White Chocolate Reese's

Have you ever had white chocolate reese's?  Well, I had not... until a client asked me to incorporate them into a cake!  The birthday boy's favorite candy is white chocolate reese's, so I created a birthday cake STUFFED with them!

Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the inside, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  This is a three layer chocolate cake with white chocolate buttercream.  In between each of the cake layers, I chopped up the candy and added it to the white chocolate filling.  For the outside, I put the leftover candies in my food processor and ground them up to create the little bits of tastiness that formed the outer "crust" if you will.

Since this was for a client, I didn't taste the final product.  But I'm told it was a hit!  Adding candy to cakes, etc. isn't something I usually do, but it's a fun - and tasty - way to bring your favorite flavors into a special dessert.

Blessings-
LC

PB Pie

As I've said on here several times, I'm not really a pie kinda gal... or a peanut butter and chocolate kinda gal.  However, I do aim to please my clients and friends for whom I bake! : )  Thus, I present to you a tasty (to most people) peanut butter pie.  This is a perfect summer treat - you only bake the crust for 5 minutes or so and then no more oven!  The filling is kind of like a no-bake peanut butter cheesecake, but not quite as rich.  And because you store this pie in the refrigerator, it's the perfect cool ending to a sizzling backyard BBQ.  I know we're heading into fall now, but I'm still hoping for a few more hot days before it's cold for good!

Blessings-
LC

Quake Cookies

As you probably heard, we had an earthquake here on the East Coast a couple weeks ago.  Because of that, and potential damage to my office building, we were released about 2pm and told not to come back until they cleared the building - which happened to be the next day.  The city was in chaos, and thankfully I live close enough to work that I was able to just walk home.  But everything else was closed, and traffic was awful, so I was pretty much forced to stay at my house the rest of the day.

So what do you do when you're trapped at home?  Bake cookies of course!  I had been wanting to make cookies with Rolo's for a while (my favorite childhood candy), and I had also been wanting to try baking pretzel pieces into cookies (you know how much I love salty and sweet together!).  So I started with my basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, but instead of chocolate chips, I added chopped Rolo's.  After I had all the cookies ready to go on the sheet, I added some crushed pretzels to the top and then put them in the oven to bake into delicious morsels.

These are FAN-tastic.  I can't tell you what a hit these were at the office the next day.  There is something so nostalgic for me about Rolo's, and the pretzels were perfect to help offset all that sugar.  I think I'll try adding pretzels to some of my other cookies and see how the flavor combination works.  While I initially called these "quake cookies" because they were the result of being sent home early and bored from the earthquake, what I realized is that because of the chopped candies and crushed pretzels, these cookies actually kind of look like they were in an earthquake too!  Clever I know... I made some cookies with pretzels, and some without.  But the cookies with pretzels were by far my favorite!

Blessings-
LC

Fun Fun

Since I started getting into baking a few years ago, I must admit I've become a little bit of a snob when it comes to prepackaged mixes or store-bought goodies.  I've just learned to tell the difference between homemade goodness and that artificial stuff, and it's ruined me forever from convenience desserts!

Much to my chagrin, many of my girlfriends LOVE funfetti... for what reason I cannot tell you.  I find the funfetti cake mixes sold at the store to be sickeningly artificially sweet.  But, as a baker, I do aim to please.

So when one of my funfetti loving friends had a birthday, I decided to make my own - from scratch!  My friend is also lactose intolerant so they are also dairy free (thanks to some Crisco and Lactaid "milk").  So if I'm gonna do funfetti, I'm gonna do it right, and I'm gonna do it like this.

Blessings-
LC