Gingered Carrot Cookies

I altered this recipe quite a bit. I barely put in any ginger, used blueberry honey instead of raisins and extra coconut instead of pecans.

I think they came out pretty well... the honey caramelized while baking so there was a nice sugary crunch to the cookie while the carrot and coconut gave it some good texture.

Linzer Sables

A very simple almond cookie... roll it out, freeze it, cut out shapes, cut the middle out of half of them and bake. Fill with jam and make sandwich cookies... eh.

I don't know that anyone was super impressed.

Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

These brownies have solidified my love of baking. I was a little scared of this recipe when I first read it. You have to melt the butter and chocolate and stir in sugar. Then you mix sugar and eggs and pour half of that mixture into the warm chocolate mixture. You can't stop mixing because the chocolate can cook the eggs. That seemed super scary to me so I avoided these for a while. It ended up being really easy.

After that you whip the balance of the sugar and eggs until it doubles in size and fold it into the mixture before adding the dry ingredients.

These brownies are amazing. So light and fluffy but fudgy at the same time. The people in my office were freaking out. They were the talk of the office (they actually were) and some very inappropriate food porn noises were heard while some people delighted in this afternoon snack.

This recipe will for sure be repeated in the very near future.

Chocolate Spice Quickies

I decided to leave the spice part out of these cookies. I'm getting to know my audience and my co-workers are not fans of the allspice, clove, nutmeg family. Actually... they seem to really dig the chocolate treats and tolerate the fruity kinds until more chocolate items are available. I may have made a mistake baking so much of the chocolately stuff first. Who is going to eat my cranberry upside down cake?

I thought these cookies were nice... not very flavorful but basically a plain chocolate flavored sugar cookie.

Honey Nut Brownies

Let's see if you've been paying attention...

Which ingredient listed in the title do you think I left out of this recipe?

So yeah, no nuts. I used peanut butter chips instead and everyone at the office thought they were yummy.

I decided I thought the honey flavor would be overpowering because you add a whole cup! I decided to use one of her tips and frost these brownies. I think it was a good addition.

Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake

OK I admit it... I'm bad at keeping up on the blog. I love the baking and taking the pictures but when it comes to sitting down to share my baked good with the interweb I just don't want to.

So here I am... two weeks later and I have 6 recipes to share with you. Sorry all my loyal fans (hi Mom!)... I'll try to be better.

I had to whip egg whites again and this time I didn't screw the whole thing up. This cake was easy to make and looked like it tasted pretty good.

Jeremy had it the first day and said it tasted great (with of course his constant caveat that it would be better with blackberries).

I left it overnight wrapped and went to cut it in the morning to bring to work. It seemed to get a bit soggy so I decided not to bring it in. This is for sure an eat it the day you make it kind of thing.

Brrrrr-ownies

Brownies with York Peppermint Patties mixed in. Once they are cooled to room temperature slice and put in the fridge. Yum!

Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake (the first and the second time...)

Last weekend I decided to make this loaf cake. We were supposed to have a new fridge delivered. They came, they scratched it, they took it back... it was a good time.

I went to make the cake anyway. I had just purchased a whole bunch of Pyrex so I figured I would try the loaf pan. Its supposed to bake 60-70 minutes. I baked it for 60, stuck the cake tester in and pulled the cake out. I waited the 5 minutes and went to turn it out onto the cooling rack upside down.

The top came out, the bottom stayed behind... it was a really great day in my house.
After it cooled I tried the part that actually baked and it tasted pretty nice so I told myself to try again this weekend.

This time I used the non-stick loaf pan, checked it with a knife, baked it for 70 minutes and it came out really well.

After it cools upside down you cut it into thirds horizontally and spread jam on each layer. I used seedless blackberry jam. Next time, more jam. Lots more jam.

Time to frost with semisweet chocolate and sour cream frosting.

For sure the next time it will have more jam and probably milk chocolate frosting.

Golden Brioche Take 3

Success... at last. It seemed it was time for me to conquer the Brioche. I was actually nervous when I started. Jeremy told me to see it through no matter what. I read through my first blog to remind myself of my mistakes and forged ahead. I doubted it the whole way but look at that. Golden Brioche! It could use some work but it tasted and looked like bread so I'm putting that in the win category.

Golden Brioche-2 Bonnie-1.

I'm coming for you Golden Brioche...

White Chocolate Whipped Cream

FAIL! When I made the regular whipped cream I was so scared to over whip it that I think I may have under whipped it. So this time I told myself to let it go. I stopped at one point and tried it and it was great.  I thought it needed just a bit more so I whipped away and RUINED it. I will do this one again... I'm excited about all these lessons learned.

Mixed Berry Cobbler

I made this with all blackberries because that's what Jeremy requested. If I can recall I believe he said it needed more sugar but the biscuit topping was good.

Rugelach

I could not wait to make this recipe... I knew it was going to be one of the first on my list once we had the food processor. I made a few mistakes... I didn't chop the chocolate fine enough, I didn't add enough jam and I cut it without actually thinking about the way the instructions were worded. This recipe will for sure be made again soon!

Chocolate Shortbread Dough & Tarte Noire

I'm super behind on posting my baked goods... I made this for Christmas dessert! We had just purchased our food processor (our gift to each other) so I was excited to make the dough. I had quite the adventure when I made the Sweet Tart Dough but this time was awesome!

The tart itself is easy... and by the time the chocolate ganache sets it looks amazing! If only the taste was there. I'm not a bittersweet fan. I prefer a sweeter chocolate. But I bet it would have been good with some sort of sweet topping.

Sour Cream Biscuits

These biscuits are supposed to have pecans in them but that didn't sound appetizing to me at all so I skipped them. I thought these turned out pretty well... for sure the sour cream makes for a nice moist flaky biscuit.

Black and White Cookies

The other day Jeremy randomly threw out that I should make black and white cookies and that I had until March 1st to perfect the recipe. I figured it might take a while for perfect to happen so I made them this weekend. For the white side to stay white you cannot put vanilla extract in there but you do lose the vanilla flavor. Jeremy suggested I use vanilla bean. I said no at first because its fun to disagree with him and then realized he was probably right (ugh I hate that) so we bought them.

I baked them for 11 minutes and as they were cooling and the second batch was in the oven I realized the tops (what becomes the bottom) were not cooked enough. So I baked the second batch for 12 minutes and then put the first batch back in for a few more minutes. Next time I will flatten the cookie longer and I think it will cook more evenly.

I need to work on the consistency of the frosting... both sides need to be much thicker so I can put more on there. Overall the flavors were pretty nice and I think with a few tweaks I'll have this in the bag before my deadline!

Dulce Leche Duos and Bittersweet Ganache

It was surprisingly difficult to find store bought Dulce de Leche. Luckily I live with a smarty pants and he directed me to a store that had it. Nothing much to this recipe. Dorie suggests you make them with the dulce de leche as the filling. I thought it would be too caramely sweet so I decided to knock another recipe out and fill it with the bittersweet ganache.












The ganache was yummy... I'd prefer semi-sweet I think. It took a lot longer than I thought to thicken... about an hour.

*Just wanted to say I still really love my countertops.*

Translucent Maple Tuiles

A Jeremy pick!

Super easy... mix it up, chill for 3 hours, roll into balls, bake.

It's really cool to watch them bubble up and separate. I'm not sure there's any flavor to it. Jeremy said they were good and he'd like them over ice cream. 

I would just want the ice cream.