If you’ve never had a bialy, you should definitely consider making a batch of Bialys with Caramelised Onion and Poppy Seeds to see what you’re missing. This batch of NY-city staples were baked by The Moonblush Baker. Bialys are chewy, bagel-like breads that are typically topped with onions and they are very popular in New York City, but tend to not be as well known elsewhere. The caramelized onions that top these add a savory sweetness that works well with the bread and makes them addictive, whether you want to serve them plain or, like bagels, spread with cream cheese.
The Mini Chocolate Drizzled Peanut Butter Cheesecakes from The Gunny Sack are the perfect treat for peanut butter lovers. The mini cheesecakes have a peanut butter base studded with peanut butter and chocolate chips. The base is made from chocolate cookie crumbs, which provides enough chocolate flavor to make you think of a peanut butter cup – and the peanut butter and chocolate glaze on top does the same thing. They’re indulgent, but they’re also small enough to easily enjoy in single servings.
Salty and sweet things have been a trend – and a good one – for quite some time now, but people continue to push the envelop with the idea and Chasing Delicious‘s Salt & Vinegar Chips Topped Chocolate Cake is a great, and unexpected, example. This rich chocolate cake has a dark chocolate flavor and a very moist, tender crumb. You could top it with anything, but this one is topped with decadent ganache and loads of salt and vinegar shoestring potato chips. The salt and vinegar make your mouth water and that actually makes the cake taste even better when you get to a bite of the chocolate. As if that weren’t enough, there is also a generous drizzle of caramel poured over the cake to enhance the sweetness and that sweet-salty contrast even more.
Another single serving treat comes in the form of the Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake Muffins from On Sugar Mountain. As much as I like big coffee cakes, the smaller versions often seem just a little more tempting because they get the cake-to-crumb ratio just right. These coffee cakes have a classic brown sugar and cinnamon streusel topping, but they also have a brown sugar and cinnamon swirl running through the batter to give them a lovely look and a bit more flavor. They’re quick and easy to make, so you don’t have to wait for a special brunch occasion to bake a batch.
You can’t go wrong with donuts in almost any situation, and that is even more true when you’re taking about freshly fried, homemade donuts. Handle The Heat‘s Yeast-Raised Chocolate Glazed Donuts look good enough to grab off of your screen. If you’ve never tried yeast donuts, you’ll be surprised that the dough is not difficult to make and very straightforward to work with, although you have to have a little patience when making them to allow for the dough to rise. You will probably want to pick up a donut cutter so that you can get that classic donut shape once you’re ready to cut and fry them. The effort is all worth it when you take that first bite of a light, fluffy donut that is light years ahead of what the local donut shop is doing.
The Pecan Toffee Coffee Cake from Katie at the Kitchen Door is not your average coffee cake. Baked in a bundt pan, this cake features in indulgent combination of flavors that would make this cake a good choice for dessert as well as for brunch. The cake itself is flavored with brown sugar, spices and vanilla, and it is packed with toffee bits. Throughout the cake, there is a swirl of filling made with sugar, espresso, cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, pecans and more toffee. There are a lot of flavors, but they all blend together well into one very delicious finished product.
Living Well Kitchen‘s Avocado Pudding uses avocados in a way that you’ve probably never seen them before: in a chocolate pudding. The pudding requires no cooking because it gets all of its silky texture from ripe avocado. You simply add cocoa powder, vanilla and honey to your avocado and whizz it in the food processor until the mixture is very, very smooth. You’re left with a surprisingly good dessert that you can feel great about eating.
There are many good things going on it Daydreamer Desserts‘ Pecan Pretzel Peanut Butter Chip Cookies, and if you like salty-sweet desserts, then you will definitely want to give them a try. The drop cookies are filled with peanut butter chips, toasted pecans and chopped pretzels, all flavors that work together well. To give the cookies a little extra salty sweetness, they also use flaky Maldon sea salt, which has large enough flakes to give the cookies a little texture as well as an extra hint of salt.
