Chocolate Dipped Birthday Cupcakes

Cupcakes, chocolate dip, marshmallow frosting, and sprinkles? That can only mean one thing...it's a birthday kind of day! Every February 26, I bake and post a special batch of cupcakes, just for a special set of twins. My little cousins, Valentina and Federico, are officially four years old today! And what better way to celebrate such a momentous birthday than with a batch of Chocolate Dipped Birthday Cupcakes?

I've made chocolate pudding-filled cupcakes, mini vanilla birthday cupcakes, and classic vanilla cupcakes topped with Nutella frosting, but this year, my sister suggested that I give hi-hat cupcakes a try. I loved the idea from the beginning, mainly because I had never actually attempted to make them myself (a hi hat cupcake, in case you're not familiar, is a cupcake topped with a towering spiral of marshmallow frosting that gets dipped in a thin chocolate coating). I'd wanted to make hi hats for a long time and never got around to it, so with the twins' birthday coming up it was the perfect occasion. There was just one small (literally) detail that gave me pause.

Chocolate Walnut Breakfast Buns

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful and relaxing holiday season, filled with family, friends, and lots of delicious, comforting food. I'm lucky enough to get a nice holiday break at work, so I was off for just over a week. Even though I did my fair share of Netflix binge-watching and had many "I'm gonna nap right now because I can" moments, and experienced more food comas than I'm proud of, I had a very productive week off. Last week was the first week where I had a full kitchen completely to myself, and I made sure to take advantage of it. My pantry and kitchen toolbox still aren't quite as stocked as I'd like them to be, but they're getting there, slowly but surely. It was also the first time I baked in my new apartment for the blog, so that was a new experience on its own. I'm so used to baking in my parents' kitchen and photographing in their living room, so doing it somewhere else took some getting used to. Since I only brought my "essential" props and tools, I'm still missing quite a few items that would make the process a bit more seamless. Figuring out how to work the lighting in my new space is also a challenge, especially because my sheer curtains aren't up yet!

New challenges aside, I'm pretty happy with the recipes I managed to bake last week. Each was rewarding in its own special way, and I'm excited to share them. First up, fluffy Chocolate Walnut Breakfast Buns--you're not on any kind of New Year's detox program right now!

I made some Quick and Easy Cinnamon Rolls a few weeks ago to satisfy a craving I had back when I was super busy getting ready to move to my apartment. They were great and totally hit the spot at the time, but the craving just came back just around Christmas. As good as those cinnamon rolls were, I couldn't shake away my need for pillowy soft yeast buns.  Fortunately, the craving came back at just the right moment. With loads of spare time at my disposal for once, I set out to create the fluffy, gooey cinnamon buns I was my brain was telling me I needed...except that as I was making them, I changed my mind. All I wanted was a chocolate breakfast bun. 

World Peace Cookies

Christmas is exactly one week away...um, WHAT? It certainly doesn't feel like it is, but here I am, buying wrapping paper, praying my gifts ship in time, and planning Christmas Eve/Christmas Day breakfast menus worth remembering with my sister. This is my first holiday season away from home, and it's a bit strange. It used to be that I was the first to welcome Christmas into the house-- I'd put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving, start (but never finish) a gingerbread house, and untangle the icicle lights to hang off the roof. My sister was always a little indifferent about getting the house ready (she was more into eating my Christmas cookies), and while my mom loves putting up Christmas decorations, she needs a push from me to get started. Essentially, all the Christmas spirit in our family came from me. I always said that if I wasn't home the house would be lacking in decorations, and of course, that's what happened this year! My mom took out a few decorations from the attic, but didn't go crazy, and instead of classic icicle lights, my parents installed a red and green strobe light of sorts that covers the entire house ( which I'll admit look kind of cool actually).




I wish I had had more time to decorate the apartment for the holidays and get crafty. I've been meaning to make some orange and clove pomanders for weeks, and I wish I had gotten a wreath (it seems silly to get one now), and I would have loved to make lots of homemade hot fudge sauce (or anything really) to jar and give away as gifts. Unfortunately though, there was just no way any of those things were happening. I barely even had a chance to do any holiday baking! The blog was way too quiet for my favorite time of the year (especially for baking), but I'm hoping I'll get to squeeze in one more Christmas recipe before next Friday. But until then, let's talk about the amazing cookies we have in front of us.

