It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? And like any other repentant blogger, all I can offer in the way of explanation is ‘life.’ But having a life is overrated, am I right?

‘Tis much better to have something ridiculously addictive and easy to make instead.

Can I interest you in my version of Rice Krispies treats?

Nothing overly fancy or fussy here, I promise. Honestly, I think this version adds 5 minutes to the original recipe, tops. And you’ll be amazed at what a huge difference these small changes make. Browning the butter creates a nutty, mellow flavor that gives complexity to the normally-bland sweetness of marshmallows. Cinnamon and nutmeg enhance the nuttiness of the brown butter while lightly spicing the flavor of toasted rice. And the sea salt sharpens each flavor, leaving you craving more with each bite.

I’ve had the chance to make these several times for family and friends alike, and the general consensus tends to be “oh, they’re all gone already?” whenever a few hours have passed. So I’m confident that you’ll not only enjoy them, but crave them like I do after you make them for the first time.

The treats in the pictures were made in a deep 8×8 pan, but this recipe will fit the standard 13×9 pan as well–they’ll just be thinner. And I’ll mention this below in the recipe, but definitely wait to eat them–ideally overnight, but an hour in the fridge will do the trick if you’re in a hurry. (Don’t leave it in the fridge or it’ll get soft, though.) Use a sharp knife; blunter knives will crush the toasted cereal and you’ll lose the crunchiness!

I’ll be moving on to healthier treats in the spirit of the new year… just consider this one last gift from 2014 since I was absent for the latter part of it online.

My Facebook news feed has become a scrapbook of engagement, wedding and baby pictures. (Whether the individual accounts fall into that chronological order is a topic for another medium.) The pictures of babies have been especially numerous–here’s Baby B making a funny face! And Baby G is laughing at a sound mama made! While others may tire and eventually grow irate of these particular updates, I enjoy them immensely. I get to see stunning pave engagement rings. I’ve never been shy about my preference for children: I’ve volunteered with adopted children at summer camps in the past, I’ve been a babysitter for as long as I can remember, I always make a beeline for the babies at potlucks and gatherings… and so on. I’m completely sure that my energy for kids will wane somewhat when I have my own child to watch around the clock, but for now, I’m happy to help!

James’ fellow resident and his wife (also known as our neighbors and game night partners-in-crime) recently had their first baby, and getting to meet her only a few days after her birth was amazing. I’ve never seen a friend’s baby so soon after delivery–she is so tiny and delicate! And her eyes are the same clear color as her mom’s; I know that babies have pretty poor eyesight at birth, but when she lifted her eyes to mine I really felt like she was looking right at me! I was so grateful for the chance to see her and meet her.

I had toyed with the idea of baking something for them right around her due date, but since the baby’s gender was unknown, I decided to hold off on planning anything. After my impromptu visit, I figured I would jump right in and bake something pink to celebrate! (Which is not to say that pink is for girls only, of course.) But the idea of pink cookies wasn’t terribly appetizing to me. So I thought: why not turn to natural colors? And that’s how I ended up with a dark-pink blackberry glaze.

As for the cookie itself… have you ever wondered why limes don’t get the same kind of love that lemons do? Admittedly, it’s not one of those pressing questions in today’s world. But other than key lime pie, we don’t see a lot of lime-centric desserts out there in the wide world of recipes–which is a shame, seeing that the lime has a sweeter, less mouth-puckering flavor than its citrusy cousin. I know that my recipe is like a tiny drop in a bucket, but hopefully it will encourage you to see limes in more ways than one.

And to my two friends–congratulations on your precious little one! I can’t wait to see the pictures of her in the knitted caterpillar suit.

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving at our apartment–or, to be more accurate, Orphan Thanksgiving. Not everyone can afford to fly back for two holidays within a month’s span… so for the second year in a row, James and I hosted other transplants like ourselves for an eating extravaganza. And like last year, I made way too much food. I think it’s becoming part of the tradition. (Isn’t it a tradition in general for the holidays?)