The Blackberry Pie Bars from Annie’s Eats are a good way to use up a lot of fresh summer berries in much less time than it takes to bake a regular pie. The layered dessert has a lemony shortbread crust as a base, and is topped with a layer of creamy, cakey blackberry topping. In addition to being easy to make, this dessert delivers some gorgeous colors and is the kind of thing that will grab everyone’s attention on a dessert table at a family gathering.
The Nutella Magic Cake that Kirbie’s Cravings recently posted is a very unusual looking cake with three unexpected layers to it. It has a fairly dense crust at the bottom, topped with a layer of custard and finished with a tender layer of cake. The magic is that these layers form by themselves as the cake bakes. The cake is easy to make and gets all of its flavor, as well as its chocolaty color, from Nutella mixed in to the batter. If you want to mix things up even more, you might want to give this a try using peanut butter too!
Rich, buttery pound cakes are great recipes to have in your repertoire, because there is never a bad time for a pound cake. They are also very versatile cakes and you can do a lot with a basic recipe. First Look, Then Cook baked a Pistachio Pound Cake, a lovely twist on a classic cake for pistachio lovers. The cake is lightly flavored with citrus, and has both lemon and orange juice in it, as well as orange and lime zest. It is also packed with toasted pistachios, which give the cake a tremendous amount of flavor, texture and a beautiful look when you start to cut slices for serving.
Madeleines are small, plain sponge cakes that are usually served very simply, but just because they are usually plain doesn’t mean that you can’t play around with different flavors. The Vagabond Baker made some Almond and Lemon Curd Madeleines that are not your typical madeleine. They’re made with ground almonds in the batter and flavored with a little almond extract. They are also filled with homemade lemon curd, which is piped in to each cake after baking, much like filling a cupcake.
The Double Butter Blondies that Feeding Darragh recently baked up sound like they will be very indulgent – and they are. These chocolate chips and nut-studded blondies don’t have double the butter, instead they are swirled with a homemade butterscotch sauce that gives them a rich flavor and an over-the-top decadence. The butterscotch sets up in the oven but doesn’t firm up completely, so these bars can be a little bit messy to eat, though they are worth every bite.
A fool is a British dessert made by mixing whipped cream and pureed fruit together into a mousse-like dish. The advantage to them is that they are easy to put together since there is no baking time involved, and Arctic Garden Studio recently whipped up some Key Lime Cheesecake Fools. These desserts have layers of homemade key lime curd and cream cheese whipped cream. The cream cheese gives the fools their cheesecake-like flavor and texture, and the lime curd pops with bright, citrus flavor.
Lemon and coconut is usually a winning combination, and Meyer lemon and coconut just might be even better. Food Nasty‘s Meyer Lemon Cake with Coconut Frosting packs in a lot of both of these elements. The towering four-layer cake has a beautiful yellow color and enough lemon zest in the batter to give it a nice citrus note. Meyer lemons are sweet, but still deliver a lot of lemon flavor, although you can substitute regular lemons into the cake recipe, as well. The cake is topped with a frosting made with coconut milk and it is completely covered in shredded coconut before serving.
If you have ever bought a roll of phyllo dough at the store, certain you are going to use it soon – but discover that same roll of dough, unused, in the freezer months later, you should definitely bookmark The Wednesday Chef‘s Lazy Spanikopita, because it is a wonderful and completely non-intimidating way to put that roll of dough to good use. The spanikopita is assembled like a pie, with a few layers of flaky phyllo as the crust, and a filling of spinach, feta and eggs. It is quick and easy, a satisfying dish that you can make as a side or as a main dish.
