These Meyer Lemon Earl Grey Tea Muffins are soft, lemony, and irresistible.
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Clementine Tea Loaf
It’s clementine season!
Pumpkin Cheesecake with Chai Buttercream Frosting, Made More Delicious
I finally upped my pumpkin cheesecake game and arrived at perfection.
Spiced Apple Cider Muffins
These muffins were so popular that I ended up making them three times in a week.
Banana Yogurt Muffins, once forgotten
My very first original recipe, and still a classic.
Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins
Light orange, sweet chocolate, and a splash of vanilla make for a breakfast you can look forward to.
Pumpkin Gingerbread Muffins
These pumpkin-gingerbread muffins make winter almost bearable.
Whole Wheat Banana Oat Muffins (with Chocolate Chips)
Banana redemption is mine.
Blood Orange Crinkle Cookies
Crispy, tangy, sweet, addictive: these Blood Orange Crinkle Cookies are not to be missed. (But we miss them already, because we ate them.)
Round-up: A Quartet of Pumpkin Recipes
It’s a pumpkin round-up! Muffins, cupcakes, cookies, and the perfect Thanksgiving cheesecake.
Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
These banana chocolate chip muffins were worth the oven confusion.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
These gems popped into my Facebook feed on just the right day.
Golden Oatmeal Spice Muffins in Silicone Baking Cups: my first product review
I got my very first request for a product review on my blog, right before we left for a family vacation to London & Paris. Exciting! I was asked to review silicone baking cups by Rizzi from The New York Baking Company, and told to be completely honest in my review.
Mini Banana Maple Muffins
LIttle banana bites with a touch of maple flavor, lovely for guilt-free eating and apparently perfect for trading on the 5th grade snack market.
Pumpkin Cinnamon Chip Muffins (without Pecans)
jump to recipe These were supposed to have pecans in them, originally, but circumstances forced me to rename them Pumpkin Cinnamon Chip Muffins (without Pecans). The recipe I based them on was called “Pumpkin Pecan Muffins,” but mysteriously, there weren’t any pecans listed in the ingredients or in the directions. I posted so in the […]
Vanilla Bean Blood Orange Mini Loaves
jump to recipe This recipe for Vanilla Bean Blood Orange Mini Loaves turned into The Great Ingredient Improvisation Experiment. I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I had to wing it a little, and once I was winging it, I started adding in some things too. The results were incontrovertible: a perfect soft crumb, and […]
Fluffy Corn Muffins
Some homemade chicken soup inspired these fluffy corn muffins. Dave spent the whole day making soup, and when we got back from the movies, I decided I’d better whip together something to go with it.
Blood Orange Poppy Seed Muffins
These blood orange poppy seed muffins are just a lovely variation on the Meyer Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins I’ve been perfecting. The texture, the flavor, everything translates perfectly to the flavor of the blood orange. I don’t really know which is better, just that both are sublime.
Meyer Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
I am unnaturally excited about these Meyer lemon poppy seed muffins.
I’m always looking for a good recipe for such things, and I’m always inundated by recipes that call for a full cup of butter and ridiculous amounts of sugar. Conversely, there are a slew of recipes out there that are “low fat” and “heatlhy” and come out heavy, dense, and stick to the muffin papers. But now, I have found it. THE PERFECT LEMON POPPY MUFFINS! They are here! In my house!
Whole Wheat Banana Muffins
jump to recipe I thought I’d run out of variations on a banana theme, but these Whole Wheat Banana Muffins took me by surprise. They taste like the best banana bread, but slightly softer and fluffier as befitting a muffin. Don’t skimp on the bananas when you make these! This isn’t one of those recipes […]
Chewy Brown Sugar Cookies
Here’s what needs to be said about these Chewy Brown Sugar Cookies: if you make these, and give them to people, don’t expect the people to leave unless you send the cookies with them. These cookies are delicious, and addictive, and of course they are, because they are full of brown sugar and butter and will haunt your dreams. They’re soft, chewy, sweet, and utterly delightful. These are fantasy cookies.
Chocolate Cupcake-Muffins
Why are these called Chocolate Cupcake-Muffins? Because they are muffins, and they are cupcakes, and they are delicious. They can be eaten for breakfast or for dessert. They can be eaten plain, or with peanut butter, or with whipped cream frosting. They are made with healthy ingredients like quinoa flour and yogurt, but also required the melting of butter and the adding of cocoa powder. Hence: cupcake-muffins.
Cinnamon Pumpkin Bread
I devoured this loaf greedily, mostly because the soft crumb made it among the nicest baked goods ever to come out of my kitchen. It’s a little taste of what pumpkin bread heaven must be like. To quote Dale Cooper, “This must be where pies go when they die.” Trade in the pie for some cinnamon pumpkin bread and I’m right on the same page.
Healthy Banana Oat Muffins
I really have to pick up the pace on my blogging. I made these Healthy Banana Oat Muffins weeks ago, and they are SO delicious and breakfasty and good to eat that I feel like a jerk for not making them available to you sooner. A jerk, I am! But maybe this is better, a little post-Christmas healthy baked good to rescue you from cookie overdose.
Molasses-Orange Cookies with Espresso Glaze
I invented a cookie!
Grandma’s Molasses was having a recipe contest, and since I’ve never created my very own cookie recipe before, I seized the moment, thought about flavors, and then inspired by my previous experiment with Orange Mocha Muffins, I created these Molasses-Orange Cookies with Espresso Glaze. Why not?
Chocolate Coconut Espresso Cookies (with Cappuccino Chips)
These weren’t JUST particularly spectacular cookies.
