Category Archives: Baking

Chocolate peanut butter cookies

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Julia

A while back last year, when Smitten Kitchen cookbook just came out, I won it at one of the giveaways, which made me very happy because I really wanted her book and because I usually don’t win anything. Since then, I have been using that cookbook mainly as my night time comfort reading, enjoying Deb’s stories and pictures right before I fall asleep. Then, I had a realization last week that I haven’t even cooked anything from that cookbook yet, and that was about to change when I started flipping through the pages and saw her chocolate peanut butter cookies, sandwiched together with a thick chocolate peanut butter frosting.

These cookies are so-o-o special! They will appeal equally to kids and adults, to those who like chocolate-based desserts and those who don’t. These cookies have a perfect ratio of sugar to peanut butter: they are perfectly sweet and the chocolate frosting does not overwhelm the peanut butter taste. Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Chocolate, Cookies, Dessert, Peanut butter, Recipe | 33 Comments

Crepes with ricotta cheese and blueberries

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Julia

Because it was my mom who taught me how to make crepes, my dessert of choice for this Mother’s Day is dessert crepes! I love crepes! My mom used to make them for me and my twin sister almost every other weekend when we were growing up. We would usually fill them with all kinds of jam or preserves and have them for breakfast on the weekends. Those were the good old days!

Lately, I really like to fill my crepes with sweetened ricotta cheese filling and stuff them with all kinds of berries. I use agave nectar to sweeten the ricotta cheese, because agave nectar is very sweet and you only need a couple of tablespoons, and it’s easy to mix agave with ricotta cheese on low heat. I tried using regular or brown sugar and it just isn’t the same. Continue reading →

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Posted in Agave Nectar, Blueberry, Breakfast, Cheese, Crepes, Dessert, Recipe, Ricotta | 24 Comments

Peanut butter surprise cookies with rolos

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Julia

These peanut butter cookies stuffed with Rolos and rolled in sugar belong in the hall of the best peanut butter cookies ever! I highly recommend these – they are definitely the best peanut butter cookies I have tried so far, especially considering how easy they are to make! The cookie itself (even without the rolos) is so perfect with its yummy brownie-like texture: it’s both chewy and soft at the same time. There is just the right amount of peanut butter: not too much and not too little. You can definitely taste a peanut butter in this cookie, and yet it’s not like you’re eating overly rich peanut butter cookies. Topped with utterly delicious milk chocolate caramel candy (Rolos), these cookies reach a completely new level! And when you bite into the chocolate center, and it burst with chewy caramel – it’s then that you realize that these cookies completely justify their name: peanut butter SURPRISE cookies (with rolos).

The seemingly unimportant step of rolling these cookies in granulated sugar right before putting them in the oven is the reason why these cookies look so pretty (almost like sugar cookies), why they are light in color and have beautiful cracks on top. Coating these cookies in sugar before baking serves two purposes:

1) The cookies acquire lighter, much more attractive color when sugar coated. If you don’t roll these cookies in sugar, they will come out much darker, almost looking like dark peanut butter. Rolled in sugar, they come out looking like sugar cookies!

2) Rolling cookies in sugar gives them a nice soft crunch on the outside of the cookie. Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Cookies, Peanut butter, Recipe, Rolos | 19 Comments

Strawberry banana bread with blueberries

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Julia

Whenever I make banana bread, it’s usually because I have overly ripe bananas that are about to rot but I don’t want to waste them. You should’ve seen these 3 bananas that went into this bread: they were black and already mushy inside their banana casing. My mother-in-law cringed when she once saw me save bananas that were this ripe. This time around, I also had a package of fresh strawberries that were getting dangerously soft and a package of wrinkled fresh blueberries, so why not throw all of these soft, wrinkly, mushy ingredients together into one deliciously moist strawberry banana bread!

And what a great and colorful banana bread it turned out to be! I also added a tablespoon of fresh lemon zest to the bread batter which gave the bread even more oomph! It’s like the summer entered my house! Mixed berries, spiced up by the lemon zest in a banana bread – to me, it tastes like a summer berry cake. You can’t really go wrong with a very moist banana bread stuffed with strawberries and blueberries. Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Bananas, Blueberry, Dessert, Fruit, Recipe, Strawberries | 32 Comments

Chocolate chip and white chocolate chip cookies

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Julia

I really liked this recipe for soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies, so when I ran out them and wanted more, I decided to make them the way I actually prefer to eat my chocolate chip cookies: with both regular chocolate chips and white chocolate chips (or chunks, as you see in these photos).

Combining both white and regular chocolate chips in one cookie, but strictly confining them to different sides of the cookie – to me, that’s two cookies in one! I love biting the semi-sweet chocolate chip side of the cookie and enjoying all that rich chocolate flavor (along with a cup of hot tea), and then biting the white chocolate portion of the cookie – the contrast and the balance of the flavors is amazing! Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Chocolate chips, Cookies, Dessert, Recipe, White chocolate | 18 Comments

Banana bread with blueberries

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Julia

Two very ripe bananas and one package of blueberries were sitting on my counter, so naturally I had to make a banana bread with blueberries. I wanted something different from the banana bread recipe I used a couple of weeks ago, so in addition to blueberries, I also added Greek yogurt. Well, adding the Greek yogurt was sort of a necessity (as opposed to creativity), since I only had 2 bananas while the recipe called for 3, so I measured that 1 mashed banana equaled 1/3 cup in volume, and that’s how much Greek yogurt I added to replace the missing banana.

