I’ve been told many times over the years that my approach to cooking is weird. Namely, I view recipes the way the Pirate’s Code is viewed in Pirates of the Caribbean — I think of it more as a set of guidelines. When I’m in the mood to make something new, my method is to look up as many different variations on that recipe I can find, pick and choose the ones I like, and make the rest up. Consequently, I don’t actually have solid recipes so much as basic concepts I re-use and tweak based on what’s in my refrigerator and what I feel like eating that day. I have tried submitting these as recipes with notes like “improvise here!” and “change this for this new form of the same thing!”, but I have been roundly told that that is not how recipes work. Which, as far as I’m concerned, sucks.

One of my favorite bases is something I found online that was called “bread pudding muffins.” The idea was that you took a cupcake liner, filled it with stale bread and half an egg, and baked it. And that’s a cool enough idea, but it’s super boring and clearly demands improvisation. But after two years of using this idea as a base, it has become my favorite thing ever. I eagerly await us having enough stale bread to make this. I’ve tried every variation under the sun. Sometimes I make it in cupcake tins. Sometimes I make it in a pan as a bake. I’ll add veggies, fruits, beans, spices, bacon, or pretty much whatever I can find hiding in my refrigerator. You can do anything with this. The sky is your limit. These two years of bread pudding experimentation have been delicious ones, and I have desperately wanted to write about this, only to realize that “get bread, eggs, and improvise!” did not pass muster as a recipe. And so I held off until I found one variation on it I loved enough to post.

I am proud to announce that I have found that variation.

Julia’s French Toast Pudding

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(Serves 4-6)

Ingredients:

• ½ loaf of bread, cut in bite-sized cubes
• 7 eggs
• 1 heaping cup of strawberries, diced
• ½ cup raisins
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Pre-heat oven to 325F.
2. Mix the bread, strawberries, and raisins together in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, cinnamon, and maple syrup. Hint: use actual maple syrup. I was, as a born and raised New Englander, distressed to learn that when most people say “maple syrup,” they mean “corn syrup that is flavored in a maple-like fashion.” Don’t subject yourself to such indignities. Go for the real stuff. Life is too short for fake maple syrup.
4. Pour the egg mixture over your dry ingredients, mix with a spoon until the egg has coated all the bread bits.
5. Grease a 12″x12″ pan. Do not go lightly on the grease (I’ve found that canola oil works best, but Crisco will do). Eggs are sticky. You’ll thank me later.
6. Pour your egg and bread mixture into the greased pan, spread evenly.
7. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the egg mixture is solid and no liquid runs if you tilt the pan.

Suggestions: While this is good at any time, and I did eat it for basically every meal of my day, it’s best for breakfast and it’s best fresh. The bulk of prep time comes from cutting the bread and strawberries, so do that the night before and throw the rest together in the morning.

For weeks — weeks, I tell you — I’ve been craving custard. A custard pie, to be exact.

If I need one on the fly, a good alternative comes from Marie Callendar’s … but I have issues with the place. And those issues crop up when my wife and I visit. Each time we’ve gone into one, someone’s usually cleaning … with vinegar. I kid you not.

You know what a whiff of vinegar will do to your appetite? Whether you’re popping into one of these establishments to sit and dine or to simply pick up a dessert to go, a simple waft of the stuff is an instant hunger killer, that’s what.

So … what to do, what to do. Swing by a Marie Calendar’s and snag a pie with the hopeless hope I can complete a transaction while holding my breath?

Or quit being a slacker and just bake one?

I opted for the latter.

I have an old recipe. And since it’s been ages since I last pulled it out, it was about time I did so. (You can see the result of my effort above.)

The recipe itself is pretty fool proof and you most likely have all the ingredients sitting around in your kitchen anywho, so why not give it a whirl? I know you can do it. It really is a simple process. And isn’t it about time you did something other than poke your finger at a microwave to warm up that barely-tolerable apple pie?

Beside setting a timer so you don’t forget you have a pie in the oven, there are two relatively simple things to do: 1) Make life easy for yourself and, 2) Make certain your pie turns out spiffy.

1) For An Easy Life: If you’re not savvy at making your own crust (I prefer not to), there are a multitude of pre-made, uncooked pie crusts out there in the refrigerated section of your local grocer. Go buy one. There’s no shame in doing so. You’ll thank me. One less thing … you know?

2) For A Spiffy Pie: Scald the milk. Seriously. It’s not that hard. Here … I’ll prove it: Ever burn something? If you have, you can scald milk. Or at least fake it pretty easily. Scalded milk is nothing more than milk that’s been heated to around 180-185°F for a spell. Yeah, yeah, yeah … I know — no one scalds milk anymore. Wrong! You do. You know why? Because it will make your pie better, that’s why. Not only will it dissolve the ingredients more thoroughly (less work for you!), it will help your pie set up better, firmer. You don’t want a sloshy custard pie, do you? I didn’t think so.

Or — if you must take a short cut — you can always forgo the scalding and simply replace a 1/2 cup of the milk called for with condensed milk. But if I were you, I’d scald it. This is your pie we’re talkin’ about here and you want it done right. Besides … there’s just something about scorching food that gets your aggressions worked out … you know what I mean?

So … here’s how you scald milk:  Slowly warm the below noted amount in a pan until steaming. Use a whisk and stir it occasionally until the first wisps of steam begin to come off the surface. Then, continuously whisk it for about 5 minutes or so. Remove from stove. Voila! Scalded milk. (Use a double boiler if you’re a scaredy-cat and a’feared of scorching your pan.)

Now … ready to bake a custard pie? Hokay … here we go:

Michael’s Custard Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 9″ pie crust (unbaked)
• 2 1/2 cups scalded milk (or 2 cups of scalded milk and a can of condensed milk)
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup sugar (I prefer cane sugar, but white sugar will work just fine, too)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg white (you can add the egg yolk from this egg to the 3 eggs above, if you like)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (Use freshly ground nutmeg if you can; it gives finished product extra *umph*. Use more or less to your preference.)

