Baking Bites An award winning food and baking blog featuring recipes, tips and more

How do you know when you’ve hit on a good chocolate chip cookie? When everyone who tastes one reaches for another. Chocolate chip cookies are funny things because, though just about everyone (except for a few crazies) likes them, everyone has a slightly different opinion about what makes a good one. Jeffrey Steingarten said it much better than I could hope to in It Must’ve ... Read More »

I like a good scone. Unfortunately, a good scone outside of the kitchen seems to be rather difficult to come by these days. I know this is not true for many people for two reasons: you might have a particular bakery you frequent that makes nice ones or you have different scone standards than I do. Let me say that having one bakery that does ... Read More »

Frying is the theme of this 18th edition of Is My Blog Burning, hosted by Linda of At our table. Now, I am not a big fryer. Don’t get me wrong, fried food tastes good. Great even. But I want and like to eat healthy when I’m eating at home. Last year, I had a great dinner at B. Smith’s restaurant in New York. I ... Read More »

It seems like it’s been a while since I made a loaf of bread. The last few I’ve made for personal consumption – not just to post about here – have been sourdough. I like sourdough and I feel like my loaves come out consistently well enough to be impressive. Not that I’m constantly fishing for compliments or anything, but it is decidedly fun to ... Read More »

I don’t know about you, but when I make rice I often season it or cook it in chicken or vegetable stock instead of simply cooking it plain, in water alone. I also don’t usually have too much rice left over at the end of a meal. This is a problem because I like rice pudding and it seems that most recipes call for starting ... Read More »

Borrowing Zarah’s idea for making both miniature and regular sized cakes, I made a batch of red velvet cake and divided it up between two differently sized pans. We all know that everyone likes cupcakes these days. Adults can relive a moment of their childhood and children can, well, experience a moment that they can relive in the future. The origins of red velvet cake ... Read More »

The isn’t much I can say about these. The spicy taste of an oatmeal cookie with the crunchiness and longevity of a biscotti. How can you go wrong? The oatmeal gives the cookie an even lighter texture than usual, so I found that dipping these was unnecessary (though still delightful). This is definately a new variation on my usual recipes that I will use again ... Read More »

I have never steamed a pudding. And by pudding, I mean cake. Steaming cakes, or puddings, is a traditionally British way of cooking these, instead of baking them. I picked a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef for a basic steamed pudding. The recipe seemed simple enough and I liked the fact that he suggested simple sounding flavor variations in addition to offering a ... Read More »