Frosted Cocoa Brownies

Oh my.  These are decadent.  I wish I hadn’t made a full recipe because now they’re calling to me from the kitchen, “Carrie, it’s just one more little piece of goodness.  No one will even notice that you ate me…except your jeans!  Mwahaha!”  I hate you evil brownies. Desserts with which you have a love-hate [...]

Cranberry Bread

I bought a bag of cranberries last week for no reason.  I found a delicious recipe for cranberry bread on Martha Stewart.com.  Here is the link. Here are the changes I made; I used 2% instead of whole milk and I sprinkled the top with granulated sugar instead of the turbinado.  This is a dense, [...]

Oreo Cheesecake

When I saw this recipe I thought that there was no possible way that this dessert could turn out poorly.  Oreos, butter, heavy cream, sugar, cream cheese, and chocolate…no possible way.  I was right.  This thing is dang good. In fact, the only problem I encountered in making this cheesecake is that my pan wasn’t [...]

Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

Oh.  My.  Good.  Gracious.  These things are crazy good.  And they came about all because of one lonely jar of chunky natural peanut butter that had been stashed in the back of my pantry for a while.  He was reaching the end of his shelf life on November 8, 2010.  I bet this jar of [...]

Double Chocolate Marshmallow Chex Bars

Today I cleaned out my pantry and the cabinet that houses all of the medicine, vitamins, paper goods, cookie cutters, cake decorating gadgets, and some other random junk I own. It felt so good to throw some things away and get everything organized. The most impressive things I tossed were a box of generic NyQuil [...]

Triple Hot Chocolate Cookies

This recipe is from the Tasty Kitchen blog, Pioneer Woman’s recipe sharing community.  I sometimes forget to look here for recipes, but thanks to my Google Reader I am reminded to check it out every now and then when there is a new post.  The site is organized well, and is easy and fun to [...]

Daring Bakers: Ice Cream Petit Fours

This challenge sure snuck up on me…like many other Daring Bakers challenges of the past.  Thankfully I remembered enough in advance to get this dessert completed in time!  We had an option this month to complete one or both of these desserts; ice cream petit fours and baked Alaska.  One day I will try baked [...]

Daring Bakers: Swiss Swirl Ice Cream Bombe

So many components to this dessert!  Two ice creams, hot fudge sauce, chocolate cake, whipped cream…and then there’s the assembly process.  Whew!  When I told Ben all the things I had to do, he said “Can you imagine having to do this when you were still teaching?”  Yes, I can imagine that.  I would have [...]

Daring Bakers: Chocolate Pavlovas with White Chocolate Mousse and Strawberries

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard. Originally, this recipe didn’t sound summery enough to me.  Chocolate upon chocolate [...]

Peanut Butter Cheesecake Toffee Brownies

A few weeks ago I caught the end of Oprah while on the treadmill at the gym.  Her guests were the contestants of the 2010 Pillsbury Bake-Off, and at the end of the show they revealed the winner of the $1,000,000 grand prize.  This was the winning recipe, Mini Ice Cream Cookie Cups. These little [...]