If you couldn’t tell from previous posts I have quite a long list of store-bought-food-I-want-to-learn-to-make-at-home. After I cleared off Spaghetti-Os, Soft Batch cookies were next on the list. They’re probably my second favorite kind of store-bought cookie (because nothing is better than Oreos). I like them so that I can only ever buy the small packs that you get from gas stations because I can’t trust myself around an entire package. If you’re unfamiliar with these cookies, they’re basically what they sound like: extremely soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies. It’s sort of like eating cookie dough but without the threat of getting sick since they’re baked.

I bookmarked this recipe for Soft Batch cookies a while back and finally got around to trying it out earlier this month. That’s when I realized that although I love the texture of those cookies, they don’t really have much flavor other than the chocolate chips. So I decided to change the recipe a bit and add one of my favorite ingredients: peanut butter! I had to do several tests (Is Cookie Recipe Tester a real job? Because I really want that job.) but eventually I found the right ratio of flour to peanut butter that still resulted in cookies with the correct “Soft Batch” texture. In a perfect world, I would add even more peanut butter, but I don’t think you can reduce the flour much more without hurting the structure/texture of the cookies.

To intensify the nutty flavor of these cookies I also used browned butter. One of the important steps in the recipe is reducing some of the water content in the butter. Since that’s pretty much one step away from browning the butter it seemed like the obvious way to go. Other than that, the rest of the recipe is ridiculously easy, you don’t even need a mixer.

The only downside to these cookies is that it’s another recipe, like my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, where you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can actually eat them. The last step involves putting the still warm cookies into an air-tight container. The residual heat steams the cookies which is an important part of giving them that soft texture. You have to let the cookies sit in the sealed container for 24 hours to develop the best flavor and texture. It’s tough to have a box of cookies in your kitchen that you can’t eat for a whole day, but they’re definitely worth the wait!

Get the recipe for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip “Soft Batch” Cookies »

Spring is officially here! And in the spirit of spring cleaning I’ve started going through my packed freezer to finally use up the last of the fruit that I froze last year. I got a ton of blueberries and blackberries from my CSA and have been using them in muffins all winter but after last week’s Pop Tart adventure I didn’t really want muffins or anything too carb-y. I’ve been craving a lemon dessert lately and lemons always pair well with berries so this was the perfect opportunity to finally make something.

Even though lemons are technically a summer fruit, there’s really nothing else that evokes Spring to me as much as a lemon. It’s just so fresh and bright, like the colorful blooms that are popping up all around my neighborhood these days. It’s the perfect thing to help transition between the stark coldness of winter and the hot sunniness of summer.

I had bookmarked a recipe for lemon cream a while ago so I finally decided to give it a try. The recipe turned out to be so simple and tasty that I immediately made another batch using limes and then put them both together in this parfait. The cream is made by whipping together yogurt, cream cheese and little bit of honey, then you stir in citrus juice and zest to add flavor. The yogurt and cream cheese combine to make a dessert that is light and fluffy like whipped cream, but with a thicker consistency like a mousse. This is just about the easiest dessert to make and it’s healthy to boot.

The parfait has blackberries sandwiched between a layer of lemon cream and a layer of lime cream. Since it’s a tart dessert with not much sweetener, I made a simple blackberry syrup to drizzle on top which added just the right amount of sweetness for me. I really liked the combination of the lemon and lime together but this parfait would work just as well with one or the other. And blueberries would work great instead of the blackberries.

My only complaint was that the berries were a bit mushy and definitely not at their best flavor due to being in my freezer for many months. Fresh berries are the way to go with this recipe, but since they’re not in season yet (or if you’ve got tons of berries in your freezer like me), I think it’ll be better to make frozen berries into a simple compote. That should help to intensify their flavor. Plus, the compote adds a bit more sugar for anyone wanting a sweeter dessert.

Get the recipe for Lemon and Lime Cream Parfaits with Blackberries »

I mentioned last week that I had a lot of egg whites left over after making my king cakes. I wanted to make a cake since I was still in birthday mode, but after a fairly indulgent month eating chocolate cookies and cream cheese filled cakes, an angel food cake seemed like a nice alternative. A sweet treat without any of the guilt!