Yes, being Chocolate Coconut Espresso Cookies, they were destined to be delicious, and when I swapped out the chocolate chips for cappuccino chips they went all the way to sublime. But these were special cookies — not in an afterschool special kind of way — because I made them for The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap
Carrot Cake Muffins
Usually when I see a recipe for Carrot Cake Muffins, there’s a lot more emphasis on the cake than the carrots, which means it’s more about dessert than breakfast. (Yes, most carrot cake is so good because it’s filled with butter and sugar!) But these were also called “Healthy Applesauce Carrot Muffins”, and I knew with some slight adjustments I could do something interesting with them. And so I did. They came out great. Flavorful, fluffy, and worthy of the carrot cake name without the carrot cake decadence. The spices are balanced perfectly and these muffins make breakfast worth celebrating.
Dark Chocolate Espresso Pumpkin Bread, and guest bakers!
It was a beautiful, perfect, delicious bread, and a perfectly wonderful baking day. I had guest bakers! Meet Tracy and Antonia. Left to my own devices, I would have reduced or eliminated the chocolate chips, but Antonia & Tracy are huge chocolate fans and I wanted them to leave with their taste buds singing.
Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins (with a kick)
I had to try making these. The minute I saw this recipe and its combination of pumpkin, sharp cheddar cheese, and cayenne and black pepper, I was caught in its spell and was just counting the days until I could sink my baking teeth into it.
My eating teeth, too. These muffins turned out great. They’re completely different from anything I’ve made before. The combination of the sweet pumpkin, the sharp cheddar, and the kick from the pepper that comes in as you’re finishing each bite is unique and irresistible. It’s like the gum that Violet Beauregarde steals from Willy Wonka’s factory: it’s almost a complete meal.
Root Beer Layer Cake with Cream Soda Frosting
Happy birthday, Nathaniel! My boy turned ten last week. TEN!
But let’s skip the sentimentality — because once it starts, it won’t stop — and jump right in to the cake. (If you ate, you’d definitely want to jump right into it too.) I asked Nathaniel what sort of cake he wanted, nervously remembering last year’s post-hurricane ginormous Devil’s Food Cake, and he didn’t take long to decide: he wanted the cupcakes his dad got for his birthday, but in layer cake form. So. . .root beer layer cake. With cream soda frosting. Right.
Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies
Sometimes, the kids need cookies.
They are often interested in the muffins or the quick breads, Nathaniel more so than Juliet, and they expect the steady flow of them to keep coming. But then there are just those aha! moments when I realize that they DESERVE cookies. At this point it gets challenging because Juliet doesn’t like chocolate chips, at least not in anything homemade, and if I make peanut butter cookies, which she does love, I will probably eat them all before anybody else is smart enough to hide them. And thus, these Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies stepped in to fulfill the need, more perfectly than I’d hoped.
I made them big, because big cookies are fun, and I only made them a wee bit healthier than the original recipe, just because I can’t help myself.
Gingerbread Muffins
Cakey gingerbread muffins for breakfast? Yes!
I really was sure it was going to be one of those other recipes, and then suddenly I was standing in the kitchen looking at a gingerbread muffins recipe. How it happened, I don’t know exactly. I’m glad it did, though, because they are cakey and delicious and I feel happier when I bite into them than I did the moment before.
Butterscotch Brownies
These brownies were a great lesson. I now know that if we find ourselves with unexpected company, I can whip together an amazing dessert without a trip to the grocery store or an abundance of time. And this hypothetical company is in luck, because these brownies are absolutely delicious. They’re sweet, fudgy in texture, and bursting with butterscotch flavor, real butterscotch, because it comes from butter and brown sugar instead of a Hershey’s bag.
Espresso Spice Pumpkin Muffins, take two
It’s pumpkin season!
Okay, all the other baking blogs are way ahead of me, but I’m a bit of a late bloomer. I’m okay with that, I’ve had years to get used to it. We won’t even talk about what all the boys used to call me before I got boobs.
Wait, what are we talking about? Muffins! We’re talking about muffins. And these particular muffins are the ultimate breakfast, supplying you with very basic morning nutrition: wheat, fruit, dairy, and caffeine.
Apple Butter Spice Muffins
While my taste buds will never accept a muffin with fruit pieces in it — I remember trying this applesauce cake well over a year ago and not liking it — I took a risk on these apple butter muffins, intrigued.
It was a risk worth taking: the results were lovely. Spiced, flavorful, slightly sticky breakfast muffins. Welcome, fall. Welcome, change.
Maple Snickerdoodles
While everyone else has already jumped aboard the pumpkin train, I decided to pay homage to my Canadian roots and make maple snickerdoodles. (For William Shatner! And Dan Aykroyd! None for you, Celine Dion.)
I combed the web looking for recipes, and finally settled on this version, because it made MORE maple snickerdoodles, which seemed more enticing than fewer snickerdoodles. (And I’ve just learned that typing the word snickerdoodle is even more cumbersome than saying it.)
In addition to your regular anycookie sort of ingredients, I assembled some specialty items:
Apple Cider Mini Donuts
Fall is upon us. . .at least in the mornings.
It’s been super cold here in the morning, so it’s jackets and maybe even a scarf when we leave the house, and then the heat kicks in and by afternoon everyone who isn’t in shorts feels like an idiot. So Fall is whispering at us, maybe, and when the kids went gaga over the apple cider donuts at Stew Leonard’s, I decided it was time to for the first treat of the season.
Zucchini Spice Muffins
These muffins are magical.
I don’t know who Kathie is, but I started with her recipe, played with it here and there, and created something exquisite. Everything came together in perfect balance, in both flavor and texture. I’m going to try to recreate these because I have to find out if it was a fluke or if there really is such a thing as muffin perfection.
Healthy Dark Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
This recipe called out to me but it took a while for me to heed the call.
First of all, it was based on a recipe by Marcus Samuelsson, whose memoir Yes, Chef was a recent and engaging, fascinating, inspiring, and delicious read. I’ve never tried any of his recipes before, and I had actually pinned this one a few weeks ago. But then I saw this version of it, which seemed to preserve the general nature of it but healthed it up a bit, finding alternatives to the sugar (which I would simply have reduced) as well as the oil.
