Caramel-Walnut Oatmeal Bars

OK, as much as I love chocolate, sometimes one just craves for caramel. Here is a simple recipe that incorporates that caramel craving while adding some nutritional value, oats. These bars are absolutely delicious and will certainly satisfy your sweet tooth while not harming your waistline. OK I'm all about indulging here and there, but this bar is definitely healthy, I swear! The caramel just oozes throughout the bar and the extra nuts we added really give the bar the extra crunch without drying the dessert. This recipe makes a decent portion that can be cut into small pieces to share with your neighbor.

Here is the recipe:

Layered Hazlenut Cake with Nutella and Coffee buttercream

Hello fellow bakers! For Siddharth's annual Super Bowl party, he asked for a layered cake for dessert. For this dessert, I made a two-layered white cake with a generous layer of nutella in the middle to give the cake some softness and extra sweetness. The trick for making this cake look nice is to make the layers and let it harden the nutella layer harden in the fridge for a little bit. Then ice your cake with this delicious buttercream. I chose coffee buttercream after heading back from Dunkin Donuts. Hazlenuts and coffee? Oh yes that would work! I'm not going to include my coffee buttercream recipe because I ran into a few problems, but I strongly suggest browsing the other blogs like Joy of Baking or Browneyedbaker; they always inspire us for recipes.

We bought these chocolate covered coffee beans from Ithaca Coffee Co. located just down the street from Siddharth's apartment to use to decorate. Siddharth also made a hazlenut brittle that was also to die for.

Recipe is as follows:

Chewy chocolate chip cookies

OK, chocolate chip cookies are simple and easy to make, right? But don't you hate it when your cookies aren't as chewy as you would like? Well, I've done some experimenting and here is a recipe that will guarantee you chewy chocolate chip cookies! The secret? Freeze the dough before you bake!

Choco Pie

Emeril Lagassi inspires a lot of our cooking. This recipe was inspired from his Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate pie (see it here). Hawaiian Vintage chocolate is a brand of chocolate that has been aged before processing, similar to fine wine. For those who do not have access to this type of chocolate, you can use any type of chocolate, but I would suggest something moderately priced. I used Lindt's chocolate, YUM! No worries, this pie did not require heavy baking techniques. I used a simple pie crust made from my Oreos (minus the icing) and honey graham crackers. For the chocolate filling, I mixed in toffee bits to give it extra texture and flavor, but you can substitute it with nuts (pecans sound good here) or peanut butter bits. After a bit of cooking on the stove top, the pie is chilled for a few hours in the fridge before serving to your hungry guests. The pie filling was absolutely divine and the pie crust surprisingly cut down the sweetness a lot, allowing one to have more than one slice. Here's the recipe:

Lavender Shortbread cookies

It's tea time, and we know the perfect cookie you can have for such occasion. We love all teas, especially English black teas (well they are really teas from India, but the idea of tea time and milk with tea came from the British). Siddharth loves shortbread cookies and we found dried lavender petals at an Asian food store so we figured it would make a great cookie combination. These cookies are great alone, but better when dipped in tea. Lavender might be hard to find, but you can use other floral aromas or citrus zest. Here's the recipe (adapted from London Foodie in New York):

Happy Fall Apple Turnovers!

Happy fall everyone! Autumn is in the air, and this year, it's a great season to apple pick. I just recently inherited more than 5lbs of Macintosh apples. Now, let me preface this: I can eat 1-2 apples a day, but 5lbs of apples is a lot. So here's a recipe for apple turnovers, a perfect baked goody to be enjoyed as a snack or an on-the-go breakfast during the week. This recipe is really easy because it utilizes puff pastry dough that gives the apple turnover flakey crust while pocketing the apples in its caramel sauce. You can skip the hard part by buying frozen puff pastry dough. I used Pepperidge Farm's pastry dough that I thawed out for 10 minutes on the counter. 

The recipe follows: 

Swirled Goat Cheese and Caramel and Walnut Brownies - the gooey kind

Listen up, bakers! This recipe is to die for, the brownies are dense but gooey, not cakey like Duncan Hines (sorry!). This recipe was completely thought out by Siddharth and it's great. The brownies are gooey and the caramel gives the extra zing to the chocolate, although I must warn you, it will require some work and a lot of patience! The goat cheese and the caramel really compliment each other, with the goat cheese and the walnuts cutting the sweetness. I'm not a huge brownie fan to begin with, but the texture of these brownies was enough to convert me. Adding walnuts gives the extra crunch as well!

