Dulce de Leche Blondies

This is a recipe for those in desperate need of dessert.

There are numerous, excellent reasons why you might be needing something sweet to eat. Maybe you had a bad day. Maybe you want to celebrate. Maybe you’re having a dinner party and you want a fancy pants dessert. Or maybe you bought a pint (potentially a gallon) of vanilla ice cream and you’re looking for the perfection known as a caramel blondie sundae.

Lets, face it regular brownie sundaes can be boring (only occasionally though….). If you’re in the mood to change it up, definitely go for some melt-in-your-mouth blondies filled with ooey gooey caramel. Trust me, this one’s a keeper.

I have been SUPER duper busy lately, which makes it really hard to find time to bake, let alone take pictures and write up recipes. Junior year testing is in full swing, with my regular class finals starting on top of SATs, ACTs, APs, and SAT IIs. I’ve even started to do some initial college visiting, which is an interesting mix of fun and stressful.

Also, I cannot tell you how EXCITED I am that it finally feels like spring! I’m so ready for some warm weather, not to mention the in-season fruit, fully acceptable drinking of ice coffee, and cute spring clothes. Get out those flip flops! (And make a blondie sundae while you’re at it )

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

Half of me wants to apologize for bringing yet you ANOTHER banana bread recipe.

….Sorry!

The other half of me says that there is nothing to apologize for with a loaf so fabulous.

I think I agree with half #2.

Besides, you can never have too much banana bread. Especially when there are such beautiful speckled bananas sitting on the counter, screaming out to be baked up into something delicious. How can you refuse?

I first saw this recipe on Cannella Vita (also run by a teen blogger – awesome!), where it looked absolutely amazing. Because it’s such a simple recipe, I found some fun ways to jazz it up a little. I swapped out the regular flour for whole wheat flour to give a heartier texture. I also used vanilla sugar to give it that bit of vanilla flavor. After all, the banana is really the star of the dish and you don’t want any other ingredients to steal the spotlight.

 

My favorite part of this banana bread would have to be the texture. It’s both solid and moist at the same time, without being too crumby. Banana bread that crumbles into sad little particles instantly = not okay.

Speaking of spotlights (although this one is giant and floats in the sky…) I’m really hoping the sun will start to come out soon. It’s been such a long winter, and even though all the snow is gone, it’s still pretty chilly outside. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for spring!

Toasted Coconut Macaroons

Baking during Passover is quite a challenge.

For 8 days, you can’t use flour, yeast, cornstarch, or legumes. Basically the only way to get food to leaven is through using lots and lots of eggs. Passover baking is not exactly cholesterol friendly.

After years of odd tasting, kosher-for-Passover box mixes, I’ve come to an important realization. The best way to eat (and bake!) during Passover is to make things that never needed bread in the first place.

This happy strategy leads to lots of potatoes, Asian food, and flour-less desserts, not to mention some very creative cooking.

One classic Passover dessert is Macaroons. These tasty little coconut cookies are made with either a meringue or pastry cream base, and come in all sorts of flavors. However, the ones from the little Manischewitz cans that everyone typically buys don’t happen to taste particularly good. Luckily, there are other options.

Making your own macaroons is EASY. We’re talking 30-40 minutes, baking time included. They’re cute and delicious and drizzled in chocolate.

And, they taste DELICIOUS. Maybe Passover isn’t so bad after all.

Tagalog Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

So normally, I try to do mostly healthy baking. A lot of the time I swap out half of the regular flour for whole wheat, use butter substitutes, and make things with fruit or veggies.

Then there are times when that strategy goes flying out the window. This is definitely one of those times.

Thanks to the fact that it’s girl scout cookie season, my house has been flooded with endless boxes of Samoas, Thin Mints, and my personal favorite, Tagalongs. My girl scout days were limited to 2nd and 3rd grade when I spent two years as a Brownie, but the cookies were always my favorite part

This is by FAR the best way I’ve ever seen to eat girl scout cookies. The original method is for Oreos, but we didn’t have 5+ boxes of those on hand. Basically, you whip up a batch of regular chocolate chip cookie dough, and then use it to surround your cookie of choice. Being the peanut butter fanatic that I am, I obviously had to go with the Tagalongs.

While cookie inception may not be the healthiest dessert ever concocted, it’s certainly one of the yummiest/most insane. Some quote highlights from the family tastings:

“These are too addicting, I need to move myself away from them.”

“I ate enough for two of me.”

“These are genius!”

I guess they were a hit! Better go try some yourself….

Challah

Some quick little thoughts:

1) This was deeeeeelish. Good challah never gets old.

2) SATs were early. And long. And tiring. Ew.

3) So make some bread.

4) And then eat some bread.

5) Clocks turn back tonight…get psyched for spring!

6) This fabulous recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen. I love.

Happy eating!

Reeses Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

As you all probably know by now, I am in love with peanut butter.

What you might not know is that this legume love is genetic! Both of my parents love peanut butter too, which is why this scrumptious cake was the perfect birthday present for my mom.

March 4th is actually a big day for our family! In a weird twist of fate, my mom, grandfather, and cousin all have the same exact birthday. It makes celebrating easy because we can do a three in one, although we live a little too far from them to share the same cake.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition that I’m the official birthday cake baker for our family. It’s a great system – I love making cakes and the rest of the family loves to eat them! We also have reasonably spaced out birthdays, so I get my fix just enough that nobody’s too tired of layer cakes galore.

This particular cake is essentially a giant Reeses. It’s three layers of moist chocolate cake with sweet fluffy peanut butter frosting inside and out. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, there are regular Reeses on top. It’s pretty much chocolate – peanut butter heaven.

In non birthday news, I have been SWAMPED with SAT studying. For those of you who are (luckily) not currently involved in the high-stress college process, the SATs are this Saturday, which means I will be sitting in a classroom scratching my brain for a good 5-6 hours. The good news is that afterwards, I will have PLENTY of time for mental recovery by means of mass baking. Pretty sure I’ll be too tired to do anything else, so expect something delicious coming up soon!

Strawberry Buttermilk Scones

HAPPY FEBRUARY VACATION!

I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this lovely week off of school. It may be freezing outside, but it’s really, really nice to have some time to be free of all the stresses of school and homework.

That being said, it’s still a pretty busy week! I’ll be competing in 3 meets for high school gymnastics, and am also spending a few days to start looking at colleges. No worries, there will be plenty of time for baking too!

This is one of my absolute FAVORITE recipes to make. I’ve been whipping up batches of these scones since 6th grade, when I first started to get into baking and my mom got the recipe from one of her friends at work. I loved making simple things, like cookies and muffins, so this was a little bit more challenging for the budding baker

Everything you could possibly want in a scone is here. They’re light, fluffy, and just slightly crisp on the outside. When I brought the scones to school as a snack for my middle school classes, I have vivid memories of one kid who regularly ate 5 or more. They’re THAT good.

Now that I’m past those awkward middle school days, scones make a great quick breakfast or on-the-road snack. Especially for our longer gymnastics meets, which can go for 4 hours or more, it’s nice to have something light to eat between events. You can only eat so many granola bars, so scones are a great way to switch things up. Clearly the food strategy worked this past weekend, because I placed on two events in the league championships!

I think I’ll definitely be packing a scone or two for team states this Saturday. Wish us luck!