What to do with the ingredients:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Mix eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla. Slowly add scalded milk, stirring ingredients in well while doing so.
3. Line a pie dish or pie pan with the unbaked crust and brush with egg white to help prevent sogginess. (I like to spritz a glass pie dish with a little cooking spray to assure ease of removal.)
4. Slowly pour custard mixture into the pie crust.
5. Sprinkle top with nutmeg.
6. Bake for approximately 35 minutes. Insert knife or toothpick in the center of the pie. If your implement of choice comes out of the pie cleanly, the pie is done. Otherwise, give it 5 or so more minutes. Keep you eye on it if it needs a bit more time to cook.
7. Cool to firmness.
8. Slice a hunk and marvel at your accomplishment. Mmmm, mmmm good.

There you go. Deliciousness, courtesy of your very own fingertips. You’ll surprise your family, your friends and yourself.

See? I told you you could do it.

I eat a little bit of dark, dark chocolate almost every day. I’m almost sure it keeps the blood flowing in my veins and the antioxidants keep me immortal healthy. No, I am not full of it — I’m like a chocolate vampire. Really. Except the only effect the sunlight has is to sometimes melt the chocolate. …

Each year for Valentine’s Day, Keith and I like to cook up something yummy together and top it off with a spectacular dessert, usually of the chocolate variety. Last year, I had a hard time choosing between these desserts, but it was the falling chocolate cake with raspberry sauce that ultimately won us over. Here are this year’s contenders:

I know, we’ve made Bea’s chocolate tahini gooey cakes about a thousand times (including just last week) but it remains one of our favorites. If we make these, we know that we’re guaranteed the perfect dessert.

Now, if it turns out that we’re in a comfort food kind of mood, I’m definitely making Heidi Swanson’s chocolate chip skillet cookies. Instead of whole wheat flour, I’d use spelt and I’d definitely cut down the amount of sugar. This would satisfy the lazy in me as well, since I wouldn’t have to make individual cookies. So, so lazy. …

Perhaps I’ll want to satisfy the one-bite dessert lover in me; in that case, I’ll be making these chocolate Chambord truffles, but I’ll be using coconut milk instead of heavy cream.

Yeah, I found yet another recipe for molten chocolate cake (I really should do a roundup of those someday), this one spiked with the liquor of your choice. They are nearly flourless, but I’m thinking that the bit that is in there will give these cakes just enough texture to be perfect. And spelt ought to work. …

The radical choice would be these chocolate-orange pots de creme with candied orange peel. Radical, because I’d have to suspend all laziness to attend to the details of this recipe and also because I’d have to take a huge leap of faith in assuming that my bizarre substitutions for dairy will work in this recipe. Can I pull off a food-snob pudding with goat yogurt and coconut milk? If I can make custards and flan with coconut milk and truffles with goat yogurt (which I can), I’m thinking yes.

Time will tell which one it will be … which one would you make?

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It’s no secret I love muffins. I’ve shared my recipes for blueberry coconut muffins, oatmeal strawberry muffins, berry muffins sweetened with agave, Halloween orange muffins, banana coconut muffins, chocolate chip mini muffins, apple cinnamon muffins, raspberry oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, peachy flax molasses muffins and lemon poppy seed muffins.

Hmmmm … I wonder how all those chocolate chips got into the recipes? I guess it’s also no secret that I love chocolate….

Many of my muffin recipes are borne from us being completely sick of Keith’s pancakes … delicious, but tiresome every weekend. So as Owen and I were brainstorming ideas for muffins this morning, this is what “won.” The result is a fluffy, moist, flavorful muffin that you could easily make with cranberries instead of chocolate chips if you swing that way. I was thinking they’d taste great with both, but I was vetoed.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

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Ingredients:

• 1-3/4 cups spelt flour (or flour of your choice)
• 1/3 cup palm sugar (or sugar of your choice)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup oil (I used rice bran oil) or melted butter
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used grain-sweetened)

Blend all dry ingredients in a large bowl, and mix all wet ingredients in a medium bowl. Add wet to dry and stir until just blended, then fold in chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes. Serve warm, because you can, and why would you miss the opportunity for gooey chocolate chips?

Alternate version: Either substitute frozen or fresh cranberries for the chocolate chips and sprinkle Turbinado sugar on top of the muffin before baking, or use half chocolate chips / half cranberries.

I’m at a real disadvantage this year … my cookie swap partners have abandoned me! Two are dieting and another has developed multiple food allergies so I’m baking by my lonesome. During the holidays, I like to bring a cookie tray with me to every gathering, so that I know Owen has a dessert he can eat. These are a few of the cookies and bars that have made it to my tray this year:

I make these chewy ginger cookies every year. I really want to make my friend Michelle’s (former cookie swapper extraordinaire) ginger cookies, but I’ve written about her before … she’s the one who clearly leaves out ingredients (or adds ones she doesn’t tell us about) to make us all beg her to bake for us. It’s a cruel trick — nothing ever comes out as good as when Michelle bakes it.

I’ve made these chewy chocolate cinnamon cookies before, but I wish I had made a few notes when last I baked them. I used agave instead of the corn syrup and palm sugar instead of refined sugar, but I really, really needed to cut back the amount. These are far too sweet for my tastes (but I bet most people with a sweet tooth would devour them). I like a cookie heavy on the chocolate and light on the sweet … these do not fit the bill. I did remember that they weren’t cinnamon-y enough for me last time, so I added 1/2 teaspoon to the batter as well as to the rolling sugar (turbinado — look how big and sparkly it is). I’ll try these again next year because the texture is fantastic … but I’ll make them for my tastes instead!

You’re also going to want to cut back the sugar in these triple chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies, but you do want to bake them (and you do want to use the parchment paper … it’s magic). They taste even better than they sound, if that’s at all possible. Somehow I’m always lazy and I skip the white chocolate drizzle part; this year, I froze them before that step, so we’ll see if I do it after the thaw. I’m betting laziness takes over.