But I didn’t want a plain angel food cake and I already made a chocolate one a few years ago so I decided to incorporate my current obsession: citrus! I just can’t get enough of oranges and lemons and grapefruits lately and a citrus cake sounded really refreshing. I always feel like grapefruit is kind of underrated compared to other citrus fruits, so I decided to make the grapefruity-est dessert I could come up with. This grapefruit angel food cake is flavored with grapefruit juice and zest and then drizzled with a grapefruit syrup. I also mixed a little grapefruit juice and zest with strawberries to use as a garnish. Obviously, if grapefruit isn’t your thing you can substitute your favorite citrus but despite how much I love lemons and oranges, I absolutely adored how this cake turned out and wouldn’t want it any other way.

The cake by itself is quite sweet and only has a subtle grapefruit flavor since you can’t really add too much liquid to an angel food cake recipe, but the concentrated syrup gives that nice tart pop of grapefruit flavor in every bite. The cakes don’t really need the strawberry garnish, but I’ve loved combining grapefruit and strawberries since the granita I made a few years ago so it seemed like a no brainer.

Since I’m a fan of miniature desserts I made individual cakes in my jumbo muffin pan. I also tried a few in a normal sized cupcake pan which were fine but since the cake is so light and fluffy it was just a little too…insubstantial (and kind of shriveled-looking). The jumbo pan made perfect sized cakes: more than a few bites but not overly large. Still, it’s a good thing these cakes are fat free because you’ll want to eat more than one!

Get the recipe for Mini Grapefruit Angel Food Cakes »

Even though I haven’t lived anywhere that celebrates Mardi Gras for a very long time, I grew up on the Gulf Coast and still have lots of fond memories of going to the parade every year. And since my birthday is in late February, Mardi Gras has fallen on or near the same day—the date changes every year, along with Easter—a bunch of times so I would usually have some kind of Mardi Gras themed party and we’d order a King Cake instead a normal birthday cake. This year, Mardi Gras happens to be next Tuesday, the day after my birthday, so I thought it would be fun to have a King Cake again.

The King Cakes I’ve made in the past have always been huge, not only hard to handle and store but they’d wind up drying out before we could finish eating them. So this time, rather than making one giant cake I decided to make small personal-size cakes. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to full size again! This recipe makes four 6-inch King Cakes which are adorable and easy to carry and store. I think they’d make great Mardi Gras gifts for friends or coworkers!

I posted a King Cake recipe 3 years ago (that post has more info on the history of Mardi Gras and King Cakes if you’re interested) but I wanted to try a filled version this time. I said in that post that I didn’t like filled King Cakes which is still true. This isn’t really what I’d call a “traditional” filled cake but I like it much better. The traditional ones I remember had a big ol’ gelatinous glob of cream cheese and/or fruit pie filling in the middle and it was never very appetizing to me. For my version of a filled King Cake, I spread a layer of a cream cheese mixture (basically cheesecake) on top of the dough and then on top of that I spread a layer of sweet lemon curd (if you’ve never had it before, it’s sort of like lemon jelly). Then I rolled the dough up jellyroll-style to make a delicious lemony-cream cheese swirl in the cake.

I’ve been obsessed with citrus lately so this King Cake has lots of lemon. Beside the lemon curd, it also has lemon zest mixed in and it’s topped with a lemon glaze. King Cakes have a texture more like a bread than a cake so all the extra flour balances out the lemon flavor making it more subtle. It gives each bite a nice pop of freshness rather than being overly tart.

There’s really no need to limit this cake to Mardi Gras. If you remove the multi-colored sugar topping you have a lightly-sweetened cinnamon bun-like coffee cake that can be eaten for breakfast or brunch. I realize the long list of ingredients and directions may look intimidating, but I promise it’s not hard! Most of the steps only take minutes and it’s all basic stuff that anyone can do (or that your mixer does for you). And you won’t need to get up at the crack of dawn since the recipe can be made a day or two before serving. In fact, the King Cake tastes best if you let it sit overnight so I recommend making it ahead of time. Just hold off on glazing it until right before serving; it will look and taste better that way. In all, there’s less than an hour of hands-on time and if you have a dough hook for your mixer, you don’t even have to knead anything.