I finished with most of my prep work right before Thanksgiving so the day itself presented a lot more free time than I had planned on. Should I recline on the couch whilst watching people lip sync on floats down New York’s streets? Take a nap? Or make an extra dessert? Well, if you know me well enough I’m sure you know the answer to that particular question!

This holiday version of everyone’s favorite treat is a snap to make. The only difference between this recipe and the regular recipe is the addition of pumpkin pie spice (and for some recipes, the omission of the vanilla extract). I also add mini-marshmallows at the end right before putting the mix into a pan to set as an extra-gooey finishing touch. Feel free to leave that out if that’s not your preference–I personally like the addition because it breaks up the monotony of the texture.

These crispy squares disappeared sometime between me carving the turkey and dessert, and were quite well-received. My only regret is that I’m posting this recipe after Thanksgiving week, which is when it seems to fit best with other fall-themed foods. However, if you’re a big pumpkin spice latte or pumpkin pie fan, this will be a great addition to your easy desserts recipe catalog!

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not the biggest fan of sweets–which, if you follow the pattern of the recipes I post on here, seems pretty hypocritical. I think the biggest word in my tag cloud for this site is “BAKING” as of today (which is very closely followed by “DESSERT” of course.) So why all of the sweets love on this site? James has always joked about how “Baking Holiday” is a more apropos name for what I write about on here–and there is a whole body of evidence on my Recipes page to back up his claim.

I myself may not eat a lot of sweets or candy, but I do love how other people react to desserts and baked goods. Someone may love cheeseburgers–yet another may prefer quinoa salad. Tastes vary across a wide spectrum when savory foods are involved. Yet desserts seem to transcend these preferences; who doesn’t love a sweet note at the end of a meal? Baking to me is really baking for others to enjoy.

Baking is also simple in theory but complicated in practice. To really achieve optimal results, it’s important to know your tools, your techniques and your ingredients. Does your oven heat up evenly? When you mix your sugar into the butter, are you watching for total homogeneity? Have you tested your baking soda recently for its continued ability to cause a rising reaction? (Yep, my science geek is showing!) When you cook something and you mess up–you can usually supplement it with something else in order to salvage it from the trash. Once you place your baked good in the oven… well, if you made a mistake in the preparation, it is mostly a lost cause. The intricacy of the steps present a challenge to me, and I love rising to the occasion.

Lastly… and this is probably the most shallow reason I love baking desserts so much… desserts are pretty. So very pretty, and fun to photograph. Honestly, the only reason this isn’t a dessert blog (and the only reason my husband and I aren’t roly-poly) is because I don’t like eating sweets. And hopefully there is some self-preservation ingrained into that preference as well…

These s’mores cookies are a crowd-pleaser. They’re chewy on the inside and out. They’re liberally mixed with gooey, slightly bitter chocolate and salty-sweet graham cracker crumbles. They’re dotted with soft, pillowy marshmallows that are placed on top after baking to imitate the texture of a s’more–instead of meting into the cookie and being ignored. The knowledge of your kitchen and tools is what keeps the cookies chewy, and damn if they aren’t picturesque to look at. Baking is amazing, indeed.

In order to keep the dough easy to work with, make sure you place the bowl in the fridge while the baking sheet is in use–the colder the dough, the easier it is to roll it into pretty dough balls that turn into perfect round cookies when baked. Make sure you check on them 2 minutes before the suggested bake time if you’re unfamiliar with how quickly your oven cooks–10 minutes works for my oven, but it may not for yours. And if you’re really looking for an authentic campfire s’mores experience, you can eat the cookies after only a few minutes of cooling. I hope you enjoy these cookies as much as my friends do–I doubled this recipe and I still don’t think the cookies survived a full day.

