We report, you decide.

So I know I keep saying that I hate to bake, and yet I keep baking things.  I really don’t like baking.  But I really do like baked goods.  And last night, I was bored.  Boredom + want dessert = make cookies.  Cookies are my favorite baked good of all time.  And after I spent a long summer testing out a bazillion different methods and recipes, I finally nailed down a perfect basic chocolate chip cookie.  I can churn out a batch in an hour.  I have this down pat.  And when the method is followed correctly, it makes perfect, round, soft, moist little cookies.  In fact, I actually make all sorts of cookies with it.  The base is a great delivery mechanism for all sorts of add-ins but chocolate chips are my favorite.

However, this time I thought I’d do something a bit different.  Not drastic, but different.  I said to myself, how about you throw in a little bit of cinnamon, since it is fall after all.  And then other me said, hell, why not just toss in some pumpkin pie spice?  It has everything.  It’ll work.  Trust me.  Then I thought, sure.  She looks legit.

So I did it.  Josh loved them.  And I have it on email record from several co-workers that they are “the best cookies I have ever made.”  And these people know their cookies.  So there you go.  Continue reading →

So this post is a shout out to Jill, of U-M’s Family Medicine Dept., who very sweetly gave me a book on cookies.  No, no, the book on cookies.  Better Homes and Gardens’ Ultimate Cookie book to be precise.  500 cookie recipes.  Five. Hundred.  Cookie.  Recipes.  Right now at this very moment, Cookie Monster himself is attempting to break down my front door.  (“Cookies are a sometimes food” my butt).

So as a thank-you to Jill, I decided to (have Josh) pick a good looking recipe out of the book and make it, so that Josh could bring it in and Jill et. al could enjoy the deliciousness of the gift.  And because thank-you notes are better dipped in chocolate and banana. Continue reading →

This brownie must be shared with the world.

To look at, I mean, not to eat.  No, this sucker is mine.  It may take a few days, but I’m gonna get it all in my belly one way or another.  I am a tigress and it is my wounded antelope.

But no, I just wanted to share this.

This brownie came from Afternoon Delight, my current favorite brunch place in Ann Arbor.  Why are they my favorite?  Two words: frozen yogurt.  Two more words: For breakfast.  Two more words: That’s right.

Today is the first day of the fall semester at the university at which I work, and for my department, as well as most others, it’s…well, a crazy day.  To top it all off, the heavens are having a serious plumbing problem and it has been raining pretty consistently all day.  So already we’re off to a bad start.

And then my friend Brian walks in with three of these things, for me and two of my coworkers.  And the skies opened, the angels sang.  The peasants rejoiced.

I don’t know if, in that picture up there, you really get the full measure of just how massive this brownie is.  So to give you a sense of it, here’s the brownie standing next to a goomba:

Anyway, just thought I’d share, and now that you’re all nice and drooly, I’m gonna take my brownie over in the corner and nibble. Hope your day is good, and filled with chocolates.

Little chocolate breads.  How can you not love everything about that fragmented sentence? I mean, really.

I found this recipe on Epicurious and, loving all things French and chocolate as I do, decided I had to make them for myself.  They’re very quick to make, very easy and super customizable.  Josh liked them, and now wants a batch made with jam.  I personally think they’d be better with a bit of cinnamon sprinkled on top as well.  I can see us easily making these on a regular basis for when you just want a little something to pick you up. Continue reading →

I’ve said before that despite evidence to the contrary, I don’t really like to bake.  I only do it because I like baked goods and so far as I know, you either have to bake them or buy them.  And really it’s better if you bake them.

Well today I wanted to use up some buttermilk and I figured, might as well make something for breakfast tomorrow–after all, Josh will be back late tonight, he’ll want to sleep in tomorrow morning; might as well have breakfast waiting for him already.  Muffins sounded about right.

Now, I am not the Muffin Man of this apartment.  That would be Josh.  Josh is the Muffin Man.  He makes delicious blueberry lemon muffins and someday I’ll get him write a guest post on that.  But he’s not here today.  So the muffin making is up to me.

I have this recipe I’ve been wanting to try for a while–raspberry cream cheese muffins—from MyRecipes.  Looked delicious AND they were healthy.  I adapted the recipe a bit, though, to make it fit my style more.  And by “fit my style more” I mean, “I added dark chocolate.”  Mmmm.  Chocolate.  I also added the seeds of half a vanilla bean and a bit more of a nice rum-based Tahitian vanilla.  But what’s really important here is the chocolate.  Let’s not forget that. Continue reading →

…in my freezer.

Seriously, there’s a whole comic book in the works and everything.

Tonight, it was a particularly useful skill–I mean, superpower–because it was 84F today and while I really wanted to fry some strawberry pies or bake a cheesecake, I just didn’t want to heat up the apartment and thereby waste the hard effort the air conditioner was putting out in order to keep Josh from melting into a puddle of human goo.  Clearly what we needed tonight was a nice, cool dessert, a good compliment to the (grilled) dinner of barbecue pork sandwiches and (store-bought and therefore no cooking necessary) chips and raw (i like crunchy) carrots.  So I fell back on one of my favorite healthy cold desserts: frozen bananas dipped in chocolate.

Wait a minute! You want to yell out in a classically drawn speech bubble with italicized, bolded AND uppercased letters.  How healthy can a banana be dredged in chocolate?

Well, duh–it’s dark chocolate.

And coconut.  And walnuts.  So that’s like, calcium and healthy fat and antioxidants all right there.

Moving on (at the speed of melting chocolate, another of my superpowers), this dessert is one of the easiest ever to make, and less rich than say, my strawberry tiramisu and less formal than the semifreddo (mmmm semifreddo).

This recipe serves 6; I cut it down to just make one banana each for me and Josh, but I’m putting the full recipe (adapted from a Whole Foods recipe) below:

Chocolate Dipped “This Day is” Bananas!
Serves 6 Continue reading →

So…I like semifreddo.  I like the word “semifreddo.”  It’s Italian for basically, “semi frozen.”  There’s many varieties of this dish but what originally got me hooked on it was a cookies and cream semifreddo from Tyler Florence, which I made Josh for Valentine’s Day.

So tonight I felt like making a variation on that one, with oreo cookies and chocolate whipped cream.  It’s a first iteration–it needs some work, so I’ll be trying it again and again and adjusting the recipe as I go along.

Continue reading →

So some of my chocolate chips may have melted a bit in the mixing process but whatever, they still tasted good.

Recipe follows: Continue reading →

You will need:

1 quart fresh whole strawberries, washed and sliced
4 1-inch slices poundcake
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2-3 tablespoons vanilla sugar (or just regular sugar) Continue reading →

I told Josh that I would make him cookies tonight and I did—I made cookies based on my chocolate chip granola bar recipe.  They have everything the bars do–oatmeal, chocolate chips, cinnamon, coconut and walnuts (okay, not everything; there’s no honey or oil).

Recipe Follows:

Continue reading →

But until that day, I will just have to get by on the kindness of my husband (who brings me chocolates from my current all-time favorite chocolatier Schakolad) and good friends like my fellow foodie Brian, who just came back from three weeks in Europe (jealous?  Yes, completely) and brought me a bar (it’s actually 2 bars in one package) of delicious Belgian Côte d’Or Noir de Noir chocolate.  I love this chocolate for a couple reasons: one, it’s freaking delicious; two, I may be somewhat in love with the packaging because it’s entirely in French and, thanks to 5 years of French classes I am a bit of a Francophile (although, really, I’m in love with the Mediterranean as a whole, but France in particular).  Continue reading →