Time for more sweet treats! We've got a mix of chocolate, sweet potatoes, coconut, lemon and honey! It's been a long time since I've made really good brownies from scratch and I think I found my new recipe. I also made one of our favorites from the past couple years, the coconut chocolate chip blondies as well as a few more new recipes! One of which I've had on my "to bake" list for over a year - whoops!
Better Than Boxed Chocolate Fudge Brownies
I made these on a day when Christian casually mentioned wanting brownies. You don't have to tell me twice! Jenna's recipes have yet to disappoint me so I decided to try her brownie recipe. This is definitely one I will be remaking. They're super fudgy and have a perfectly flaky top to add a bit of crunch.
Flourless Chocolate Cake
I made this as our Valentine's week treat. Normally I would make chocohotopots but Tessa made this her February baking challenge and I LOVE flourless chocolate cake, so I decided to give it a go! We don't have an 8in round pan so I decided to use my fun heart shaped dutch oven from Home Goods since I would have to adjust the cooking time no matter what I used. I wasn't able to get it out of the dutch oven so no pretty picture of it on a plate, luckily the dutch oven is pretty.
Sweet Potato Muffins with Cinnamon Sugar Topping
We had a ton of leftover sweet potatoes after a dinner I made (mental note: we only need 1 sweet potato, haha) so I decided to bake them into muffins! I used walnuts instead of pecans and added chocolate chips to a few. I wish I added chocolate chips to them all, but we weren't sure we'd like the flavor combination. Overall they were tasty and a good way to use up leftovers!
Chocolate Coconut Blondies
I've featured this dessert a couple times in my past baking roundups. It's always a hit, even if the center is a bit under-cooked for Christian sometimes. I personally love the gooey center, so he gets all the edge pieces, ha ha.
Honey Lemon Cake
I've been wanting to make this cake since I saw Elizabeth make it on Ranch to Table. Christian loves honey and lemon so I figured this would be a perfect treat for him. This first go around wasn't the best, the butter didn't cooperate when I was whipping it, I assumed because the eggs weren't fully at room temp yet. I continued on anyway and the cake came out a little gummy. The flavor was there though! After my (sort of) fail I re-watched the segment on Discovery+ and her butter/egg combo looked the same as mine so maybe that wasn't the issue. I may not have mixed the honey in enough or mixed enough when adding the milk. Next time I'll do better, I hope!
Double Chocolate Chip Muffins
Another case of, "I have buttermilk from another recipe that I need to use." I have had this recipe saved for a while but since I don't normally have buttermilk on hand it's not something I can just whip up anytime. The recipe also uses sour cream which Christian and I HATE. But I always keep the little sour cream packets we get in our HelloFresh (get a free box!) or Blue Apron meals for this purpose. We won't use it for the meals but if I can hide it in a baked good, I'll use it.
Christian and I are not huge on Valentine's Day, but we do buy cute cards and make sure to have a delicious meal to celebrate. When Valentine's Day is during the week that usually means I make one of our favorite meals or we grab takeout. I'm always up for trying new things, so this year we're including some delicious treats from Wildgrain.
Wildgrain offers an artisanal bread subscription box ($89 + free shipping) for you to liven up meals at home. They are the first bake-from-frozen delivery service for breads, pastries and pasta! And the best part? Everything is made by small-batch bakers and pasta makers across the country so you'll be supporting small businesses. Each month you'll get a delicious selection of goodies to keep in your freezer until you are ready to enjoy them.
One of our usual date night spots is a fancy Italian restaurant so I decided to recreate that experience at home with help from the items in our Wildgrain box. I started by baking the sourdough spelt loaf right out of the freezer - it only took 24 minutes. This was my first time having spelt bread and it was very good. I couldn't see a huge different between regular flour, but it definitely had the sourdough flavor. I had only recently heard of spelt, thanks to the Great British Bake Off. Spelt is an ancient grain that was one of the first species of wheat used to make bread. Wildgrain bakers also use wild yeast meaning making these crusty loaves can take days from start-to-finish. A labor of love that you can see, feel and taste! We enjoyed the bread with butter and pesto, yum!
Our main course used fresh tonnarelli pasta. Since it's a special occasion I decided to make shrimp scampi, such a simple dish but feels very fancy. Or is that just me? Anyway, I made a sauce with butter, olive oil, garlic and chicken broth before adding in the shrimp, some red pepper flakes and finishing it off with lemon juice and parsley. Delish!
Our meal ended with two ooey gooey giant chocolate chunk cookies. They were loooooaded with chocolate, my favorite kind of cookie. I under-baked them just a little so they were nice and soft and full of chocolate flavor.
We can't wait to try the rest of our box! There's still a plain sourdough loaf, fettuccine, 4 croissants, 2 more cookies and a cranberry-pecan loaf (so excited for this!) Plus we still have 2 more portions of tonnarelli pasta in the freezer. So much food!
Wildgrain is a great way to get homemade sourdough without all the effort. I love making bread, but I am far too lazy for sourdough. There is so much that goes into the process that I don't have the patience for. I also haven't mastered shaping my non-sourdough doughs yet. Maybe one day I'll get the hang of it! But for now, I have Wildgrain to provide tasty, crusty, delicious bread that I just have to pull out of the freezer and bake!
February boxes can include a sourdough loaf, rosemary garlic sourdough loaf (YUM!,) fettuccine pasta, english muffins, cherry pie bites and more! The Mixed Wildgrain Box includes sourdough bread, hand-cut pasta, and artisanal pastries. The Bakery Box includes breakfast baked goods, sourdough bread, and artisanal pastries. The subscription works much like other meal delivery service. You order your box, it's delivered for free each month and you can pause, adjust frequency or cancel at any time. Rescheduling your delivery is also possible if you'll be away. They even warn you 4 days before you will be charged in case you forget to skip a month. Right now you can receive four free croissants with each box (for the life of your membership.)
