Cranberry Bars

It may be the first day of Spring today, but there is still snow on the ground outside. As much as I want to eat local asparagus and new potatoes, my farmer's market only have onions and pickles for sale. Instead of being sad about there being no spring produce, I have decided to embrace the end of winter.

There may be no strawberries, but I still have a half bag of frozen cranberries in the freezer! You may think of cranberry and orange as more of a holiday flavor combination, but I really needed these last week when there was snow and hail piling up on my tulips.

The snow is slowly melting and I'm crossing my fingers that my bulbs weathered the storm. Until the snow is all gone, I'm enjoying the last of my favorite winter treats - hearty soups, root vegetables and cranberries.

If you are already enjoying jacket-free days, I'm really jealous of you. You can enjoy all of your fresh springtime produce and I'll finish eating this pan of bars.

One Year Ago: Peanut Butter Fudge
Two Years Ago: Homemade Marshmallow Peeps
Three Years Ago: Potato, Spinach & Asparagus Quiche
Four Years Ago: Momofuku Confetti Cookies
Five Years Ago: Fish with Mango Salsa
Six Years Ago: Filled Meringue Coffee Cake

Oreo Brownies

Are you ready for more recipes? I've been crazy busy over the past two months and haven't had a moment to make my own dinner, never mind making fun treats for WITK. What has I been doing? First, the boyfriend and I trained for and ran a half marathon! Second, I started a new job! 

The new job is along the same lines of what I was doing at my last company, but with much less international travel. I'll miss the monthly opportunities that I had to visit the far reaches of the planet, but I look forward to the new challenges associated with my new job!

One of the important things about my new job is that my office is so much larger. My previous company was only seven people in an office. Pretty small when you want to bake a cake and feed the leftovers to your coworkers. These days I have so many happy coworkers to feed, I can't wait to ply them with sugary sweets. How else do you make new friends at work?

I made these brownies a few months ago and fed them to myself. Luckily the recipe makes a smallish batch of brownie cookies and they store pretty well.  You can make a batch of these on Sunday and enjoy them all week long! 

With my new coworkers to feed, watch out for new recipes here in the kitchen! I'm ready for the holiday season and can't wait to get back to blogging.

One Year Ago: Brownie Donuts with peanut butter glaze
Two Years Ago: Loaded Potato Soup
Three Years Ago: Apple-Cranberry Crumble
Four Years Ago: Pumpkin cookies with Chocolate chunks & How to roast a sugar pumpkin
Five Years Ago: Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies
Six Years Ago: French Toast Cupcakes

CTB 2014 - Fat Witch Brownies

I'm sorry, I made you two desserts in a row! Last Thursday was a fruity and summery cobbler. Today you get brownies. Brownies that are filled with cream cheese and hazelnuts.

That's right. Cream cheese and hazelnuts. I'm absolutely terrible.

So what if we are all still trying to maintain our cute bikini bodies? We all need a little bit of luxury every now and then. Besides, it's the middle of August. It's time to start getting ready for cooler temperatures.

To be honest with you... I baked this batch of brownies, photographed the 3x3-inch bars, and then cut the large bars into four smaller, bite-sized pieces. These brownies are so rich, there is no way you would even want to eat a big slab of brownie. Bite-sized is the way to go with these.

Just be sure to toast the hazelnuts.

Peach Melba Linzer Bars

I am totally in love with these bars.  

I've never made a Linzer bar before, but I will definitely be making them again.  They are so stinkin' good!  The reason why they are so delicious?  Toasted hazelnuts.  Amazing.

These bars were a lot of work to make.  Between roasting and skinning the hazelnuts, preparing the dough and rolling out and filling the pastry, it probably took half the day to complete this dessert.  It was so worth it.  I refused to share any of these bars with anyone else.  So. Good.

The major delicious part of this dessert is the hazelnut dough.  You can totally fill the pastry with your favorite jam.  I went with a combination of raspberry and peach, a little take on the peach melba.  Since this treat is filled with jam, rather than fresh fruit, you can make it at any time of the year.  I plan on making it again in the winter, with jam made from this summers farmers market fruits.