I made these chocolate raspberry crumb bars in all of their evil goodness. They are perfect just the way they are … if you want to spike your blood sugar, overload your mucus membranes with dairy and get a wicked headache from the wheat. What do you mean, that’s just me? I found a few substitutions that worked fabulously in a very similar recipe …

… for chocolate mint bars. These are getting rave reviews from all who try them. I made the basic dough with spelt flour and palm sugar, and instead of sweetened condensed milk, I used agave syrup and coconut milk. Ghiradelli chocolate chips and mint extract made the minty part. And I left out the walnuts to satisfy the multiple food allergy people in my life. It’s all good.

These chocolate crinkles I didn’t make (yet!), but I’m a sucker for chocolate and a sucker for a crinkle. This recipe calls for a holy load of sugar though, and I know they’d be too sweet for me. When I make these, I’ll cut the sugar way back and probably roll the dough in a mixture of powdered sugar and cocoa powder. Because more chocolate can never be a bad thing.

You know it wouldn’t be a post from me without a perfectly healthy dessert option — these cookie cutter cookies are it. No, I’m not making them, but it’s not because I don’t think they’d be tasty … I’m simply a drop-cookie gal. Yep, it’s because I’m lazy.

I’m not an avid follower of The Pioneer Woman because frankly, she intimidates me. Have you been over to her site? Do you see how much she does? I can’t keep up, so I just kind of pretend she doesn’t exist. However, I do follow her on Twitter, so I’m able to keep abreast of anything super-important that comes up, such as Black Heels to Tractor Wheels and Cookie Week.

Luckily, Cookie Week happened to coincide perfectly with the cookie exchange that I attended with El and Lo. After scrolling through the entries, I decided that I wanted to incorporate salt, so I stopped dead when I saw Two Peas and Their Pod’s Chocolate Caramel with Sea Salt cookies.

The recipe was automatically intriguing, not just because of the sea salt, but because it didn’t have any eggs. Instead, it uses plain yogurt. The recipe also included a filling, which I’ve never done before. I balked when I saw that the caramel they used was $25 a box, but decided to forge ahead with whatever I could find at Target.

I ended up with a bag of store-brand soft caramels. I was worried that they wouldn’t be soft enough, but while it required a little elbow grease, I was able to roll them into balls pretty easily.

The rest of the process is pretty simple: no mixer required. The directions just say to wrap the cookie dough around the caramel balls, but I wasn’t sure how much to put. Eventually, I started surrounding the caramel with the least amount of dough possible, hoping to get more cookies out. Luckily, it seemed to work pretty well.

They baked in only about 10 minutes, and then I had just tons of chocolaty, chewy, sweet, salty, caramel goodness. These are seriously the best cookies I’ve ever made, and I plan on making them again for Christmas morning. Regardless of any presents I buy, these cookies are going to make me the Christmas hero.

Cooper is obsessed with fruit, so we basically weigh him down with an orchard’s-worth every time we pack his lunch. However, we forgot to take into account the fact that he wouldn’t be in school for four days due to Thanksgiving, so we ended up with some extra bananas that were rapidly turning brown.

Banana bread is one of those things that I always say I’m going to make, but the bananas invariably get thrown away, because I never actually do. I just have some sort of mental block against banana bread– I always think it’s going to be way more complicated than it actually is, I guess.

In any case, I had a few days off (and the previously mentioned browning bananas), and muffins seemed to be the thing to do with both. I went on to my Big Oven iPhone app (I mention them a lot, but I’m not shilling, I swear!) and tried to find an easy banana muffin recipe. I certainly succeeded. With only six ingredients, it took just a couple of minutes to whip up.

Now, this isn’t a healthy recipe, by any means. I’m sure I could have modified it, but I just stuck with what it said, which includes an entire stick of butter. However, I did do a half cup of brown sugar and a half cup of white sugar instead of a full cup of white sugar. Okay, just typing this out makes it sound really bad, which it is, but they’re quite delicious.

It is a very basic recipe, so if you’d like, you can certainly dress it up a little bit. I just added some cinnamon, but I’m sure some nutmeg, etc. would have been nice as well. If you’re really pressed for time, I recommend mini-muffins– it cut the baking time down to about 15 minutes.

I really love blondies. They are like chocolate chip cookies, but gooier. When it comes to desserts, any goo is good goo. I’ve always loved my old recipe for blondies, which ironically I wasn’t able to find when I wanted to make some recently, and I still can’t find … but that’s OK because these are infinitely better.

I’ve got to give Smitten Kitchen some of the credit, since I based my recipe off of her blondie recipe. The brilliant addition of coconut though … that’s all me. It’s scary the amount of creativity that comes out when attempting to satisfy a craving. I’ve been dreaming about the taste of coconut and chocolate but really wasn’t in the mood for the texture of my healthy coconut-chocolate macaroons, so I figured I’d try dumping some shredded coconut right into the blondies. I’ll be doing that again.

Coconut Chocolate Chip Blondies

Ingredients:

• 8 tablespoons melted butter or coconut oil
• 2/3 cup palm sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• pinch salt
• 1 cup spelt flour
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I use grain-sweetened)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

This was a one-bowl beauty, ladies and gentlemen — simple mix the butter and sugar together, then add the egg and vanilla and mix well. You could use your mixer for this, which is normally my style, but I didn’t this time and it worked out great.

Stir in salt and flour, mix and then stir in the chocolate chips and coconut. Spread into an 8×8 inch pan (grease it first) and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. Not too long — you want them just a little bit gooey in the middle.

The weather is getting colder, so to me, that means baking. Last year, I got turned on to spicy desserts, including spicy hot chocolate and these spicy molasses cookies. This fall, I’m planning on expanding my spicy dessert repertoire, so I found some fun-looking recipes to try. I’ve never attempted lava cakes– to me, that’s a chain restaurant-type dessert and not anything that I thought you could make. I plan to test this theory with these spicy chocolate lava cakes.

I’m generally not a pudding person, but this Aztec hot chocolate pudding recipe involves not only chili powder, but rum, which sounds delightful.

Speaking of booze, this recipe for chocolate chile cake involves bourbon, which is awesome. Because in addition to baked goods, cold weather means heavy drinking. That’s a thing, right? Moving on.

I think I’d try something other than the maple syrup icing on this pumpkin chocolate chip bundt cake, but I do love anything that involves pumpkin. However, pumpkin pie is by far my favorite pumpkin dessert, so this spicy pumpkin pie is probably going to be first on my list.

