A Pie, a Muffin, and Other Things We Actually Bake

The baking that matters in this house is meant to be eaten, not styled for a camera. Some of it happens every morning. Some of it shows up for dinner or a birthday.

The everyday bake is bread. I bake a loaf every day in a Zojirushi BB-PDC20, on course 1 with a medium crust, set to a timer along with the coffee, and the house smells amazing in the morning. The recipe is The Daily Loaf. That loaf is how most days here begin. I also wrote about the habit in Rhythms Are How We Make It Work and in Tools I Reach for When I Cook.

The other baking has a home in the Recipes section. Here's the short tour.

Mini Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Streusel are my own version: brown sugar, the creaming method, and frozen berries. They're a small bake, the kind that can sit on the counter and disappear.

Gourmet Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins come with a friendly family debate attached. There are two ways to handle the filling. One is to pipe it in before the muffins bake. The other, which is Joanna's preference, is to add the filling after baking so it will not sink. I kept both methods on the recipe page, because both are part of how this bake actually lives in our kitchen. If you want something to go with a muffin, there's also Light Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting.

Spelt Apple Pie with Heart Cutouts is one of the pies in our recipes. Pork, Cabbage, and Caramelized Onion Pie is another, a savory pie, which belongs at a dinner table as much as a sweet one does.

On November 12, 2026, I baked a Strawberry Mochi Chiffon Cake for a family birthday. I can tell you that much. I haven't written up a final verdict on how it came out after cooling and unmolding, and I'll leave the recipe notes as they are until I can.

None of these have to be weekend projects. The morning loaf definitely isn't. A muffin tin can be an ordinary afternoon. A pie can be dessert at a candlelit dinner, or the center of a table that already had a home-cooked meal on it. The point is that the baking we do is food for the people who live here, and sometimes for a birthday, and then it's gone.

If you want the wider kitchen, start with What I Mean by Eating Well at Home. If you came for the smell of bread in the morning, start with The Daily Loaf.