Wilde Week #20

1. Did you stop by this week and have some cake?  WITK celebrated it's third birthday this year and we feasted on Milky Way Cake!  So good.

2. I finally made it to NY Cake & Bake this week and I was in sprinkle heaven!  I had to hold myself back from buying the entire aisle.  I want a rainbow of sanding sugars in my pantry and sprinkles for each holiday.

3. Did you know that J Crew only puts things on sale once they run out of my size?  I desperately wanted these seahorse shorts, it just wasn't in the cards.

4. If you were wondering, I totally bought the flowered jeans from last week!  I'm wearing them right now as I write this post.  They make me very happy, especially since they were 50% off, plus another 50% off.

5. Heading to NYC?  Want delicious brunch?  Go to Tartine in the West Village.  I went there with a friend this week and they make an amazing (and huge) apple pancake.

6. It's summertime in NYC and that means the Union Square Greenmarket is full of local eats.  While I was tempted by the bright snapdragons and bunches of sweet pea blossoms, I went home with a basket full of Santa Rosa plums.  I didn't bake them into anything, I just ate them.  What can't you resist putting in your basket when you head to the farmers market?

7. Any other thirty somethings having a great summer watching Pretty Little Liars?  Total guilty pleasure TV.

8. I posted these blackberry rice krispy treats on facebook yesterday and promised you a recipe.  Guess what, it's so simple!  Just use this...  Blackberry Flavor Fountain (from LorAnn Oils!).  They have a whole bunch of different flavors - bubble gum, cake batter, mango.  I got mine at a local specialty store, but you can totally order the syrup from their website or Amazon.

Black Raspberry Rice Krispy Treats

3 tablespoons butter

1 - 10 ounce package marshmallows

6 cups Rice Krispy Cereal

1 tablespoon Black raspberry flavoring

Lightly coat a 9x13-inch pan in cooking spray.  Wipe out the excess with a paper towel.

In a large pot, melt butter over low heat.  Add marshmallows and stir to coat in butter.  Stirring occasionally, let marshmallows melt completely.  Add black raspberry flavoring and stir until combined.  Add cereal and stir to coat.  Pour into the prepared pan and press into an even layer.  Let sit for at least an hour before cutting into squares.

Wilde Away

What does someone do when they've been laid off?  They go on vacation!  No wait, that doesn't seem like the normal thing to do.  Nonetheless, boyfriend and I are not in country right now, we are in Morocco!  In a way it's a good time to go on vacation.  It gets the mind off of the fact that I don't have anywhere to go in the morning.

Boyfriend and I are currently in the Sahara desert, riding camels around.  We got to spend the night in a Berber camp in the desert, where I saw the stars for the first time in a long time.  We have spent the past few days in Marrakech and will be moving on to Agadir tomorrow morning, where we will learn how to surf!  I'm very excited and totally frightened for my life.  The ocean is scary and I'm hoping we're surfing little baby waves.  On giant surf boards.  While wearing floaties.

Until I come back, enjoy these uh-mazing strawberry bars.  I made them just before we left, you know, in all my unemployed free time.  I really enjoyed them hot with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.  For breakfast.  Don't judge.

Disclaimer: OXO was nice enough to send me some fun fruit-related products as a part of their blogger outreach program, including the strawberry huller you see in the first image.  I used the huller to remove the hulls of the strawberries.  You can use a paring knife just as well, I like tools.

Coconut Key Lime Squares

I've never been so happy to see Thursday than I have this week!  Not that it has felt like a very long week, it's just been a very tiring one!  Coupled with the fact that I spent a long weekend in Buffalo, eating totally healthy food (aka - hot dogs, Buffalo wings and Perry's ice cream), I'm exhausted.  I even missed one of my scheduled runs for my half marathon training plan!  I'd make it up, but I'm tired.

This past weekend I headed to Buffalo for a few reasons.  1. It was my dad's birthday!  We enjoyed local hibachi at Shogun (ONION VOLCANO!) and ate Dessert Deli cake that was more chocolatey than just pouring chocolate syrup in your mouth.  2. Perry's Ice cream invited me to come visit them and eat ice cream!  And they told me I could bring someone.  I brought my dad, because it was his birthday and he loves their ice cream.  I'll talk more about our ice cream factory tour next week, what I want to talk about today is - my long run in Buffalo.

