Lunchtime Links for August 28th, 2013

• Cookies & Cups: Devil's food Snickers cheesecake cupcakes. 
• Oh Sweet Basil: Baked Mozzarella bites. 
• Kirbie's Cravings: 5 minute Chinese buns. 
• Table for Two: San Francisco visit. 
• The Budget Babe: Vinegar for longer lasting manicures. 

Lunchtime Links for August 2nd, 2013

• Serious Eats: San Francisco ferry building.
• Averie Cooks: Chocolate covered microwave peanut brittle.
• The Pioneer Woman: French bread pizzas.
• Brown Eyed Baker: Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. 
• Cookies and Cups: Brownie bottom ice cream cake.

Lunchtime Links for March 20th, 2013

• How Sweet It Is: Chocolate frosted cake doughnuts. 
• I Heart Naptime: Chocolate marshmallow cookies with Reese's.
• Bakerella: San Francisco treats. 
• Cookies & Cups: Tagalong bars. 
• Two Peas and Their Pod: Homemade Oreos with peanut butter. 

Lunchtime Links for November 2nd, 2012

• Serious Eats: All of the cream puffs at Pacific Puffs, San Francisco. 
• Bake at 350: Rosy little pumpkin cupcakes. 
• My Baking Addiction: Sugar and spice cupcakes.  
• Picky Palate: Pumpkin brownie cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream. 
• Kirbie's Cravings: Pumpkin frozen yogurt.

The Candy Store at Target Prize

A big "Thank you!" to the Target Style Twitter account for having a fun giveaway of The Shops at Target collection items! 

I received a jar of gummy fried eggs and jawbreakers from the candy store at Target - super cute!  I'm still trying to figure out how to use the fried eggs in a cupcake - maybe some sort of maple cupcake with an egg on top, like a breakfast cupcake?

These items (as well as the other Shops at Target collections) may be on sale by this point in local stores, so check it out if you're in Target!

Lunchtime Links for January 6th, 2012

• The Kitchn: Sumo citrus.
• Serious Eats: Korean steak sandwich in San Francisco.
• Feisty Foodie: Tabata Ramen in NYC. 
• The Pioneer Woman: Tuscan bean soup with shrimp.
• Blondie and Brownie: Browned butter bacon doughnuts.

Lunchtime Links for October 31st, 2011

• Kirbie's Cravings: Pumpkin pound cake.
• Cupcakes and Cashmere: Caramel corn.
• Serious Eats: Bread bakeries in San Francisco.
• Gossip Girl: Recap from NYMag.  
• A Passion For Food: Halloween macarons. 

Lunchtime Links for August 4th, 2011

• The Cupcake Avenger: Fluffernutter cupcakes.
• The Pioneer Woman: Chipotle steak salad.
• A Passion For Food: Six-course tea dinner.
• Kirbie's Cravings: Yogurtland Hello Kitty promotion.
• Bakerella: Sweet shops.

Lunchtime Links for July 6th, 2011

• Serious Eats: Crunchy no-stir peanut butter taste test.
• Bakerella: Pop stars.
• In Good Taste: Cold sesame noodles.
• The Kitchn: Frozen lemonade.
• Cakespy: Humphrey Slocombe in San Francisco.

Lunchtime Links for June 29th, 2011

• The Kitchn: Flight-friendly meals.
• Serious Eats: Doughnut shops in San Francisco.
• In Good Taste: Seven layer magic bars.
• Tiffany's: Suite at the St. Regis in NYC.
• Real Housewives of NJ: Recap from TVGasm.

Lunchtime Links for June 14th, 2011

• The Budget Babe: Louboutin Lady Daf pumps.
• Serious Eats: Ice cream sundaes in San Francisco. 
• Eat Drink Pretty: Goat cheese sundried tomato tortellini.
• Big Girls Small Kitchen: Lemon mousse with strawberries. 
• Framed Cooks: Guaca-hummus.

San Francisco Visit - Boudin Bakery Breads

Just a few photos from my stroll through Boudin Bakery in San Francisco, I couldn't help but notice all of the cute animal-shaped breads!

San Francisco Visit - In-n-Out Burger

Can't have a trip to the West Coast without a visit to In-N-Out Burger!!!

Here we have my burger and K's burger and fries - I love the retro feel of all In-N-Out restaurants, even down to the way the burgers are wrapped up.  Is this the best burger in the world? No, not necessarily, but the ingredients taste fresh, and it's a great choice among fast food burgers.  It also helps that the employees are a far cry from normal surly fast food restaurant employees, haha.

I took this opportunity to order a "secret menu" item- the Neopolitan shake.  Since their shakes come in vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry, ordering it Neopolitan is just a combo of all three, haha.  But what I really liked about this one is that the guy making this for me didn't just layer one flavor on top of another, but rather swirled in each flavor, alternating a little of all three for the shake.  It made for a tasty milkshake for sure! 

The "secret menu" items have long been publicized and are not-so-secret in reality, but it's still fun to order stuff that's technically off the menu.  Serious Eats did a crazy post where they tried every "secret menu" option in one visit, check it out here.

In-N-Out San Francisco

333 Jefferson

San Francisco, CA 94133

San Francisco Visit - Ice Cream Treats

Two places on my "Can we please go?" list for visiting my friend K in San Francisco turned out to be ice cream places.  But not just any old chain ice creams, obviously- these are two incredibly popular spots in San Francisco, and I couldn't wait to try them!

First up, we tried Bi-Rite Creamery.  When we first arrived, there was a walk-up window with some flavors listed, and I was v. confused, since I had seen this place on tv before and thought it was a real store.  Then I realized that this was their soft serve window only, and the real store was directly next door, haha. 

