Bites from other Blogs

This is a wonderful time of year because there are so many opportunities for baking, with several major holidays just around the corner and regular holiday parties and events with friends. You don’t need an excuse to bake, of course, but it never hurts to have an excuse to make something a little extra special for dessert.

• Use Real Butter made Rolled Pistachio Baklava. These elegant treats are a little bit messier to make than traditional layered baklava, but they’re easier to serve and eat, so they are perfect for entertaining. They’re packed with pistachios, sugar and spices and rolled up tightly in phyllo dough. After baking, the baklava are soaked in a simple syrup spiked with cinnamon, orange, lemon, honey and orange blossom water, which go well with the pistachios and give the dish a lovely holiday flavor.
• The Creme Brulee Cupcakes that Annies Eats baked are another dessert that is great for entertaining. They’re actually like two desserts in one, since the “frosting” for these cupcakes isn’t frosting at all, but a rich vanilla custard that is bruleed after the cupcakes are assembled to give them the look and flavor of a creme brulee. The cupcake bakes makes these easy to handle and serve, and unlike traditional creme brulees, it is much easier to clean up a few cupcake wrappers after a party than to was a few dozen small ramekins.
• Sweet Pea’s Kitchen‘s Fresh Cranberry Scones are treats that would make a nice addition to brunch, rather than to the dessert table. The buttery scones are spiked with vanilla and orange, then packed with fresh cranberries. Dried cranberries are more often seen in scones than fresh cranberries are, but the fresh fruit bring a very tart sweetness to the scones and really stand out against the moist, tender scone batter. Their bright red color also pops and makes these lovely to look at.
• Cinnamon Rolls can be time consuming to make, though the results are often worth the effort. Beantown Baker‘s Cinnamon Roll Bundt Cake captures the flavors of freshly baked cinnamon buns in a more streamlined format. This bundt cake has a brown sugar and cinnamon swirl running through it to mimic the flavors found in the filling of cinnamon buns. It is also topped with a cream cheese glaze, just like a batch of buns might be. The cake is moist and tender, and turns cinnamon buns into something that could easily be served for dessert!
• Pumpkin is heavily featured in many desserts this time of year and the Pumpkin Biscoff Cupcakes that The Batter Thickens baked are no exception. These cupcakes are generously seasoned with cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. What is unusual about these cupcakes is that they are topped with a fluffy Biscoff frosting. Biscoff, also known as cookie butter, has a slightly spicy brown sugar flavor to it that goes very nicely with pumpkin, almost lending a gingersnap flavor to the frosting that makes these perfect for the fall and winter holidays.