High Altitude Adjustment (for my lovely Colorado friends): Add 2 Tbsp. of AP flour & 2 Tbsp. of water, subtract 1 tsp. of white sugar from the recipe. Set the oven to 365ºF (+15ºF from recipe) and reduce the bake time by 2-3 minutes.

I’m not sure why, but I got a hankering for this cake a few weeks before I flew out to Colorado to spend time with my grandmother. Since she was overseas on a cruise at the time, I figured I would find the recipe online with little trouble. Well, you know what they say about when you assume…

Where was this mystery cake? It has a similar consistency to bibingka (a famous Filipino baked dessert) but was baked in a pan, not in banana leaves. It had condensed milk instead of salted cheese and eggs at the top. It contained dried coconut in the batter, but not young macapuno (young coconut) like most of the other recipes called for. I kept hitting dead ends, and ended up resigning myself to waiting until I visited Colorado so I could have the mastermind herself–my grandmother–show me how to make it.

The recipe itself is very easy–but the taste takes me back to my childhood, when my family and I would fight over the chewy corner pieces and pick the condensed milk off our front teeth (then lick our fingers). I always knew that mochiko cake was on the way when I saw the trademark white box and condensed milk sitting on the counter. I remember my grandmother making it for special occasions, for our giant holiday potlucks, or sometimes just because my brother and I begged her to make more (usually because my dad had eaten all of the edges already).

As I grow older and look to start a family of my own, I find myself awash in the nostalgia of my childhood–and as a Filipino woman, the food I grew up with is an instant connection with my past. I’m so grateful that I was able to watch and learn from my grandmother today; I can’t wait to share this recipe with my kids when they’re old enough to bite through this chewy, sticky cake! (And probably fight with them over the best pieces. You know, because… tradition?)

Lastly, I should note that this recipe makes 2 8×8 pans of cake/ 1 13×9 pan of cake. It’s a very heavy cake–think brownie-type thickness–and if you’re not making it for a party, I would encourage you to halve the recipe.

Pardon the dust! I’m totally revamping the site and the cookie recipe can now be found here (or by clicking on the cookie):

High-Altitude Oatmeal Raisin Cookies 

Thanks so much and enjoy!

My father is an unapologetic fan of chocolates and sweets. I remember a never-empty jar of mini-Crunch bars in the den when I was growing up; and a pint of Rocky Road ice cream was ever-present in the freezer. The last time I visited his place in the Philippines, a jumbo-sized plastic jar with assorted Hershey mini-chocolate bars sat just a few steps away from his nightstand. The memories of my dad’s sweet tooth are so strong that I associate these candies with him regardless of the current time or place.

He flies back to the country a few times a year to spend time with the family, and since there are no direct flights from the Philippines to Colorado I get to see him during layovers going either way. Sometimes he stays with James & me in our tiny apartment, sometimes he’s here for dinner and gone in a few hours. Of course, anytime I get to spend time with him is precious. But I figured that I would show him how happy I was to see him again during his most recent trip by baking him a batch of cookies to temper his sweet tooth!

Why these cookies, when the combination of chocolate + cookies is endless? I distinctly remember my mom coming home from the grocery store with chocolate-covered pretzels on a weekly basis and watching them disappear next to my father’s computer. And as much as I love Crunch bars (who doesn’t?), I’ve been trying to stay away from candy for the sake of my own diet—if I had leftover candy bars after incorporating them in a recipe, it would be the end of me!

I brought the batch of cookies with me to the airport when I picked him up, and to say that he enjoyed them is an understatement! Since then, I’ve baked a few more batches: two batches in Boston for my whole family, a batch for my visiting aunt and cousin (and significant other!), and the most recent one… well, I just dropped my father off at the airport to fly back to the Philippines, and I thought it would be a sweet way of sending him off until I see him again for Christmas in a few months. See you soon, Daddy!

