This recipe comes from my absolutely most favourite food blog out there – How Sweet It Is.  Its author, Jessica, is my blogging hero – her recipes are foolproof and delicious, her pictures are gorgeous and as a bonus, she’s completely hilarious.  I always make sure I read her posts carefully so I don’t miss any of her funny details.

I make at least one of Jessica’s recipes each month, and I’ve definitely pinned more stuff from her than from any other site.  I really cannot recommend How Sweet It Is enough.

So now that I’ve convinced you to leave our blog and go visit that one, here’s a slightly adapted version of Jessica’s Oatmeal Peanut Butter Snack Squares.  I made a few tweaks based on the ingredients I had on hand and they turned out so wonderfully well that I’m probably going to make them again within the next 48 hours.  So, so good.

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These aren’t actual brownies, obviously.  They’re also not blondies, because blondies are caramel-y.  Instead, these are like the yellow cake version of brownies.  They’re dense and chewy and a nice little snack.  This is the kind of cake you leave on the counter and cut chunks from throughout the day.  It is NOT the kind of cake you ice and put candles on and present to someone for their birthday.

These were inspired by Cake Batter Blondies from The Girl Who Ate Everything.  I liked them a lot, but they use a cake mix and I wanted to try something similar from scratch.  So I adapted this recipe from Allrecipes and I’m extremely pleased with the result.  Quick easy cake.  I like it.

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Update: the sugar in the filling was incorrect – rather than one cup of white sugar it should be 1/2 a cup of brown sugar.  The recipe has been corrected to reflect this.

If you’re a food blogger then you understand how much work this can be.  By the time we’ve made a new recipe, adjusting and adapting to make sure it works and will taste good for our readers, the last thing we want to do is take pictures.  These cinnamon buns were so delicious, but neither Torie nor I was interested in photographing them – instead, we just wanted to serve them to guests at a breakfast potluck.

It’s a darn good thing one of the guests was a professional photographer!

Since Aaron of Rhymes With Orange Photography was at breakfast, and happened to have his equipment with him, we immediately took him up on his offer to take pictures of these cinnamon buns.   And of course, they’re totally awesome pics because he’s a pro and not, say, a random person with a semi-fancy camera who might know a little about lighting but that’s it (ie, me).

So, thanks for the pictures, Aaron!  You made these cinnamon buns look as good as they tasted.

And boy did they taste good!  Like, they’re the best cinnamon buns I’ve ever had and everyone at the potluck raved about them.  If you’re looking for a soft almost pastry-like bun… make these.  Now.  They’re adapted from Joy The Baker’s Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread and they are ridiculous.

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Gauging the success of your blog can be a challenge.  When you start from zero, any visitors or comments seem like a great victory.

I like to think, though, that being asked to write a guest post on someone else’s blog is a sign that you’re doing something right.  So Torie and I were delighted when DeAnn from The SIP Project asked us to participate in her new initiative, Dish & Serve.

The concept is that you make a favourite recipe, then share it with someone as a random act of kindness.  For our act of kindness, we gave these Chocolate-Dipped Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies to our friend Jess on her last day of work before starting a new job – read more about it in our guest post on DeAnn’s blog.

Whether you keep them for yourself or share them with someone else, these cookies are definitely worth making.  They’re adapted from the ever-amazing How Sweet It Is.

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I am incapable of buying brown sugar.  This should not be a difficult task – “buying brown sugar” is not complicated enough to ever be listed under Special Skills on a resume.  But I can’t seem to do it.

Twice I have accidentally purchased demerara sugar instead of regular brown sugar.  The first time was annoying; the second time I just felt like a complete moron because you’d think I’d have learned my lesson the first time.

Then, however, I learned to love demerara, in all its sticky, molasses-y goodness.  So when I decided to make hermit cookies, it seemed like a great time to pick up some demerara and make some caramel-y cookies.

