"Why did Lena make a Christmas cake if she's Jewish?" "Why is Lena posting a Christmas cake on January 18th?" "Why hasn't Lena posted anything in five months?" Good questions, reader! First off, I made this cake for a friend to bring to a Christmas party. I spent Christmas Day driving to New Jersey with [...]
if you'd told me a year ago that my favorite colors would become pink and yellow, i would've laughed hysterically. my wardrobe consisted of blacks, grays, dark greens, and the very occasional light blue. my bedroom was literally 50 shades of gray. but something changed, and now i can't get enough of bright colors. it's [...]
today marks a month since i moved in to college! here's a timeline of some (lena's lunchbox-related) events that have happened so far: august 28: i started marketing immediately, plastering my door with cake photos and posting in the GW facebook group. i figured it would take a while to get my name out there, and [...]
after visiting denmark a few days ago, i'm doing my best to embrace the danish concept of hygge (hue-gah). hygge roughly translates into coziness — ideally a coziness that leads to a sense of well-being and contentment. imagine sitting around a fireplace and drinking warm apple cider with friends, or curling up with a blanket and a book while [...]
i usually make some sort of red, white, and blue dessert on the fourth of july. in the past i've made this hidden american flag cake and this star-shaped trifle with strawberries and blueberries. this year is different. i'm not feeling very patriotic. we have a president who has admitted — BOASTED — about committing sexual assault. [...]
i'm currently in ithaca, ny — home to cornell university, and also home to a huge annual apple festival! the festival is in october (this cake is sorta seasonally inappropriate), but it's one of the many cool events that take place in this tiny town. ithaca is small, and it's in the middle of no where, but [...]
have you ever tried those jelly fruit slice candies? i only ever eat them at passover* — we stock up on them in lieu of [preferred] gluten-y desserts — but i suppose they're available year round. this cake is topped with the elevated, "from scratch" version of those candies in the form of candied clementines. after [...]
i've had a taste aversion to cinnamon ever since i tried the cinnamon challenge at a middle school sleepover. would NOT recommend. i'm okay if there's a pinch of it in my coffee, but any more than that makes me want to gag. every single component of this cake has cinnamon, so i haven't tried it, [...]
the cheesecake factory has a massive tome of a menu, filled with a huge number of appetizers, entrées, and desserts. "over 250 dishes," it reads, "made fresh every day." WHAT? HOW? OVER 250? WHAT DOES "FRESH" MEAN THEN? you can walk into any of the restaurant's 185 locations and order filet mignon, or an egg roll, or a mac n [...]
i don't mean to brag, but i think it's safe to say that i was the tooth fairy's favorite little kid. our relationship went waaaay past the conventional money-for-tooth exchange. she left notes under my pillow every night, regardless of whether i'd lost a tooth. sometimes the notes were even accompanied by small gifts: a thimble, [...]
LENA'S LUNCHBOX 