These easy-to-make bars come together quickly and are a favorite grab n’ go snack around here. There’s something about the simple combination of peanut butter, butter, honey and oats, studded with dried cranberries and topped with a drizzle of chocolate and a sprinkling of flaky sea salt that is just so satisfying.
Read MoreThese chocolate cherry almond biscotti were good enough to pull me out of sluggish apathy this morning and finally revive a blog wallowing in abandonment for over a year. Well, abandoned by us as bloggers, but not as bakers. We continue to reference this blog for our favorite shared recipes on a weekly, if not daily, basis. And it looks like many of you reading this do the same! We thank you all for continuing to follow along for the past year, even when new content was scarce. After a long break I think we’re ready to start posting regularly again…just in time for the holidays!
Read MoreAs much as I love Ottolenghi’s savory recipes for their dynamic flavor profiles, so much do I love his sweet recipes for their subtlety and finesse. Just like his Oat Cranberry Almond Cookies, these Peanut Sandies have flavor without being in your face. They perfectly balance butter with peanut, sweet with salty, not one element outshining the other. The texture is delicate and crumbles away in your mouth. They are, in a word, a delight.
Read MoreThis is kind of a crossover between two cookie classics—Keebler’s Magic Middles and Hershey’s Secret Kiss cookies.
Read MoreA bakery cookie can come as a revelation, or it can be a dud.
I once got a chocolate chip cookie at a local bakery that, when I went to split with my 3yo daughter, shattered into a hundred dry and crumbly pieces. That was a dud.
Two years ago I wrote about our quick 2-day trip down to the Florida Keys, where I had my first and only Matheessen’s cookie. It was the size of my outstretched hand, big and soft and full of peanut butter flavor, topped with a slather of dense and chewy chocolate fudge. The man behind the counter explained how they used to top their peanut butter cookies with chocolate frosting, which proved a bit of a mess. The cookies stacked for display would stick together and the frosting would smear. Then one day the owner was inspired to take their housemade fudge and slather a bit on top just before it set. The resulting cookie was a revelation.
Read MoreThis was a recipe I definitely did not mind testing. But though I tested (with LOTS of tasting), there’s still just a lot of wiggle room in the recipe. When you have a treat like chocolate peanut butter, it might as well be just to your taste. So please don’t be annoyed by my loosey-goosey ingredients list. Feel free to follow it to the letter the first time, but fiddle with it as you please! I really just want to empower you to just try making it, that’s all. And anyway, chocolate and peanuts? You can’t really mess it up.
Read MoreFor the past several years, my sister-in-law and I have been making the bulk of our Easter candies. Both of us love to bake, and it is fun to pick out different recipes to try out, opt for new challenges, and try again to nail a previous favorite.
Read MoreSo as a mom of two with a third on the way I got to this point of being fed up with buying granola bars. Sure, they are convenient. But do they have any real nutritional value?
Read MoreI’ve loved these cookies for years. Though only five ingredients (six with the chocolate), they are interesting and addictive. They just happen to be gluten and milk free. I sometimes add spices like cinnamon to them to vary them up. They are thin, crisp, and almost melt-in-your-mouth.
Read MoreI had my doubts about this cake. The ingredients and method both seemed unusual to me, and I expected it to be maybe one dimensional and unremarkable. I know the recipe promises the cake will be “light, delicate, and delicious … like a milk chocolate bar”, but I was skeptical. But I’ve been working through my vintage recipe project and the occasion of my 1 year old’s birthday was pretty low stakes, so I gave it try. And I am so glad I did! This cake came out of nowhere and totally won me over. It is so so delicious. It’s not fancy, it’s nothing gourmet or complicated, but it is light as a dream with a delicate texture and chocolate flavor. The cake layers and the whipped cream together are airy and not too sweet - in fact, the cake is almost salty in the way that the most delicious milk chocolate has the sweet/salty element that keeps you going back for more. The frosting is very sweet, but it pulls it all together and balances the cake and cream. I’ve made a lot of cakes and watched a lot of kids eat those cakes and most of the time they don’t finish, or they eat the frosting and leave the cake or pick out the cake and leave the frosting. Not this time. They inhaled it., each one of them, both days it was served. So did the adults… I mean, when a cake is this light, it goes down real easy.
Read MoreEver since I tasted Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies, I have had an eye on her cookbook Dorie’s Cookies. One bite of the World Peace Cookie, and I was crazy over the play between crumbly and chewy, the deep chocolate flavor, the ease of baking, and the adorable little puddle-circle shapes. The recipe struck me as genius, and I wanted more.
Read MoreWelcome to our June GBBO! Now this dessert goes by two names: schichttorte (as introduced on the GBBO) and baumkuchen. The German cake was traditionally made on a spit over a fire, each layer being brushed on, baked, then another layer brushed on to bake on top of the previous one. The end result is a beautiful ringed pattern, reminiscent of the cross section of a tree. Over the years, a simpler version was invented where layers were brushed into a pan, then baked under a grill or broiler. The same intricate layers were created, but now horizontally stacked.
Read MoreLayers of crunchy chocolate cookie crust, fudgy brownie, fluffy peanut butter cream, whipped chocolate mousse, topped with a poured chocolate peanut butter ganache glaze and a sprinkling of chopped roasted peanuts.
Read MoreI always have an egg white or two in the freezer. I love rich, custardy desserts that need yolks, and since egg whites freeze so well, I never think twice when a recipe calls for an extra yolk or few. I know I can stash away the whites and use them down the road.
Read MoreWhen we first started this blog, we decided we didn’t want to be unecessarily chatty in introducing our recipes. We agreed that for the most part, when we are looking at other blog recipes, we typically scroll down quickly to the recipe recipe, where it’s written out in recipe format, and pretty much ignore everything else. So for our blog, unless we have something we particularly feel like saying, we try to skip all that intro story telling and get right to the recipe.
Read MoreI love breakfast, but 90% of the time I don’t eat it. On the weekends we’ll cook up a big breakfast...sausage, bacon, potatos, eggs, pancakes, waffles, crepes... But that’s when we have the time to make and enjoy it.
This bread is pretty dreamy. The chocolate flavor is pretty intense, amped up by the addition of some espresso powder. The toasted coconut adds a wonderful texture. And despite the ample amount of banana in the bread, the crumb remains pretty tender and not at all squidgy. It’s good for dessert, snack, or … yes … breakfast.
Read MoreThis isn’t exactly a recipe per se, but it’s a dessert our family often eats on special occasions, and so I felt like we really ought to share it on the blog.
When I first set out to write this post over the summer, I decided I’d do some googling to see if I could find out the history or origin of the “St. Croix Sundae.”
Read MoreA lot of holiday recipes can be quite involved, and require fancy ingredients, which makes sense, because Christmas is a time to celebrate and pull out all the stops.
But sometimes you just need a break. You want something that’s delicious and festive but comes together in under an hour with ingredients you probably have on hand.
This chocolate peanut butter bark is just the thing. It’s quick and easy, and ridiculously addictive to eat. It freezes well, and makes a lovely gift.
Read MoreOur 7th Cookie in our 12 Day line up is chocolate drizzled, caramel coated nuts & popcorn aka crunch munch (yes, we’re coining the name). Wait, that’s not a cookie?! I guess we are fudging things a little. :) But, maybe after giving this a try, you’ll forgive us.
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