• Food Blogga’s Banana Apple Cardamom Cake with Cardamom Icing sounds like it might be a simple cake - and it is easy to make - but it is far from simple where flavor is involved. The cake includes lots of spices, vanilla, honey, shredded coconut, coconut milk, raisins, apples and nuts. It has something for just about everyone, and the nice thing about it is that you won’t really realize this until you cut into the cake.
• Granola makes a great addition to a batch of chocolate chip cookies. It adds a lot of flavor and more crunch that you might get from additions like toasted nuts alone. Dandy Sugar’s Granola Cookies with Toasted Coconut, Almonds, and Chocolate have a lot of other great flavors on top of the granola, too. The coconut and almonds add a lot of nuttiness, and this is going to be even better if the granola you choose to work with incorporates some of these flavors already.
• You don’t have to miss out on scones entirely if you need to stick to a gluten-free diet. The Chocolate Chip Scones that Gluten Free Goddess whipped up are made with sorghum flour, millet flour and tapioca starch. They’re a bit more cake-like and crumbly than your average gluten free scone because these are also vegan, so there is no egg in the recipe as a binder, but they still make a warm, satisfying addition to breakfast with a cup of hot coffee or tea.
• I usually bake biscuits to use as a base for my strawberry shortcakes, but I’m not opposed to using other types of cake as a base for this lovely summery dessert. Comfy Belly uses a moist, almond cupcake for the base of these Strawberry Shortcakes. The cupcakes are turned upside down and sliced in half horizontally, before being filled with creme fraiche and fresh berries. It is light, sweet and the presentation is great. You could mix it up with different flavors of cupcakes, as well.
• Maple fans will want to mix up Not Derby Pie’s Maple Yogurt Pound Cake straight away. This ultra-moist cake uses flavorful grade-B maple syrup as its primary sweetener and uses yogurt to add a subtle tanginess and moisture to the cake. It’s a simple cake that whips up in a single bowl, so you can make it on short notice and enjoy the smell of that maple syrup filling your kitchen while the cake bakes.

When it comes to pie crusts, I am a firm believer in making my own when I can. They’re really not that difficult to make by hand, and you can also blend the dough in a food processor. The more you practice, the better you’ll get - and you also have a great excuse to bake more pies this way. Still, there are plenty of times when a premade pie crust can come in handy. I really like using premade graham cracker crusts for convenience and I’ve had some success with frozen pie dough, although homemade tends to taste better. I decided to give Trader Joe’s Frozen Pie Crusts a try because they’re made with real butter and I hoped that the finished product would have a good flavor.

These pie crusts come two in a package in the frozen foods section. They’re flat, so you’ll need your own pie plate to fit them two. You simply defrost the crusts, transfer them to your pie plate and bake as you would with homemade crust. Do not defrost them all the way to room temperature or they’ll be too soft to handle; aim for a chilled but flexible texture with these crusts. These will definitely not fit in a deep dish pie plate, as they just barely fill a regular 9-inch plate. You can roll them out slightly if you want more of a crust overhang on the edge of your pie, but that kind of defeats the purpose of using a ready-made crust.

After baking, I was really pleased with the flavor of the crust. It was light and had a nice butter flavor to it. I noticed that it was a tiny bit saltier than my usual crusts, but that is not necessarily a bad thing since most pie fillings are nice and sweet to start with. So, I’d have to say that these are a good, flavorful bet as far as ready-made crusts go, although they’re not as easy to use as pie crusts that come already shaped to a pie plate and do require prep time because they must be defrosted before using. The packaging doesn’t take up much room, however, so this might be just the thing to keep in your freezer as a backup when you just don’t want to do it yourself.

• Croissants, brioche and other french pastries are a good way to start off the morning, but one of my other favorite breakfast pastries is the Pastelito. Pastelitos are Cuban pastries that have a guava and cheese filling. 5 Star Foodie made a batch of Pastelitos at home, starting with a layer of puff pastry and filling it with a mixture of cream cheese and guava jelly. Guava paste is traditionally used in these pastries, but it is more difficult to find in stores than guava jelly. A quick brush of an egg glaze and sugar syrup for extra sweetness, and these pastries come out of the oven looking like something you’d find at a good Cuban bakery.
• Hamantaschen are cookies traditionally made for the Jewish holiday of Purim. As a holiday cookie, they’re one of those treats that people don’t usually make at home, but are much better when made at home rather than being store-bought.Simply Sifted starts these a batch of these cookies off with a simple dough that is flavored with orange zest. Any kind of fruit filling or jam can be used to add a splash of flavor and color to the center of the cookies, which are rolled out and then folded up into triangular hat shapes before baking.
• Natalie’s Killer Cuisine’s Salted Cashew Cookies with Homemade Dulce de Leche are a twist on peanut butter cookies. They start off with whole, roasted cashews, which need to be processed in a food processor (with a little bit of peanut oil) until very smooth and creamy. The nut butter then goes right into a cookie dough, along with brown sugar, butter, vanilla and a few cashew bits for crunch. The cookies are finished with a little sprinkle of sea salt, which makes then a good match for the creamy dulce de leche spread that sandwiches them together.
• Dense, decadent and rich all describe the Vintage Butterscotch Bars from Culinary in the Country. These easy to make bars are a type of blondies, as their chewy and almost fudgy texture does make you think of brownies, even though there is no chocolate in these. The bars get their flavor from a very generous amount of brown sugar. To stop these bars from being too sweet, CitC mixed in some chopped walnuts, but cutting them up into bite-sized pieces will let you savor their flavor without being overwhelmed by butterscotch, too.
• Cookies and Cups has been experimenting with making Homemade Kit Kats. These layered bars aren’t really exactly like the candy bars for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which being that they’re quite large. Still, the flavors are there and with good quality ingredients you’re going to get a treat that will taste better than the “real” thing. The bars start with a lyaer of salted club crackers, which are topped with a graham cracker-containing caramel. Another layer of crackers and caramel comes before the final crisp layer of crackers and finishing layer a rich chocolate peanut butter mixture.

Kerrygold is one of the best known brands of Irish butter - perhaps one of the best known Irish brands period if you’re into cooking and baking. Irish butter is a European-style butter and has a higher butterfat content than the average American butter. This translates into a richer, creamier texture for the butter. Kerrygold’s is a little different from other European butters because it has a lot more flavor. It has a tangy note that might remind you of cheese or buttermilk, and as unusual as that might sound at first, it is that little extra bit of savoriness that makes this butter a real standout. That extra flavor is said to be the result of the rich, grass-heavy diet that the cows have in Ireland.

It tastes fantastic smeared on a good piece of bread or toast, and unlike plain butters, it adds a lot of complexity to each bite. It is available in salted and unsalted varieties, and is easy to find in many grocery stores, and even easier to locate at specialty grocers. It is a a bit expensive compared to standard butter, so while it is great for cooking, I’ll often save my block of Irish butter for finishing off dishes or spreading on pieces of baguette. If you haven’t tried it before, I’d recommend starting with Kerrygold Salted Butter and a nice loaf of bread so you can get a feel for the flavor.

• Usually, one of the best parts about eating waffles is getting to douse them with maple syrup as you eat. My Baking Addiction’s Maple Chip Waffles infuse some maple right into the batter. Maple Chips look like brown sugar-colored chocolate chips and have an intense maple flavor to them, so you get a little bit in every bite of whatever you mix them into. Naturally, you should still go right ahead and serve these waffles with more syrup, but the leftover chips - which you’ll probably need to order online - can be saved to add into cookies and other baked goods.
• Gluten Free Pastel de Arroz reallys conjure up memories of childhood for Cannelle et Vanille. Well, the smell and flavor of eggy custard kissed with cinnamon, vanilla and lemon peel brings back memories of childhood, since the kind served up at the local bakery used buttery puff pastry instead of a gluten free one to form the crust. You can go either way if you try these at home, but having the gluten free option means that these lovely little tarts will be accessible to just about everyone.
• I’ve heard that Momofuku’s Crack Pie is dangerously addictive. Looking at Momofuku for 2’s pictures after baking one up at home, courtesy of a recipe for it from the LA Times, you can start to see why. The pie starts out with an oatmeal cookie crumb crust, made out of freshly baked oatmeal cookies that are crumbled just for this purpose. The filling is a very buttery mixture that includes sugar, heavy cream and egg yolks and falls somewhere between custard and caramel on the flavor spectrum. The recipe makes enough for two, so if you don’t want to risk digging into the second one yourself, take one to a friend’s house to share.
• St Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, and what better dessert to try than a Guinness Bundt Cake from Confections of a (Closet) Master Baker. Many recipes that call for Guinness also call for chocolate, but this cake does no such thing and is more like a gingerbread or spice cake. It uses a whole can of the rich-tasting stout, as well as molasses, lots of spices and a generous handful of candied ginger. It’s spicy, flavorful and a great way to infuse a little of the Irish spirit (or Irish beer, in this case) into your cooking.
• If you’re tired of the same old peanut butter cookies, another peanut buttery recipe worth trying is the one for Chewy Peanut Butter Blondies from Epicurean Escapism. These blondies have plenty of peanut butter in them that contributes a rich, nutty flavor and helps to give the bars their chewiness. A handful of mini chocolate chips breaks up all that peanut butter when you go to bite into a piece. I think that a handful of chopped, toasted peanuts on top would add another layer of tastiness to this easy to make dessert, adding a little extra salt, a little crunch and making the base seem even chewier by contrast.

You’ll notice that most baking recipes these days call for lining a pan with parchment paper. It is widely available, but can you substitute it with similar looking wax paper if you don’t already keep it in your kitchen? The short answer here is that wax paper may look similar to parchment paper, but it is quite different, and it is not ideal for baking.

Wax paper is coated with a thin layer of wax to make it water resistant. It is often used in the kitchen for food storage purposes, since something wrapped in wax paper will stay much fresher than something wrapped in a non-waterproof material. While it is not nonstick in the same way that silicone-treated parchment paper is nonstick, the wax makes it nonstick, so it is a good choice for rolling out pie or cookie dough.

But as useful as it is, it is not a good choice for baking. At high temperatures, the wax on the paper can melt and will transfer to whatever you are baking. The food grade wax is not toxic, but it’s a good idea to keep it out of your baked goods. The wax will transfer to your baking sheet and may require additional cleaning. The wax also has a fairly low smoke point, which means that any exposed wax paper will smoke while it is in the oven and there is a possibility that, if you are cooking something that requires a very long baking time or very high temperature, the paper could actually catch fire. If you use wax paper to line the bottom of a cake pan, it will not smoke but you will still have wax transfer.

Stick to parchment paper - which is reusable, completely nonstick and is generally heat resistant to around 450F - for your baking needs, or simply fall back onto an even older technique to prevent sticking: lightly greasing a pan with oil. I also like to line the pan with aluminum foil and lightly grease that to minimize the amount of cleanup you need to do after baking.