Whiskies Around The World Tasting

This blog is primarily a sweets blog, but sometimes you turn to alcohol to punch up the taste of whatever your making so I figured the post would be appropriate and I had some pretty cool pictures too! Last Monday, Dave and I had the chance to accompany our friends Pete and Christey (@fotocuisine) to a whiskey tasting at one of our local pubs – Mainstreet Pub. Mainstreet offered up a selection of 13 different whiskies for their ‘Whiskies Around The World’ event, along with a ‘unofficial’ tasting of a 14th. I am pretty much open to trying anything new, and I honestly didn’t know all that much about whiskies going into the tasting. I DO know that bourbon is one my favorite ingredients in baking, so why not broaden my pallet and bask in the opportunity to try some new spirits, revisit some old ones and find a drink of my own!

Bake With Tradition

I feel it’s important for our children to not only be book smart, but kitchen smart too! To share our love of baking and cooking and learn how traditions incorporate them. The holidays have come and gone, but it was a great time to start new and continue old traditions.

Apple Coffee Cake

I have a weakness for coffeecake, and when the temperatures started to dip and Christey from Fotocuisine was coming over for a playdate with the kiddies I couldn’t help but resist to warm up the house with….coffee and coffee cake! I had never thought to add fruit to coffee cake until one day I was eating an apple ugly (aka apple fritter) from our local mom and pop donut shop. If someone could combine diced apple with a donut dough, why couldn’t the same be done with coffee cake? From there I have always been curious how fruit would taste in our basic coffee cake recipe.

Last Minute Sugar Cookies

I did a lot of cookie baking last month. This by far has to be my most favorite, quick, easy and tasty cookie. I like my sugar cookies to be more buttery tasting, than sugary tasting – which I guess means I am more for a shortbread/butter cookie type gal. After attempting to make sugar cookies on my own, which failed horribly – the cookies looked more like sugar cookie biscuits, I grabbed this recipe that I knew worked and went to town!

Spinach, Mushroom and Carrot Quiche

We’re almost finished celebrating the holiday with friends and family, and alas there’s not a single pinch of sugar in this recipe. (I plan to get back to posting tasty treats soon!) My mom and sister came over to visit and instead of making dinner for them, we decided to do brunch instead of our normal family visit and dinner thing. We had mimosas, belgian waffles, hash browns, sausage, fruit salad and quiche.

Cookie Exchange 2009

At the last minute a hostess was needed for our MOMS club cookie exchange. I frantically thought about all the hours everyone put into baking tasty treats, that I offered to host. The cookie exchange must go on I said to myself! I made some coffee and spiced cider as well as a few additional batches of cookies. So while the kiddies played and the mommies chatted, I snapped a few pics before all the cookies disappeared!

Million Dollar Caramel Cookies

A chewy chocolate cookie with toffee topping hiding a golden caramel filling

This is THE recipe (my original photo) that inevitably comes up whenever I talk about baking. THE one that everyone asks for. I am actually kind of humble about it. This recipe was featured in Parenting Magazine, December 2008/Jan 2009 (their picture) issue as part of the top 5 winners in the 2008 Cookie Bake-Off Bonanza.

It’s actually kind of funny finding your own recipe on the Internet. I’ve seen these cookies for sale for $18/dozen, reviews about how they need more chocolate (????), been a prize for selecting a wedding song, other food bloggers making these and these cookies have been swapped over and over again in cookie exchanges!

Bake, fail, post

Bread (Spiced brioche dough) fail

See The Sugar Pixie Bake, See The Sugar Pixie Fail, See The Sugar Pixie Post! Yes my first fail that I am willing to blog about, because well it frustrates me to no end. I’ll even make a ‘Fail’ category!

My name is Krissy, and I can’t make a decent bread (involving yeast or kneading) product.

I made a small batch for my husband and I test (what a brave soul), and I tried it … it was bad, and I threw it out. No use in eating the extra calories if it’s bad! Here’s a picture of what the final product looked like.

Quick and Easy Sweet Cornbread

This is probably the quickest oven to blog post I’ve ever done, but it was so good I had to share! We were eating some leftover beef stew tonight for dinner and I was hungry for some bread, but there wasn’t enough time for it. So since I was trying to get rid of a bunch of the corn meal we had in the freezer (leftover from sweet pregnant cravings), I thought why not cornbread? I went searching for my favorite cornbread recipe that was bookmarked on my husband’s computer, but it wasn’t there! Oh no!!!

Ultimate Chocolate Brownies

When you have a craving for chocolate, a pregnant craving no less, only the ultimate in chocolate will do. While pregnant with our first child I had the craziest craving for chocolate brownies on July 4th no less. This was after we had already dropped off my in-laws at the airport and considered our day done. Not me! I wanted BROWNIES, and no one would stop me! If I recall, we had just enough ingredients to make the batter but I was short on chocolate chips, but had lots of Rolos and nuts so I just threw everything in and baked away. They were the tastiest brownies I ever had.