Chocolate Pistachio Loaf Cake

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! I think I'm just starting to recover from my food coma, but that intense feeling of fullness was completely worth it. This year, my family celebrated the holiday with my boyfriend's family for the first time, which seemed fitting given that we moved in together literally four days before. Our families joined forces and created an amazing Thanksgiving meal with an Italian flair. We started with prosciutto and melon and caprese salad, followed by an enormous plate of the best lasagna in the world, and then all the traditional Thanksgiving fixings were served. After downing a plate piled high with turkey, stuffing, two types of cranberry sauce, two potato dishes, several types of salad, stuffed mushrooms, and an assortment of freshly baked rolls and cornbread, it was time for dessert. I went a bit overboard and ended up bringing Gluten-Free Brownies, pumpkin pie, a Simple Almond Cake, Linzer Cookies, and the prettiest Apple Pie I've ever made. Tiramisu and roasted chestnuts rounded out the meal and by the time I realized how full I was, I was in no condition to do anything except pass out on the couch...basically, I did Thanksgiving proud.

While I love Thanksgiving, I'm happy the holiday is over. One down, two more to go! The holidays are my favorite time of the year, but I'm really looking to just get back to a more normal schedule. Between getting ready for the move to Astoria, the actual move, setting up the apartment, work, and Thanksgiving, I've had an incredibly busy November. It flew by and i can't believe that I'm sharing a recipe I made in the last week of October in December. I've worked on this post in bits and pieces over the last few weeks--typing up the recipe one night, selecting photos the next, editing them a few days later, and this entire post was pretty much written on the subway ride to and from work. 

I do see an "end" to all this craziness coming soon though. The apartment is in amazing shape, and C. and I are getting used to what is now the new normal. We'd been planning on living together since we graduated from college two years ago, and even though we've spent so much time together over the last six years, being able to say that we actually live together still feels very surreal to me. I'm sure it will feel that way for a while, but it's nice that we're slowly settling into a routine and figuring out how this whole cohabitation thing works. It's been an exciting and busy time, and as much as I'm ready to just have my regular routine all figured out, I couldn't be happier about the way things are unfolding.

Kit Kat Milkshake

I hope everyone had an amazing Halloween! Whether you dressed up or not, I hope you at the least got to eat a TON of candy. I definitely ate more than I should have, and since we got almost no trick or treaters, I have an absurd amount of candy leftover. And while I'm more than happy to just eat it straight, it's always fun to mix it up into something new.

A milkshake is my favorite way to go about this.  Three years ago, I shared a Snickers and Pretzel Milkshake and it was a huge, huge success. I thought it was such a great way to use up my favorite goodies from Halloween as a kid, so I wanted to make a new version this year. My tastes have changed since I made that milkshake--back then I was a die-hard Snickers fan, but today, I'm all about Kit Kats.

This Kit Kat milkshake is just your basic chocolate milkshake with a lot of Kit Kats blended in. There's nothing crazy about it, but nevertheless, it's pretty amazing. A couple scoops of chocolate ice cream (or any other flavor you want) get blended together.  The mixture is then poured into a tall glass that's been drizzled with hot fudge or chocolate sauce, and is topped off with a generous dollop of freshly whipped cream and finished with two more Kit Kat bars. 

Tiny Chocolate Cake (GF)

Hello! I'm here! I haven't disappeared.  I've just been a bit quiet and taking things easy over the past few weeks. I think I'm just in need of a break of sorts.  I'm not really even sure what I need, but having slowed down recently has been nice, I'll admit.  I've been taking some time to think about this space I've carved myself online, and reflect on how I've spent the last four years (almost) of my life.  The time really just flew by, and it's amazing to me how quickly it's gone.  Over 300 posts, more photographs (both good and bad) than I would ever want to count, and so much time have gone into this.  Creating content on such a regular basis and maintaining a site has been more work than I could have ever imagined, but it's been incredibly rewarding at the same time.  Despite that, I'm starting to drive myself crazy. 