With the cooler weather, my love for comfort food is starting to kick in. I made my first crock pot meal since last winter this week, and all of the baked goods recipes crossing my path are sending my cravings into full gear.

I love pumpkin bread, and this recipe uses spelt flour, yogurt, and maple syrup. It also calls for pumpkin pie spice, which I assume is nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and allspice mixed together — can anyone enlighten me? The only thing offensive is the nuts … they just don’t belong in breads, cookies or brownies. My sister is the only one in our family who disagrees (which she inherited from my grandmother….).

When I find a great flourless recipe, I save it for safe keeping, and this one has been an open window in my browser for months. How good does orange almond cake sound? Pretty good, you think? Well, try topping it with dark chocolate shavings. Yep, you’re clicking on the link right now, I can feel it.

Is it even possible that Better Homes and Gardens is sending out their holiday recipes already? It’s kind of stressing me out, but I still set aside a few to try since they are really different from any I’ve ever made before:

• Date-walnut honey bars, made with apple jelly
• White chocolate and nutmeg bars, made with dried and fresh cranberries
• Cranberry blondies, ditto
• Cranberry pear bars, with oatmeal and pear nectar
• Chocolate mint bars, so I can try replacing the condensed milk with coconut milk

I’m definitely not into the vegan thing. Eggs are a gift from the food gods not to be squandered. But I will say those feisty vegan bakers and their recipes saved me when my kid was allergic to eggs in the first three years of his life. in fact, almost any recipe by Isa was a big hit in our house with anyone … not just the eggless. And I have a really mean extended family who’s not afraid to tell me when my cooking sucks.

One of our favorites is Isa’a chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe. I have a cousin who has specifically requested these cookies, so that’s very telling. For years, it was revered and I wouldn’t mess with it even a little bit (I’m such a liar … I never use canola oil, so I’d use butter, rice bran oil, or coconut oil). Lately, though, I’ve started messing for a couple of reasons.

I’m sort of off chocolate, in theory. I’ll eat a chocolate dessert now and then, but I’m proud to say I no longer hoarf down a handful of chocolate chips every time I pass the pantry closet. Yeah, I’m prouder than the mom of a round-headed newborn.

I really don’t like the kid to have too much chocolate either since caffeine and the under-6 crowd of bad sleepers really don’t mix. We’ll try anything, even tricking him.

And now we’re back at the messing. A couple of weeks ago, I made Isa’s recipe with half cocoa powder and half carob powder. No one could tell, so I started getting crazy. I added, substituted and made the recipe mine, all mine. And in my house, anyway, we think it’s better.

It’s healthier, super-delicious but still “normal.” I held myself back from adding pureed spinach, but used the most nutritious unrefined sugar I could find, used coconut milk instead of soy milk and some of the oil and this and that until it fit my specs for healthy. Try it and see what you think.

Carob Chocolate Chip Cookies with Coconut and Cranberries

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup rice bran oil + 1/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 1/2 cups palm sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon whole flax seeds
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 2 cups whole spelt flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened carob powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup grain-sweetened chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup fruit-sweetened dried cranberries
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes (optional)

Grind the flax seeds in a blender until they become a powder, then add the 1/2 cup of coconut milk and blend more, until the mixture thickens a bit and gets gooey.

Meanwhile, mix flour, carob powder, baking soda and salt together in a separate bowl.

Using a mixer (yes, Isa, I’m willing to lose the punk points), cream together the oil + coconut milk and the palm sugar, then add the flax mixture and vanilla and keep on mixing until mixture is almost fluffy.

Slowly add the dry ingredients while mixer is set to low speed. Blend well then stir in chocolate chips, cranberries and coconut.

Plop onto greased cookie sheets and make semi-pretty circles almost 2 inches around, slightly flattened in the middle. These do rise and expand, so leave at least an inch between cookies.

Bake for 10 minutes, let cool for 10 minutes on the pan and then cool the rest of the way on wire racks.

As discussed in an earlier post, Cooper is in love with muffins. He recently had a birthday, so I decided that some fresh-baked muffins for breakfast were just what he needed to start off his special day. I’d been planning on making banana muffins, but any time I thought about doing it, either the bananas were way too fresh, or way too black and horrifying.

Luckily, we had gone to a pick-your-own apple orchard a few days prior, so we had an entire sack of apples that were just begging to be eaten. Last year’s excursion ended with a sack of apples that just sat in our fridge for months, waiting for an apple pie that we never got around to making — so I vowed that this year would be different.

I googled “healthy apple muffins,” came up with this list of different recipes. There were several that had ingredients that I had zero interest in, including one with ricotta cheese. I settled on the apple-cranberry muffins because I had a couple bags of Craisins left in the pantry, and I’ve been wanting to try out a muffin recipe that involved oatmeal.

I did, however, make a few changes to the recipe. The biggest one was replacing white sugar with brown sugar. This was a good move, because once I mixed the wet ingredients together, it almost had a caramel apple consistency, which was delightful. As I was mixing everything together, I started to get giddy because, hello fall!

My big mistake was not thinking about the fact that I was making mini-muffins instead of full-sized and adjusting my cook time accordingly. Instead of 20-25 minutes, 15-20 is plenty if you’re going the mini-muffin route (incidentally, Mini-Muffin Route is the name of my Little Feat tribute band). I kept mine in for 20 minutes, and they did get a little bit overdone. Cooper though? Did not care even a little bit.

We were at a family reunion a few weeks ago at a hotel that served free breakfast. Since Cooper has been on an egg strike recently, and the Cheerios were actually generic cardboard toasted O’s, we needed to find something else for him to eat. Luckily, he’s been on a big yogurt kick lately, but as we quickly found out, dude loves muffins.

I tried to give him the healthiest muffins I could, but let’s be real: we were talking food service muffins that come in flavors like chocolate, chocolate chip, and something that resembled blueberry, but may have just been “tic-tac-flavored” or some damn thing. I’m good with him eating muffins, but I wanted to find a recipe that was a little bit healthier once we returned home.

