well, apres anything, really. Read More »

I like to have some kind of baked good in the morning along with my cup of coffee, and honestly, there is nothing better than a scone to serve that purpose. Muffins are nice, but they’re too sweet (and often they are also the size of a man’s head). Biscotti go fabulously with coffee, but inevitably disintegrate into crumbs whenever I attempt to eat them.

But scones… aahhh. They’re just so close to perfect. Also, you can freeze them and just pop one out whenever you want to eat it—beautiful!

So I was rooting around for a great scone recipe this weekend, and I unearthed this monster on the mother of all recipe sites, the (aptly named) All Recipes. I will announce this publicly: I will never search for another scone recipe again. These are SO AMAZING!

To make a flawless recipe even better, they are also customizable. Yeah, that’s right. The recipe lists raisins as an optional ingredient, so if you don’t want raisin scones, you can basically throw whatever you do want right in the batter and mix it up.

I made cranberry-walnut scones, but the possibilities are endless. Chocolate-chip scones? Okay! Orange-lemon scones? Yes! Irish coffee scones? Well… I’m not quite that ambitious, but go for it and let me know how it turns out. Read More »