Zucchini Chocolate Coconut Muffins
Pretty, they’re not.
Delicious, they are. And then some. They’re bursting with chocolate and coconut with just a touch of cinnamon, and not a whisper of zucchini hits the taste buds. Amazing.
I confess that I was very, very nervous while I was making them. I changed so many elements of this recipe that I had no idea if I was going to be elated by success or depressed by failure, and then have to go hungry as well. But sometimes a baker has to take a few chances.
Skinny Chocolate Fudge Banana Muffins
Ignore the word “skinny”. Really. Because these taste anything but skinny. They taste FAT in the most delightful way. Fat with chocolate flavor. Fat with cakey texture. Fat with desserty joy.
And yet they are skinny too. Low fat, Weight Watchers-friendly, and full of healthy ingredients like wheat germ, yogurt, bananas, and whole wheat white flour. They have chocolate chips too, of course, but that’s okay. It’s all about balance. And deliciousness. These muffins have that in abundance.
Zucchini Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
jump to recipe Everyone loved these. I thought they were just okay, but everyone I work with went nuts for them and kept coming back to ask if there were any left long after the last one had disappeared. So I’d consider that a hit. And they’re awfully good for you. They started with zucchini. […]
Honey Tea Bread
I’ve been wanting to try making this recipe for weeks, but first I had to use up the carrots, zucchini, and bananas that were sitting around. Finally I ran out of everything, and felt it was morally okay to proceed. (I hate wasting food, okay?)
I had a feeling this bread was going to be something special and I was right. The texture is soft and perfect, reminding me of that Chai Tea Bread I enjoy so much. And it’s sweetened with honey; not a grain of sugar passed through my hands.
Carrot Oatmeal Muffins, new & improved
I already liked my carrot oatmeal muffins. A lot. But it’s been a while since I made them, and I decided it was time to see if I could make them even better. And I did!
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread (two misses and a hit)
Finally!
This delicious, satisfying chocolate zucchini bread came on the heels of two very unfortunate baking experiments, and a last-minute mishap to boot.
Failure #1: I tried to make a zucchini bread without chocolate chips or cocoa powder. Now I know that it’s possible to make a good spiced zucchini bread, but the recipe I tried did not generate one.
One Banana Banana Bread (made with two bananas)
And then I remembered the recipe I’d seen a while back for One Banana Banana Bread. Yes! Since Pinterest finally allows you to search your own pins, it was easy enough to find the recipe, and reassure myself that all was going to go well in bananaland.
Peach Ginger Tea Muffins with Lemon
A few weeks ago, I picked up some peach-ginger tea at an interesting little spice store in Sayville. We were on our way to Fire Island, but had some time to kill before the ferry came, so we stopped in town to get some coffee (for us) and some treats (for the kids) and when I spotted the gourmet store next to it, I couldn’t resist. I’ve had it in my mind to bake with that tea for the last few weeks, but I couldn’t decide exactly how. And then I remembered my Lemon-Ginger Tea Muffins, and thought I could use that as my base.
Carrot Tea Cake with Oat Crumb Topping
This tea cake is so delicious that I made another one three days after making the first one, and the only reason I waited so long is because we were away for the weekend.
The cake itself is warm with spices, and the topping adds a crunchy sweetness to every bite. It’s a magical combination. Hard to believe it starts out with something as mundane as a cup of shredded carrots.
Cinnamon Graham Banana Bread
jump to recipe I know I have a pretty good banana bread recipe, but this one is sublime. And it comes with cinnamon glaze. I’m not surprised it’s so delicious, since I found the recipe on Tutti Dolci, plus it gave me a chance to use more of the graham flour I bought a while […]
Butterscotch Peanut Butter Cookies
It was the 4th of July, and the kids deserved cookies. And when we were in Pennsylvania, I’d picked up something intriguing called “butterscotch peanut butter”, and I thought that would make for an interesting variation. I was right! These are terrific. Sweet, nutty, crunchy, and crumbly.
Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Muffins
Another win for the peanut butter team! These Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Muffins are delicious, good for you, and hunger-satisfying in the best way.
Mini Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
I thought I had the banana muffin market cornered, but these are just as good as mine and come in mini form! The recipe for these mini banana chocolate chip muffins had unusual instructions, and specific directions, and I obeyed all with success. I changed a few things in the recipe, and got great results: a moist, flavorful, fun mini muffin, popular with all who tasted.
Peanut Butter Muffins
If you love peanut butter, then you love these muffins, whether you know it now or not.
(I love peanut butter.)
They’re not healthy breakfast muffins, though. They’re dessert-y, peanut butter fantasy muffins. And they’re very easy to make.
Peanut Butter and Banana Bread
jump to recipe This was one of those nights when I had a non-specific baking itch. I had no idea how to channel the whisking urge until I spotted the overripe bananas on the counter, then this recipe from Delish leapt out at me. Who was I to argue with a leaping recipe and some […]
Orange Oat Muffins
These muffins are such a nice little surprise!
I’ve been feeling the loss of the great blood oranges of the season, but now I know the joys of a regular (non-blood!) orange muffin too. Phew! These are lovely. Nathaniel says it’s like drinking orange juice while you’re eating a muffin, and I agree. (I think my son would be a great food critic; he told me tonight as we were watching Chopped that he’d be a good judge on that show. Given how specific his reviews of my baking are, I believe he’s right.)
Double Chocolate Chip Muffins (“Skinny”!)
I have tasted the magnificence that is a “skinny” double chocolate chip muffin, and I’ve personally witnessed all the ingredients that went into them. I alone can vouch for the seemingly impossible truth: these healthy muffins taste like decadent brownies. For real. And I’ve already made them twice, so I know it wasn’t just a fluke.