After a quick Google search, I found one that caught my eye on cooks.com. It involves Cheerios, which as we all know, is baby crack, so I knew he’d like them. It gets most of its flavor from spices, rather than sugar, but I threw in some blueberry-infused craisins, just to give it a kick.

Cheerio Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 c. finely crushed Cheerios
• 1 c. flour
• 1/4 c. whole wheat flour
• 1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. ginger
• 1/4 tsp. cloves
• 1 c. apple sauce
• 3 tbsp. canola oil
• 1 egg white
• 1/2 c. soy milk
• 1/2-2/3 cup of craisins or other fruit

Just mix the dry ingredients together and add the oil, egg white, milk, and apple sauce. mix with fork until it forms a batter (about 30 seconds or so of stirring is really all you need). Put in desired amount of craisins and bake at 425 for 8-10 minutes.

I love this recipe because it’s super-simple and quick to make, and the only thing I had to buy was the canola oil and the apple sauce. I used soy milk, because that’s what we had on hand, but you can use whatever you want.

I baked mini muffins and put them in a ziploc bag for breakfast the next morning. Luke apparently let Cooper eat five of them. Yay for him liking the muffins, but five? That’s probably not a good idea.

I’ll be the first one to admit that not every gluten-free dessert is a taste sensation. Oftentimes, they are dry and crumbly, bland and blah. That was not the case with the raspberry almond torte I baked tonight, though.

We cooked for my parents today, mostly just because but also because they took such good care of the cat while we spent a few days at the beach a couple of weeks ago. It was a really wonderful meal that we kept simple so that we could just enjoy being together and not spend the whole day in the kitchen (the grill … oh, how I love a grill meal).

I finally made the crushed pea spread that I’ve been drooling over for weeks and I was right to drool so shamelessly — the combination of sweet peas, goat cheese, tahini, lemon juice, fresh mint and scallions was perfection. I served it with baguette and fresh radish slices and shaved pecorino romano cheese.

For dinner, we marinated a black angus flank steak in an orange soy marinade, grilled some romaine hearts and red potato slices and served some green and yellow beans with poppy seed dressing alongside the grilled mishmash.

Instead of making my go-to zucchini chocolate chip cookies, I was torn between the orange almond flan and the raspberry almond torte for dessert. So you’ve read the title of this post and know which dessert came out the winner, but what I haven’t yet told you was just how delicious it was. We served it with some homemade vanilla coconut milk ice cream with a good portion of Greek yogurt blended in … divine. Here’s the clincher — my dad, my very hard-to-please, dessert-hating chef of a dad said that he could have eaten the entire half of the torte that was left over. That, my friends, is better than the five-year-old seal of approval (which, by the way, I also got in spades).

Now don’t go reading anything Freudian into this. If any of you know me (including my dad who’s probably reading this only because my mother forwarded to him), you know that seeking my father’s approval has never been a big priority for me. I was the fresh, defiant kid (I know, hard to believe) who would go toe-to-toe with my hot-tempered dad when the other siblings would run for the hills to avoid the frothing spittle spewing from his lips. Thankfully, he’s mellowed a lot since then and so have I, and although I’m happy my dad enjoyed the torte, I would love it no matter what.

It was very easy to make, it’s gluten-free and has very little sugar in it (and even then it’s unrefined sugar and maple syrup) and it’s almost pretty. Sure, it could have done with a layer of chocolate (couldn’t everything?) but it was a relatively awesome dessert that topped off this summer meal perfectly. Don’t hold its gluten-free vegan-ness against it — it’s a wonderful torte.

Last week, we went to my in-laws’ house for a lovely visit with a delicious bonus — my father-in-law has many blueberry bushes (which he wisely protects from the birds) that were bursting with ripe berries. While Owen and Keith picked for the instant gratification, I planned ahead and more of my berries made it in the container than in my mouth.

A couple of weeks ago, I made an amazing blueberry buckle that was the beginning of a momentous baking discovery for me. When I combine my sprouted spelt flour with a bit of arrowroot, the texture is what I’ve been missing. Instead of being a bit crumbly and seeming dry (but not really … it’s a weird phenomenon), the arrowroot “glues” in the moisture and keeps the muffin, cake, what have you, together as if there’s gluten. Arrowroot works like a pseudo-gluten when combined with the spelt and I have so been enjoying the texture.

Anyway, Owen and I were on our own while Keith went to Comic-Con and we couldn’t wait to bake something with all of those blueberries. I had been eying this recipe for strawberry coconut muffins, so I figured they’d taste good with blueberries too. I did a little search on the internet — as I tend to do — and I’m so glad I did. Although I ended up goig it mostly on my own, I have to credit this loaded blueberry coconut muffin recipe for the brilliance of using coconut milk as the liquid in the recipe. I can’t say I would have thought of it on my own and it made a world of difference in the recipe … so coconut-y and dare I say creamy?

When your five-year old says the likes of, “Every time we make muffins they need to be this recipe,” then you know you’ve done something right. And it’s really great cooking for such an appreciative crowd!

Blueberry Coconut Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1-1/4 cup sprouted spelt flour
• 1/4 cup arrowroot powder
• 1/3 cup palm sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup (5-1/3 tablespoons) melted butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 1 cup fresh blueberries (though I’m sure frozen would work just as well, even though your muffin would end up purple)
• Turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl, and all wet ingredients in another (leave out blueberries and Turbinado). Add wet to dry and mix until just moistened. Fold in the blueberries. Fill greased muffin tins and then sprinkle Turbinado sugar on the top of each muffin. Bake at 400 degrees for about 18-20 minutes.

Then serve the muffins warm to your five-year-old and bask in the glory of his praise.

My parents were away for the weekend, my sister was out for the day, and I was home alone with a refrigerator full of food and my mother’s vague instructions that maybe I should do something with it instead of sitting on my couch all weekend watching the all-day Dogs v. Cats marathon on Animal Planet. (Which, whatever, was totally awesome.) I’d sauteed up the kale, I’d made some turkey meatballs that were good but the recipe needed tweaking before I was comfortable showing it to anyone, and all we had for dessert was a frostbitten fudgesicle, mango sorbet, and three over-ripe peaches that my mom told me I should get rid of. And then somewhere between my billionth episode of Dogs 101 I had a terrible, brilliant idea.