As I was making this recipe I realized there are a lot of egg yolks in here. Not only in the cake, but in the fillings as well. Don’t throw the egg whites away! You can freeze them to use later. In the next week or two, I’ll have a new recipe that uses up those egg whites but in the meantime you might want to check out this Frozen Raspberry Pie or this Chocolate Angel Food Cake. Both recipes are very worthy (and healthier) ways to use up those extra whites.

Get the recipe for Lemon and Cream Cheese-filled King Cakes »

I’ve never made a big deal about Valentine’s Day. It’s nice to get some flowers but I don’t expect anything else. We don’t even bother going out to eat on Valentine’s Day anymore because the restaurants are always so crowded. Besides, my birthday is less than a week later so it’s easier to celebrate both occasions then. But there is one thing I love about Valentine’s day, especially since I started this blog: it’s a great excuse to make chocolate desserts!

I decided to make some cookies because Brandon’s coworkers have been asking for more cookies from me ever since my epic cookie testing project last December. It’s definitely flattering that they liked my cookies so much, so it seemed like a good idea to keep them happy and to find a great recipe to post for Valentine’s Day at the same time! I found these chocolate malt cookies in one of my Martha Stewart cookbooks and thought they would be really nice paired with a cherry-white chocolate filling.

Usually I find chocolate cookies kind of boring (I’d rather have a brownie!) but I really like the subtle malt flavor. These chocolate malt cookies are really easy to make and they come out of the oven a little bit crispy around the edges, but soft and chewy in the middle. They’re good candidates for a sandwich cookie, but they’re just as good on their own.

The creamy filling is white chocolate mixed with cream and cherry juice. I had imagined the filling would turn out more red or pink, but using dark cherries resulted in a more purple color. You could use less juice to get a lighter color or you can substitute raspberries for a redder color. My only nit pick is that the white chocolate really overpowers the cherry juice and the cherry flavor doesn’t really come through. But the recipe I based it on specifically says to use good quality white chocolate which I didn’t have in my pantry. So maybe it will work better with good quality chocolate but even if it doesn’t the filling still tastes really good (and I’m not usually a big fan of white chocolate). Besides, if I’m going to have a colored filling I’d rather use natural ingredients instead of a dye.

If you’re looking for an easy Valentine’s treat or just a quick chocolate pick-me-up these cookies are a great option!

Get the recipe for Cherry Chocolate Malt Cookie Sandwiches »

Hello January, we meet again. I used to try to make resolutions, the usual ones about going on a diet, exercising more, etc. but after years of pretty much not ever following through I’m officially giving up resolutions. I know it’s the New Year and that seems like a great time to “start over” but January just never works for me. The cold weather makes it hard for to get motivated to go walking (the only form of exercise I enjoy) and I crave lots of warm and hearty foods that are rarely low-calorie. And even if I do make some progress in January, February comes along and there’s Valentine’s Day and my birthday and I lose all my motivation.

So I’m not going to bother going on a diet this year or maybe ever again. I’m just going to keep doing what I’ve been working on since I started this blog: eat more real food like fruits and vegetables and a little less carbs, sugar and processed crap. That’s why I was really happy to get this new cookbook for Christmas, Green Market Baking Book which is a beautiful cookbook filled with recipes that use natural sweeteners like maple syrup and honey instead of processed sugar.

This butternut squash cake was the first thing that popped out at me because I had two butternut squash waiting for me to do something with them. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this cake to be that good, but I figured it was worth a try just to use up some squash. Besides being made only with maple syrup, this recipe uses oil instead of butter and I figured without butter or sugar that it would wind up being dense and flat. But it’s always nice to be surprised, so I was glad to find out that all my preconceptions about this cake were totally wrong.

This is called a cake, but it actually reminds me more of a quick bread like my mom’s Applesauce Bread, it’s filled with spices like cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg, which are really what give it flavor, while the pureed butternut squash adds moisture. Butternut squash is pretty much interchangeable with pumpkin so you can easily substitute pumpkin puree instead if you still have tons of canned pumpkin in your pantry. I’ve made this recipe twice, first as cupcakes and now in mini loaf pans; both times they have come out fluffier and more moist than just about any cake or muffin I’ve ever made.