Blood Orange Poppy Seed Bread
jump to recipe I had the last blood oranges of the season, and I wanted to make sure that whatever I baked would be worthy of them, so I adapted this wonderful lemon poppy seed bread recipe from amyBITES and hoped for the best. I’d already adapted it VERY slightly to make Meyer Lemon Poppy […]
Golden Oatmeal Spice Muffins
Soft and fluffy muffins, moist without being dense, and full of the beautifully intermingled mix of the spices I’ve used, with a little sweetness from the vanilla.
Peanut Butter Bran Muffins
jump to recipe I wasn’t sure how things were going to go with these. I got brave and decided to swap out some of the flour for wheat germ (as my current obsession dictates) and I added some vanilla, and what I ended up with, to my delight, was not only a light airy delicious […]
Wheat Germ Bread
I know, it doesn’t sound tasty, does it? Wheat Germ Bread. Wheat Germ Bread? How is a person supposed to get excited about that? Well, taste it. Because once you taste it, you’ll get it, and once you find out how easy it is to make, you’ll make it, and once you start eating it, […]
Blood Orange Wheat Germ Muffins
Blood Orange Wheat Germ Muffins. They taste SO good, full of orange flavor, contained in this wonderfully textured, soft, substantial muffiny package.
Blood Orange Tea Muffins (mini)
A while back I made some delicious Meyer Lemon Tea Muffins, only I didn’t realize they were supposed to be mini muffins so I only ended up with 9 of them. Since they were delicious, I decided to give them another shot, this time using blood oranges instead of lemons. And behold: mini muffins. Delicious, soft, fluffy blood orange tea muffins.
Blood Orange and Meyer Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
Sometimes an ingredient shortage can work in your favor. For want of a few more blood oranges, some Meyer lemons were used, and born out of the uncertainty of that unusual pairing, some poppy seeds were added. Thus, a brand new muffin emerged, and a very delicious one at that.
My intention was simply to make another batch of blood orange muffins, based on my very slight adaptation of a recipe I’ve used before. I started squeezing the blood oranges, noting how much more juice I was getting from each one since I was using a plastic juicer as opposed to just squeezing by hand. But then when I had squeezed the last one out, I looked at my measuring cup and I only had just over 3/4 of a cup. Disaster!
I didn’t want to throw away the juice, or risk having it go bad if I stored it, since I didn’t know when I’d be able to get more blood oranges. So I got creative: I decided to top off it off with Meyer lemon juice. Risky, I know. Bold, even. I am normally neither risky nor bold, but this was a baking emergency. I took out the lemons, and squeezed out enough to make a full cup of juice.
Honey Pumpkin Bran Muffins
jump to recipe I still had the white balance settings wrong for this entire batch of photos and it’s annoying me because these muffins were really delicious and you can’t even see their true beauty. Trust me, they looked lovely. I found these in the bottom depths of one of my Pinterest boards. Sometimes I […]
Banutter Bites
jump to recipe I invented these. I had some overripe bananas, which I had to protect with a label or our cleaning lady would have thrown them away: I also had an itch to do something new, a craving for peanut butter (which is really just status quo around here, “around here” being inside my […]
Peanut Butter Cookies
Sometimes, in the middle of all the healthy baking, it’s time to make something for the kids. They put up with the bran stuff and the pumpkin whatnot for a while, but they’ve become pretty blasé about all the (what I think are) goodies coming out of the kitchen. So this past weekend, I asked […]
Pumpkin Muffins, made over and still delicious
jump to recipe I’ve made these before, but I put a spin on them this time: I wanted to know if I could make them healthier without compromising on deliciousness. And the answer: a resounding yes. I’ve been looking for a formula for a long time that would cover how to add flax and wheat […]
Coconut Banana Bread
Coconut banana bread, who knew? I had many doubts about this one as I was making it and AGAIN messed up with something egg-related (see Cocoa Banana Yogurt Muffins for another egg near miss) but but in the end, it turned out great and was also immensely popular.
Cocoa Banana Yogurt Muffins (a Laurie original)
jump to recipe Yesterday, I played with my tried-and-true banana yogurt muffin recipe to see if I could add in some cocoa powder without ruining it. I’ve also been playing with my camera. My photography class started yesterday, and I got cocky and started shooting on manual, which turned out to be something of a […]
Oatmeal Muffins
jump to recipe These are delightful. I took a very basic, healthy recipe that I found on food.com, read the reviews, made it mine, and created deliciousness. If I achieve nothing else over the weekend, at least there’s that. I kept very little of the original, but I started out exactly as directed, by letting […]
Peanut Butter Pound Cake
This was my birthday cake. This was one of the most decadent things I’ve ever made. This was also the best cake I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. I may have to make it again next year. It started with two sticks of butter. Then, the first two cups of sugar. (The first two, […]
Salted Espresso Oatmeal Cookies
I’ve made these before, but this time I added a twist. I made them at Christmas, and instead of using regular chocolate chips I used Christmas-colored red & green chips, but this time I really took these to another level flavor-wise by substituting half of the chocolate chips for cappuccino chips, freshly arrived from the […]
Carrot Bran Muffins
jump to recipe These muffins. These muffins! The fact that they are so healthy and good for you makes no sense with how delicious they taste. And I took a risk with these, changing the recipe mid-process, on a whim. A crazy, carrot- bran whim! I never knew there was such a thing. Once the […]
Blood Orange Poppy Seed Muffins
I’ve decided that there’s a property peculiar to baked goods with blood oranges in them: it’s all about the second bite. Just like the Blood Orange Muffins I’ve made before, the first bite is a little confusing to the palate, but the second one rolls in all the flavor and goodness the muffin has to […]
Meyer Lemon Sugar Cookies
I know, there’s been a lot of citrus lately. I feel desperate to play with Meyer lemons and blood oranges while they’re still around, plus it helps remind me that spring is coming, despite the really weird snowfall we had yesterday. Full confession: before I made these, I tried to make some kind of low […]
Pumpkin Espresso Bread
Another home run. Make this bread right now. I mean it. It couldn’t be easier and your taste buds will thank you, as will anyone else who gets a bite. I brought some of this to work with me and had someone come back for thirds. Who says you have to wait for fall to bake with pumpkin?