Passover baking doesn’t use any leavening agents, which leaves many bakers to turn to flourless options for dessert. There are also recipes that use matzoh meal, and with a little creativity, you can make some great desserts using that. Zoe Bakes‘s 7 Layer Passover Cake is an orange and vanilla sponge cake with a poppyseed buttercream frosting. The cake contains no leavening and gets its rise from beaten egg whites, while it gets its texture from matzoh cake meal. The cake meal is a very fine version of matzoh meal and turns out pastries with a finer texture, so it helps give just enough structure to this cake to make it easy to layer and delicious.
Many people think of scones as a sweet pastry, something to have at breakfast alongside a cup of coffee. Like biscuits, however, scones are versatile and can be both sweet and savory. Milk and Honey‘s Goat Cheese, Chive and Mascarpone Scones are on the savory side of things. The scones have a slightly unusual combination of buttermilk, mascarpone and Greek yoghurt in the dough, which makes them very tender. They’re also full of crumbled goat cheese and seasoned with chives, which bring out some of the more savory notes in the cheese and add a little hint of color to the finished scones.
A White Russian is an indulgent cocktail that features vodka, Kahlua and cream. Culinary Concoctions by Peabody saw other possibilities for this flavor combination and transformed the cocktail into something sweeter. Her White Russian Fudge is a white chocolate fudge that is spiked with a hint of vanilla vodka and a generous amount of coffee-flavored Kahlua. The finished fudge has a distinct creaminess that is reminiscent of the cocktail – as well as a boozy burst of flavor. This fudge is a great dessert option for a cocktail party where you want to do something a little different.
Strawberry lemonade is lemonade that is spiked with a little bit of red fruit – such as strawberries – to give it a pink color and a little extra sweetness. The Brass Halo captured the flavor of this popular summer drink in a batch of Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes. The moist cupcakes themselves are lemon flavored. The “pink” comes in because they are topped off with a strawberry frosting made with real strawberries. It has a lovely light pink color and delivers the sweet flavor of the berries in every bite.
St Patrick’s Day might be over for this year, but that is no reason to overlook this lovely Guinness Chocolate Cake with Irish Cream Frosting that A Beautiful Bite baked. The three-layer cake looks stunning, since the nearly black chocolate cake contrasts beautifully with the white irish cream frosting that it is stacked up with. The cake is ultra-moist and has a deep chocolate flavor, thanks in part to the Guinness that is used in it and a touch of espresso. The frosting has a generous dose of Irish cream that ties everything together. The best part is that this cake is easy to assemble and looks beautiful just by stacking those layers together.
Maple and bacon is a flavor combination that shows up everywhere from breakfast to dessert these days, but the Maple Bacon Marshmallows that Bourbonnatrix Bakes made are a very unusual form for this flavor combination to take. These start out as simple maple marshmallows, made with high quality maple syrup to give them a rich maple flavor. 1 1/2 cups of homemade chopped candied bacon is stirred in before the fluffy marshmallows set up. The result is a candy with a sweet-salty flavor and strong elements of both maple and bacon. The texture means that you probably won’t want to toss these in a mug of hot chocolate, but they’ll be delicious on their own.
Cheesecake is delicious, but lately I prefer making cheesecake bars to full size cheesecakes. They’re easier to make and it seems easier to get creative with the flavors that you can add to them. Handle the Heat recent made some Lime and White Chocolate Cheesecake Bars. The crust is made with vanilla wafter cookies and ground macadamia nuts, which give the crust a nice texture and a slightly tropical twist that ties in well with the lime in the cheesecake. The cheesecake layer itself, in addition to fresh lime juice and zest, is enriched with melted white chocolate that gives the cheesecake a nice richness and contrasts with the tart lime.
The Well Floured Kitchen‘s Carrot Bread with Whipped Orange Cream Cheese is a take on carrot cake that you can feel good about eating for breakfast. The whole grain bread is made with white whole wheat flour, rolled oats and ground flaxseed, in addition to being packed with shredded carrots. Instead of being topped with cream cheese frosting, the orange cream cheese spread is served on the side and you can add as much or as little as you like to each slice of carrot bread.