Using maple syrup as a sweetener gives the cakes a subtle sweetness that’s nice but not cloying. I added a maple-cream cheese glaze on top since it seemed kind of plain on it’s own. The glaze does contain powdered sugar, but I couldn’t really find an alternative. I originally tried a cream cheese frosting that was sweetened with only maple syrup, but it just didn’t taste good. The cream cheese was too overpowering and it wasn’t sweet like a frosting should be. This glaze has maple syrup and sugar, so it wound up being much more successful. And that nice sharp cream cheese flavor contrasts well with the spices in the cake. You don’t even need very much glaze, just a little bit drizzled on top is perfect.

Get the recipe for Butternut Squash Cakes with Maple-Cream Cheese Glaze »

If you couldn’t tell from many of the recipes on this blog, I love to bake and I struggle throughout the year trying to balance the sweet treats with savory and/or healthier recipes. But from Thanksgiving to New Years Day all that falls away and I embrace what I like to call “baking season”. I don’t put restrictions on myself, I don’t worry about calories, I just let loose and make whatever I want and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about anything I eat. It’s my yearly Christmas present to myself.

Cookies are my favorite thing to make during the holiday season and I think I’ve been mentally saving up because I haven’t posted any cookie recipes here since May. So when I heard about the Food Blogger Cookie Swap I immediately signed up. I’d be making cookies anyway so why not share some of them with others?

The thing I didn’t factor in was how difficult it would be to find a good cookie recipe! The main issue was finding cookies that could travel well and that would keep for at least a week. Maybe others didn’t have any trouble with this and I was just being crazy but it took me weeks to find a recipe that worked. The upside is that my boyfriend’s coworkers love me now since I sent all those trial cookies into work with him.

These molasses spice cookies were actually a last minute find. I had pretty much decided on a whole different recipe but a couple days before they needed to be shipped I found a recipe for cookies with Orange Sugar. That sounded so good that I just had to try it immediately. And honestly, the first time I tried the orange sugar it was like one of those the-skies-open-up-and-angels-are-singing type moments. Have you ever had those chewy orange slice-shaped candies that are covered in sugar? That’s exactly what this sugar tastes like. That’s probably my favorite candy so now that I’ve discovered how easy it is to make it’s hard not to sprinkle orange sugar on everything. I’ve already made cranberry muffins with it on top. Yum!

Unfortunately, the actual cookies that the orange sugar was sprinkled on wound up being temperamental and actually tasted worse the next day. But there was no going back, I had to make cookies with this orange sugar now! Thanks to Martha Stewart I found a cookie recipe that I was able to adapt to complement the delicious sugar topping. I minimized some of the spices (mostly ginger) so that the molasses flavor would shine through. Orange and molasses may just be my favorite new flavor combination. I have another recipe for molasses spice cookies that I posted years back, but these are quite different since they’re rolled out. They’re slightly crispy around the edges but soft and chewy in the middle. The sugar adds a nice crispy topping to bite into, like little orange flavor crystals that explode in your mouth. These cookies keep their shape well, too. I hate going to the trouble of rolling and cutting cookies only to have them turn into blobs in the oven.

I adore these cookies and the feedback I got from Brandon’s coworkers and one of my cookie swap recipients has been very positive which makes me very happy after weeks of worrying. But the best part about a cookie swap is that I also got three dozen cookies from three very awesome ladies. Brandon and I have been gleefully stuffing them in our faces this past week. Amber from Amber’s Confections sent chocolate cookies covered in powdered sugar. Beth from Eat.Drink.Smile sent Chunky Chocolate Gobs, which are chocolate cookies filled with chocolate chips and chunks of Mounds candy bars. And Leslie from My Kitchen is Open sent Dark Chocolate Cafenela Cookies which are a variation of chocolate chip cookies with cinnamon, coffee and pecans. Check them out! Trust me, you’ll want to try those cookies!

I’d also like to give a shout out to the ladies I sent my cookies to: Deanna from Silly Goose Farm, Tanvi at The Hathi Cooks
 and Annalise at Completely Delicious. I don’t know what kind of cookies they made yet, but I will definitely be checking out their Cookie Swap posts to see!