If you have been reading along, you'll know that I'm only three weeks out from my half marathon!  Each weekend I've been making longer and longer runs to help train for my eventual 13.1 miles in central park.  I've run 10K races in the past and never really trained for them.  BF and I ran a Spartan Super last year that wound up being 11 miles, we trained one day for that race and ate crossant sandwiches the morning of the race.  I decided that neither of these tactics would be a good idea for my upcoming half marathon, I wanted to do it right.

Knowing that it was still a little cold in Buffalo, I packed my new running hat and gloves and fuzzy running jacket.  The only thing I wasn't prepared for was snow.  Which it did on Friday, four inches worth of the white stuff.  I headed to my brothers house and used his treadmill for my 4 mile run.  But there was no way I was going to run 8 miles on a treadmill.  It's so boring!

Instead, I mapped my run online, trying to find the right route from my parents house that would give me an 8 mile loop.  It also had to avoid running up the highway overpass near their house.  I decided upon a route that was just longer than 8 miles and crossed only one 4-lane highway.  It was also on a series of roads that I grew up driving down.  I'm very familiar with the roads of my hometown and I know exactly when each road intersects.  This proved an amazing bonus when running.

Saturday morning, around 9:00am, I worked up the energy to go running.  I put on my layers, showed my mom how to track me with her phone, laced up my shoes and hit the road!  I ran past my High school best friends house, my first house that we moved out of when I was 5, my high school and first middle school.  At mile seven I ran past my brothers house and was on the home stretch!  I crossed the highway and my mile tracker called out the completion of my eighth mile.  Unfortunately, I was still a half mile from home.

After running 8.47 miles in 82 minutes and burning almost nine hundred calories, I had no qualms with eating a big slice of cake for dads birthday that night.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I usually don't do holiday posts, but I had to make these.  I don't really celebrate St. Patricks day in the traditional sense either.  You know, the whole - wear green, drink a copious amount of green liquor and stumble home in the early hours of March 18th.  It's not really my thing.  What I do love to do is coat cereal in marshmallows.  Then dunk the results in $10/pound Belgian white chocolate, you know, to class them up a bit.  After I tinted the fancy, Belgian white chocolate green.  They're super classy marshmallow treats.  Go make them and celebrate like the Irish cereal-promoting leprechauns celebrate March 17th.

Lucky Charms Marshmallow Treats

6 cups Lucky Charms Cereal

1 10-ounce bag Jet-puffed marshmallows

4 tablespoons butter

1/2 pound white chocolate

Green food coloring

Melt butter in a large pot.  Add marshmallows and stir until melted.  Add Lucky Charms and stir to coat. 

Coat a 9x13-inch pan with cooking spray.  Pour marshmallowy cereal into the pan.  Coat your hands with cooking spray and gently press marshmallowy cereal into the pan.  Let set for at least 4 hours. 

Turn pan upsidedown to release marshmallow treats.  Cut into reasonable sized bars.  Melt white chocolate in a bowl set over simmering water (or in the microwave).  Add a few drops green food coloring and stir until evenly colored. 

Dunk cereal treats in the chocolate and place on wax paper to set up and harden the chocolate.

Biscofferoos

Several years ago, I ate almost an entire pan of scotcheroos at a Super Bowl party.  And I didn't even feel guilty about it, because they were delicious.  Luckily this was before the start of WITK.  I wasn't obligated to recreate them in my kitchen and share them with you.

Little did I know that scotcheroos were a fairly common dessert treat and that you could find on the Rice Krispy website.  It was only recently that I learned the name of the bars that I devoured in between watching SB commercials and gabbing with my girlfriends.  It was at that same time that I picked up a jar of Biscoff spread from Fairway, fate seemed to have forced my hand to make these - Biscofferoos.

I thought I was being all creative, as all we bloggers think we are, until I checked the internet.  Apparently I was almost brilliant, except one person beat me to it!  So close.

Were these just as addicting as the original scotcheroos?  You bet your cutest pair of shoes they were!  I ate so many of these.  An unhealthy amount of them.  Then I brought them to work and fed them to my unsuspecting coworkers.  Mostly just one guy.  He ate 90% of them.  I ate the rest.

