TWD – Chewy, Chunky Blondies

AKA: “What’s a blondie?”
AKA: the holy grail of all things loaded!!

These have everything from nuts to shredded coconut to chocolate chips and even butterscotch chips in them. And a few glugs of bourbon may or may not have found its way into this blondie. I am not available for comment.

Ahem. BOY, were these good! I have 2 handfuls of people who enjoyed them rather thoroughly. And NOOOO it wasn’t because they were boozy. My friends have more class and dignity than that. Or so they lead me to believe.

But it didn’t seem like anyone really knew what a blondie WAS! I always thought that it was a vanilla version of a brownie. Blondie, brownie… it makes sense to me! But everyone was in agreement that it was more of a cross between a brownie and a chocolate chip cookie. Who am I to argue semantics with a handful of boozy friends that were praising my treats? I’m not above that.

As far as prep work goes, there’s a lot of chopping involved (unless you don’t mind hauling out the food processor) but once everything is chopped and ready to go, these are thrown together quite easily. I made these and my go-to brownies (I’ll get the recipe up… eventually) in the same afternoon. They did take a bit longer for them to bake up, probably because of the glugs of bourbon that may or may not have been in the dough, which gave them a more solid, crunchy-esque top rather than the crakled, brownie like tops I imagined seeing.

Overall, I think these were a hit. I enjoyed them as did everyone else. That deserves a repeat in my book 🙂

Please disregard my alien looking, freakishly orange butterscotch chips. I promise they didn’t look like that the night I made them!

A big thanks goes out to Nicole of Cookies on Friday for choosing this recipe. Head on over to her blog for the recipe, its a good’n!

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TWD – Lots of Ways Banana Cake (sorta)

When a recipe tells me that there’s ‘lots of ways’ to make one certain recipe… I’m totally on board. You see, I used to be afraid of making my own nips and tucks to recipes for the fear that whatever-it-was-to-be wouldn’t turn out. I never took any creative opportunities. I was a weenie.

Well, I’ve been baking for a while and making substitutions and changing things around don’t irk me as they used to. I welcome the creative opportunities!

*The natural light makes my heart smile*

So I can make this cake and choose to use buttermilk instead of coconut milk. I can choose to throw in the rum (hey, boozy = better). I can choose to use semi-ripe bananas (because that’s what I had, ha). I can choose to completely skip the coconut and dried fruit and throw in an ungodly amount of mini chocolate chips. I can choose to bake these up in 6 mini cakes and a sorry excuse for a bundt cake. I can choose to skip the frosting all together. But daydream about a silky ganache to top the next bundt I make out of this recipe.

And that I did. All of it. I’m a rebel 😉

This cake is really delicious!! Its super moist and tastes like your very own little slice of banana (and chocolate, in my case) heaven. I half expected the nutmeg to be a bit overpowering but I was surprised that it was merely an afterthought of each bite.

I can only imagine what it would taste like with coconut rum, toasted coconut and dried pineapples (or even crushed fresh pineapple!), coconut rum glaze sprinkled with more toasted coconut. Oh my, I think I have inspiration for the next time I bake this cake. Oh yes, there will be a next time 🙂

A big thanks goes out to Kimberly of Only Creative Opportunities for choosing this recipe. I think she secretly knew that I loved banana cakes/breads. Head on over to her blog for the recipe!

Up next week: Chewy Chunky Blondies. Oh these were a HIT!!

TWD – Coconut Tea Cake

I’ll go ahead and keep this short in hopes that I’ll save some time and get some other posts typed up because I have some pretty yummy stuff waiting in the wings 🙂

This cake isn’t exactly my cup of tea, mainly because the texture throws me off. It might be my fault and I could have over-baked it (although I baked mine ten mins less than the lesser time) and it seemed to teeter between moist and dry.

The coconut flavor wasn’t as prominent as I thought it was supposed to be and the rum was a wasted liquid. Maybe my rum just sucks? But I didn’t taste it. At. All. Don’t get me wrong, this is a tasty cake. My co-workers seemed to like it and I sent 95% of this cake to work with the fiance and he said that “it went very fast and was liked very much.”

All in all it came together quickly and baked up pretty. Dust with a bit of confectioners sugar, serve alongside a cup of your favorite tea and you’re in business.

Thanks to Carmen of Carmen Cooks for choosing this recipe and getting some of my coconut out of the freezer 🙂 Her blog is set to private, but you can find the recipe here!

Up next week: Mocha-Walnut Marbled Bundt Cake

TWD – My Best Chocolate Chip (etc!) Cookies

I think that I have a ‘chocolate chip cookie curse.’

No matter how many different recipes I make, how hard I try, underbake, overbake, mix like crazy, just incorporate, freeze, chill, don’t chill… it doesn’t matter WHAT I do, my cookies never come out the way I want them to. And it ONLY happens with chocolate chip cookies.

The are flat as discs. It seems like all the dough falls to the baking sheet and leaves the chips exposed. If anyone can remedy this problem for me, I’d love you forever. I’d even send you a package of the beautiful cookies, scout’s honor!!

Aside from my displeasure at the appearance of these, they tasted great. I made 4 different versions (posted above, respectively): regular ole chocolate chip cookies, CCC with walnuts, CCC with coconut and raisins, and Chocolate CCC. I also used bittersweet, semi-sweet and milk chocolate chips/chunks for variety.

The coconut raisin variation was dubbed “the best cookies I’ve ever had” by a coworker. None of the cookies lasted very long, which is a good sign. So I’ll be making these again, nipping and tucking until they look like they do in the book. I’m OCD like that. 😀

Thanks to Kait of Kait’s Plate for picking these. Head on over to her blog for the recipe and the the TWD blogroll to see the different variations of a classic.

MSC – Coconut Cupcakes… OMG yum.

Let’s start this post off by noting that I was never a fan of coconut. Unless of course it was in the shape of an Almond Joy. But coconut cookies, cakes, anything sprinkled with the waxy, oddly textured stuff was shunned by me. I quickly turned my nose up in disgust and pranced away to play with barbies.

I am reformed! Can I get a hallelujah? I’d like to think that my adult taste buds are finally coming in and I am starting to branch out into different tastes and textures.

These cupcakes have opened up my mind. I must admit that I was a bit hesitant to try one but I sighed in that beautiful aroma and ogled the light, springy cupcake and I could no longer resist. Coconut or not, I was eating one! (After all, I had to even out the batch. Odd numbers bother me. I’m quirky, alright?)

And it was indeed perfect. Soft and springy and fluffy. Warm and delicious. Hints of coconut flavor, but not over-powering. Oh the joy. And that was without the frosting.

Now, the frosting, I wasn’t too crazy about. It had a great texture, but even when I added vanilla extract, it tasted like it was still missing something. It’s a great simply-throw-together type recipe but it needs to be tweaked, flavor wise.

I halved the recipe and yielded 9 cupcakes and halved the frosting as well and had wayyy too much left over. I am no cupcake artist, but I am rather proud of the way these turned out! PRAISE ME!! *imitates Invader Zim*

Now when I am offered a coconut treat, I’ll politely take one with an open mind. And then prance off to play with my barbies 🙂

A great big thank you goes out to Jennifer of Cinema Cupcakes for opening my coco-nutty world 😀