Mocha Cheesecake Bars
This month for the Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned Sara’s blog, Cook With Sara. There, she shares a plethora of recipes across pretty much every area of cooking – grilling, slow cooking, baking – and also all sorts of ingredients. Her recipe index was so long (and well organized!) that I was immediately overwhelmed with so many stellar options.Fortunately, I knew I wanted to make something with coffee for an upcoming dinner, so I was able to sift through her many recipes to settle on these Mocha Cheesecake Bars. (more…)
Outrageous Holiday Oreo Brownies for Play Up Dessert with OREO
I’m excited to bring an old favorite recipe out of the archives, livened up a bit for the Play Up Dessert Holiday Baking Challenge with OREO! This brownie recipe hails from Ms. Ina Garten, and is one I have made countless times with many variations. It’s a foolproof recipe – it makes a generous mountain of brownies so I regularly make 1/2 or 1/3 of the original recipe, and it works just as well every time. (more…)
Homemade Oreos
As a long-time lover of Flour Bakery and Joanne Chang’s Flour Bakery Cookbook, I periodically revisit the cookbook and try out recipes I’ve never made before. I’ve certainly indulged in my share of of Flour’s Homemade Oreos in my time, but never from my own kitchen. This past weekend I decided it was long past time to give them a try for myself! After all, how can you say no to homemade oreos?! All butter and chocolate and sugary goodness… I was sold. (more…)
First Foodie Pen Pals
When I first heard of Foodie Pen pals just one short month ago, I thought it was such a cool idea! I loved having penpals in elementary school; somehow sharing letters with a stranger as if you were friends was such a novel idea to me, and it allowed me to feel connected in places besides my immediate surroundings. Now being a grown up, I still revel at the idea, especially when food is involved! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t enjoy receiving packages in the mail, especially when they’re filled with thoughtful treats from another foodie like me. (more…)
Cranberry Bliss Bars
A couple of weeks ago I attended my very first baby shower for one of my coworkers at the office. It seems that at my age, I should’ve attended at least one or two baby showers in my time, but somehow I’ve missed out until now, so going to my first one was exciting. What would happen? Would we play games? Did I need to get her a gift or would we get an office gift? What’s even an appropriate gift for a coworker’s unborn baby?! All I really know how to do is bake things for people that make them happy, so for this occasion that’s exactly what I did. And these bars came out great!
Chocolate Bread Pudding with Salted Caramel
I don’t think it has ever snowed in October before in my LIFETIME, so this past weekend’s storm was quite a shock to my system, as it was to everyone else in New England who got slammed with a mind-winter-strength nor’easter just two days before Halloween. Coincidentally, Kevin and I picked that weekend, of ALL the weekends, to go visit our families in Western Massachusetts. Kevin’s family, who lives farther west than mine, collected a whopping 21 inches of snow from the storm, and my family got about a foot. But the worst part of all was the power loss and devastation that was all around us after the storm.
Outrageous Oreo Brownies
With the great move of 2011 behind us and most boxes unpacked, it’s finally time to get back to the kitchen! Last weekend during hurricane Irene I had grand plans to bake up a storm (haha… no pun intended), but I only got through breakfast and two loaves of banana bread before I totally crashed. Moving will do that to you I guess! This past week was filled with lots of activities, mostly revolving around unpacking, organizing the apartment, getting rid of old furniture, running errands, adjusting to a new routine, and celebrating my first anniversary with Kevin! So… I didn’t get my baking mojo back until last night with these Outrageous Oreo Brownies. (more…)
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars
Two weekends ago, my best childhood friend came into the city for a visit. She lives up in Maine now so I don’t get to see her too often, so I was happy she got a chance to come down for a couple of days/ Hannah and I have long history together that dates back to when we met in the 1st grade, and became almost immediate friends. We’ve spent countless hours together since the day we met, and I’m lucky to have such a good friend who’s known me through nearly everything. We both took a culinary arts course for a couple of years in high school, where we learned our true styles in the kitchen together: I cook, she eats. Since then, we’ve enjoyed many making countless memories, both in and out of the kitchen. When “we” cook, it’s typically me flitting around measuring sugar and flour and creaming butter and portioning cookies, while Hannah’s sitting at the counter, sampling batter as necessary. It’s a great routine, and works perfectly for us! (more…)
Double Fudge Oreo Chunk Cookies
It’s not often that I break into a bag of Oreos, or any other packaged cookies for that matter. It’s so simple to whip up a batch of homemade cookies, and so much more satisfying and rewarding that I just can’t justify eating the ones that come out of a plastic wrapper. But just because I don’t eat them doesn’t mean I don’t love them, and any excuse I can get to put cookies into other cookies, I’ll take it! (more…)
Jelly Roll Ice Cream Cake: Daring Bakers
The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.
This month’s Daring Bakers Challenge was a seriously delicious one. It happened to be a very big month for my brother — he turned 21 on Monday! — so this challenge could not have possibly been better timed. I asked my brother to tell em his two favorite types of ice cream, and this cake was born out of that inspiration.