I should make up a dessert recipe.

Okay, for those of you who don’t get why this is a terrible idea, allow me to explain — anyone can make up cooking. Making up cooking is relatively easy. Cooking is not fussy. Cooking doesn’t deal with chemistry. What’s important in cooking is getting the ingredients un-raw (most of the time). All anyone really needs to make up their own recipe for dinner is a bunch of ingredients they know and a spice rack. I’ve only been seriously cooking for about a year and a half and I’ve made up at least five recipes. But making up baking recipes is very difficult.  Baking is chemistry (something I barely scraped by with a B in during summer school because it was easier than taking it during the school year). It’s an exact science. And if you start playing with ratios or substituting things you better damn well know what you’re doing. My only other experimentation with creating dessert was what I refer to as “The Lemon Meringue Implosion of 2008″ which, well, I think you can figure out how that turned out. But, with great trepidation, I forged ahead, combining a few of my favorite cupcake recipes and hoping the result didn’t turn out too badly, and totally pulling the frosting recipe out of thin air. And you know what? It didn’t suck. In fact, quite the opposite, it turned out delightful.

My aim, which I think I succeeded at, was to move away from the idea that summer fruit recipes have to be light and fluffy. I’ve tried a peach cupcake recipe before and it was good, but the cupcake around the peach was kind of bland. I still wanted the peach to be the star, but I wanted it to have an ensemble of sexy supporting characters like whipped cream (which I wanted to be stiff enough to hold up as frosting) and honey and spices.  I wanted cupcakes that I could just have easily been named “Auntie Clarabelle’s Spiced Peach Cupcakes” because you eat them in Ju-ly on your veranda while sippin’ on sweet tea and listenin’ to the sound of banjo music and breezes through the magnolia trees.

I mean, the only time I’ve ever crossed the Mason-Dixie line in my life was to go to Disney World so I’m not sure if my vision succeeded in that aspect, but I’d like to hope so. I’ve at least succeeded in one way — yum.

Spiced Peach Cupcakes
(Makes roughly 16 regular-sized cupcakes)

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamon
3 peaches, peeled and diced in ¼ inch squares
½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
½ cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
2. In a separate bowl, stir together dry mixture (flour, baking powder, salt, spices).
3. First mix the two sugars together until the mixture is fairly uniform. Then cream the butter and sugar mixture together in a stand mixer with paddle attachment on medium speed until soft and creamy.
4. Add in eggs, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition to combine before adding the next.
5. Alternate between milk and dry ingredients mixture, waiting until each is fully incorporated before adding more.
6. Mix in diced peaches.
7. Using an ice cream scoop fill each cupcake liner.  Don’t be afraid to make the liners quite full, this recipe doesn’t rise much.
8. Bake in oven for 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Don’t worry if the tops look a little oily, that’s normal.
9. Let cupcakes cool before frosting.

Honey Cream Frosting
2 tbsp butter (room temperature)
2½ tbsp honey
1 cup heavy cream

1. Cream together butter and honey until there are no lumps left
2. Add cream. Beat until the mixture holds stiff peaks, but do not whip so long it begins to clump — that means it has turned from whipped cream to butter.

Out of all of these recipes, that brioche is the one that makes me salivate the most. The combination of goat cheese and sweet peas … pardon me while I wipe my chin….

I love the way Heidi Swanson describes this chocolate loaf cake as “unattractive.” But she’s a girl after my own heart … she changed up a Nigella Lawson recipe with spelt flour and Muscovado sugar. It’s very few recipes for baked goods that I don’t have to change up a bit, but this one I’d make as-is.

Now, this recipe for raw energy bars in another story. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make them less sugary? I get that there’s no added sugar, but that’s a lot of dried fruit which is basically concentrated sugar, no mater how natural. I like that it’s not honey or agave or brown rice syrup, though, so I may give these a go with less fruit and see if they stick.

This simple brioche with crushed peas … I just can’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it’s because the peas from our CSA farm are one of the greatest things to happen to vegetables ever, or perhaps it’s the goat cheese, radish, watercress, shaved Parmesan….

Really? Could a dessert really be this simple? Raw foodists, celebrate, because all you have to do for a soft-serve ice cream is whip frozen bananas in your food processor. I’m not in love with anything too banana-y, but I’m definitely willing to give this one a try.

Sometimes Keith is hard to tame when it comes to breakfasts. It’s not his fault; he loves to make pancakes every Saturday morning and every vacation day imaginable and sees himself as the breakfast master chef. I find it rather endearing when he takes charge of the kitchen, but when he wants to pack up all the ingredients for gourmet pancakes and try to make them in an efficiency kitchen in a small beach rental, I have to put my foot down.

When we go away for four days, I just don’t see why we have to have a different breakfast each day. Honestly, can we just keep something simple in this family? I took matters into my own hands and used up the blueberries in the fridge and made a blueberry buckle the day before we left, so we could take it with us and have a yummy breakfast every day.

Inspired by this blueberry buckle recipe, my recipe makes changes that suit our family’s needs and just taste good. I combined my usual sprouted spelt flour with some arrowroot to lighten things up a bit and help the cake be less crumbly. Success! I also cut back the sugar, substituted palm sugar and pumped up the crumb topping.

This was one amazing blueberry buckle. Let me explain to you in five-year-old terms just how wonderful this cake was — Owen requested that I make this cake for his birthday. His birthday, people! The kid doesn’t want a gooey cake dripping with day-glo frosting … he wants a blueberry buckle! Either the kid’s got taste or he’s as weird as his mother, or the blueberry buckle was that good … make it and you be the judge!

Blueberry Buckle

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons organic unsalted butter
• 1 extra-large egg
• 1 1/2 cups sprouted spelt flour
• 1/2 cup arrowroot flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 3 tablespoons whole milk plain yogurt
• 2 cups fresh blueberries (other berries can be substituted)

Crumb Topping:

• 1/4 cup palm sugar
• 3 tablespoons sprouted spelt flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons organic unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan. Add 1/3 cup palm sugar, 3 tablespoons butter and an extra-large egg to a large mixing bowl and beat on medium to blend well.