And the topping…to think I almost didn’t include it. How dumb that would have been. The bread is a wonder unto itself but the topping adds a bit of crunchy magic. I made a few changes to the recipe, but the credit really belongs to a beautiful blog called Pastry Affair that gave me reason #85279 to love Pinterest and the internet.
Mini Meyer Lemon Bundt Cakes
These are tiny sweet lemony bites from heaven. Oh my. I didn’t even know I owned a mini bundt pan until about a month ago. I’m not 100% sure where I got it, but my money’s on it being a freebie from my friend Scratchy’s days at the Martha Stewart show. And what a way […]
Carrot Spice Mini Muffins
I make these carrot spice muffins pretty regularly. They’re freakishly healthy, and I say freakishly because they are just ridiculously delicious. The spices are a perfect blend with the carrot base, the texture is moist but fluffy, the turbinado sugar on top gives them an extra bite of crunchy sweetness, and they’re full of good-for-you […]
Meyer Lemon Pound Cake
I changed this recipe up a fair bit, and it paid off. Dave is normally immune to the charms of the endless stream of baked goods that makes its way through our kitchen, but this one hooked him. He’s even suggesting that there might not be any left to bring to my hungry co-workers tomorrow. I’ll take that as a compliment to the awesome power of Meyer lemon pound cake.
Double Chocolate Yogurt Loaf
jump to recipe Let me just put this out there right away: this picture does not do this loaf justice. The how-to-use-your-new-DSL-camera class doesn’t start until April, so I’m still using the automatic setting, and I baked at night, so there was no natural light to work with. So understand that the dark blob you […]
Blood Orange Muffins
I had my eye on this recipe for a few weeks before I got a chance to try it. I’d picked up a bag of blood oranges at Trader Joe’s and I knew there had to be a good recipe out there. Look at them! The recipe called for an entire cup of juice and […]
Peanut Butter Bran Muffins
I never would have thought to mix peanut butter and bran, but I am in love with these muffins. I also love that they come via a blog called The Teenage Taste, written by a junior in high school. It’s a simple recipe, not particularly low in WW points (coming in at 5 because of […]
Meyer Lemon Madeleines
They have a bit of crispness on the outside with a cakey texture on the inside, they’re sweet from sugar and vanilla but get tang and zing from the lemons. I think Proust might remember these too.
Oatmeal Tea Bread II
It’s a bit of an odd concoction, but I love it. It’s a hearty, oaty bread, with a lot of sweetness, so it fills you up and feels healthy but dessert-ish at the same time. It’s an odd combination, though, and this is one of the few times that I’m eating more of it than […]
Meyer Lemon Poppy Seed Bread
Definitely make this. Perfect texture, deep, tangy lemon flavor with just the right amount of sweetness, and it’s not even bad for you? A win all around, And I like recipes that get very specific about when to put in which ingredients, and what to do after that, and how slowly or quickly to do […]
Wholesome Oat Muffins
Get aboard the muffin transport! You won’t regret it. jump to recipe I should have made these muffins instead of last night’s disasters, but we have them now, so the muffin balance has been restored. These are delicious and the recipe seems to lend itself to adding different spices, sugars, or bonus ingredients. The process […]
Banana Nutella Muffins — an original
jump to recipe I had two overripe bananas, a jar of Nutella, some peanut butter, and an urge to combine them all. I combed Pinterest and Google for recipes. I compared. I contrasted. And then I realized that I didn’t need a NEW recipe, I could just adapt my own banana muffins recipe. It’s the […]
Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
jump to recipe I couldn’t resist this one. Peanut butter and oatmeal and a Sunday afternoon, it all just seemed like the right combination. The recipe called for half a cup of butter and a full cup of brown sugar. I didn’t mess with the butter portion, but I did play around with the sugar, […]
Lemon Tea Muffins (made with Meyer lemons)
jump to recipe I admit I screwed these up. Not the flavor, not the texture, and I didn’t knock anything upside down on its way out of the oven, but somehow I missed that these were supposed to be MINI muffins so I was bewildered when I was pouring the batter into muffin cups and […]
Cinnamon Honey Oat Muffins
jump to recipe If an oatmeal cookie came down to earth disguised as a muffin, this is what it would taste like. I don’t know why I made the cookie come from outer space. Just live with it. These muffins are delicious, filling, and both breakfasty and desserty at the same time. Maybe they DID […]
Baking with Kate in Toronto
We were in Toronto for a few days, and my niece Kate likes baking (and eating), so it seemed only logical to bake with her. Also, she’s fun to hang out with, so really, I’ll take any reason that comes my way to do spend time with her. We immediately ruled out anything that would […]
Peanut Butter and Banana Quick Bread
I love peanut butter.
This quick bread brought out the best of the peanut butter & banana combination, and didn’t break the Weight Watchers bank along the way. It’s long gone, but looking at this picture as I type, I wish I were eating it right now.