Blueberries add so much to banana bread! In addition to the berry flavor, they almost make the banana bread even more moist, without letting it lose the texture. Biting a slice of banana bread with blueberries is very much like having a slice of a berry cake: juicy and fruity, but without all the butter. I still can’t believe that this moist loaf of bread has only 1/3 cup butter, the rest of butter replaced by Greek yogurt and bananas. I need to make recipes like this more often!

I also realized something while making this banana bread and that one: the key to a moist and flavorful banana bread is to use very ripe bananas. Before I even consider using the bananas in baking, I wait until they turn black on the outside and get really soft to the touch. When peeled, such bananas are still white inside but very soft and mushy, not really holding their banana shape. Mashing such bananas with a fork is very much like stirring the smoothie: effortless! That’s when bananas are at their sweetest! Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Bananas, Blueberry, Dessert, Nuts, Recipe, Walnuts, Yogurt | 25 Comments

Outrageous chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Julia

As I was eating the last outrageous chocolate cookie, I began to wonder what those cookies would taste like if I used white chocolate chips instead of regular semi-sweet ones. It didn’t take me long to start baking cookies again, and I have to tell you that these outrageous chocolate cookies with white chocolate chips are so unbelievably good, I ate almost all of them myself. Well, I only made half a batch, so it wasn’t THAT many cookies to eat – at least not by my standards. My husband did get to eat 2 of these cookies.

As I was making these cookies I had a brilliant idea of using half the chocolate to melt for the cookie dough and guess what it resulted in? My cookies came out looking like little ugly thin chocolate cakes (I have photos of these little ugly creatures which I think I will post in a separate post as a warning NOT to use any less chocolate than required). They did not have that crispy chocolate-covered looking shell like outrageous chocolate cookies are supposed to. Lesson learned – do not reduce the amount of chocolate that you are melting to add to the cookie dough!!!! It’s very key for the success of this recipe. The photos that you see here are from my second, SUCCESSFUL batch, where I DID use the right amount of the chocolate to melt, and, as a result, cookies came out pretty, with A crispy chocolate shell, tasting like a chocolate cake inside, – just like they are supposed to be: Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Chocolate, Chocolate chips, Cookies, Dessert, Recipe, White chocolate | 27 Comments

Soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Julia

These cookies were gone quicker than it took me to blink! I had to make a second batch, then the third one – all within the same week! This is my favorite recipe for soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies, and it takes only 15 minutes to prepare these, plus 8 minutes of baking time. Easy, simple, classic chocolate chip cookies. They are soft and chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside. If that’s what you’re looking for – that’s the right recipe!

And, yes, that’s all that is currently left of the third batch: a very pitiful single cookie:

If you love soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies, then that’s exactly what this recipe delivers (just make sure not to over bake them). You’ll also love the simplicity – there is no need to spend more than 15 minutes on these cookies. Just keep in mind that it only takes about 8 minutes to bake these in a preheated 350-degrees-hot oven, and, when you remove cookies from the oven, they will still look somewhat uncooked in the middle (they will look cooked and set only around the edges). That’s what we want! Cookies will continue to cook while they cool on a wire rack (not on a hot baking sheet!), and, once they have cooled off completely, they will look cooked and not at all liquidy in the middle. Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Chocolate chips, Cookies, Dessert, Recipe | 36 Comments

Berry clafoutis

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Julia

The main reason I wanted to make this baked French dessert was that I liked how it sounded – clafoutis. Doesn’t it sound very French and sophisticated and refined? Plus, as you can judge from the name, the berry clafoutis is filled with berries (and I love sweets with berries), and it is different from your usual berry desserts because it has a flan-like texture. So I was excited to give it a try!

Keep in mind that this dessert is not for everybody. Here is an example. My husband loved it because he loves everything “French” and he doesn’t like overly sweet desserts. My mother-in-law, who prefers more traditional desserts, was not very crazy about it. She thought it was too bland and asked for a scoop of a very sweet ice cream on top. So, judge for yourself and your audience. If you don’t like overly sweet desserts but love desserts with a lot of berries – go for it! This recipe has only 1/3 cup of flour, compared to 1 cup of half-and-half and 3 eggs, which results in a flan-like texture instead of a cake-like texture. As a result, these dessert bars are very light in terms of the density of the cake batter, which makes berries the star ingredient (as opposed to the cake batter). And that’s why I loved this recipe. If that’s what you’re looking for – you’ll love it too! Continue reading →

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Posted in Baking, Blackberries, Blueberry, Cake, Dessert, Fruit, Recipe | 19 Comments

Banana bread with walnuts

Posted on March 27, 2013 by Julia

This is simply the best recipe I’ve found so far for the most moist, perfectly sweetened, and easy banana bread. I added walnuts to this recipe, but they are totally optional, even though I love my banana bread with walnuts. This recipe is so easy, you don’t even need a mixer – just mix everything with a big wooden spoon!