This recipe from The Brown-Eyed Baker is pretty solid as-is—the only changes I made were to add more pretzels (at my father’s request, of course!) and to leave them in pretzel chunks instead of finely crushed. The pretzels soften slightly during baking because of the oil in the cookie, but still retain enough of their own texture to make the cookie more interesting to chew on. Because I increased the pretzel “presence” in the recipe, I also increased the chocolate chip ratio. What you’re doing, in essence, is taking a peanut butter cookie recipe and throwing in pretzels and chocolate. Who knew that something so simple could elevate the cookie to another level?

Recipe adapted from The Brown-Eyed Baker

James likes to brag tell family and coworkers about my baking prowess. This is obviously a compliment, and I (and my ego) am more than happy to oblige these folks when they inevitably say “well, we can’t wait to taste what she has to make!” Cookies, cupcakes, cakes, pies—oh my! And I’ll admit that I am much more motivated to bake when I feel like I have to live up to someone’s expectations.

So when he mentioned the other day at dinner about how I bake well, my mother-in-law exclaimed: “Oh, I love apple pie! You know, the Sara Lee kind?” I smiled in recognition and said in return that “I will bake you a pie while you’re visiting Los Angeles, then!” I don’t think she knew that I was being serious, but who would pass up the chance to score some extra brownie points with the in-laws? I was fired up! We stopped by the grocery store for some Granny Smith apples and I went home in a blaze of determination, ready to prove myself.

Full disclosure: I’ve baked apple pie for her twice before, but both times there was something missing—the first was a wee sour, the second a bit boring and bland. I got the equivalent of a pat on the head and a “great job” for both efforts, but it wasn’t enough. I was in it to win it, baby. This was my time to shine.

…except that, in my haste, I didn’t buy enough tart apples and didn’t have enough butter for both the pie filling and the pie crust. By the time I realized that I was woefully lacking ingredients, it was already 10pm. The idea of a late-night trip to buy more groceries wasn’t appealing to me or to James. So I improvised, and heavily at that. And you know what? It turned out well. Extremely well. So much so that when my mother-in-law took a bite, she said it was far better than the ‘Sara Lee box.’ And hearing those words made all of my late-night substitutions completely worth it. Not only that, but I created a recipe all my own using elements from other pie recipes! Sure, it was out of desperation—but sometimes necessity is the mother of invention! Or so I hear. Either way, hooray!

Some candid notes:

• This recipe is fit for a 9-10 inch pie pan.
• The brandy listed for the filling is optional, but you’ll find that it gives a complexity to the sweetness and elevates the flavor of the apples. Brandy and apples are good bedfellows, after all.
• The best way to mix the crumble topping is with your hands. It’s greasy, and messy, and sticky—yes, I know. But it’s also the best way to test if you need to add more flour or not. The amount I’ve listed is what I used, but you might find you need more (or less).
• I had a smaller pie crust to work with, so my crust did not rise above the level of the pan’s lip. This is not preferable! Make sure you have crust to spare so that you can roll the excess over the lip and underneath itself—this ensures that the pie filling won’t bubble over your crust and underneath the pie itself, making the crust soggy.
• Speaking of crust, I normally use a recipe for an all-butter pâte brisée–but was forced to make do with a vegetable shortening-based crust instead via The Pioneer Woman. I’ll try to make a post about the alterations I made to the recipe sometime soon!

I have very fond memories of my grandmother making snickerdoodles for my family when I was little. She used the same cookbook that she had been using for years—the Betty Crocker Cookbook, published in the 1960’s. The cover was worn and the binding a little tattered, so she covered it with one of our elementary book covers—a picture of Mickey Mouse, books in hand and schoolhouse in the distance. Whenever I saw that book on the counter, I knew that in time the kitchen would be filled with the delicious smell of cinnamon, sugar and butter.

When I became older, she allowed me to assist her with the basics—rolling the dough into balls, tossing them with cinnamon-sugar, and placing the dough balls on the baking sheet. I would hop around with impatience and glance through the oven glass for the next 10-15 torturous minutes as the smell of cookies wafted throughout the entire house. I could barely contain myself when my grandmother pulled them out of the oven and shooed me away as she placed them on a cooling rack. And when I finally got to bite into each cookie, armed with a tall glass of whole milk… the memory still makes me smile, no matter where I am or how I’m doing.

