Some people like to wake up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, or a plate of hot bacon. You could count me in for both of those things, but freshly baked cookies would make the list, too. That said, I would be very suspicious if I woke up in the middle of the night and suspected - by smell or by the sounds of pots and pans moving around - that someone unknown was in my house baking them for me. This is exactly what happened to a man in Michigan this week. He heard some suspicious noises coming from his kitchen and called the police to report an intruder. The police arrived and found a woman in the kitchen baking cookies. It turns out that the man’s wife had stuffed some clothing under the covers in bed so it looked like she was there, then went down to the kitchen to bake a surprise batch of cookies!

Who knew that a simple batch of cookies could turn into such a big deal? I hope that there were enough to share with the police who responded to the call as well as with her husband.

This month, Girl Scouts around the US will kick off their annunal cookie sales. Some councils have already started, and some will be gearing up in the next few days. This is a time of year that most cookie-lovers look forward to because it means we can pick up a few boxes of our seasonal favorites. The Girl Scout Cookies are produced by two different bakeries, Little Brownie Bakers and ABC Smart Cookies, so the distribution of the new cookies flavors varies by region and which bakery supplies cookies in your area. Samoas (Caramel de Lites), Thin Mints, Tagalongs (Peanut Butter Patties), Do-Si-Dos (Peanut Butter Sandwich), Trefoils (Shortbread) are available everywhere. Lemon Chalet Cremes, a lemon-filled cookie, and Lemonades, a lemon iced cookie, are back for another season but are available in different regions. Thanks-a-Lot, a chocolate-dipped shortbread cookie and the 100-calorie pack Daisy-Go-Rounds are also back from the ABC Bakery, while the Dulce De Leche shortbread cookies return from Little Brownie Bakers. One new cookie this year is called Thank U Berry Munch, light and crispy cookies with dried cranberries and puffed rice cereal in them. As much as I like the new cookies, I still think back to some of my favorites from years gone by and hope that some of them - like Lemon Coolers, Golden Yangles, Aloha Chips and Juliettes - will make a return!

While I’ll be on the lookout for Girl Scouts to support (and new cookies to try), I’ll also be baking my own at home as I do every year. Homemade Girl Scout Cookie recipes make it easy to have cookies any time of year and, since they tend to cost less than the boxed cookies, where only a percentage goes to the troops, you can donate the savings directly to your favorite group of Girl Scouts (and maybe encourage them to have their own bake sale) to support them.

Sometimes you don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone, and I have to say that the recent coverage of an impending shortage of Kellogg’s Eggo waffles due to manufacturing plant closures is enough to make me want to run out and buy a box. But instead I’m going to do what I usually do with waffles: make my own and freeze them. All you need to have is a waffle iron in order to make waffles and the batter is really no more difficult to whip up than the batter for pancakes. Most, if not all, waffle recipes can be frozen easily and will reheat in not much more time than it takes to toast that Eggo.

While you can use any style of waffle iron when making frozen waffles, it helps to have a waffle iron that makes flatter waffles, since Belgian-style waffles will not always fit easily into a standard toaster. Allow your waffles to cool completely on a wire rack after cooking, then layer them between sheets of wax paper and stick them into a large Ziploc freezer bag. Once the waffles are frozen, they can be removed one at a time and put into the toaster (or a toaster oven) to crisp up. Since Eggo waffles are very light, remember that homemade waffles may take a little extra time in the toaster to be ready. If you’re doing Belgian waffles and can’t fit them in a toaster, you can also reheat them in a preheated oven at 350F for about 10 minutes, depending on the size and thickness of the waffle.

Old Mother Mallard’s Delicious Golden Brown Waffles, a recipe I made based on a Donald Duck cartoon, freeze very well, and so do my Belgian Waffles when cooked in a flatter waffle iron. Buttermilk waffles are always a good choice, as well.

The shipping date for The Baking Bites Cookbook is approaching quickly. I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has preordered a copy. You won’t have to wait much longer until your book is in the mail and on its way! For everyone else, you can still place an order and the books will ship as they come in. The list price for the book is $19.95, but if you order it directly from this site, it’s only $16.95, including free US shipping. If you buy 2 or more copies, the price is just $15.95 per book. Did I mention that The Baking Bites Cookbook makes a great gift? International shipping is available, although there is a small surcharge for overseas shipments.

Anna, at Cookie Madness, tried out one of the recipes from the cookbook this week. You can see her photo of my White Chocolate Oatmeal Crunch Brownies at her site. They’re definitely a favorite of mine and it sounds like she really liked them, too. You can read a bit more about the book at my original post about it.

If you want a chance to win a copy of the cookbook, I’m giving one away with a great Mini Pumpkin Cheesecake pan this week! All you need to do is leave a comment on the pumpkin cheesecake post (not this post!) with your favorite flavor of cheesecake to enter! And you might want to check back in over the next couple of weeks, because there might be another cookbook or two up for grabs in the near future!

Way back in January, I said that one of my goals for this year was to finish a huge project: to write a cookbook. Unlike the resolutions that involve pledging to use that gym membership everyday (or at all), this is one that I can check off the list. I’m thrilled to announce that The Baking Bites Cookbook is coming out this October!

The book has 51 recipes - and to give you some perspective on how many this is, it’s almost 4 months’ worth of posted recipes! Almost all of the recipes are new, never before seen treats. Only four have been featured on the site before and it’s only because they’re so popular (and such favorites of mine!) that I absolutely couldn’t resist putting them in. The cookbook is styled after some of my favorite single-subject cookbooks, with full-page, full-color photos of every recipe. It uses a large font, making it easy to read and follow - no need to squint at the pages or bend down close to the counter to figure out the next step in the recipe as you work.

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Some of the easiest world records to set are food records, because even though it isn’t easy to build a giant food item, it is a heck of a lot easier than, say, being the fastest person up Mount Everest. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the world’s largest cupcake was unveiled this past weekend. It measured 12 inches tall and 24 inches wide, which is much smaller than I would have expected it to be, but it weighed in at an impressive 150.7-lbs. This figure included 60-lbs of frosting and 15-lbs of fudge filling. The cupcake was made by cakes.com, which is run by cake-decoration supplier DecoPac.

Personally, I think that the line in between a cake and a cupcake is a little fuzzy at this scale. Part of the point of a cupcake is that it is a cup-sized cake. Even the Giant Cupcake Pan from Wilton seems to acknowledge that it is just a cake shaped like a cupcake. Is that all this giant cupcake really is? A cake shaped like a cupcake? It’s still tasty looking, no matter what you decide to call it in the end.

Speaking of ends, most record-setting foods are sliced up and shared with onlookers. This cupcake was shipped out to a pig farm after it was measured and photographed at the Mall of America. About 4,000 smaller cupcakes were given out to onlookers.