52 weeks of baking

When I dined stuffed my face at the Brazilian steakhouse, it was really difficult to not devour the complementary mini loafs of cheesebread. Known as Pão de Queijo, these little puffs are made from tapioca flour and are so light and fluffy and surprisingly dense at the same time. When we decided to highlight Brazilian food today, I knew I'd have to use the opportunity to dig up a recipe. It's pretty easy to follow, just make sure you don't underbake them (which would result in an uncooked/doughy middle). To knead up your own batch, check out the recipe, just read more

I almost broke my 52 weeks of baking resolution this week, but a random office concoction saved me. I was internally debating on what I should do when I remembered that there was a toaster oven in the office kitchen, as well as a bunch of random ingredients. So in a last ditch effort to save my resolution, I threw everything together and created what I've dubbed "ghetto bread pudding." I call it this for three reasons: (1) it looks pretty ghetto, (2) there's no pudding in this bread pudding and (3) it seems like something you'd eat in college and everyone knows, you eat some pretty ghetto stuff in college.

However, no matter how bad it looks, this mixture of chocolate, peanut butter, bread and bananas tasted pretty great. If your office has those four ingredients and a toaster oven, then do yourself a favor and whip up an incredibly simple indulgent snack. To see what I came up with, read more

One of geeksugar's favorite treats is a fresh baked madeleine - for those of you that don't know, a madeleine is a French, cakelike cookie shaped like a shell. In fact, she likes them so much, her mom actually ended up buying her the special pan in order to make her own. Only there was one problem: geeksugar swears she can't cook. I think this is a total lie and so I suggested that she make a batch and then I would make a batch. I'd never made madeleines before, in fact I couldn't even remember what they were supposed to taste like, but I thought it would be a fun challenge. Besides, I wanted to see what her "non-cooking" skills could muster up. To see both of our results and check out the recipe we used, read more

For this week's baking experiment, I wanted to make something out of Heidi Swanson's new book, Super Natural Cooking. There were a few really great sounding recipes, but I wanted to use one that I had most of the ingredients for so I ended up settling on the Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake - only I had strawberries, not raspberries, so I gave that a try instead.

My final cake was actually delicious, unfortunately it didn't really turn out like it was supposed to - quite a few things went wrong, but ultimately they were happy accidents. The butter was supposed to be at room temperature, but it was really hot out that day and mine was at butter-soup temp and wouldn't cream correctly (I shouldn't have even bothered), I took it out of the oven too soon (it was getting late and I was impatient), and I didn't grease the pan properly (should've used a parchment paper sling, like my gut told me to). While it was baking, it looked wonderful, but while it was cooling it completely collapsed. I was pretty devastated, and contemplated rushing out and buying all the ingredients to start over again, but then I tasted it, and it was delicious. It was insanely moist (like bread pudding), the whole-wheat resulted in a delicious loaf, and the smell was amazing. I want to try it again, but I'm almost afraid that it will turn out correctly this time. If you want to check out the recipe and hope for your own happy accidents, read more

Yesterday Molly asked me what I was planning on baking this week. I told her that I wasn't sure yet, but that I would bake it on Wednesday night. That's when she pointed out, duh it is Wednesday.

Great. Here it was, already Wednesday and I totally didn't know what I was baking. I wanted something fun, but nothing that would take too much time or use any special ingredients. I toyed around with pretzels, and then thought about crackers. The thought of an afternoon cheese and crackers break sounded like a good idea, so I said I would bake crackers if someone else brought the cheese. Molly agreed to bring cheese and she even picked out the recipe. To see how they turned out (they're rosemary flavored, but you could easily add more of a different herb instead), read more

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to bake this week, I thought about baking something from the amazing book Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, but wanted to take some time and really do the recipes justice (I'll talk about the book more in the near future, but really it's amazing). However, I did get inspired by a cookie recipe in which she uses leftover quinoa (hopefully I'll try this one soon) and decided to just throw stuff together and see if rolled oats, couscous, and crushed/toasted almonds would work out. Turns out they're not bad all mixed up, especially if you add a bit of chocolate. Although my end result wasn't so much a cookie as it was a bread/muffin creation. In fact, they ended up looking so much like muffin tops, that I have inventively decided to call them: Top of The Muffins To Ya - a name which I have stolen from Seinfeld.

