gimme something sweet

who doesn't love cookies!! yummy buttery, crispy and chewy warm fresh the oven cookies... just one whiff of that intoxicating smell radiating from the oven is enough to send me over the edge...

ahh... i love them so... so when my hubs asked me to bake some up, i was in the kitchen in a flash... however, when i got there that's when the problem arose... what kind of cookies am i to bake...

so after poking around the pantry, i decided to go with some yummy oatmeal raisin cookies... hmmm... raisins... however i didn't just have good ol' plain sunmaids... i only had dark chocolate yogurt covered raisins... so much better!! and hmmm... what about some toffee bits... dude... killer f-ing cookies...

i went with the traditional quaker oatmeal raisin cookies... but put my own spin on them... i added more butter, used only brown sugar and only egg whites...

Ingredients
1 stick of butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups quaker oats
1 cup raisins

1/3 cup of toffee bits

directions:

1. heat oven to 350°F.

2. in large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed until creamy

3. add eggs and vanilla; beat well

4. add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and mix well

5. add oats and raisins and toffee bits; mix well
6. drop dough by rounded tbsps onto cookie sheets
7. bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light golden brown, cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack

on the last day of summer...

anyone else boo-hooing about the end of summer... i know i'm not the only one out there... so here's a sweet summer farewell treat... no more sunning at the beach or tanning poolside... no more late morning wake ups... time to put away the skimpy swim suits and pull out the over sized comfy sweaters...
i was going to go with something really summery... but hey, when the no more summer blues kicked in, i automatically went into chocolate and peanutbutter mode...

so i went with a browned butter vanilla bean cake, smeared with layers of chocolate peanutbutter creamcheese frosting, and outlined with a dark chocolate whipped ganache...

i used the vanilla cake recipe from last post, except i browned the butter with a split vanilla bean in it... i used the bean seeds in the batter too... which created a wonderful buttery vanilla taste explosion...

so long summer... until next year...

sweet deliciousness!!

unluckily for me i live near a sweet little hotspot known as "wawa"... if you've have no idea what i'm talking about, it's a deli of sorts... known for its steaming hot coffee, quick deli sandwiches, that interesting "zing" sound the register makes when it rings up an item, and of course their doughnuts... oh man, they are fantastic...ahh... just thinking about the blueberry cake doughnut...

anyways... i love wawa's doughnuts... and i've been meaning to make some of my very own, but i've been slacking in the doughnut motivation department... that is until a few days ago, when i feasted my eyes on these... banana doughnuts by tartelette... and i was done for...

now i had a fire lit under my little tush...

it was time...

time to make the doughnuts... (can i be any dorkier)

i followed tartelette's recipe, but i halved it... and they are really delicious... but instead of topping them with dried banana streusel i went with hazelnuts and toffee chips, and a few with vanilla frosting and sprinkles...

as for now my doughnut hunger has been curbed... lets see how long it lasts...

happy 1st birthday lily!

the day following ben's christening, i had the privilege of baking cupcakes for a very nice woman who was celebrating her daughters 1st birthday... and guess what?! they were my first paying customer... i was so freakin excited!! i've never felt such a combination of excitement and nervousness... i've been baking for years, and for the most part they've been just made for family and friend consumption, luckily for me my family is as eager to eat my creations and i am to bake them...

so as i was saying... i finally had a customer... this is a whole new ballgame for me... but hopefully this is a beginning to what i hope is my career...

a few posts ago i posted some cupcakes i had made for my little dudes, with white and blue swirled frosting, and thats basically what i did for these, except that i used a combination of light pink and white frosting and cute little flowers (i'm getting better and faster at making them, the flowers that is... ) and i once again used my new favorite vanilla cake recipe... it's so DELICIOUS...

sweet vanilla cake:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

8 ozs. melted butter

1 cup of sugar

3 large egg whites

1 tbsp vanilla

1 1/4 cups vanilla yogurt (i've been using stonyfield organic french vanilla)

* this recipe was abapted from "lovin from the oven's" confetti cupcakes, which is a super aweseome recipe... i added 1 more egg white and 2 more tbsp's of butter to my recipe... which added extra fluffiness and moistness... i love this cake recipe...

directions:

1. preheat the oven to 325

2. sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt and set aside

3. in the bowl of a mixer, combine the sugar and melted butter and mix until combined

4. add the egg whites, and mix until light

5. add vanilla

6. alternately add the flour and the yogurt (begin and end with the flour), and mix just until all combined

7. bake for about 20 minutes, cool and enjoy!

happy birthday lily and happy baking everyone!

sweet blessings benjamin

sweet blessings to my little benjamin who was just baptised this past weekend...

for dessert i strayed from my usual fare of cupcakes, and decided to go with a simple, elegant and of course delicious sheet cake...

the cake was layers of buttery vanilla cake... the middle was a layer of vanilla bean creamcheese buttercream, slathered with a layer of homemade salt caramel and topped with toffee chips... and the frosting was again the vanilla bean creamcheese buttercream...

it was simple, delicious, moist and fork tender... and the combination of flavors was just mindblowing...

look at that cutie... i could eat him up just like the cake...

that's me and my baby... oh how i love him so!

cupcakes for my boys

well, i don't really need a reason to want to bake cupcakes... but since ben just turned 7 months, and jack is just jack, i decided to bake some cupcakes just for my little fellas... so here they are... yummy buttery vanilla cupcakes, with swirls of white and blue cream cheese-buttercream (which is my hubs new favorite frosting... it has that scrumptious cream cheese tang along with the rich yet subtle butter taste... both are wonderfully complimentary to each other...)

so here's to my boys...