Meyer Lemon Tea Bread
This lemon tea bread took some doing. It’s not that it was hard to make, it’s that I had one of those rare, completely unnecessary baking disasters, and I wasn’t able to pull it together enough to give it another try until the next day. I’m glad I did, though; it was completely worth it. […]
Chai Tea Bread
jump to recipe This is a keeper. It was easy to make, didn’t take long, and tastes just wonderful, with a soft fluffy crumb and a mix of spices that come together beautifully and provides an array of flavors for your taste buds to savor. I did make a few changes, and I didn’t bother […]
Baked Apple Cider Donuts
A donut pan is one of those things I’ve been dismissing. You can’t own every specialty pan there is, not in a kitchen like mine, which is already bursting at the seams. There’s no room at the inn. Plus we already have that cute mini donut maker that Jenny gave us, so why would I […]
Toffee Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake with Caramel Sauce
Toffee Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake with Caramel Sauce and Sea Salt, to be precise. The annual bake-off for the Digital Group was upon me, and this year I wanted to really make something special. I’ve taken up baking pretty heavily since the last one, but I mostly do everyday baking: breakfast muffins, cookies for the […]
Honey Oat Quick Bread
jump to recipe Yesterday I was poking around the web looking for quick bread recipes, and came across this one. I liked the look of it, I liked the ingredients, but most of all, the reviews were almost all glowing. A few people had some trouble with texture, but the vast majority of people who […]
Carrot Spice Muffins
The other night I wanted to make something healthy. I always want it to be delicious, but I wanted to contrast the chocolate buttercream frostings and cheesecakes as of late, and I wanted to try something new. That’s how I found myself making Carrot Spice Muffins. And I’ll tell you right now to read on, because they are not only good for you, they’re super delicious. I’m eating one right now and it’s healthy enough for breakfast but tastes like dessert. Awesome.
Pumpkin Gingersnap Cookies
Tonight I let Juliet make the final decision about which cookies to make, since she didn’t like Nathaniel’s gargantuan chocolate birthday cake, or the pumpkin cheesecake on Thanksgiving. I showed her five different cookie photos and she chose these. Good call, Juliet! I started with butter and sugar, substituting a less refined cane sugar for […]
Devil’s Food Cake with Chocolate Buttercream
Nathaniel requested an insane cake for his birthday party. He didn’t say “devil’s food cake”, but he knew exactly what he wanted. “A chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, and I want layers, and I want it shaped like a rectangle.” Layered rectangles? It’s not like we invited 50 kids to this thing, I think we’ll […]
Pumpkin Cheesecake with Cinnamon Chai Buttercream
Finally, I remembered the sugar.
The last time I tried to make this cake, it took until it had been sitting in the fridge for a few hours for me to realize, mid-bloggery, that I had forgotten to put in the sugar. This time, I remembered. As Juliet would say, “wa-lah!” (It’s her version of “voila.”)
When it comes to a full-on decadent dessert maker, you can’t really go wrong with Paula Deen. I did actually lighten things up just a tiny little bit, but mostly I was just focused on making this a worthy dessert for tonight’s Thanksgiving table at Dad & Michael’s.
Whole Grain Nutella Swirl Banana Muffins
People went NUTS over these. I made some mistakes along the way and had to improvise, and wasn’t even sure they were going to turn out okay. But not only did they turn out fine, they turned out delicious, and I have never had raves like this before. I think the word (and the substance) […]
Cinnamon Chip Maple Oatmeal Cookies
These are so tasty! What a great recipe for someone to just invent. I want to learn how to do that. In the meantime, I’ll keep making great cookies like these. And eating them, unfortunately. I’m going to have to get these out of the house soon.
Vanilla Chai Muffins
Muffin redemption has arrived. I haven’t blogged my last two experiments because I just wasn’t happy with them. It started on Saturday, when I was very excited to make Rocky Road Muffins. And don’t they look good? Sadly, they were not so good. I thought they were too dense, too hard, the chocolate was too […]
Pumpkin Spice Rice Krispie Treats
Recipes like this are reason number twenty million for why I love the internet. I told Jana to pick a birthday treat, and she went to my Pinterest board and picked Pumpkin Spice Rice Krispie Treats. So I read the comments under the recipe, and a lot of people were complaining that the squares fell apart because of the moisture created by the pumpkin. And then one person posted that she came up with a solution to get the moisture out of the pumpkin. I followed her link. I followed her advice. I will now follow her blog. And maybe follow her around.
Baked Pumpkin Spice Donut Holes
jump to recipe Remind me not to listen to Presidential debates while I’m baking. It’s so depressing. It feels like this great big game with so little meaning. And yet I’m still watching. I listened to it on the radio while I was baking, I switched to my iPhone when I had to walk around […]
Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread (Lightened Up)
I finally did something with those brown bananas that have been sitting on the counter for days, disgusting all of us. Or maybe just me. I don’t know. I find them disgusting! But I’d seen this lightened-up version of cinnamon swirl banana bread a while ago and wanted to try it out. Its time had come.
Pumpkin Spice Latte Muffins
These are wonderful. Fluffy light texture, deep rich espresso-pumpkin flavor, just delightful. Sophisticated, ever so slightly, but definitely a treat and a reasonably healthy one at tha
Gingery Carrot Tea Cake With Cinnamon Glaze
jump to recipe I’ve made this before, sort of, but today I changed the recipe, used a new pan to make things pretty, and took the glaze from one dessert to add to it, skipping the frosting. We have company coming, and we’ve actually been talking about having these guys over for years. Literally. Years! […]
Peanut Butter and Dark Choolate Mini Muffins
Dave doesn’t usually express a strong baking opinion, but tonight he asked for something that didn’t have pumpkin, but did have chocolate. I didn’t exactly come up with something Weight Watchers-friendly, but sometimes one must make sacrifices, especially where peanut butter and chocolate are concerned. Also, it looked like a fun recipe to make. I […]
Spice Bundt Cake With Cinnamon Glaze
I don’t know what happened, I just had to make this cake last night. Maybe it was how good it looked, maybe it was the mood I was in, maybe I’m just nuts. But I had to make a cake, and I did, and it’s delicious, and and it even looks good, which breaks tradition. […]
Banana, Peanut Butter, and Honey Muffins
jump to recipe Finally! I am always looking at recipes that involve peanut butter, are low in points, and healthy enough for breakfast, but usually they involve some sort of Epicurean compromise. But my quest is over. I have found them! These banana, peanut butter, and honey muffins are delicious, in a no-caveats-needed way. Bursting […]
Cinnamon Chip Pumpkin Blondies
(for Antonia’s birthday) It’s Antonia’s birthday, and she’d like something with pumpkin. Since I experiment on her constantly with my baking, she deserves something customized for her birthday. These blondies also included a honey and caramel drizzle baked into them, which sounded pretty delicious to me. Guess what? They ARE delicious. They’re birthday delicious. They’re […]
Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Mini Loaves
I’m almost too busy savoring to type. These mini loaves are sublime. I really had no idea what I was going to bake when I got home tonight. I had bananas to use up, and I had peanut butter cravings, but I always have peanut butter cravings. Still, I felt obliged to honor them tonight. […]
Healthy Gingerbread Muffins
jump to recipe This looked simple enough, and very delicious, but I may have screwed it up by using the wrong kind of sugar. I’m going to taste one of these muffins when I finish writing this up and then we’ll all know. If I did screw it up, I’m going to make them again; […]
Breakfast Bran Muffins
I haven’t made bran muffins in a long time, and I found this nice, low-fat, healthy, and flexible recipe on Pinterest, so I whipped them together last night. I have to say, I’m very, very happy with the results. I do love a good bran muffin, and these have an unusually light texture, with a nice flavor that you can adjust based on your own tastes. I have big plans for these muffins. Plus, they were sort of fun to make.