In a separate bowl, mix together the spelt flour, arrowroot, baking powder and salt. Add half of the flour mixture to sugar mixture in mixing bowl, along with half of the milk. Repeat with remaining flour and remaining milk and yogurt, beating just until blended.

Stir in the blueberries gently with a mixing spoon and pour into prepared pan.

For topping, add 1/4-cup palm sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, cinnamon and 2 tablespoons butter to a small bowl and blend with a fork. Sprinkle crumb mixture over the cake batter, breaking the crumb mixture into small pieces with your fingers if necessary.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until texture seems firm in the center of the cake. Serve warm or cold.

I’m having flashbacks of this cake that can only be described as obscene … is it wrong to lust after a breakfast food with such fervor?

As I was dumping the ingredients for these brownies into my food processor, making this recipe for the first time, I was thinking to myself, “This may be the grossest dessert I have ever attempted. OK, maybe not the grossest. That would have to be the carob avocado banana pudding, which actually isn’t half bad.

People, I have hit rock bottom. This recipe doesn’t come from a place of healthy love for all foods good for you — I am desperate. Keith and I have given up caffeine, chocolate and white sugar for a couple of months to cleanse and I’m flippin’ hungry. Sure, I’ve lost five pounds and quite frankly look fabulous in my summer clothes, but I’m not sure the trade-off is worth it … I’m wasting away, I tell you!

I jest a little because I honestly don’t miss my nightly dose of chocolate as much as I thought I would, though I do wish I could have the occasional special treat. Enter these black bean brownies. Now, I’ve been making a recipe similar to these black bean brownies for years, but this recipe was a little bit different. It caught my eye because there were bananas in it, which cut back the amount of sweetener by over a cup from my other recipe.

I had to change things up a bit, but there was no time like the present to try, since Owen is going to a birthday party tomorrow and he can’t eat the cake with all his food allergies. Believe it or not (I’m still in awe), what I came up with works. It really works. I’m not feeling like I’m eating a second-rate dessert (the cinnamon is brilliant!) and they just looked so pretty when I took them out of the oven that I almost don’t care that they don’t stay together very well after you cut them.

Black Bean Carob Brownies

Ingredients:

• 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
• 2 whole bananas
• 1/4 scant cup of agave syrup
• 1/4 cup carob powder (or cocoa powder if you’re not cleansing….)
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon (brilliant, I say!)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup almond flour
• 1/2 cup carob chips (any other day I’d use grain-sweetened chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8×8″ pan and set aside. Combine all ingredients except the carob chips in a food processor and blend until smooth, scraping sides as needed. Stir in carob chips. Pour batter into the pan. Bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool before slicing. (This is very important. If you try to slice them too soon, they don’t hold together.)

A few notes:

• Store them in the refrigerator after cooling, and cut them when chilled if you don’t want them falling apart on you. They still taste good, but tricky to bring to a party.
• They are mushy, so the chips are a great addition and I’d even throw in some roasted, chopped almonds next time.
• The cinnamon is brilliant — have I mentioned that yet?
• A dollop of coconut milk ice cream sprinkled with granola would top these brownies perfectly.
• The taste is a huge hit with the men in the house, and anyone who likes banana desserts will adore these.

Let me be clear — this is not my favorite dessert in the world, but it satisfied my craving and was pretty yummy. Not perfect, but just what we needed.

UPDATE: My men will not stop going to the refrigerator and snitching from the pan of these brownies. They obviously like them better than I do, or I am not the desperate woman I thought I was….

Although I enjoy my sprouted spelt flour baking, I’m really trying to cut down on my carbs, grains and flours in general. Gluten-free is supposed to be easy to digest but mostly, it’s just a bunch of weird flours that tend not to have much fiber or nutrition.

So I’ve been on a hunt for some gluten-free treat recipes that use real food, not seven different obscure white flours and three different vegetable gums. Luckily, my hunt is proving fruitful and I’ve got some great recipes to share with you. The best news is that you probably have most of the ingredients in your pantry already, but if you don’t, a trip to the closest market will get you all you need.

Elana’s Pantry created this gorgeous cranberry almond loaf that she enjoys slathered with goat cheese (yes please) but that she suggests you could also toast and use for a turkey sandwich. Almond butter, almonds, seeds, eggs and other easy ingredients combine for a flourless bread. OK, so there’s a little bit of arrowroot in it that might be hard to find, but I got my Bob’s Red Mill Arrowroot Starch Flour, 20-Ounce (Pack of 4) for pennies on Amazon.

Yummy — oatmeal carrot cookies are gluten-free if you make sure you get oats that aren’t contaminated, but if you don’t have celiac you probably don’t care. They call for stevia liquid (I know, I really have to explore this stuff) as a sweetener, but I’d just throw in agave syrup, palm sugar, brown rice syrup or a little honey.

Melting Wok’s arrowroot cookies sound divine … it’s the coconut milk that gets me. I’m definitely trying these.

Is it painfully obvious that I have a ton of arrowroot flour and I’m looking for recipes to try? Here are two arrowroot cake recipes — a yellow cake and a double chocolate cake — made with all normal ingredients. Too normal … I’d use palm sugar and organic butter, and replace the cream with plain yogurt. Other than that, I’m anxious to try these recipes because we don’t often make cake.

I just have to give a shout-out to La Tartine Gourmande — she’s got a gluten-free (and fabulous) section on her website, my favorite recipe being the chocolate tahini gooey cake.

It’s not often that I find a collection of dessert recipes like this, all in the same week. Usually, I’m altering more conventional recipes into something naturally sweetened and substituting flours. Most of these ingredients are just fine for everyone’s issues in this house — yay!

Since we’re all taking a short break from chocolate in my house (short … I can only handle short, but it’s been good because I really was eating it abusively and I haven’t missed it quite as much as I thought I would), this carob layer cake caught my eye. It’s only sweetened with honey, agave or brown rice syrup, which I like and she gives alternatives to sugary frostings, which I also like.

