
I finally upped my pumpkin cheesecake game and arrived at perfection.
Baking Adventures In A Messy Kitchen
A blog about healthy baking, with occasional dips into decadence.
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.
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
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.
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.
It was Juliet’s 6th birthday last week so I sat her down with my iPad and we went through one of my Pinterest boards so she could pick out something special. She knows what she likes, that’s for sure, and once she saw heart-shaped peanut butter sandwich cookies, the searching stopped. I kept thinking she’d want a cake of some kind, but Juliet didn’t care about that. Like me, she loves her peanut butter.
Happy birthday Dave! Time for root beer cupcakes with cream soda frosting!
The week of his birthday, I sat my lovely husband down and showed up the recipes I’d been pinning for him. He’s a vanilla guy, so I walked him through vanilla layer cakes & pound cakes and something called “fudgy vanilla brownies”. He brought up the 2nd-prize-winning Toffee Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake with Caramel Sauce and Sea Salt, as well as my mom’s classic recipe for blonde brownies. And then we got to the root beer cupcakes, and the decision-making suddenly got a whole lot easier.
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 […]
This morning I wanted to make something special and sweet for the kids. They argued about what it should be. There were tears of frustration. Juliet wanted donuts. Nathaniel wanted mini muffins. We settled for mini donuts, with the requirement that they have some sort of icing or glaze. Deal. Into a bowl went the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
jump to recipe Nathaniel’s birthday was actually almost two weeks ago, but when Sandy knocked out the power, birthday baking was put on hold. Then I went away to BC, and so it got further delayed. Then I got home, we restocked the kitchen, and the time for birthday treats for his class finally arrived. […]
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 […]
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 […]
jump to recipe Nathaniel, unsurprisingly, is a Star Wars fan. And Nathaniel owns a very entertaining book called The Star Wars Cookbook. No, really, he does. We’ve made Wookie Cookies before, but this time Nathaniel really wanted the Bossk Brownies. I’ve had some bad experiences with brownies, but I decided to give it a go. […]
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 […]
(requested by Nathaniel) This was another very early Pinterest discovery: Cinnamon Swirl Bread. I made it in early January and I was disappointed because my streusel swirl sank to the bottom. The only reason I haven’t made it since then was my father’s description: “It was delicious but the sugar made my teeth sing.” But […]
The kids loved when we made sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day, and have been begging me to do it again. It seemed like a good day for a time-consuming project; I needed some distraction but I wanted to spend time with them, and that fulfilled both needs with one buttery, sugary task. Why not. Since […]
I already have a plan for how make them prettier, but I think the deliciousness is just about right. Found this recipe on Pinterest, of course. (Of course!) I waited to make the glaze until the following morning, and it was very easy. The whole recipe was specific, but easy. The adventure began as I […]
. . .with White Chocolate Chips and Cream Cheese Blobs It’s supposed to be a cream cheese swirl, but I am esthetically challenged when it comes to baked goods. I can make things that taste wonderful, but none of them look all that terrific, and some look downright scary. My treats are designed for deeper […]
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