Here is the recipe:

Got berries? Make a crumble!

It's still summer and you've probably been buying pints and pints of berries because they are still in season. But what happens if you can't eat them all in time and the berries get all wrinkle-y and not bright in color anymore? Well here is a simple recipe that you can try. It's probably the easiest summer dessert you can remember, just remember the number 4 because every measured quantity is a multiple of 4.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

Who doesn't love cornbread? And who would have thought to make corn muffins with cornmeal? These muffins have the same texture as corn bread but it has a coffeecake crumble crust that is absolutely delicious, especially from the sweetness of the berries and the extra honey. This recipe calls for cornmeal which is readily available in your cereal/baking goods aisle.

This recipe is easy as pie and with summer season coming along, we all have access to the best berries of the season. I chose blueberries because they are everywhere and Siddharth loves blueberries. I adapted this recipe from Martha Stewart, and you must check it out. Here is the recipe. 

Praline Pound Cake

Greetings fellow bakers! I apologize for the lack of communication for the past months, but no worries, I am posting some recipes that you will love. 

First off, for the Heat vs. Mavericks game, I wanted to do a southern dessert for the party, to go along with our "Go Mavs, boo Heat" theme. After browsing through Paula Deen's repertoire of southern baking, I was inspired to make a praline pound cake. Pralines are a big thing in Texas, so I thought this dessert will suit our Texas-themed party quite well. This dessert ended up being the biggest hit of the night, bigger than the Mavs beating the Heat.

For the recipe, I used a bundt pan but I'm sure you can substitute with a regular cake pan, just adjust the baking times. Make the cake first, then the praline sauce. Read on for the recipe!

German Chocolate Cake with Coconut-Pecan Frosting and Chocolate Ganache

2 missions were accomplished today: baking a cake all by myself and tasting German Chocolate cake. This recipe is actually Bobby Flay's so I had some high expectations this will be good. The cake was so moist and flavorful, you'll love it.

His original recipe for the frosting called for a coconut-pecan cajeta which is a thickened syrup made by goat's milk. Unfortunately goats milk is not readily available in typical supermarkets, so I substituted it with whole milk.When I tried his frosting, it didn't turn out very well and the milk curdled really fast, so I opted for a different type of frosting with coconut milk with coconut and nuts (see below).
 
There are other substitutions that I made to help those bakers who do not have access to certain ingredients. Dutch processed cocoa is also hard to find at ordinary supermarkets. I did some research and found that you can Dutch processed cocoa is cocoa powder with alkaline to neutralize the acid in the cocoa. Thus, we can substitute this with regular cocoa but add an additional teaspoon or two of baking soda. To be more accurate, you want to substitute equal measurements of Dutch processed cocoa with regular cocoa and add 1/8 teaspoon per every 3 tablespoons of cocoa.

The other substitution is buttermilk. Unless you make quite often with buttermilk, you don't need to make the extra trip to purchase it. Just substitute equal amounts of buttermilk with regular milk and add 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup of milk. Let that sit for 5 minutes to allow the acid to react.

This modified recipe makes 2 9-inch cakes that will be divided to make 4 layers.

Tricia's Magic Bars

Magic bars are composed of 4-6 layers of goodness. The most common type of Magic bars consist of a graham cracker crumb base followed by layers of coconut, chocolate chips and nuts. Here is a modified recipe that consisted of all the sweets that Siddharth and I like. This is a VERY simple and easy recipe that pretty much anyone can do because it does not require any preparation (no cooking, no measuring, or extensive mixing). It is all about what you use for your layers- the order of the layers doesn't even make a difference (except the coconut and nuts layer which I will discuss later). You can also add more than 6 layers if you desire, then it would be almost a sweet lasagna!

White Chocolate Cupcakes with Irish Cream Glaze

For St. Patty's day, Tricia attempted to incorporate some Irish into her cupcakes. After some trial and error with baking times and temperatures, she managed to create these delicious, super-dense white chocolate cupcakes. To "Irish" it up, she dyed them green and glazed them with a thing Irish Cream-flavored ganache. The dinosaurs? I don't know - you'd have to ask Tricia! See the recipe on the next page...