Mocha Snack Cake
I made this simple but magnificent cake at Mom’s in BC, and I had to find out if I could reproduce it in my own kitchen. I didn’t change the recipe one iota in either place, keeping the all purpose flour, the white sugar, and the butter, but for all I know, the magic may […]
Healthy Pumpkin Bread With Cinnamon Chips
Dave looked at me like I was crazy when he saw me standing in front of a counter full of ingredients, and I don’t blame him. Every afternoon I get this lightheadedness and feel dizzy, and the feeling extends well into the evening, and yet there I was, setting up mixing bowls and measuring cups. […]
Baking in BC: Banana Muffins With Peanut Butter Chips
I had to make my famous original Banana Yogurt Muffins in BC once I saw Mom’s potato masher. “Do you have a potato masher, by any chance?” “I do, but it’s not a very good one. It has a penguin handle and it’s in the drawer.” Okay, Mom? That’s not a penguin. I think it’s […]
Baking in BC: Mocha Snack Cake
(with help from Serious Coffee) Okay, I just want to start by saying that this is my favorite new thing I’ve made in a long time. It’s really, really delicious, and very easy to make, and you should brew up some coffee and make it immediately. You will not regret it. I wanted to make […]
Baking in Toronto: Oatmeal Peanut Butter Snack Squares
We started out our vacation in Toronto, and I really felt like what the city was lacking was a giant dough ball. I think that’s what my brother’s house was missing too, as it certainly didn’t have one when I got there. So I set out to remedy that with the very delicious, previously tested […]
Gingery Carrot Tea Cake With Cream Cheese Frosting
This cake was created to make someone feel better, so I’m hoping it does its job. I haven’t frosted it yet as I write this, but the cake smells fantastic, the frosting tastes wonderful, and I can’t wait to combine them in the morning. I just didn’t want to put the cake in the fridge […]
Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf
“I’m glad I took the whole piece.” That’s what Dave said after he came upstairs to taste the Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf I made tonight. He took half of the piece I cut for him, but I told him to take the whole thing. He was glad. He said so! (And by the way, that’s demerara […]
Secretly Healthy Chocolate Cupcakes With Cream Cheese Frosting
As Nathaniel & Juliet would sing, “It’s the final countdown…” All week I have been using my colleagues at work as guinea pigs. They tasted, they described, they compared and contrasted. They weighed the issues: kids have to like them, they can’t be too messy, they need to appeal to the widest variety of tastes, […]
Espresso Chocolate Muffins
“Can you make something with espresso?” asked Kate. Of course I can. We have a house full of visiting family this week and couldn’t be happier about it. I plan to stuff them full of baked goods as much as they’ll let me, and they get to make requests too. Tonight I whipped together a […]
Lemon Poppy Seed Sugar Cookies With Juliet
The cousins are coming, the cousins are coming! I plan to make a lot of treats while they’re here, but Juliet and I got a head start today by whipping up some Lemon Poppy Seed Sugar Cookies. I’ve made them before, and they always turn out addictively delicious. This time I added cuteness to the […]
Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal
After I threw the corn muffins away, I had to make something else, and it was almost lunch time, and the kids requested that the primary flavor be peanut butter. I couldn’t argue with that idea, as I love peanut butter with a fierce, obsessive love. We’d had baked oatmeal at Mussers’ Bed & Breakfast […]
Oatmeal Tea Bread
Yesterday I didn’t bake anything. So tonight I baked two things. I made my signature banana yogurt muffins, although I was a little distracted and forgot to top them off with cinnamon chips. Crap. They turned out great anyway, I say with honesty, and without any ego. They’re just delicious, that’s all. But I’ve had […]
Snickerdoodle Mini Loaves (and muffins)
There are some baked goods that I call “get-it-out-of-the-house-or-gain-ten-pounds-delicious”, and I created that expression specifically to describe snickerdoodle mini loaves. They’re insane. Antonia — the same Antonia who inspired me to make the Cheesecake Brownie Bites — asked for something decadent again, this time to celebrate John Calvin’s birthday tomorrow. She isn’t a Calvinist; in […]
Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins With Juliet
The kids were completely disinterested in the Chai Pumpkin Bread, unsurprisingly, and as of late I haven’t been baking things that Juliet particularly likes, so I offered to make her something she’d like, and after some waffling over the cookies vs. muffins debate, she made her wishes known: Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins, please. And she […]
Chai Pumpkin Bread
jump to recipe I wanted something to contrast yesterday’s bran muffins, something with a more complex flavor. When I saw that the ingredients for this recipe included cardamon, allspice, cloves, black pepper, and brewed chai tea in addition to cinnamon and nutmeg, I knew my search was over. See all that stuff? I figured I’d […]
Buttermilk Bran Muffins
jump to recipe I was planning on making carrot oatmeal muffins tonight, since I’ve run out of breakfast muffins, but then I was poking around in the Epicurious iPad app today and saw a buttermilk bran muffin recipe that looked like it was worth a try. When I got home, I asked Nathaniel which one […]
Oatmeal Peanut Butter Snack Squares