Finally, if the Food Blogger Cookie Swap sounds like fun to you and you didn’t get a chance to sign up this year, I encourage you to subscribe to their announcement list now so that you’ll be notified when you can sign up for the cookie swap next year! Even though it was a bit stressful trying to find the best cookie recipe (and then worrying how it would be received) I had a lot of fun and I can’t wait to do it again next year.

Get the recipe for Molasses Spice Cookies with Orange Sugar »

It’s finally December! Not only is it my favorite month with my favorite holiday, but it’s my favorite time of the year to bake since there are always so many fun recipes to try. I love gingerbread so this recipe has been on my “To Make” list for while and it finally seemed like the perfect time for it. I already have a gingerbread muffin recipe that I love, but this gingerbread cake turned out to be quite different and I love the twist of making it an upside-down cake, too.

The big difference from most gingerbread recipes I’ve made is that this recipe uses fresh ginger instead of ground. I was a little weary about this because I haven’t always been a huge fan of fresh ginger. It’s ok in small doses, but in a lot of recipes I find it really overpowering. Luckily, it turned out to be pretty great in this cake. My guess is that the molasses and all the other spices help to tone down the ginger just enough so it’s not overpowering. Despite that, you can clearly taste a difference between gingerbread made with ground ginger and gingerbread made with fresh ginger. It just tastes well…fresher. Every bite has this nice little zing to it that you don’t get with ground ginger. Plus, fresh ginger and pears complement each other especially nicely.

If you’ve never bought fresh ginger before, you should be able to find it in the produce section of your grocery store. It’s an ugly brown root (but a pretty yellow color when you peel it), so it’s usually around the onions, shallots or potatoes. Ginger can be kind of a pain to grate but I’ve found it’s easiest with a microplane grater or with one of these special ginger graters.

This cake has several other things going for it: it’s really simple to make and since the recipe is from Cooking Light it’s not horrible for you either. Some of these low-fat cakes can turn out dry, but this gingerbread cake has a light, airy texture and the pears on top keep it very moist. My only nitpick is that I found the gingerbread to be a bit thin, so next time I’ll try making it in a 8 inch pan instead of a 9 inch.

If you’re looking for a lighter, but still satisfying dessert to serve during the holidays, this cake is a great choice!

Get the recipe for Pear Upside-Down Gingerbread Cake »

I hope all my American readers had a nice Thanksgiving. The past couple of years Brandon and I have had a guest to help us eat all that food, but this year was a simple Thanksgiving with just the two of us. Unfortunately, my brain kinda went on autopilot as I was preparing all my traditional dishes and I wound up making enough food for probably 5 or 6 people! Suffice it to say we had lots of leftovers.

The biggest culprit turned out to be cranberry sauce. I found a new recipe to try this year and went a little gung ho with it, making enough to feed about 12 people. Thankfully, the cranberry sauce turned out to be as good as its name: Cranberry Sauce Extraordinaire. It will definitely be my go-to cranberry sauce recipe from now on. The best thing is that it’s not just cranberries: it has apples, pears, pureed orange and other berries. You can even mix in some pecans if you want. I love cranberries, but cranberry sauce can sometimes be a bit too tart for me, so I like how all the added fruit really balances the flavor.

It was only after I made all that sauce that I remembered Brandon doesn’t even like cranberry sauce. 5 days later, after most of the leftovers were gone I still had a huge bowl of cranberry sauce taking up space in my fridge. So I decided to make it into a dessert since I knew I was more likely to actually finish it that way.

I seen other recipes for pandowdies around the internet and have been wanting to make one, so this turned to be a perfect opportunity. If you’ve never heard of a pandowdy before, it’s basically a cross between a pie and cobbler. Instead of putting a filling inside of a pie crust, you put the filling in a baking dish and just top it with pie crust. The point is to cut some holes/slices in it, so that all that filling will bubble up and become gooey and delicious. Unlike a pie where the filling usually gels together when cooked, a pandowdy filling is supposed to be juicy, more like a cobbler or a crisp. That’s why using the leftover cranberry sauce turned out to be a perfect fit for this recipe.

