When new bloggers join the Slashfood team, we like to make sure they get a proper introduction to our readers. Meet the latest addition to our team, blog editor Alex Van Buren.

Do you have a personal blog?

Yes. It's where I post recent articles and scribble about various New York City food discoveries.

What is your day job, or rather, what do you do when you're not food blogging?

I am a full-time food nerd. I'm the new editor of Slashfood, have written for Gourmet, Martha Stewart Living, In Style and Time Out New York and am the co-author of "Clean Plates NYC: The Healthiest, Tastiest Restaurants in Manhattan," which published last week.

How long have you been blogging with Slashfood and what's your favorite post?
Here are my faves from each of our great writers during the month I've been editing here: Cheese. Beer. Julia. Egg creams. Cheap wine. Chickens. Croque monsieur. Ostrich eggs. Greek cuisine. Starter cookbooks. Bread pudding ice cream. And let's not forget the flaming bacon lance of death.

As for me, I loved eating dinner in bubble almost as much I enjoyed seeing more than 700 of our readers defend their favorite "bad" beers.

Here's a cookie recipe to get you in the mood for Halloween (side note: isn't it interesting how, in the past 10 years or so, Halloween has become a massive holiday for adults?). They're Dulce De Leche Bat Cookies, from Martha Stewart Living.

The recipe calls for an aspic cutter to make the bat shape. I've never used an aspic cutter before, but if Martha says you have to...

Conveniently, even if it isn't Halloween, these cookies would be good for your next Batman-themed party.

I've never made ice cream. It's one of those foods that I think it's unnecessary to make because what you can buy in the store is just as good (if not better) than what you could make at home. I feel the same way about pasta.

But I was reading one of Andy Rooney's books (he's one of my favorite writers) and he makes ice cream a lot. He has a very simple recipe, and it doesn't include eggs at all. He says that if you add eggs, it's not ice cream, it's custard. He was on Martha Stewart's show one time, making ice cream, and she agreed that adding eggs was a bad idea. But when she was on CBS a while later, she made ice cream, and she added eggs!

So I'm curious: who's right in this? Is ice cream better with no eggs? Do eggs make it richer in some way, or just turn it into something else?

Last week, our Cooking Live series focused on a savory stew. This week, I'm turning over to the sweet side with a classic breakfast favorite: coffee cake. If you're not familiar with coffee cake, it gets its name because it is designed to be served with coffee or tea, as part of a mid-morning or mid-afternoon meal, not for dessert. This coffee cake is a Martha Stewart Living recipe that is brimming with streusel. In fact, it has more streusel than batter, though the batter expands to a respectable amount once the cake has baked.

The recipe that inspired this "episode" is Cardamom Streusel Coffee Cake, which won me over with its delicious appearance. It also gives me a good opportunity to take my own Martha Challenge, and see if I have better luck with her (and her publication's) recipes than some others have. I guarantee that a few liberties will be taken with this recipe, so stay tuned for the ingredients and my version of the recipe later in the week, with a full series of posts detailing the method, mixing, baking and eating of the cake on Friday.