Chocolate Babka

For the past few years, my sister has taken it upon herself to request an unconventional birthday treat.  A regular birthday cake is never good enough for her. She's requested homemade Chocolate-Glazed Yeast Doughnuts, a sky high New York Style Cheesecake, and last year, she wanted an entire week dedicated to breakfast treats.  This year, however, I beat my sister to the punch.  I thought "birthday babka" had a nice ring to it, and she immediately agreed.  I'd been wanting to make a babka for years, but I was never brave enough to go through with it. The yeast, and the folding, and the swirls! It all seemed like too much.  I had already opened my mouth though, and she was set on her birthday babka, with lots of chocolate swirls. There was no turning back now.  

I went straight to Smitten Kitchen, because I knew Deb had simplified Yotam Ottolenghi's chocolate krantz cake recipe into one that was foolproof. If I've learned anything from working closely with Clarkson Potter over the past few months, it's that Ottolenghi is a brilliant, brilliant man. I figured that if Deb had worked her magic on an Ottolenghi recipe to improve it, the final result had to be spectacular.  Her recipe seemed completely doable, and as I was reading it through, I wondered why I hadn't ever given myself chance to actually make a babka.  It didn't seem that hard. 

Chocolate Stout Tart with Pretzel Crust

When it comes to beer and cocktails and fancy drinks, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m neither adventurous nor very knowledgable. I have a very basic set of cocktails, beers, and after dinner drinks that I stick to and rotate through, and if you were to offer me a glass of wine, I’d have to politely decline, as that’s a beverage I haven’t quite gotten a taste for just yet. It’s a situation that is slightly embarrassing, but at the same time, it’s not a priority for me to fix.  I don’t drink all that often because to put it simply, I much prefer to indulge in a caloric overload via ice cream, cake, and brownies. That’s just the reality of the situation. It’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a beer with friends every now and then. I’ll just almost always choose a beer on the lighter side (because I like to play it safe), and I steer clear of anything dark.  I make a special exception for stout though. Definitely not for drinking, but for baking; give me a slice of rich Chocolate Stout Cake and I’m all over it.  The first time I made it, I wasn’t sure if the stout flavor would be too pronounced and overpower the chocolate (a horrible situation for anyone who prioritizes chocolate above all other things), but I was so surprised with how well the combination worked, and even more surprised at how much I loved it. 

Chunky Walnut Brownies

I don't think I've ever lived through a colder winter than this year's. It's pretty crazy. I remember teasing my sister for having to deal with Hanover's brutally long, cold, and snowy winters, and now I'm having to deal with them myself.  Karma, I guess? I don't think I really deserve it, and even if I do, this is just too much.  Seriously, it's beyond cold and despite the birds chirping outside my bedroom window at 6:30 in the morning (how are they even alive?!), it doesn't look like spring is coming anytime soon. All I can do now is keep warm as best I can and thank my lucky stars that I invested in my L.L. Bean parka last year (I thought it was excessive and had buyer's remorse for a while, because when does it ever get that cold in NYC, right?).

Since its been so cold lately, all I seem to want to make right now are really quick and easy comfort treats (this dulce de leche cake being a notable exception). All I want are giant chocolate chip cookies and hot fudge sundaes and warm brownies...BROWNIES! I hadn't made a batch of brownies in an awfully long time, and they seemed like exactly the type of indulgent comfort food I was craving. There's just something about brownies that makes them completely irresistible. I had that initial spark, and there was no doubt about it. I needed a big pan of brownies.

Oatmeal, Pecan, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oatmeal is one of my all time favorite breakfast items, period. When I was little, I was really into microwaveable instant oatmeal packets, mostly because they could be purchased in variety packs and I could have a different flavor for breakfast every day. As varied as my breakfasts may have been, they were definitely pretty lackluster in flavor!  My oatmeal obsession matured over time, and now I make my own oatmeal breakfasts, in a variety of flavors, but with a whole lot more flavor.  One thing I still haven't outgrown though, is a really good oatmeal cookie. As a kid, oatmeal raisin cookies were my favorite.  Super sweet and chewy with just barely a hint of oatmeal and maybe two raisins per cookie...that was a good oatmeal cookie. 