Side Note: Thankfully I made these before I began my marathon training, because I would have found myself sitting on the couch eating them and not lacing up my sneakers to hit the treadmill.

Cherry Kuchen Bars

I make a lot of desserts.  I go through pounds of sugar every month.  I love to bake, but I also love to fit into my jeans.  So here are the ways that I stay healthy and still make all these tasty treats.  Maybe my tips will help you keep off the pounds but let you enjoy time in the kitchen!

- For most of my recipes, I will make half batches.  Having fewer cookies around means fewer to eat.

- I make things that Boyfriend likes to eat.  As long as I leave fruit out of my dessert recipes, he'll happily chow down cookies, brownies and blondies.  He's six foot three inches and burns calories like a hummingbird.

- My coworkers often enjoy treats on Monday morning.  I once put an entire bundt cake in the lunchroom and left for an hour.  When I returned, I found an empty cake plate.

- Boyfriends coworkers also get to have sweets.  Things like cakes, cupcakes and pies stay in New Jersey because they are awkward to carry on the commuter train.  The most positive thing about sending them to work with BF is that I don't eat any extras.  The downside?  I've lost a few containers because someone forgets to bring them home.

- The freezer is full of dessert.  They are there if I really want something sweet.  At the end of the month I go through the freezer and clean out all the excess food.

Of course I also hit the gym several times a week and I'm on my feet a lot during the work day.  I generally eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch during the week (oatmeal for breakfast & a salad for lunch) and I make lean protein and veggies for dinner.  Repetition helps me maintain my healthy weight.

Or you could think about it this way.  The more cupcakes you feed your coworkers, the thinner you look in comparison!  It's a win-win.

No-Bake Granola Bars

It would seem that we are into the thick of winter here in the Northeast.  I'm pretty sure it was a lot warmer out before I went to Buffalo for Christmas.  Maybe I brought the cold weather back with me?  All I know is, I find myself putting more and more layers on before I head out to the train in the morning.

I suppose that it had to happen eventually.  It's not like I live in Florida and this below freezing snap is a surprise.  It's just that you get used to those warm sunny days and it's sad to see them go.  This cold weather was further a slap in the face this week when I got to work on Thursday to find my office a balmy 40 degrees.  That's right, 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Apparently sometime Wednesday night, both boilers in the chemistry wing failed and the offices and labs proceeded to equalize their temperature with the outside world.  All the space heaters in the world could do nothing to warm up our chilly offices.  The reason?  Hood fans.

In a chemistry building, you have labs.  In each lab there are four to five chemistry hoods.  These hoods are just like your range hood over your stove, only bigger, and enclosed.  These hoods constantly pull air from within the labs and vent it through filters and out the roof.  This means that they are always bringing in new air from outside, air which wasn't being heated.  This meant that we couldn't do any lab work until the heater was fixed. 

Everyone in our wing made for the conference room to get some computer work done.  It felt like study hall.  We waited all day to hear something, anything, about the boilers.  Our facilities staff was running around the building with large wrenches, people were up on the roof banging on things, I was getting antsy just sitting in the conference room.  At least it was warm in there.

Our facilities team was able to get the boilers up and running Friday afternoon, just before we went home.  At least it will be warm in the office come next week.  Though it will be the first full week back to work, it's going to be a long one!

Strawberry Rice Crispy Treats

We're really getting into the big eating season aren't we?  It feels like it was Halloween just a few days ago and here we are, the day before Thanksgiving.  The malls have already started decorating for Christmas and the Short Hills mall has set up a big Ice Age pavillion for photographs, it's a nice non-denominational set since we have such a diverse population here in Northern New Jersey.

It might come as a surprise to you, but I won't be cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year.  In fact, I won't even be eating a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  I'll be going out to a restaurant with Boyfriend and his parents (the in-laws!).  Since I'm not cooking dinner, I took to the kitchen this weekend and made some treats for my coworkers.  There were chocolate chip cookies, two French silk pies and these little pink beauties.

