Easy Peasy Baking

Hmmmmm I want to say that these chocolate chip cookies came from a NY Times Cooking article...I’ll maybe find it eventually but they look a little thinner than most other chocolate chip cookies I’ve made before in the past.

I spy some espresso powder:

Brown sugar in the cookie base:

Chopped chocolate and shavings:

Flaky salt on top:

Flat chocolate chip cookies:

If you have leftover pumpkin puree, I highly recommend these adorable mummy pumpkin cookies. They are seriously the perfect Halloween treat and very fitting for the Fall season. Look at the little edible eyes!

All the butter for the pastry part:

Basically pie dough:

Pumpkin puree filling:

Bases for the mummy cookies:

Adding the pumpkin filling:

Dough strips added:

The eyes!

A pile of mummy cookies:

And once again I can’t remember where this recipe came from, but it looks an awful lot like olive oil rosemary polenta cake. If I had to guess, I would say this is from one of Smitten Kitchen’s cookbooks.

What are those green specks? Rosemary after the food processor?

Looks polenta-y:

Decorated with some rosemary sprigs:

Mochi is so easy to make and I love matcha so the combination of the two seemed ideal. I’m pretty sure this is from Molly Yeh’s blog with the matcha twist from the mochi I made before.

Splash of matcha powder:

A little tint of green:

Pre-bake:

The mochi is set:

Little pieces of matcha mochi:

I discovered Butter & Brioche on my Instagram feed (thanks Instagram for collecting my browsing history on baked goods) and was immediately drawn to the beautiful food photography. These seriously double layer salted espresso fudge brownies looked insanely good.

Butter and sugar:

Cocoa powder mix:

Frosting prep:

Batter into the pan:

Some marbling in the brownies:

Messy frosting:

Cross-section view (the frosting is basically the same thickness of the brownie!):

I love carrot cake and I’ve been a huge fan of Hummingbird Bakery’s carrot cake which I’ve made multiple times in the past. Smitten Kitchen upped the game, though, by adding graham cracker crumbs to what otherwise would be a fairly traditional carrot cake.

Graham cracker crumbs in the mix:

Wet ingredients:

Grated carrots into the mix:

One of the layers:

Three-layer cake decorated:

Cross-section view:

I’m a big fan of Smitten Kitchen’s olive oil cake, so the chocolate olive oil cake seemed like a good chocolate-y version to make.

Good amount of cocoa powder:

Chocolate-y goodness:

Looks like a big pot of chocolate:

Chocolate cake!

Ingredients for the glaze:

Drenching the cake:

So one downside of waiting so long to catch up on blog posts is that I sometimes can’t remember where I found certain recipes. Based on the pictures, these look like white chocolate macadamia nut blondies.

Chopped filling:

Brownie/blondie base with espresso powder:

Looks like one egg...

Flour:

Added filling:

Into the pan:

Very toasty golden brown:

I never thought I would be this extra, but since we were going camping, I figured we could have extra fancy s’mores. Smitten Kitchen’s graham cracker recipe looked pretty do-able, so why not, right?

Brown sugar flour and butter:

A little bit of honey to sweeten:

Rolled out dough:

Wavy edges:

Sprinkled with cinnamon sugar:

Homemade graham crackers!

I am so behind on posting, but I’m going to try to catch up especially since I’m a year behind!

For 4th of July last year, my cousin was hosting a barbecue, so I naturally volunteered to bring dessert. Smitten Kitchen fortunately had just the thing to make - a colorful, patriotic flag cake.

The basics of butter and sugar:

Whipping in the eggs:

Batter in the pan:

A little toasty on top:

Frosted cake:

All the berries on top:

When I was evaluating various recipes for the Passover Seder dinner at our friends’ place, I had come across Molly Yeh’s hazelnut and almond flour chocolate chip cookie cake. I ended up going with Smitten Kitchen’s lighter than air chocolate cake, but I’m glad I made this chocolate chip cookie cake later on.

Easy to make when the flour is ready to go:

One egg:

Chocolate chips:

Into the cookie pan:

One big cookie cake:

A nice little slice:

Since I had so much success with the copycat Levain Bakery dark chocolate chip cookies, I figured I’d give the regular chocolate chip cookies a try. Modern Honey also had a copycat recipe available.

I wasn’t as thrilled with the outcome and the recipe calls out specifically that Levain Bakery doesn’t use vanilla extract, and I’m not going to lie, but I felt like these copycat cookies could have used a healthy dose. Next time I’ll have to add a bit of vanilla extract to bring out some more flavor.

All the butter:

Dry ingredients:

Walnuts and chocolate chips:

Cookie dough ready for chilling:

Once again, monster cookie dough:

Nice and toasty:

Pretty on the cake stand:

My parents have always raved about Levain Bakery’s cookies, and even though I haven’t personally tried them, I was excited to replicate one of their cookies with Modern Honey’s copycat recipe. When I was reading through the recipe, it sounded a bit outrageous, but I figured why not!

Butter and sugar:

Stand mixer makes quick work:

A bit of cocoa powder:

Chocolate on chocolate:

Look at that cookie dough:

Monster mounds of cookie dough:

These are so heavy:

Ooey gooey on the inside:

I definitely went on an olive oil dessert kick this year, in part because it’s so easy to hand mix everything compared to butter. Smitten Kitchen has a delightful olive oil ricotta cake that’s basically a one-bowl recipe. I wasn’t drawn to the concord grape coulis pairing, so I found a straightforward strawberry sauce to use instead.

Everything in one bowl:

The dry ingredients:

Into the cake pan:

Nice golden top:

Start of the strawberry sauce:

Finally used the immersion blender:

Paired with the cake:

This year, my husband’s birthday coincided with the Passover dinner our friends were hosting, so I asked our friends if it would be okay if I helped provide a kosher dessert that could also double as a birthday cake. After browsing many recipes and getting the okay from our friends that both my two potential choices would be kosher for their Passover dinner, I settled on a chocolate cake from Smitten Kitchen.

So much chopping to break down the chocolate block:

Rich, melted chocolate:

So many egg yolks:

Looks like a custard filling:

Mmm chocolate and egg yolks:

Matching set of whipped egg whites:

Everything together:

Splitting into pans:

Nice and toasty:

Final product:

So I definitely went on a Molly Yeh rampage and made three recipes from her blog three weeks in a row. I was probably the most excited about this one, particularly because of the mochi. I love mochi and enjoy it as a topping on my frozen yogurt or shaved ice, so I was excited to try making mochi myself.

Equal parts sugar and sweet rice flour:

The coconut milk definitely looks full fat:

Everything all together:

It’s mochi!

Hoping to make it less sticky when cutting:

WHOAAAAAA a mound of mochi bits:

Popsicle ingredients:

Ready for the freezer:

My Valentine loves matcha, so I found this super easy recipe from Molly Yeh for brownies with a matcha glaze. These brownies are seriously super easy and if you don’t make the glaze, it’s a one bowl recipe!

Everything in one bowl:

And magically out of the oven come brownies:

The matcha glaze didn’t quite turn out: