• Nami Nami used a bunch of not-quite-right bananas to bake a batch of tasty Banana Muffins with Pecans. Her post is a great reminder that, while it is always good to use great-tasting fruits in baked goods and desserts, baking is a great way to improve the flavor and texture of less than perfect fruits by enhancing them with other ingredients. The recipe itself is a lovely looking recipe for some basic banana muffins that could easily become everyday breakfast favorites.
• Oatmeal, coconut, sweetened condensed milk and lemon all come together in Eat My Cake Now’s easy to make version of Lemon Squares. The lemon squares have a creamy, sweet-tart center thanks to the sweetened condensed milk and lemon, and a flavorful crust that is both crisp and chewy. It’s easy to make because the bottom crust and the top crust are made from the same mixture, so you can put this dessert together in only a few minutes before popping it into the oven.
• In spite of the name, the Pistachio Coffee Ring baked by One Pefect Bite doesn’t include any coffee. It’s actually a sweet yeast bread, made rich with the addition of butter and milk, that is quite like a coffee cake. It has a spiral of pistachio nuts in the center that add crunch and color. It looks quite impressive and is not too difficult to make - and definitely worth experimenting with yeast for pistachio fans out there.
• Coconut Coffee Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting from 6 Bittersweets, by contrast, do include coffee. Coffee and coconut add relatively subtle flavors to the cupcake base and really serve the purpose of highlighting the Peanut Butter Swiss Buttercream that tops these off, making the frosting seem even richer by comparison. The frosting is a good stand-alone recipe, too, and would make a nice topping for chocolate, vanilla or banana cupcakes.
• One of the most indulgent Thanksgiving side dishes you can have is candied yams, or candied sweet potatoes. Rich with butter and sugar, and topped with marshmallows, it’s a dish decadent enough to be dessert. Bake And Destroy has some Vegan Sweet Potato Cupcakes that seem to turn this classic into dessert! The sweet potato cupcakes use canned sweet potato puree and lots of warm spices. They are topped with candied walnuts and marshmallows, which are bruleed before serving. You can find vegan marshmallows at some natural food stores, but you can also rely on regular marshmallows if you’re not vegan and want to give the recipe a try.

• Meringue and custard are generally at opposite ends of the texture spectrum, one light and airy and one dense and silky. Perhaps that’s why they make such an interesting combination in No Special Effects‘ Filipino Meringue-Custard Roulade. The outer shell of this roulade is made from a soft meringue made with 10 egg whites. The 10 egg yolks leftover all go into a custard, along with some sweetened condensed milk, to make a very rich (and very satisfying) filling. The finished dessert has a great balance between the layers of the roulade.
• I often make a Cranberry Orange Bread for the holiday season and I like the idea of a Cranberry Orange Buckle, which Family Style Food made as more of a comfort food take on the flavor matchup. This buckle is like a moist cake, loaded with fruit and topped with a smattering of crumbs to create a nice crisp topping. I think that you could serve this as a coffee cake, but serving it warm while the berries are at their juiciest seems like it might be the best way to enjoy this recipe.
• Everyone who was tempted by my Snickerdoodle pie should take a peek at Recipe Girl’s Pumpkin Snickerdoodles. This snickerdoodle variant has pumpkin puree in the cookies, giving them a lovely orange tinge to their color and a slightly more cake-like consistency than the original. They’re got great flavor and travel a bit better than pumpkin pie does, especially if you’re going to be bringing dessert to a far off family gathering!
• Clumbsy Cookie baked up one of the most upscale versions of Oreos I’ve seen in a while, Oreo Macarons. This take on the classic french cookie has actual Oreo cookies in it, to give the macarons an authentic flavor. The chocolate wafers from the cookies are ground up and incorporated into the almond-meringue shell of the macaron. The leftover filling is actually used to fill the cookies, so you get very close the the “real” flavor of the oreo in a totally different vehicle. Still looks like they taste good when dunked in milk!
• I’ve never seen a pumpkin flavored Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in my grocer’s freezer, but Please Pass the Pie has their cookbook and made Ben & Jerry’s Pumpkin Ice Cream at home. This recipe is a must try for pumpkin pie fans, since it contains pumpkin puree and is spiced up with a mix of pumpkin pie spices. Try to make sure your spices are as fresh as possible for the best flavor, and consider serving scoops of this in mini graham cracker crusts for a pie-like presentation!

Last week, I had the opportunity to take a trip out to Orville, Ohio with a few other bloggers and take an inside look at the Smuckers company. Smuckers is known for their jam, but what you might not know is that the family-owned company actually owns quite a few other brands, including Crisco, Jif, Folgers and Eagle Brand, just to name a few of the most well-known. The event that Smuckers put on for us was just wonderful, giving us a preview of some new products, a change to test out some of their existing products, tour their test kitchens and even take a trip through the factory while they made a batch of seasonal Apple Cider Butter, the recipe that started the Smuckers brand off almost 100 years ago.

We started off our tour at the Smuckers store, pictured above. The store is a fully operational store and cafe, but it is also a huge showcase for all kinds of Smuckers products that you won’t necessarily see in stores because they’re regional or simply on limited distribution. There were all the standard jams, of course, but also organic jams and more gourmet lines, such as (my favorite) Smuckers Orchards Finest. I’m a sucker for food shopping no matter where I am, and it was fun to look through all their products. The store had been decorated for Christmas and cleverly incorporated jam into several of their decorations. The chandelier below is made with jars of jam!

(more…)

• The first lemons on my tree are starting to ripen and Jules Food’s Lemon Almond Bundt Cake is a great way to use up just a little bit of lemon. The bundt is has a tight, moist crumb and has a combination of almond and lemon flavor in it. The almond flour, or ground almonds, used to make the cake give it a little bit of denseness, like a pound cake, but do not make it too heavy. I suspect that this is a cake that would keep well for a couple of days in the kitchen.
• A very easy, but extremely festive, recipe for the holiday season is the Salted Gingersnap and Hazelnut Bark at Bitchin’ Camero. I tried some chocolate covered gingersnaps last year that were ok, and this combination of ingredients sounds so much better. Store bought gingersnaps - the crisp kind - are combined with melted chocolate, spread into a thin layer and topped with chopped hazlenuts and sea salt. It’s easy and makes a great gift or holiday snack.
• My Recession Kitchen made some Pear and Chocolate Scones, using a basic scone dough with a filling of fresh pears and chocolate chips. This is a great idea for incorporating fresh fruit into a scone, especially something juicy like a pear, to get a good texture from the dough without introducing too much extra liquid during baking. The post also has some good tips that make the process of rubbing butter into the flour mixture incredibly easy.
• Aside from banana bread, one of my favorite things to do with bananas is to make honey-sweetened Crunchy Banana Pops. A great variation on this is Bell’alimento’s Banana Nutella Pops Dipped in Coconut. For these, bananas are spread with Nutella and rolled in coconut, then they are frozen. The bananas take on an ice cream-like texture when frozen, but the whole pop is more flavorful (and a bit healthier!) than your average ice cream bar. You can use chopped nuts or sprinkles on these pops in place of coconut for a little variety.
• I thought that I had made rice krispy treats a little more fun by using bright-red Franken Berries cereal to make them for Halloween. Smitten Kitchen made the popular cereal treat a little more gourmet with a batch of Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats. These marshmallow treats aren’t any more difficult to make than regular treats. The secret is taking a few minutes to make browned butter - melted butter that has been cooked to intensify its flavor - to give the bars a rich, buttery, nutty flavor that both kids and adults can enjoy!

• Pumpkin and maple are two classic fall flavors and Erin’s Food Files uses both of them together in Maple Ice Cream with Pumpkin Pie Fudge. This dessert came together a bit unintentionally, mostly as a way to use up some leftover fudge, but the flavors of pumpkin and maple go so well together that it sounded like a hit as soon as the idea came up. This could also be a good way to use up any fudge received as a holiday gift, adding chocolate to chocolate, coffee or vanilla ice cream for another treat.
• The Pumpkin Pie Spiced Chocolate Truffles at Megan’s Cooking are another seasonal candy recipe. Easy to make, these truffles are made with a simple dark chocolate ganache that is kicked up with pumpkin pie spice. I can’t help but think that milk chocolate might go well with the pumpkin pie spice, too. The decorative transfers that were used to finish off the truffles really make them look professional, and they’re easy to find at many online chocolate/baking suppliers.
• Shortbread is usually a very simple cookie, made primarily with butter, sugar and flour. They are light and crisp. 101 Cookbooks‘ Apple and Carrot Shortbread doesn’t quite fit the standard mold, for although they are light and buttery, they are sweet from the addition of grated apples and carrots. They are also slightly less crisp because of it. That said, while they may not be the most traditional, they certainly are a good flavor combination and a great twist on a classic recipe.
• Annie’s Eats made some Banana Caramel Cupcakes that sound like they would be an even better use for some ripe bananas than a batch of banana bread. The cupcakes are moist and tender, made with mashed banana, buttermilk and lots of butter. They are frosted with a caramel buttercream and drizzled with extra caramel sauce before serving.
• Finishing off with a Halloween recipe, Almost Bourdain’s Macaroni and Cheese Bake in Coffin Toast is a really fun one to serve the kids. A classic macaroni and cheese is spooned into a small, square loaf of bread that has had the center carved out to resemble a coffin. The mac and cheese is finished off under the broiler, melting some extra cheese and toasting the coffin before serving. A decorative skull (ceramic, hard plastic or something that won’t melt) reallly finishes off the dish and makes it fun to eat.

• Donuts are one type of food that is not that difficult to make at home, especially if you’re going to try cake donuts, which don’t require that you wait around for a yeast batter to rise. I’ve tried Pumpkin Donuts before with good success, and if you like nuts, you might like the Pumpkin and Hazelnut Donuts from Cannelle et Vanilla even better. These donuts have hazelnut meal/flour incorporated into the dough and are also rolled in a hazelnut-sugar mixture after frying. You could make full sized donuts, but donut holes cook more quickly and are a bit more fun to eat by the bunch.
• Hearty and packed full of nuts, Food o’ Del Mundo’s Harvest Pancakes are a good way to get a cold wintery morning started. These pancakes are made with whole wheat flour, oatmeal, flax seed and up to three types of nuts! Even though they sound as though they’d be heavy, the pancakes are actually very light, almost delicate, in texture and even though they’ll fill you up, they won’t sit there heavily in your stomach all morning, either. Maple syrup would be good with these, but butter pecan syrup might be even better if you can get ahold of some.
• It’s always nice to have a cookie that dips well if you like to have a nibble with your afternoon coffee or tea. Ezra Pound Cake specifically baked these Chai Butter Cookies to pair with a chai latte. The buttery shortbread-like cookies are tender, but won’t dissolve into crumbs when dunked into a mug of hot liquid. The cookies have actual tea in them too, giving them a more floral overall flavor than using ground chai spices - like cinnamon, cardamom, etc. - would.
• Sometimes, it’s nice to have a healthier version of a favorite recipe available so you can feel good about snacking on yet another baked good. The Cooking Route’s Lower Fat Banana Bread only has two eggs in it and uses no added fat, making it a much lower fat recipe than your average banana bread batch. The bread, thanks to a lot of bananas and a little bit of honey, is still very moist and satisfying, and you’re not going to feel like you’re skimping when cutting a big slice. This recipe is spiced up with some orange zest, fresh ginger, cinnamon and cardamom, but nuts and other spices would also make for some nice variations.
• I tend to think of apples being paired with cinnamon, pie crust or nuts when it comes to baking them, not chocolate, but the Toffee Apple Chocolate Cake from Culinary Travels of a Kitchen Goddess looks and sounds like a delicious and decadent combination. The cake can be made entirely in a food processor, where nuts and dark chocolate are ground up finely to be incorporated into every bite. The cake is served warm with some cream poured over the top - or garnished with a dollop of whipped cream - for a light, rich, satisfying autumn dish.