Coffee Break: Behind the Scenes & More!

Oh hi! It’s me!

Somehow it’s been almost a year since I checked in with a personal update. I remember when I had time to write these coffee break posts monthly! I guess I never understood what being a busy working parent meant until I had my 2nd child. Or, at least, until she was mobile. (She is turning TWO in July! And my oldest is turning 5 in September! How can that be already?)

Since I shared my last update, I finished my cookbook proposal for my 4th cookbook! And I mean… I *just* submitted it this past week. It took me an entire year to write the proposal, which sounds like an unusually long time. But I’ve been doing about 1 billion other things on the side like testing and publishing recipes on my website, launching a website redesign, celebrating 10 years, and a huge recipe video shoot. (Which I’m showing you below!) All the while of trying to balance my career and family, which feels like some super magical secret that I can’t figure out. HOW DO YOU BALANCE EVERYTHING?

Recipe Video Shoot

It had been nearly two years since my entire team and I got together to film recipe videos. This past spring, we shot 20 baking videos/tutorials. It sounds like a lot because, yes, it was a lot!!! We schedule big recipe video shoots to make the most of our time together because the team lives all over the country. Since we can’t get together often, we filmed a lot of content for the holiday season and I’m so excited to publish it on the site. As you can imagine, it was quite comical seeing spring flowers bloom outside while enjoying pumpkin pie and Christmas cookies.

Part of my video crew is also known as Paragraphic and you can follow them as they film handcrafted documentaries highlighting different artisans and creators. I love their work and am so fortunate they have time and dedication to produce recipe videos for my website. They’re also A LOT of fun.

Anyway, we completely took over the kitchen with video equipment, lights, cords, ingredients, and dishes.

Filming this many recipe videos requires a lot of people, a lot of work, and a lot of planning ahead. There’s talking points to review, dishes to wash, props to order, and plenty of prepwork. To stay organized when shooting multiple videos in a day, we usually set up pre-measured ingredients on baking sheets (just a little trick of the trade!):

Over 6 days with a 10 person crew, plus neighbors and families of my local team members, we had plenty of mouths gobbling up all of these treats. And trust me, there were A LOT of treats.

The baked goods had expanded out of the kitchen and crept into the office.

Carrot cake! (The new carrot cake video is published by the way!)

And a note to remind everyone not to eat “the pretty cookies” until after we filmed them. Demanding notes on a tray of beautiful cookies, totally normal.

So yes, a lot of work and a lot of food. Not to mention, all the bloopers, laughs, and times I completely messed up on camera. (We had two years of laughs to catch up on!!!)

You can find some of the finalized videos in these posts:

and there’s many more coming soon!

Bloopers

And, lastly, when you view these finalized recipe videos, please know there is tape on my back holding down the weird wrinkled creases that kept appearing on my shoulders:

And that the crumb patrol was sleeping on the job:

PS: That’s Franklin, our 6 year old pup and the one on top of him is Simon. We adopted Simon last year and the two are inseparable. Simon’s a german shepherd mix and, as you can see, quite the snuggler.

And Here’s What I’ve Been Baking!

You’d think I’d be sick of the kitchen after all that, but one of my favorite activities with my daughters is baking together. Usually about once a week, we bake a batch of muffins and yes, it’s complete chaos with a 2 and 5 year old. But muffins are awesome when baking with children because they’re quick to prep, have a relatively short baking time, and you don’t have to wait for them to cool before enjoying. Perfect for little bakers with little patience!!

Here are zucchini muffins and we baked this batch using coconut sugar instead of refined sugar:

And applesauce muffins with raisins. In this particular batch, I snuck in 1/4 cup of ground flaxseed and added another Tablespoon of applesauce:

We usually make bread together, too. My go-to recipe is multigrain bread… doesn’t look like much but it’s oh-so-flavorful and soft. The girls love it even with the “chunks” (oats and pepitas). LOL.

And mini margarita cheesecakes for the adults!!! I made these for a little summer party and after 3 people asked for the recipe, I knew I had to publish it. They’re so creamy!

And, finally, say hi to Dorothy (from the site Crazy for Crust) and Holly (from the site Spend with Pennies). I escaped the humidity of the east coast and we spent a few days in Napa, CA. Wine tasting at Cakebread Cellars, shopping, pool time, a once-in-a-lifetime dinner experience at world famous restaurant The French Laundry, and most importantly, treasured time with great friends.

I’ll end on that note but hopefully I’ll have time for more frequent updates. I did A LOT of baking this past month and have some exciting new recipes and re-tested recipes to publish. (Did you see my updated blueberry pie? SO GOOD!) In the meantime, you can subscribe via email so you never miss a new recipe, updated recipe, or baking related article. I usually send about 3 emails/week to subscribers!

Thank you for coming behind the scenes today. 🙂