Posts Tagged ‘indulge’
crack bark
Pretzels and chocolate and brown sugar caramel and sea salt and are you drooling yet? Here’s an awesome treat you can whip up in minutes and is just as addictive as the name dictates. Perfect for a snow day treat or something wonderful to crumble on top of vanilla ice cream.
no-bake lemon drops
Every time I come home I am expected to do a few things. Make dinner, fix problems on my mom’s iPhone and laptop, etc. Making my mom a lemon drop martini every night is also on the list. I’m happy to do it – playing bartender for my mom has a very fun Christina Crawford feel to it. Making lemon drop inspired cookies is even better.
I tried these weeks ago during a shoot at work and immediately photocopied the recipe for my own use. Finding a really really delicious no-bake treat is hard, in my opinion, and this one is fantastic. Just the right balance of sweet and tart, plus oddly refreshing since they’re chilled. There’s no vodka in them (sadly!) but instead crushed up lemon drop candies, my all-time favorite treat. Be sure to use the rough, cheap drug store-type lemon drops. The kind that make your tongue feel like sandpaper after having too many. Yummy!
double raisin oatmeal cookies
On the twelfth day of Christmas my oven gave to me… 4 dozen awesome oatmeal cookies!
Okay I know the twelfth day of Christmas is technically January 5th but it’s 12 days until Christmas right now and I can’t help it. It’s inevitable. The holidays roll around, I get insanely festive, and the baking bug bites me bad (try saying that 3 times fast!) Even after a full day of cooking and styling I still want to come home and just listen to Bing Crosby and make cookies. That is the power of Christmas. And that is why I love it so.
These cookies are a riff on my favorite oatmeal raisin by using some golden raisins and pecans, two things I had sitting around and just sounded fun to toss in. I’m such a fan of scooped cookies – rolls you have to chill and then slice seem so tedious and not at all what you want to bake after a hard day’s work. So throw these together and enjoy! You can even freeze the dough balls and bag them up to bake in the future. Not a bad present to save for yourself, if I do say so myself!
chocolate-dipped macadamia nut cookies
The Test Kitchen is swamped with cookies right now. Every few hours it feels like a new batch appears. Millionaire’s shortbread. Madelines. Pear bars. A new cookie book is in the works and you’d think it would make my desire for cookies wane, but oh no, the exact opposite has been happening. I just want cookies more now.
I whipped these together after reading the recipe in Everyday Food. I love macadamia nuts and the idea reminded me of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, the Sausalito cookie from Pepperidge Farms. Toasted macadamia nuts, bittersweet chocolate, and just the right texture of a moist inside with a delicately crisp bottom.
The chocolate is pretty thick so I didn’t dip so much as paint on the portion that is chocolate. I was tempted to break out the pastry bag and tips and do pretty designs but yeah, delusions of grandeur and laziness got the better of me. Lack of frills aside, these are still delicious and soul satisfying.
british flapjacks
My blog turned 2 a few weeks ago during which I was going through tissues like water and could barely stomach anything beyond tea and toast. I was sad to miss the opportunity to make something grand to celebrate it, but when I sat down to decide what to cook to commemorate the occasion, I realized something grand wasn’t the style at all. My blog should reflect what’s going on in my life. That’s the point of it (for me, at least). I cook food that makes me reminisce, that reflects the seasons or holidays around me, that reflects my mood and current life situation. I ate my feelings via baked goods living in Boulder. I started thinking about calories and eating healthier when I was working out hardcore. Now I work 2 jobs, pinch pennies like I never have before (thanks student loans!), have almost no time or energy to cook at home, yet am far happier now than I was a little over a year ago.
So in a way, this recipe perfectly reflects how I’m feeling, my life, and things going on around me. The Royal wedding. No time or energy to cook. Strapped for cash. Reminiscing about other times in my life and thinking about what I’ve learned this year.
British flapjacks are sort of their version of our Rice Krispie treats. You melt some sweet ingredients on the stove and stir them into dry cereal (and in this case, you bake them). The thing that really caught my eye about them was the use of Lyle’s Golden Syrup, an ingredient I had never heard of before starting my job in the test kitchen I still currently work in (and the job I was awarded right around the 1st anniversary of my blog). It took me ages to find it in the grocery store and it’s still something I don’t see very often (in stores or recipes). I tried it and learned something new – an ongoing theme in my life I still cherish at my job. It’s an almost sickly sweet sugar syrup that needs tempering with salt and other ingredients, but it’s a marvelously underused ingredient with tons of flavor and depth.
The bars are delicious. Like super sweet granola bars with a nutty, almost caramel undertone. I wish I had had some dark chocolate to drizzle on top but alas, they’re still delicious plain.
Also, it pains me to say it but as I indicated above, since time and money is short right now, my posts may be sporadic until life evens out.