I’m attracted to the idea of these raisin bars, because they don’t have sugar in them at all, but I still think all of that dried fruit is going to make them very sweet in their own rite. Since they sound so delicious and I happen to have all of the ingredients in the house, I just may try them.

I may not be OK. I’m not sure how to stop drooling … over the picture … over the recipe for cherry amandines … over the fact that there’s no wheat or white sugar in the recipe … over the fact that Bea used cherries, pits, stems and all, in her beautiful dessert. That’s bold! La Tartine Gourmande, you’ve won my over with this one!

I don’t cook with grains very often, and if I do it’s my favorite sprouted spelt flour (which digests like a vegetable so I have myself nearly convinced it’s not a carb … some of us embrace our denial). These grainy recipes caught my eye this week and even though they aren’t usual menu items for me, these recipes are so appealing that I know I’ll be trying them in the near future.

Everyday granola makes it sound not very special, but to me, this recipe is a winner. I’ve been searching for a granola recipe that’s not overly sugary and doesn’t have any wheat in it. Epicurious has not let me down with this recipe: oats, coconut, pecans, dried fruit and honey, plus a little brown sugar and some cinnamon and ginger. That’s it, and it sounds just perfect.

Just imagining the texture of these peanut butter cornmeal cookies gets my mouth watering. They won’t be too mushy, and they’ll have a hearty crispness to them that’s irresistible. They’re sweetened only with maple syrup, but I think I’d try a combination of agave syrup and molasses.

I’ve never made a soda bread, ’cause I’m rather fond of just dumping a bunch of ingredients into my bread machine and letting it do all the work. This six-seed soda bread sounds so simple, though, that I’m pretty sure I’m trying it — and soon. Tons of buttermilk (which I’ll substitute with plain yogurt), lots of seeds and about one minute total kneading time. I can definitely handle that.

As I may have mentioned, the strawberries at our CSA farm are at their peak right now and I’ve been looking for ways to use them since the very ripe ones don’t last but a few days, if that. The strawberry ice cream recipe was a smashing success and we’ll be making more of that this weekend, but I’ve got the hankerin’ to use some berries for breakfast tomorrow. We’ve just been eating them as-is or with yogurt, but with just a little more creativity, I’m sure a great breakfast is in my future — with a berry on top.

Berry muffins sweetened with agave could do the trick … we actually have some store-bought (gasp!) blueberries too, so these would be delightful. Or maybe these oatmeal strawberry muffins are what would make my world go ’round….

Maybe I’ll just toss some in a strawberry banana smoothie for Owen and Keith, while I partake in my favorite (bananaless) smoothie. I’ll just use strawberries instead of cherries … done!

If I’m feeling decadent tomorrow, perhaps I’ll make these strawberry crepes with honey sauce for the family … can you make crepes with spelt flour…?

It’s been a while since I’ve made a quick bread and this strawberry bread (with lots of cinnamon) has me feeling inspired. It would need a bunch of tweaking to make it work with fresh berries and less sugar or an alternate sweetener, but I just might be up to the challenge.

Smoothies, I can understand. The weather’s getting warmer and a cold, frothy drink might be just the thing. Pasta, everyone’s got to eat dinner — why not pasta? But the cookies? I know, not seasonal — but then again, is there a cookie season? Do we need an excuse to drool over cookie recipes? And these two are so interesting they really got me wanting to bake (though I guess that’s not hard).

Heidi Swanson’s quinoa cloud cookies are just so cute. I get that I wouldn’t have to use cloud cookie cutters, but still. I’m also pretty intrigued about cookies made with quinoa flour, something I’ve never tried. Plus, I’d pretty much eat anything with shaved chocolate in it.

Look, more cute cookies, this time star-shaped — thank you Cathe Olson. I love that these sesame almond flourless cookies are, well, flourless. Sesame seeds, almonds, grated orange rind… yum. Almond extract, not so yum, but I’d leave it out and not lose anything in this recipe.

A smoothie made with tea … OK, I can wrap my head around that. However, this jasmine honey lassi combines strongly brewed jasmine tea, honey, yogurt and peaches. Delicous, defintely, but so fragrant I can almost smell it right now.

Heidi Swanson again, this time with a pasta recipe. I need to confess that I’m a bit tired of asparagus in every recipe she creates … or is it just that I’ve been making all of her asparagus recipes lately? Regardless, this one’s got a different twist — pappardelle with Moroccan spiced butter. Saffron, lots of shallots, fresh mint and parsley, pine nuts and yeah, asparagus. It still sounds good.

I’ve been cooking this and that and it’s time for some recipe test drives. What’s interesting to me is that out of these three recipes, the best one belonged to the home cook. The famous chefs missed the mark for me, this time, though I still love them both dearly.

I didn’t think there could possibly be anything wrong with Ina Garten’s turkey meatloaf, and there isn’t. We enjoyed it thoroughly, but it just didn’t have the magic of my gourmet meatloaf. The reasons I love my meatloaf — the carmelized onions, the balsamic vinegar, the tamari, the two different kinds of meats, the mustard and the fresh basil — were not in The Barefoot Contessa’s meatloaf, so my taste buds were not singing. It was definitely easier to make than mine, but the next time I make meatloaf, I’m back to my old favorite.

Any crock pot recipe that sticks a pinch of saffron into it has some promise. This easy crockpot Moroccan chicken, chick pea and apricot tagine was really special. I only wish I had snapped a shot of it before we inhaled it … it looked so pretty, sprinkled with fresh cilantro and sporting the round chick peas and the sweet brown apricots. The blend of flavors and textures really worked.

Color me disappointed, but La Tartine Gourmande’s coconut and lime macaroons were unsatisfying as a cookie, treat … edible substance. She makes them sound so delicious, irresistible even. As a macaroon lover, I couldn’t wait to try these. Granted, the citrus zip was a wonderful complement to the coconut, but I honestly don’t think her directions were correct. Since I don’t usually make my macaroons with eggs, I just followed her steps. Mine looked nothing like her pictures and the more I think about it, the more I think the egg whites needed to be beaten until fluffy and the rest of the ingredients folded in. I’ll try it that way the next time and if these cookies are worth making, you’ll hear about it.