I’ve included the recipe for my cranberry sauce if you want to start with that or you can use whatever sauce you have leftover and add some extra apples, pears and whatever else you want to it. This pandowdy recipe is really flexible, you can make it in any size pan you want. I think it would be great in ramekins if want to make a more individual-sized dessert. You don’t even really need to bother with putting the pie crust on top in one piece, it can be cut up into smaller squares and assembled on top of your filling. I rolled it out in one piece because I think it looks nicer that way (and I’m a weird perfectionist), but it’s called a pandowdy because it generally looks kinda “dowdy” so you really don’t need to put effort into making it look nice.

Also, I should say that I’m generally scared of making pie crusts because they can be so temperamental, but this was seriously the easiest pie crust I’ve ever made. According to Bon Appetit you shouldn’t use your food processor or even bother cutting in the butter by hand, you can let your mixer do all the work! Using the paddle attachment on your mixer to cut in the butter prevents the dough from becoming overworked like it can be in a processor. It took me less than 5 minutes to mix up the dough and it rolled out easily without having to be chilled. And it tasted great; slightly sweet and perfectly flaky…my favorite kind of crust! It helps that you brush it with melted butter and sprinkle cinnamon-sugar on top.

The sweet, flaky topping and the warm, bubbly cranberry sauce and tender fruit all taste great together. Especially with a scoop of melting vanilla ice cream. I gobbled it up right after I finished taking pictures. Then I filled up the bowl all over again…

Get the recipe for Cranberry Pandowdy (and my favorite Cranberry Sauce) »

Looking back through my archives I realized I’ve posted at least one chocolate-pumpkin dessert before Halloween for the past few years, so I figured it was past time to post a recipe like this, especially after all the apple recipes I’ve posted lately. Fruit is great, but for me at least, chocolate will always be better.

I’ve actually been working on this recipe for a while. I made some pumpkin swirl brownies last Halloween and even photographed them, but I kept deciding against posting them because they weren’t quite good enough. Something was missing. But then earlier this year I discovered Supernatural Brownies. These are hands down my favorite brownies. Ever. And I have tried lots and lots AND LOTS of brownie recipes. I’m not into cakey brownies (if I wanted cake, I’d make that instead!), I like fudgey brownies and these are moist and fudgey beyond belief.

Fast forward to this month and I decided to retry the dessert but with the Supernatural brownies as the base. I also decided that chocolate and pumpkin weren’t quite enough. I’ve done that. I wanted to make it better. So what goes good with both chocolate and pumpkin? Caramel! The result are brownies with two layers of pumpkin-cream cheese swirled into them and then drizzled with caramel on top. When you’re ready to serve, you can warm up the rest of the caramel sauce and pour on even more.

I have no qualms about posting this recipe. The perfect, fudgey brownies and caramel topping definitely fill what was missing from earlier incarnations I tried. I love everything about these brownies. Well, except that they take a little bit of patience. You’re supposed to wait until the next day before you even cut into these things. But honestly? I’ve only ever made it about 3 hours. However, I agree that the brownies taste better the next day. The flavors meld together and intensify. I felt that was definitely the case for the pumpkin, which was much more prominent on the second day than the first.

The ingredients you use are also important for making these brownies as good as possible. This recipe is very dependent on using good quality chocolate so buy the best kind you can afford. I splurged on some Scharffen Berger 70% Cacao chocolate this time, but I usually use Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate. Also, use Muscovado sugar if you can find it. It’s a more intense dark brown sugar and will add more depth of flavor to your brownies.

You can cheat and buy caramel sauce at the store, but homemade caramel is going to have much better flavor. I’m not going to tell you that caramel is easy. It only takes about 15 minutes to make, but you have to watch it very carefully. In fact, due to my old lopsided stove it took me four tries to make this caramel without burning it. Four! But honestly, that just makes it much more satisfying to eat. (And yes, it’s totally normal if you just want to eat it by the spoonful) Plus I learned some stuff about making caramel which I tried to pass on to you guys in the recipe so I think it was worth all the effort (and sugar) in the end.

This recipe is very versatile. Like I already mentioned, the brownies are great on their own. It’s my go-to recipe now. The other components are made separately, so you could just make the pumpkin OR caramel if you want to make things a bit easier. But if you really want to satisfy your brownie cravings, I don’t think the chocolate-pumpkin-caramel combo can be beat!

Get the recipe for Caramel-Pumpkin Swirl Brownies »