We normally have my family over for a big Easter Sunday celebration, complete with an egg hunt, but not this year. Since I’m getting too old to be crawling around the bushes hiding eggs, and my nephews are way too old to be hunting around for them, our family plans never materialized. My husband and I ended up having a quiet holiday weekend alone, with plenty of chores, and our taxes, to keep us occupied.
Strawberries and cream. They make a great pair, don’t they? In their simplest forms, they are spectacular, but they’re even better when baked together, like in these muffins. As soon as I stumbled upon this recipe, I knew I had to make it. Fortunately for me, strawberries are available year-round in Southern California.
Rugelach (literally meaning “little twists” in Yiddish) is a cross between a cookie and a pastry. This crescent-shaped cookie is made by rolling a triangular piece of dough around a sweet filling such as preserves, chocolate, dried fruits, nuts, or cinnamon sugar. Rugelach is easy to make and it is a perfect addition to a holiday cookie platter!
Aaaaah! It’s finally starting to cool off here in Southern California, which really gets me in the mood for fall baking. I look forward to this time of the year, when I can relax with a cup of hot cocoa and a sweet treat. A couple of weeks ago, I featured a pumpkin coffee cake, and this time, I have a pumpkin cookie recipe to share with you. If you are a fan of soft, melt-in-your-mouth cookies, you will definitely like these. They are tender and fluffy, almost resembling mini cakes.
Today I’m doing my best Paula Deen imitation with this recipe for Pumpkin Swirl Coffee Cake which requires almost 12 ounces of butter. I certainly don’t recommend baking with and eating this much butter all the time, but it is a nice indulgence once in a while. The result is quite possibly the most buttery and moist cake I’ve ever made. It is also light and tender with just the right amount of sweetness and spice. The crumbly pecan and brown sugar streusel made for a great topping, as well as a base, for the cake. My kitchen was filled with the heavenly aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger, reminiscent of Thanksgiving, which, by the way, is a mere 56 days away!
Chocolate symbolizes, as does no other food, luxury, comfort, sensuality, gratification, and love.
― Karl Petzke and Sara Slavin
Today is my husband’s birthday, and to mark the occasion, I chose to bake something chocolatey. I came across this recipe that I knew he would love, so move over birthday cake, and make room for birthday brownies! I wanted to bake a special treat and these certainly are!! These made-from-scratch brownies are utterly decadent, intensely rich and dense and are best eaten with a glass of ice-cold milk. I added a little bit of ground cinnamon since I know Chris loves a touch of it with chocolate. Continue Reading…
I am not normally a made-from-scratch cookie baker. For many years, I’ve been buying frozen cookie dough from my nephews’ school as part of their fundraising efforts. When both boys moved to different schools, the fundraiser ended and with it went my ready-made cookie dough supply. Now, I am “forced” to make cookie dough myself. I don’t really have any go-to cookie recipes aside from my Snickerdoodle Cookies so I’ve been testing out recipes I’ve seen on different blogs and websites. So far, I’ve discovered a couple of keepers, like the Pistachio-Tangerine Cookies and the Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies that I featured in previous blog posts. Continue Reading…
The essence of the classic snickerdoodle cookies lies in its utter simplicity. They are unfussy cookies made from ingredients you most likely have on hand – flour, eggs, butter, salt, baking soda, sugar, and cinnamon. You probably even have the cream of tartar, which you forgot you had, shoved all the way in the back of the spice cabinet. Snickerdoodles can be made entirely by hand, without any kitchen appliances, although I prefer to use the stand mixer for convenience. All you really need is a bowl and a whisk to combine the ingredients and your hands to roll the dough into balls and to dredge them in cinnamon sugar. Fifteen minutes later (10 minutes to bake, 5 minutes to cool), you will be eating a crackly-topped cookie, fresh from the oven, that is soft in the middle with slightly crunchy edges. Don’t forget the milk!
In Mexican hot chocolate, unsweetened cocoa is usually laced with vanilla, cinnamon, and almond flavors to make a fragrant chocolate drink. In this recipe, the espresso and cocoa combine to make a mocha ice cream with a cinnamon twist. Follow this recipe from A Pastry Affair to make your own Mexican cocoa or use a mix like Azteca D’Oro, which is readily available in grocery stores (at least in California). Continue Reading…
On one of my recent trips to New York City, I discovered Rice to Riches, a modern, Jetson-inspired store that serves only one thing – rice pudding. The gourmet rice pudding at Rice to Riches comes in 21 designer flavors with whimsical names such as Fluent in French Toast, Cinnamon Sling, and Sex, Drugs, and Rocky Road. There are a variety of toppings to choose from – toasted buttery pound cake, espresso crumble, toasted coconut, and graham crackers, to name a few. The bright, bold color scheme – orange, pink, yellow, and white – along with the irreverant slogans makes Rice to Riches a fun and kitcschy hangout. The rice pudding is served in the coolest custom-made plastic containers with long curved spoons. I loved those containers so much, I had to buy a pack of them. They are cool, aren’t they?
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