Round-Up

You know how people are all, "You want a bikini body? Put a bikini on your body.  There you go."  Well, ideally, it would be nice if this was a food blog.  Sooooo I'm slapping some pictures of food up here, and, well, there you go.  To all 8 of you readers, I present: my blog of food (at least for today), here to help you with that slammin' bikini body.  

Because I prize fairness over all the goodly qualities of amateur food photography, every dessert gets its two photographs in this post.  Over here, everyone deserves to shine.  Hello, mini banana cupcakes with dulce de leche filling and chocolate cream cheese frosting, how are you?  (Word to the wise: don't make these when you're fasting.  Or do, whatever, I don't care.)

Wanna jazz up those stuffy old chocolate chip cookies?  Throw some caramel in the middle and sprinkle them with flaky sea salt on top: WHAMMO.  Those ladies in your book club won't know what hit them.  People might hold off at first, thinking, "Come on.  A CCC?  Old hat.  Enough of that.  I wouldn't eat them on a mat, I wouldn't eat them with a cat."  But then when all the other desserts are gone and your guests are jonesing for a sugar rush: surprise!!!

This berry cinnamon swirl bread threw me for a loop at first.  (Haha, "loop.")   Let's just say, I didn't think it was going to work out between us.  I had to throw out my first batch and start again.  BUT it was well-worth it in the end for a hearty slice of Christmas Morning come breakfast time.  And using my new cast iron skillet (dubbed The Iron Lady) is always fun.  She makes me feel rustic and earthy, like I could plow a field or dig a well. 

The blogger who shared this recipe, Joy The Baker, was actually doing a "thing" where she had her readers make this bread and then tag it on the 'Gram.  Seeing as I venerate my food bloggers as gastronomical gods, imagine my delight when both Joy AND her sponser, King Arthur Flour, liked and commented on my photo. 
A brush with Diety!  (It's the small things.)

This week has been kind of a weird* one, and I haven't quite always known how to deal, but these peanut butter butterscotch bars proved to be the perfect afternoon pick-me-up.  Dense and gooey and buttery, these guys are an ideal meal replacement.  Not if you want to lose weight, just if you want to eat dessert instead of grown-up meals, yeah, these will do the trick. 

 And here, on the left (imagine my Price is Right hands gesturing) you can see Salted Nutella Chocolate Chips for my boss' son's bake sale.  They were deceptively gigantic, like the size of my face, but I didn't receive any complaints.  And take a gander to the right for the cupcakes I made for a friend's graduation party: devil's food cake + Oreo cream filling + cream cheese frosting - almost too decadent to eat.  Almost.

(Uhhh...sorry I lied.  No two photos here.)

The final stop on our tour today = the White Wedding Wonder.  Around here, we like our cornelli lace like it's 1993 - don't you?  A method study in white chocolate buttercream and ivory satin, this cake had me crunched for time.  I had company in town and limited refrigerator space, but somehow I managed to knock out this behemoth and her two sister sheet cakes in five hours.  The flavors here were all over the board, and it was kind of amazing - chocolate, white almond sour cream, vanilla, cream cheese, dark chocolate ganache, white chocolate mousse.  You name it, we had it.  

Let's all just take a moment of silence for late-night indoor food photos and for the times when I'm too stressed to figure out how to put the external flash on my camera...again.  

The struggle is real. 

 

But you know what's not a struggle?  Dessert.  Let's do some good eating together.

*Um, at one point on Tuesday I found myself in a freezer full of human heads.  No lie.