I think it's safe to say that my taste in oatmeal cookies have evolved significantly since then.  Gone are the barely-there oatmeal cookies of my youth; they've since been replaced with chunky, substantial cookies, loaded with real oats and mix-ins galore. Even classic chocolate chip cookies can benefit from the addition of a few ups of rolled oats and nuts, a thought I would have never ever considered back in the day!

Chocolate Panna Cotta

My obsession with panna cotta has been well documented here. It all started a few years ago when my cousin Angie shared this delectable panna cotta with a simple strawberry sauce. I never thought I could love a dessert without a trace of chocolate as much as I loved that panna cotta. It was just divine! Since then, I've expanded my panna cotta repertoire to include both buttermilk and Greek yogurt versions, and while I love both of those, the original cream and milk only version is still my favorite. Luscious and smooth, it's truly something special.

While I had ventured out of the traditional panna cotta realm before, I never strayed far from the same basic sweet cream flavor. Sure, some versions added a hint of tang, but essentially, it was a similar flavor profile. I hadn't thought about making a chocolate version until recently, and I thought that would be a good place to begin experimenting. I envisioned a super smooth and velvety chocolate treat that was just rich enough to save for special occasions, but not enough that you'd want to skimp out on your share!

Gluten Free Chocolate Chunk Cookies

If I had to eliminate gluten from my diet, I think I would miss my mom’s famous chocolate cake the most out of everything.  It’s intensely chocolatey and is brushed with amaretto for three days before serving, and it’s easily one of my favorite desserts of all time. Second on my list would be these brown butter chocolate chip cookies. They’re everything a chocolate chip cookie should be: crisp around the edges, thick and chewy in the center, loaded with chocolate chips, and rough and craggy on top.  While one of those cookies should be enough to satisfy me, they’re so good that I can never help but break off small pieces of cookie whenever I walk past the kitchen, and the next thing I know, I’ve ended up eating something around three entire cookies by myself…or more. They’re dangerously delicious. 

I wanted to make a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie that exactly matched my favorite traditional cookies.  They had to be thick and chewy and deliciously crisp along the outside- I was not going to compromise on any of those requirements. While browsing through recipes I was disappointed by most of the photos I saw.  The recipes may have been just fine, but none had that old-fashioned bakery look that I think is essential to a really good chocolate chip cookies. It was frustrating, but after a little more Google-ing, I found Alton Brown’s recipe.  The photo for his cookies was the closest in matching the perfect cookie vision I had in my head, so I figured this would be the best way to go. 

Easy Chocolate Skillet Cake

It's only the second week of January, my third blog post of the year, and I'm already posting about chocolate cake.  I guess I got bored of the healthy eating already?  I mean, I haven't really. I just got bored of a life without cake and chocolate.  Seriously, I think a week is about all I can handle without indulging in some of my favorite sweets.  I try not to think of this as a bad thing.  

After my first week in the new year, I had a craving for cake.  Just cake.  Any cake would have probably made me happy, but you know me, I'm a simple kind of girl who will take a slice of plain cake over just about anything. Really. Any flavor, with any kind of mix-ins, baked, in a loaf pan or a round pan or a square pan, as long as it's a slice of plain, moist cake with a dusting of powdered sugar, I'm good to go. I wasn't really shocked at all when I found myself thinking of cake...and more cake...and more cake. I needed it!

Thumbprint Cookies with Chocolate Ganache

This weekend was the first in a while where I was rudely reminded that winter is coming.  It's obviously been on its way for a while now, but we've had many random little moments of sunshine and mild weather, the kind of moments where you wish it could just be fall forever.  This weekend though, oh boy.  It was cold.  Much colder than it had been earlier in the week.  And it was gray and rainy and just miserable.  Truly, it was depressing.  It didn't stop raining for the entire day on Saturday, and as much as I wanted to curl up under the covers with a cup of tea and a good book, I devised a new plan to entertain myself and brighten up my day.  I would make cookies, because the idea made its way into my head and it wasn't leaving.  Cookies were exactly what I  needed.