These are strawberry rice krispy treats.  Made the simple way.  In the past, I have made flavored rice krispy treats using homemade marshmallows.  When I wanted to make flavored treats this weekend, I didn't have the energy to whip up a batch of marshmallows, let them cure and finally prepare the krispy treats.  What I needed was a potent source of natural flavor.  Dehydrated strawberries were the perfect solution.

A little tricky to find (I got my dehydrated strawberries at Whole Foods), I sometimes find myself eating these little gems like potato chips.  Luckily I had set aside a bag of berries for the purpose of making strawberry macarons.  Instead, they made their way into these marshmallow treats and they packed a flavor punch.

Seriously deep with strawberry flavor, the dehydrated berries were the perfect solution to making flavored rice krispy treats without all the fuss.  I'm searching the health food stores for other dehydrated fruits that I can put into my next batch.  I've already found freeze-dried pears and pineapples.  What else is out there?  dehydrated blueberries, apples, beef?  Okay, maybe no to beef-flavored rice krispy treats.

I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving, whether you are cooking, being cooked for or having pizza.  I've had dessert already, so as long as I can score myself some turkey, it will be a good day!

Peanut Butter Cup Blondies

The thing that I love the most about warm weather vacations? Beach hair. There is no other time in your life that you can exert next to no effort on your own appearance and look absolutely amazing.

The pink cheeks from a day spent exploring. The effortless clothes that say 'I have no where to be.' And the salt-infused hair that tumbles around in the wind. It all says vacation.

Upon returning to the room after a day spent on the sand, I am loath to take a shower and ruin my beach-perfected look. As soon so I step foot into the fresh water my sun-kissed skin turns into a lobster red sunburn. My beachy waves lose all of their fun and I'm left looking like I spent too much time in the sun.

But you can't go on without showering. Not only are you covered from head to toe in ocean salt, sunscreen and whatever beachside drink you inevitably spilled on yourself, but if you are like me you took half of the beach home with you.

The post-beach shower is sadly necessary to remove all those rogue bits of sand that are trying to come home with you. Sure enough you'll be packing plenty of sand in your suitcase, there is no reason to let those tiny grains stowaway on your person. If I spend any time at all in the surf, I will have to spend an equal amount of time scouring myself with a loofah to wash away all the residual sand.

Beachside showers and hoses are no match for the sand, it wants to come home with you. I'll be finding bits of sand all over the apartment and myself for at least the next two weeks. Small memories of vacation or tiny little nuisances? Only time will tell.

Peanut Butter Rice Crispy Bars

Slowly, I'm coming back from the dead.  The cold virus that knocked me down like a freight train has been galliantly fought off by my immune system and I'm on the mend.  It has been rough, being sick at this time of the year, because this is the most fun time of year to cook!  This is the time of year that you can make everything red, green and blue, cover everything in sprinkles and frosting and feed your coworkers endless supplies of sugar.  They don't complain because it's festive.

I had big plans to make you lots of cookies the week leading up to Christmas, these bars are as far as I got.  While they were certainly delicious, I can't say that they are terribly festive.  Now that we've made it past December 25th and the presents have been put away, I suppose that you need some treats to celebrate the New Year.

Now that I'm living withing throwing distance to New York City, I've been getting lots of questions about what I'm doing for the big night.  Sadly, since I've been sick, we haven't made any plans at all!  A few years ago, before we were living here, boyfriend and I came to New York for the ball drop.  We figured, "You have to do it once!" 

Unfortunately, that year it was freezing cold.  I'm talking single digit temperatures as we approached midnight.  We had layered pants upon pants and sweaters under our jackets, yet still, we were cold.  There was no way we were going to sit still in Time's square for eight hours.  We would have been peoplesicles.  Instead we wandered the city from four in the afternoon until the ball finally came down to ring in the new year. 

We actually had a good view of the descending ball from our final position at the southeast corner of Bryant park.  The winds were even blowing in our direction and we got a nice shower of confetti and balloons.  However, moments after midnight, the crowds quickly dispersed and we hoofed it back to our hotel room as fast as our frozen bodies could take us.

This year looks to be a lot warmer here in the Big apple.  Does that mean that you'll see me in with the throngs of people in Time's Square?  Not a chance!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!  I hope you spend it with people you love, whether you decide to ring in the new year at eight o'clock or midnight.