The couscous was leftover from dinner (only 1 cup, but I wished I had used 2), and the almonds could have been more consistently crushed, but the end result was pretty decent. They didn't turn out at all like I expected, but the folks around here seemed to like them. They're comparatively high in fiber, so you could convince yourself they're good for you, but they're still made with two sticks of butter and 1 1/2 cups of sugar, so they're not... To check out what I did with couscous (yes couscous and I'm going to try it again someday) and rolled oats, read more

Jimmy's birthday was last Friday, and to help him celebrate I offered to make a batch of cupcakes for him to take to work. These, my friends, were what I consider to be a true labor of love. I've dubbed them "Jimmy Only Wants Chocolate" Cupcakes (since he kindly asked for me not to use any sort of funny/intense flavors) however I should have called them "Oh Yeah, You Had Better Love Me" Cupcakes - because they took about 3 hours on a work night. Granted, the three hours is because I bake slow, I like to clean up as I go if possible and I enjoy measuring things etc., but still...

Anyways, BuzzSugar let me borrow a book called Cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans - who also wrote one of my favorite cookie books - and I debated over which ones to make. In the end, these ones stood out to me (the picture was beautiful, mine look nice, but not nearly as pretty as the stylized photo), and although it took hours (I essentially made 30 miniature layer cakes), it was actually one of the simplest recipes. So if you're in the mood for chocolate on chocolate topped with chocolate cupcakes, and are looking for something that will make people ooh & ahh, but really doesn't take more than just time, then check this recipe out. There are lots of pictures and details, so read more

I thought about skipping out on this week's 52 weeks of baking (I'm actually making cupcakes for Jimmy's birthday tomorrow, and I thought I'd double-up and have two for next week). However, 51 weeks of baking just doesn't have quite the same ring to it, so I ponied up and took the time between Top Model (secret vice) and Lost (not-so secret vice) to head to my kitchen and see what I could whip up.I contemplated making crackers, cookies, or muffins, but Molly's on vacation (and I know she'd be sad to miss out on the in-office treats), so I decided to try some phyllo dough experiments instead. Earlier in the week I had been inspired by these beautiful herbed phyllo breadsticks (I'm not the only one, this post is from over a year ago, and yet it's appearing on a bunch of blogs now) and wanted to see if I could make something similar. I ended up with a few different phyllo "breadsticks" and one "tomato pie."

To check out what I did, read more

The other day I read about Julia's Easter Cake Bake challenge and decided that it would be a great theme for this week's baking project. I'd also been thinking about making a lemon cake using lemonade concentrate (like these cookies that PartySugar made a few weeks ago) and thought that lemonade and Easter seemed like a good match. So I headed to my kitchen and started brainstorming - I took a bunch of different cake recipes (along with some tips I've picked up along the way) and came up with a pretty decent lemonade cupcake (Julia's challenge originally said cake, but something about the bite size cupcakes seemed more fun). The cake itself was a bit too sweet and over crumbly, and I forgot to sift my powdered sugar so the frosting was a bit lumpy. However, the coconut "grass" hid the frosting, and the textures all seemed to work well together.

I'm excited to have created another original recipe that mostly worked, but I'm waaay excited about how the decorations turned out. Somehow I got it stuck in my mind that coconut dyed green would look really cute as grass, and (here I go: toot toot!) I think it is! To check out my recipe, and see more up close photos (I like the one of them all lined up in a row), read more

Toot! Toot!
That, my friends, is the sound of me tooting my own horn. A few weeks ago I bought some of the amazing goat butter from the folks at Meyenberg and loved it so much that I wanted to use it for everything. I had eaten it on toast, over pasta and on crackers, but at some point I decided, actually make that knew that I had to make shortbread cookies with it. Nevermind the fact that I had never actually made shortbread cookies, nor actually even liked them that much, neither of those things were going to stop me - I was going to make goatbread cookies (aka shortbread cookies made with goat butter)! To see how they turned out (toot! toot! I freaking loved them) and see the recipe that I more-or-less concocted on my own, read more