While I could have chosen to make some wonderfully spiced or pumpkin or cider kind of cookie, I didn't want that. No, I wanted nothing seasonal.  I just wanted a good old, straight up happy cookie.  Seasonal wasn't going to cut it.  My cookies needed to be cheery and be able to make me feel good.  Nothing fussy or overly complicated about them...they just needed to be good.

Creepy Cobweb Chocolate Cake

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, right behind Christmas and Thanksgiving, which are both tied for first right now.  I love spooky and creepy things, and getting dressed up as a little kid was always just about the coolest thing ever.  I was always a fan of dressing up, and that's something that hasn't changed.  My mom would always make me an elaborate homemade costume, and I always thought my costume was the best there was. Combined with my epic costumes, the fact that I also lived in a neighborhood where people were super generous when it came to giving out trick or treat goodie bags meant that Halloween was always a really special time of year.  I'm not dressing up this year, mostly because I just didn't have time to pull together a costume that met my standards, but I'm not without Halloween plans.  I'll be watching scary movies in the dark and eating my weight in mini chocolate bars, which is just as good a plan as any.  

I got into one of my layer-cake-making moods a couple of weeks ago, and rather than just bake a layer cake and get it out of my system, I decided to save it for Halloween. In theory, this meant that I would have had a long time to plan out my cake and decide how I wanted to decorate it, "in theory" being the key words there.  I did spend a lot of time looking for inspiration, but I just couldn't settle on anything.  I knew that I wanted to make a chocolate cake, because I don't think there's anything better than a perfectly moist chocolate cake, and also because the last two layer cakes I had made were of the buttermilk vanilla type (see here and here). Super dark, intense, almost black chocolate layer cakes were going to make it into my final halloween cake in one way or another. The decoration required a bit more thinking, and in the end, I ended up over-thinking it (because that always happens).

Cinnamon Chocolate Chunk Scones

I usually try to have some kind of interesting story to write about in every blog post, and for the most part, I'm typically able to come up with something that I hope is worth reading.  And then, I'll try to somehow connect that interesting little story to whatever recipe it is that I'm posting.  Sometimes the two flow together seamlessly, like when I'm sharing a favorite family recipe.  It's like the words just come out and I breathe a sigh of relief when I hit publish.  Other times I'll finish writing my post in a stream of consciousness kind of situation, get to the end, and think to myself, "well...I guess that kind of makes sense?"  When that happens I usually hope that the pretty photos in the post make up for the iffy written content in the post.  And then, there are also times like these. Times when I just really wanted a scone, so I made them, and here they are.

I hadn't made scones in a really long time, and over the weekend, I just had this inexplicable craving for them.  I hardly ever eat scones (shame on me), but last weekend, I couldn't let my craving for them just pass by.  I needed to remedy the situation, and it needed to be done in a manner that was simple and effortless.  Scones are simple on their own, but for the mix-ins, the rule was the same as always.  I was not going to the supermarket, and I could only use things already in my pantry.  I've gotten into the (good) habit of always having a big bar of dark chocolate on hand, and I was excited to see that I still had a decent amount of mini cinnamon chips from sister (previously used in these snickerdoodle cheesecake muffins).  Cinnamon chocolate chunk scones were happening!

Chocolate Balsamic Coconut Macaroons

Today we have coconut macaroons on the blog, because who doesn't love macaroons, right?  I happen to be a really big fan of these chewy little bites, and I love them even more when they're studded with tiny chocolate chips and a touch of balsamic.  As good as that sounds, that's actually not the true reason why I made macaroons this past weekend.  The true reason I made them, is because they're gluten-free.

Now, I don't have an intolerance to gluten (thankfully), but more and more people are developing an intolerance as time goes on.  My mom seems to be one of them.  Due to other various health issues (not Celiac's), my mom has chosen to eliminate gluten (and possibly dairy) from her diet, and it's made a world of difference.  Simply eliminating foods with gluten has done wonders for my mom in just a few days, and she says she's feeling so much better now that she's avoiding bread and pasta.  Unfortunately, it also means she will have to avoid almost everything that I bake for this little blog.

