The Ultimate Reese's Cake

The Ultimate Reese’s Cake: Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cake with Peanut Butter Icing, Covered in Reese’s Fudge

As promised in my birthday cake post, here is how you can make the amazingly epic Reese’s cake that I made for Lindsay’s birthday. I must warn you that a lot of ingredients and various steps go into this, but it is all SO worth it for the end product. I recommend reading through the entire recipe before starting, as I listed the ingredients under their parts of the cake, rather than all at the beginning of the recipe.

Spicy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Popsicles

Spicy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Popsicles

Months ago, I bought a Zoku popsicle maker. For those of you have not heard of this awesome contraption, it allows you to make popsicles in about 9 minutes. After first getting it, I experimented with it a few times, but since then it has really just been taking up freezer space. So, I decided it was time to put it to use again. Not being the hugest fan of fruit flavors, I grabbed a can of pumpkin from my pantry and with very few ingredients made this delicious treat! It's super easy to make, and super quick if you have a Zoku!

A Special Birthday Cake Edition

A Special Birthday Cake Edition 

Ever since making Lauren’s “21 cake” I have become semi-obsessed with making birthday cakes for my friends with their favorite candies and flavors. I have not posted many of these epic creations because there is so much involved in them that I do not always remember what all I put in them. Nevertheless, I wanted to share some of these cakes because I think what is really most exciting about them is all of the fun components, rather than the recipes themselves. 

Copycat Jim N Nicks Cheese Biscuits

Copycat Jim N Nicks Cheese Biscuits 

Yesterday, I tried Jim N Nicks cheese “biscuits” for the first time and they changed my life forever. Those quotations were necessary because these things are nothing like any other biscuit you’ve ever had. They’re more like cheesy cornbread with a biscuit-y top. I woke up this morning with an urge to bake, and decided to recreate them. As a first step, I examined several copycat recipes for them. I looked at every single website on my first page of Google search results and something very obvious struck me about all of these recipes. And that was that they were all wrong. Not one of them had cornmeal. I’m not sure how they all managed to miss this key ingredient, but not to worry, I have fixed this little error, combined some elements from various copycat recipes already out there, and added a few insights of my own. The result? Pretty darn delicious and quite close to what I tried last night at Jim N Nicks. 

 

Gingerbread Hot Chocolate Pancakes

Gingerbread Hot Chocolate Pancakes 

My inspiration for this recipe came from a recent brunch with two of my best friends from high school, Lakelyn and Tori, and their boyfriends, Christian and Thomas. Since I celebrate Christmas with movies and Chinese food, I’m always interested to hear about what Christmas is like for those who celebrate more…traditionally. My friends discussed how Christmas morning was the only day of the year that they were morning people, and how when they were younger they would often wake up really early on Christmas morning, only to have to wait for everyone else to wake up before opening presents. Thomas even mentioned one Christmas when he woke up at 2 AM and stayed up until 7AM, when his family opened presents, playing his Gameboy by the Christmas tree, anxiously waiting to open presents. 

Being a firm believer in food as a solution to (almost) all problems, I began to think about a Christmas breakfast treat to make the morning extra special, and to entertain those who wake up a little earlier than everyone else. 

White Chocolate Cheesecake-Filled Red Velvet Cookies

White Chocolate Cheesecake-Filled Red Velvet Cookies

 

Christmas time is here! Let’s face it: this time of the year was made for baking. It’s cold outside, there are tons of fun sprinkles and such in the grocery store, and there are enough cookie exchanges and ugly sweater parties to keep baked goods in high demand all season long. For baking bloggers like us, however, it means we need to step up our game. During the rest of the year, people are happy enough that we’re even making chocolate chip cookies, but when everybody and their moms are baking (quite literally), people expect something more from us, something that will stand out among the crowd. It’s a tough task, but who would we be if we weren’t ready for it?

Butterscotch Chai Cookies

Butterscotch Chai Cookies

Despite what the weather might suggest, we have reached that special point in the year that the Gregorian calendar likes to call “December.” This fateful month triggers a wide range of emotions for various people: excitement about spending the holidays with family, fear for the apocalypse on the 21st, or, for college students across the land: stress, stress, and more stress because finals are approaching. Everyone deals with stress in their own way. Some complain, some watch movies, others exercise or flee to remote places where they can escape their problems. I bake. A lot. Like more than usual. Last Friday, in order to de-stress, I decided to devote some time to my favorite pastime. I knew I wanted to make one thing I had made before and one new creation. So, in addition to my all-time favorite Red Velvet Mocha Brownies, I made these delightful and spicy butterscotch chai cookies.