TWD - Caramel Crunch Bars

For this week, Whitney of What's left on the table? chose Caramel Crunch bars. Please see her website or pages 112-113 of Baking from my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (great book you should buy it if you don't already have it!). I made these Sunday and they were a big hit with my church's small group and my officemates. These are super easy to whip up and are phenomenal. I really liked that the caramel aspect of the bar was just Heath toffee bits. I am not a big caramel fan, but I do enjoy Heath toffee bits. Time is short this week, but I hope you enjoy the photos I took of the process. I think I followed everything to the letter this week, except that I didn't have the 9 total ounces of bittersweet chocolate I needed, but I did have a lot of unsweetened chocolate and semisweet chocolate. So I guesstimated...it isn't a one to one ratio, but bittersweet is somewhere in between unsweetened and semi sweet, so I used a mix :)







Next week: "Chocolate Armagnac Cake - The Cake That Got Me Fired"... I am interested in the story behind this cake ;)

TWD - Devils Food White Out Cake

So this week's recipe, chosen by Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater, is the cover recipe of Dorie Greenspan's Baking from my Home to Yours. Please see either Dorie's book or Stephanie's blog for the recipe.


This week is crazy busy, but I couldn't just not make the cover recipe... so I made a fourth of this recipe. And instead of making a cake (because a quarter cake would be hard) I make 5 cute little cupcakes.



The cake tastes great, but I couldn't get the icing to work out right. Probably because I had to hand mix it since I was only doing a fourth, I had to use just one egg white, and I couldn't very well whip that up by itself in the KitchenAid Mixer.


So I added some powdered sugar to thicken up the frosting.


I actually made 6 of the cupcakes, but I used the smallest of them for crumbling on top of the other frosted cupcakes.


All in all this was a fun recipe. The cake tasted great. Next time I will either use a different icing recipe, or make the full recipe (maybe it would work better in bulk in the KA).

TWD - World Peace Cookies (and those Corn & Pepper muffins I never posted)

It has been ages since I have posted anything...and I am sorry for that. Life has been a bit crazy here. I am trying to graduate this semester with my masters...and it is going to be a little close to defend my thesis by the deadline for May graduation (March 13). BUT...all things aside, you have to have life in balance...and I cannot work all the time...and in some of that remainder time, I would love to bake/cook.


Anyways, I digress. This week's TWD recipe pick was World Peace Cookies. Jessica of cookbookhabit chose the recipe this week, and should you want to make them, you can buy Dorie Greenspan's book Baking from my Home to Yours or get the recipe from Jessica's website.


Now before we start, I have to say that my husband LOVED these cookies. I will be surprised if there are any more of them by end of day tomorrow (and I wasn't done cooking them until Monday night around 11pm...see hilarious picture above...we had the munchies so we were cooking bacon and baking cookies all after 10:30pm). He kept saying he liked them but wouldn't come out and say he really liked them, but kept eating them...actually I took a bite of one and then set it down so I could finish cutting the cookies for the second batch...I turn around and he ate the rest of my cookie. Seems he can't keep his hands off them. He wouldn't even bring them to work to share because in his mind I hadn't made enough for us and them (even though I made a full batch).


So if all that didn't peak your interest. You should really make these cookies. They are great, especially with coffee in the morning...yum. I made these exactly to the directions and had no difficulty. Although I was looking through some of the other TWDers blogs and I saw one where they put some espresso powder and cappuccino chips...which sounds divine. So I might go with that variation next time.



Corn and Pepper Muffins
Also here are the pictures from the Corn and Pepper Muffins. They were alright...but as silly as it is...I am a Jiffy fan. I like my cornbread undefiled my extraneous ingredients. The muffins were good, it is just not what I think of when I think cornbread...and I was expecting cornbread. But thanks anyways to Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake for getting me to bake outside my comfort zone. If you like stuff in your cornbread (and like sweet cornbread, this one does have sugar) then you should try this one out. Check out Rebecca's blog or Dorie's book for the recipe.



Turns out I thought I had a can of corn...but all I had was creamed corn. Sigh...such is life.


So my sweet husband strained the creamed corn for me (because I was quickly falling apart...halfway in the middle and super stressed out...and we have no canned corn??).


Also I used a cast iron muffin tins...I personally think cornbread belongs in cast iron.



And here is a pic of the muffins with the soup we had with it. Not chili...mainly because I didn't have any time to make the chili. I can't wait until school is over and I have more time.


Up next week: Floating Islands...hmm sounds intriguing.