I’ve resisted this recipe for as long as I can. I mean, I pinned it TWELVE DAYS AGO and it has peanut butter, oatmeal, mini chocolate chips, and at some point you actually get to turn it into this: That’s twelve days too long, in my book. I had a great excuse to make it, […]
One Bowl Chocolate Cake
I’m not sure which I’m happier about: conquering a recipe with (liquid) coffee in it, or finally managing to successfully dust something with powdered sugar without having it look hilarious, like a 4-year-old did it. Both feel like long-awaited accomplishments, and both resulted in deliciousness. A long time ago, years before I was baking anything […]
Pumpkin Scones
jump to recipe The night after we got home from Pennsylvania, I was feeling the baking urge again. The baking urge means that I want to make something I’ve never made before. And that always brings me to my Pinterest board where I pin healthy recipes I want to try. And THAT is where I […]
Baking Scones At Mussers’ Bed And Breakfast
jump to recipe Every June, on or about the last day of school, we take the kids to Pennsylvania to ride the rails at Strasburg Railroad. We ride Thomas the Tank Engine, visit the train museums, buy jams in tiny jars, eat homemade ice cream and shoofly pie, and take a horse & buggy ride […]
Espresso Spice Pumpkin Muffins
Something’s just OFF with me today, so I am surprised these muffins turned out so well. Honestly, I was knocking things over the whole time I was making these, spilling things too, and I swear that every time I opened the fridge, things just leapt out at me. I dropped my iPhone three times today. […]
Banana Bread
Nathaniel has been asking for banana bread again. He really liked the cinnamon swirl one I made a few weeks back, but what he was after was the recipe I used to use a long time ago, long before the baking frenzy began, and he wants chocolate drizzle on it too.
Whole Grain Thin And Crispy Oatmeal Cookies
(some with cinnamon chips) Another great Pinterest find. I tried really hard not to bake for Robin & James, because they don’t want to be loaded up with baked goods, but I couldn’t help myself. Despite the fun of annoying Robin with the word “muffins” as much as possible, I opted for cookies, since I’d […]
Weird Oatmeal Cake, and Baking Fever
It’s been an odd evening. On the way home, I decided I wanted to try this recipe for “My Best Oatmeal Cake”. The photo above is directly from the recipe page, but let me tell you, I don’t think there’s an iota of a chance that this recipe was used to make the cake in […]
Cream Cheese Pound Cake
According to Pinterest, I first noticed this recipe 20 weeks ago, which means it’s been waiting for me since January. Maybe it was the three sticks of butter that dissuaded me from trying it sooner, but a visit from our glorious friend Jenny was a good excuse to try something new, and she said she […]
Mini Pumpkin Bran Muffins With Chocolate Chips
jump to recipe I am still a little surprised at the deliciousness of these. I had some pumpkin to use up, I bought some wheat bran I wanted to try out, and I had the urge to prepare something healthy, and I think I hit the jackpot with this recipe, which is pretty good for […]
Crisp Peanut Butter Cookies
How come it never occurred to me to use the meat tenderizer on peanut butter cookies before? The fork-created cross-hatch is a peanut butter cookie staple, but the meat tenderizing mallet is fun and has the whole pattern built in. I admit it was the lovely photo on the recipe that made me decide to […]
Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread
Sometimes there’s no turning back. There was a point where I thought I’d have to trash the whole thing, but I persevered, and despite a rather major misstep, it all came together at the end. I’m still not quite sure how. Nathaniel wanted banana bread. I have a tried and true recipe from long before […]
Pumpkin Cinnamon Chip Brownies
Like all the reviews said, they don’t taste quite like brownies, but it’s hard to stop eating them once you start. They were really easy to make, despite a few screw-ups along the way. And even though I made what might be my best batch of banana yogurt muffins ever yesterday, I still needed some […]
Biscoff Oatmeal Cookies
Have you ever tried this stuff? It is meant to replace peanut butter, but it’s basically a spread made from cookies. When Mom asked me to pick some up for her, I got a jar for us as well and I have had my eye out for recipes. This one popped up on Pinterest last […]
Snickerdoodle Cookies
( requested (and assisted) by Juliet) Juliet doesn’t eat chocolate chip cookies. I don’t understand it at all, but that’s how it is. And now no peanut butter cookies. She was sure she wanted some kind of cookies with butterscotch chips, but then she didn’t, and then she wanted lemon poppyseed sugar cookies, but suddenly […]
Chocolate Chip Cookies
(requested by Nathaniel) Sometimes an 8-year-old boy just wants a straightforward treat. “Chocolate chip cookies,” he said. “Big ones, though…not like the little ones you usually make.” It’s true, I am guilty of making my cookies small, because then they contain fewer Weight Watchers points. Of course that strategy only works if you don’t eat […]
Mini Lemon Loaves After The Vehicles Fair
Today was a day for the kids. I’m going away in a few days, which makes me nostalgic for family time in advance, plus it was the annual Vehicles Fair, which we have loved going to since Nathaniel was just a tiny guy. I asked Juliet what she wanted me to bake and she didn’t […]
Lemonade Stand On Mother’s Day
This isn’t about baking, it’s about three kids who decided that they wanted to run a lemonade stand. We had a beautiful weekend of hot summer weather, and a little while after Margot came over to play, Nathaniel approached me for what he clearly thought would be a fruitless mission: he wanted to know if […]