I stole (borrowed?) that Betty Crocker cookbook from my house my junior year of college, determined to bring that happiness to fellow parishioners at my parish’s bake sale. Hoo boy—that did not go well. It was probably a combination of my ineptitude, the 30-year old oven at my apartment, and the fact that I didn’t adjust the recipe to high altitude (which ties into the first reason). Being in a pinch, I ended up “baking” a brownie mix from a box instead. I tried a few more times to recapture the magic that my grandmother had woven with her snickerdoodles, but even after I made altitude adjustments to the recipe I was still at an impasse.

I started trying recipes that I found online, desperate to figure out where I went wrong and what would work best. And after a few tries, I finally found this recipe on Simply Recipes—and it was perfect. Crispy on the edges, soft on the inside, with just enough cinnamon kick to tickle the taste buds. I’ve made this recipe for my closest friends, for my lovely coworkers, and everyone in between. Out of all the cookie batches I’ve made in the past, this one seems to have the most positive response. And although my taste has moved on (my favorite is oatmeal raisin nowadays), the act of making and baking snickerdoodles will always make me nostalgic for those long-ago days in the kitchen where I’m ten years old again–giggling and rolling dough in cinnamon sugar with my grandmother’s sharp-eyed supervision.

Someday, though… someday I’m going to tackle that dang Better Crocker recipe again, and I’ll finally master it! (I still have the book sitting in my bookshelf… no, I never gave it back. What a bad granddaughter I am!)

Recipe modified from Simply Recipes.

It sounds absolutely ridiculous to long for summer when I live in Southern California… yes, I recognize that I sound spoiled. Springtime in Los Angeles is a temperate paradise compared to the bipolar craziness that is Denver—“Oh, were you expecting May flowers? Surprise! Here’s a snowstorm instead!”

But as I have continued to bake more frequently over the years, I have also grown to eagerly anticipate what I like to call “berry season.”

Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries… oh my! So juicy, sweet, and tender… and really, just begging to be baked into a pie or cake. They never taste as good when you buy them out of season, even if you’re over-saturating your recipe with sugar. And of course, that takes away the fun of munching on a few berries while you’re preparing the batter or crust… or waiting for the cake or pie to come out of the oven…  I digress. (I’m a glutton for them, if that wasn’t obvious.)

When strawberries dropped drastically in price at the store a few weeks ago, I knew my “berry season” had begun. Lucky for me, Smitten Kitchen had just the recipe I was looking for—strawberry and cream biscuits! Could anything in biscuit form be nothing less than delicious?

The short answer, of course, is no—I mean, can anything with butter ever be wrong?—but I did alter a few things from the recipe, both while I was making the biscuits and adjustments afterward in hindsight. There are a few things that I’d like to stress before we get down to the nitty-gritty:

• Make sure that your strawberries are almost too ripe. Since there is a very small amount of additional sugar in the recipe, the sweetness of the biscuits is determined by the ripeness of the fruit. I made sure mine were dark red and almost dull in color before using them. If you don’t feel like waiting, I would increase the amount of sugar in the dough to ½ cup.
• This is really silly on my part, but I didn’t realize my baking powder was expired until these came out of the oven with nary a rise to be seen (hence my jokingly labeling them as scones). Super important to make sure your leavening agents are still chemically active, especially when you’re relying on one and not both (baking powder and baking soda).
• If you don’t have a biscuit cutter/round cookie cutter, use a short drinking glass. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all!

I gobbled up a few of these as soon as they were cool enough to touch… which is to say, I could barely hold them but ate them anyway. Buttery and flaky, but with the added one-two punch of velvety cream and juicy strawberries—berry season forever! (Please…?)

Original recipe: Smitten Kitchen