We all know I love a brand that gives back, and for every new Wildgrain member, 6 meals are donated to The Greater Boston Food Bank. Over 120,000 meals have been donated so far! If you'd like to try out Wildgrain, use code MEGB10OFF for $10 off your first box!
*This post was made in partnership with Apogee Agency. All opinions on the product are my own and have not been influenced by this sponsorship. Thank you for supporting brands I feature* #WildgrainFebruary #sponsored
This roundup includes some treats I made for Christmas as well as some cookies I made with a Christmas gift. So even though we're well into the New Year, we're going back to the holidays a bit! Also a "healthy" treat for breakfast and an old standby cookie.
Turtle Thumbprint Cookies
I made these for our Christmas Eve celebrations and they didn't disappoint. I probably could have added more caramel based on the recipe photos but I did the amount it called for, haha. Maybe the cookies in the photo are larger for better visual effect?
Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze
We made this last Christmas and Christian wanted to make it again this year. We also had a request for it because my sister in law loooooved it last year. I wasn't going to include this in today's roundup since it's a pretty unique thing and I've made it already, but that just shows how tasty it is!
(Customized) Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies
One of my Christmas gifts this year was Tessa of Handle the Heat's "Perfect Cookie Kit." It comes with 2 spatulas, 3 cookie scoops, a 6-piece cookie cutter set, cookie "adventure booklet" and access to her Perfect Cookie Course! (I love the cute sprinkle print on the spatulas and cookie cutters.) I decided to follow her adventure booklet for my first bake using the set and customized her bakery style cookie recipe to make them "extra soft" and swapped out some chocolate chip cookies for mini candy coated chips. They came it SOOOO GOOD. Christian said top 1 or 2 cookie I've ever made. Keep in mind, I've made the plain Bakery Style cookies before and those also came out amazing, but there's just something about this kit that made them more magical, haha! Or maybe it's because I've had more practice making cookies, you decide ;)
Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins
Christian wants to try some "healthier" treats this year with less refined sugar so I tested out this blueberry muffin recipe that uses honey as the sweetening. You could definitely tell there was no sugar, but they were tasty and a nice easy breakfast or snack. I added oats to the top of some (as per the recipe,) left a few plain and added some dark brown sugar to a few.
Blossom Cookies
If you can believe it, this was my first time making kiss cookies! We had some Grinch milk chocolate kisses that I mainly bought for decor (I don't like milk chocolate) so it seemed like a perfect way to actually use them as intended - for food! Ha ha. I did a half batch and made 2 of the 4 variations in the recipe. Chocolate and Peanut Butter! The recipe also has a Gingerbread and Sugar Cookie variation. They were so fun to make and it was very satisfying pushing the kisses into the warm cookies.
Funfetti Crumble Cake
One of my cousins was visiting from out of state recently and we had a family get together to finally meet her almost 1 year old. I figured I should make something a little festive and this funfetti crumble cake was the perfect choice. The crumble was a little weirdly flavored for everyone, probably because it was dark brown sugar, and was a little too sweet. I probably won't make it again but it was fun to try!
So much baking, so little time! We've got some Thanksgiving themed bakes in here as well as some any-time-of-year treats. We'll see what kind of things I whip up for Christmas in my next baking roundup!
Soft Triple Chocolate Cookies
I'm still trying to bake my way through Tessa of Handle the Heat's cookie handbook and made her triple chocolate cookies. The website doesn't seem to be on her website but you could try her Double Chocolate Cookies instead! They were sooo soft and delicious!
Autumnal Birthday Cake
We visited Christian's family for Thanksgiving and this was our contribution to the table. Maple cake with a maple meringue frosting coated in pecan pieces. It was pretty good, although sometimes too maple-y for me. Christian loved it.
Apple Cider Cake
This was a fun one! Back in October I bought this adorable NordicWare Autumn Delights Cakelet Pan because it was on sale for about $20 at the King Arthur flagship store. I wasn't sure if I'd find a recipe for it, but I needed it. You know how that is, right? When we visited Christian's Mom for Thanksgiving I decided to try this Apple Cider Cake recipe and bake some of the batter in the pan. The recipe was for a bundt cake so I figured it would work here as well. So we had a pan of cute cakelets and then a larger loaf.
The Easiest Pizza You'll Ever Make (King Arthur Flour)
The day after Thanksgiving (after having leftovers for lunch) we made some pizza dough for dinner. The recipe makes 4 pizzas so we each got our own. I believe this is the first time we've made this particular recipe, but it's fairly similar to all the others out there. Christian and I did pepperoni and bacon but his Mom & her husband used the turkey & ham leftovers to make some fun pizzas! I only took a picture of mine though, haha. We baked them for about 15 minutes at 500 degrees and they were so tasty!
K.I.S.S Brownies
I had some buttermilk in the freezer (from Christian's birthday cake) that I needed to use up so I found this brownie recipe for a bit of it. I tried baking them in one of my Le Creuset baking dishes but I think the shape made them come out a little weird. I baked them 10 minutes longer than the recipe said and they were still very soft and gooey (not a problem for me, but Christian likes brownie edges and very cooked brownies, ha ha.) Probably won't make them again - mostly because I don't keep buttermilk on hand - but they were tasty!
Perfect Buttermilk Biscuits
To use more of the aforementioned buttermilk, I decided to finally try to make "real" biscuits. Normally I do quick drop biscuit recipes but this one required me to do the pat and letter fold method, it was fun, but very messy. I made a few of them look like Christmas trees but it was too annoying to use the cutter so I switched to squares after. I baked a few fresh and the rest were frozen so we could have biscuits on demand whenever we need!
