The other day I bought strawberries, and last night I dreamt about baking with them. I dreamt about different strawberry and lemon combinations, and this morning I made somethin' of it. I found this recipe, which I thought would be harder than it was.  I used less sugar than it called for, and less lemon juice, but everyone loved them anyway. See the recipe here :)

I'm in love with these Pumpkin Brownies

I had a bunch of leftover pumpkin puree from Thanksgiving, and I will admit that I used it up in it's entirety for three batches of this recipe. From the very first time I made it, I loved it, and I'm not even a big pumpkin fan. I love me some chocolatey brownies, but they complimented each other amazingly in this Pumpkin Brownie recipe.

Minty Sugar Cookies

One of my mom's close friends from work made these sugar cookies with minty hershey's kisses in the center, and I decided to make it my own.

So of course, I started from scratch. My base recipe was for a sugar cookie:

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

But I added about half a cup of candy canes that had gone through a food processor into the dough, in addition to a teaspoon of peppermint extract. In place of the hershey's kiss, I put an Ande's mint in the center.

Here they are before I put them in the oven:



And then afterwards :)

Recipes I Haven't Written About Yet

Pumpkin Brownies
Chocolate Chip Caramel Rice Krispies
Mint Chocolate Chip Rice Krispies
White Chocolate Chip Craisin Muffins

Coming soon!

Wingin' it with Bread

We had three old apples sitting in our fruit basket next to a bag of newly bought red delicious looking apples. I wanted to bake with the gross apples while I could, so I peeled them, sliced them, and put them in the food processor, and then into this recipe.

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 4 ounces butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (I replaced this with 3 apples)
  
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Honestly, it went so fast that I couldn't even get a picture of it. It was so fucking good. I had to make in it a cake pan, and guessed entirely on the time (40 or so minutes total) but it worked out. I'd recommend wingin' it.

Chocolate Chip Banana Crumb Muffins

This morning I woke up at 7am, & couldn't get back to sleep. My brain was awake -- and thinking about muffins! I wanted to use up the bananas I bought that were finally ripe, too, so I looked for a recipe & found this one for Banana Crumb Muffins.

I added chocolate chips, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, & a random amount of cinnamon to the batter. I just sprinkled cinnamon into the mix until the batter tasted good, honestly, haha. For the crumbly part, I cheated. I had some of the crumb mix from a crumb cake box mix leftover, so I just put generous heaps of that on top of each muffin.

They took a few more minutes to bake than the recipe said they would, but the wait was worth it -- these are SO good! Moist, melt in your mouth, cinnamon-y goodness. Here's what they look like:

Minty Chocolate Covered Pretzels

These mint candies have been sitting in my baking cabinet for too long! So tonight on a whim I used them to cover chocolate-y pretzels, along with a few almonds. I melted the chocolate, put the mint candies in the food processor until they were almost dust, & that was all the prep necessary! The mint adds a refreshing twist to one of my most favorite treats :)