I really like how they have the flavors written directly on the glass case - I bet it's much easier for them to do this than to have to change a hanging wall sign every day, since their flavor selection seems to change v. frequently.  Plus, it adds a little more of that "homemade" appeal to me. 

There were SO many different flavors I was trying to decide between - I was initially going to go for one of their signature sundaes, but we clearly were eating more the rest of that day, so I went with a single cup, haha.  I finally decided on the earl grey ice cream because I love tea-flavored sweets.  This was really creamy and delicious!  Like a sweet milk tea flavor with an assertive but not overwhelming taste.  I also like their little wooden "spoons", reminds me of the ones you get from the ice cream truck if you ordered something in a cup, haha. 

On another day, I forget what we were talking about initally but I suddenly remembered that I was going to try to find It's-It ice cream sandwiches while I was in San Francisco, since they are pretty much only available in the city or close to it, apparently.  After a little confusion over the name - aka K thought I was going crazy, telling her that I wanted "Itsits" and she had no idea what I was talking about- we looked it up and found that they are sold in most local supermarkets. 

Unfortunately the store we went to was sold out of the original (I'm assuming vanilla ice cream) ones, so we got a box of the Cappuccino flavor. 

First off- these are pretty enormous, haha.  As you can see there is plenty of ice cream sandwiched between the oatmeal cookies!  Despite the fact that I don't like oatmeal cookies I enjoyed this a lot!  Although I think it helped that these oatmeal cookies didn't have raisins in them, which is usually the case with oatmeal-based cookies.  I'm so glad I got to try these!

Our final stop in the ice cream adventure was Humphy Slocombe, which I was also excited to try out. 

I didn't get the Jesus Juice, but I thought it was pretty funny, heh.  They also had a Breakfast ice cream (you can see part of it on the top right of the phone) which included bourbon and corn flakes, haha.

I went with the Vietnamese iced coffee ice cream, which admittedly is not one of the crazier flavors in the context of all of their ice creams, but I still thought it'd be interesting.  It had a v. strong coffee flavor with a hit of sweetness as well.  It's definitely different from regular coffee ice cream!  I would've enjoyed a little bit of texture (maybe some chocolate covered espresso beans) but overall I found it to be an enjoyable cup of ice cream.  

Just as a side note- we did not eat all of these one right after another, it was over the course of a few days.  And we walked a TON in between...really!!  

Bi-Rite Creamery

3692 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Humphry Slocombe

2790 Harrison St
San Francisco, CA 94110

San Francisco Visit - Ferry Building Marketplace Eats

At the beginning of May, I went out to San Francisco for an extended weekend- thankfully this time around I actually made it there!  I was originally supposed to go out there last fall, but a plane mechanical error resulted in a cancelled trip.  It was probably for the best though, considering that the fall weekend turned out to be rainy and gross the whole time, and I had great weather on this trip! 

There will be a few food posts from my trip (obvi), but I wanted to break it down into a few posts: this one will focus mainly on the Ferry Building Marketplace, where I spent a good portion of one of my days since it was close to where my friend K works.   

First stop: Boccalone, which is a haven for pork lovers like myself.  K and I were going to Incanto for dinner while I was visiting as well, so I thought of this as a nice little preview. 

 

I went for the famous Salumi Cone with the day's selection of three meats all neatly placed into a paper cone.  Yum! 

Then, I walked around the rest of the market to check out the other shops.  The market wasn't as big as I remembered it (to be fair I was probably around 10 or so when I was last here, haha), so I wound up taking a few laps around, checking out each shop and taking in what they each had to offer.

While we have a Cowgirl Creamery in DC, it was still fun to see them in California, a little closer to home for them :o)  They had a great sandwich and snack menu, including a milk bar!

I also looked around the Scharffen Berger shop- I wanted to take everything with me!!  But I stuck with just getting one salted caramel chocolate- v. rich and smooth.

I kept coming back to the Miette shop because the cakes and everything looked lovely, and they had really cute decorations that I loved- think pastel cake stands, charming packaging, v. girly overall.

K and I split a strawberry cupcake, which looked v. pretty but didn't really "wow" me per se.  I enjoyed the fluffy frosting that had a great taste to it, but the cake tasted like a dry, heavy poundcake, which I didn't really like.  Maybe I should've tried one of their many other cute desserts instead.  

The Ferry Building Marketplace has a lot to look at and tons of options if you are hungry- they also have a farmers market just outside of the building, which I caught the tail end of when I was there.  It's a great place for good eats and food gifts!

Ferry Building Marketplace
One Ferry Building
San Francisco, California 94111
415.983.8030 

Lunchtime Links for May 27th, 2011

• Serious Eats: Food from San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Market.
• The Kitchn: Ice cream bombes. 
• Pregnant in Heels: Recap from TVGasm.
• I Eat Cupcakes for Breakfast: Mocha cupcakes. 
• In Good Taste: Cinnamon sugar donuts.

Lunchtime Links for April 4th, 2011

• Real World Vegas: Recap from TVGasm.
• Serious Eats: Nutty desserts in NYC.  
• The Kitchn: Tortelloni with lemon basil ricotta.
• Gaga Daily: Lady Gaga visits the Twitter office.  
• Kirbie's Cravings: Reese's cookies.

Lunchtime Links for March 23rd, 2011

• Serious Eats: Burgers at Pearl's Deluxe Burgers in San Francisco.
• Top Chef All-Stars: Recap from TVGasm. 
• How Sweet It Is: One bowl vanilla cupcakes for two.
• The Budget Babe: Target's Go International designer collective. 
• metrocurean: Mini doughnuts at Art & Soul.