Except that I picked up regular brown sugar instead.  Apparently I cannot tell the difference.  In my defence, I was a bit frazzled by the time I got to the baking aisle – I literally just fallen over in the bulk aisle while buying dates.  Some weird nerve things in my back have left my right leg a bit unpredictable at the moment and I stupidly crouched down to scoop some dates from the bottom row, putting all of my weight on my right leg, and toppled over.  Have you ever looked at the floor of a bulk aisle in a grocery store?  It’s dirty.  Very dirty.  And I had the pleasure of sitting on it.  Ick.

Anyway, after that I just wanted to get the heck out of there.  And in my rush to leave I grabbed regular brown sugar.  Even after I got home I had to examine the package in great detail because I was so sure I’d picked up the right stuff.  One day I’ll learn…

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I apologize upfront for my complete lack of elegance when it comes to drizzling chocolate..

 

I don’t even know if I can call this a recipe. Because it’s so easy and takes less than 5 minutes to make.  It doesn’t even use an oven. This is microwave- start to finish. It requires one bowl, a spoon, and a paper bag.

I’m having a busy, yet un-motivated week. So I ate a bunch of peanut butter popcorn. And now you can eat peanut butter popcorn and maybe later I will turn my oven on.

Unlike the regular S’more Popcorn, I choose to shape these into balls to create individual servings. This is helpful to keep oneself from eating an entire batch in one sitting.

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I started going to the gym about three times a week, starting about a month ago. My arms are getting some nice muscle tone, and my cardio endurance is up. I weighed myself today and found I had actually gained weight since starting the gym.  I told myself that I weigh more because I’m gaining muscle. But now that I’m writing this post, I’m starting to question the actual source of weight gain.

Muscle mass or Nutella Brownie Cups?

Little bit of column A, little bit of column B.

Guess I better hit the gym.

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Vanilla cake is not as easy to accomplish from scratch.  Not the way chocolate cake is. It’s easy for vanilla to seem bland or dry.  However, these cupcakes received a very good seal of approval. “I think this is the best vanilla cake I’ve ever had from scratch that didn’t come from a bakery.” I’ll take it.

But my favourite part of this recipe is the frosting. It’s half whipped cream so it’s light and fluffy and it perfectly complements the strawberry flavour.

Oh my other favourite part? These adorable cupcake wrappers, making them the perfect treat for Mother’s Day.  We gave them to my mom early since it was her birthday yesterday (Happy Birthday Marm!) and she thought they were adorable.

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Sometimes I want to work on not just a recipe, but a baking project.

Sometimes I want to bake treats that will make the people who eat them think I’m awesome.

Sometimes I want to set things on fire.

S’more cupcakes satisfy all three of these criteria.  These cupcakes are a project (albeit not a difficult one), there was lots of fire involved, and I think I achieved a solid level of awesomeness.  One person actually said these were the best cupcakes he’d ever had.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re almost bakery-worthy – these things are that good.

While I adapted the proportions and a few ingredients, all credit for this concept goes to Cookies and Cups.  The cupcakes, the icing and the assembly are all from them, so go take a look.  For the chocolate cupcakes and marshmallow icing, see this post.

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Torie and I both seem to be venturing into uncomfortable baking territory these days.  While she’s started using Nutella – which we both agree is not breakfast food, because, really, it’s the inside of a Purdy’s hedgehog – I found myself purchasing a jar of marshmallow fluff last week.

I don’t know why, but I am adamantly against marshmallow fluff.  There’s something about it that just seems awful.  I have no issues with regular marshmallows, but somehow, in jar form… I don’t know.  But I was planning to make s’more cupcakes (look for that post in a couple days), and in order to make marshmallow buttercream, there was no option but to buy marshmallow fluff.  So I did, and now there’s half a jar of it left in my pantry, staring at me everytime I open the door.  Ugh.

On the bright side, marshmallow buttercream is really good!  And it pipes beautifully.  So I will reluctantly say that this is likely not my last encounter with marshmallow fluff.

Like the upcoming s’more cupcake recipe, both the cupcakes and the icing are adapted from Cookies and Cups.

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