Artpark Brownies

I've been working on making some changes in my life.  The biggest, and change I'm most nervous and excited about, is my recent career change.  I've been feeling a little ambivalent about architecture lately.  I still love architecture and design, and I think I always will.  At the same time, however, this little interest I have for food and writing and such has been growing more and more over the last few months.  It's grown so much, that the thought of going back to graduate school to study architecture was just not sitting well with me anymore.  I figured that the best course of action would be to step aside from architecture for a bit and try something new for a while.  I embraced this decision whole-heartedly, and I actually landed a job at Random House, to work with the Clarkson Potter editorial team. I started this week, and while it's a major change, it's a change I'm very happy with so far.  I can't say I'm completely sure I know what I'm doing or where I'm planning on going with all of this, because I don't know, but I'm excited to find out and see what happens.

I've been reading a lot more food-related books lately, and I'm hoping to grow a nice little collection to match my growing cookbook collection.  One of the books I recently finished reading is Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table.  In this book, Ruth Reichl, a well-known food writer, shares memorable moments from her life and details how she came to love food.  The book is charming and funny, and makes you love food just as much as she does.  Scattered throughout her stories are the recipes from the defining moments in her life, and the recipe for these Artpark Brownies caught my eye immediately.  Ruth's brownies were known for being "the best in the world," so I knew that this was one recipe I had to try for myself.

Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Can I confess something to you all?  I had never actually had the chocolate-chip-cookies-and-milk combination until yesterday.  Actually, I'd never had cookies of any kind with milk before, to be perfectly honest.  I didn't really drink milk as a kid, because it always upset my stomach (thankfully, this never happened with ice cream or cheese), and while I can drink milk now, I usually don't, just out of habit I think.  I've photographed many different cookie recipes for the blog, and they're almost always accompanied by a nice tall glass of milk.  Whenever the time came to taste the cookies in question for the photos, I would always take a bite out of the cookies, and pour just a bit of the milk back into its container, to pretend like I actually took a sip myself.  At the end of the photo shoot, all the remaining milk in the glass would go back into the milk carton, or I'd give it to my sister to drink. This is how I always photographed my cookies and milk, until yesterday, when I photographed these Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

I really wanted to try a new approach to photographing my cookies and milk.  I took a few shots with the standard glass, of course, but I also wanted to try a few shots with spilled milk.  I had no idea how those photos would come out, but I ended up really liking them!  If you scroll down for the recipe, you'll see what I'm talking about.  In that photo, some of the cookies got pretty soaked in milk, so I figured it would be as good a time as any to finally try out the whole, "cookies and milk" phenomenon and see if it was actually as great as everyone claimed it was. To my big surprise, I ended up liking the combination!  I still prefer my cookies when they're not dipped in milk, purely for textural reasons, but I can see myself dipping them in milk on occasion from now on, especially now that I've found this amazing recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cereal Treats

Summer is officially winding down, can you believe it? It's that back to school time of year again, and I know many people have already gotten started, or are about to start in the coming weeks.  I always loved going back to school, and I loved it until the real heavy workloads started getting piled on.  When I was little though, I loved heading back to school and getting all of my stuff ready, whether it was my "first day of school outfit," or my school supplies, or picking out a new lunchbox.  A lot of thought needed to be put into the lunchbox! It had to be cool and pretty, and at the same time, meet my mom's standards for efficiently transporting my lunch from home to school without a disaster happening.  My mom would usually pack me a sandwich, a juice box, a fruit, and a sweet treat for dessert or snack time.  My favorite were the Little Bites Mini Muffins and Brownies, but every now and then she'd swap in a Rice Krispy treat, which I also really looked forward to. 

These Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cereal Treats are a throwback to one of my favorite lunchbox snacks. Back in the day, I only ever tried the plain Rice Krispy treats (did they have other varieties back then? I don't even know), so this chocolatey version was a very welcome change.  I used Cheerios, but you can use whichever cereal you like and change the flavorings to what suits you the most.  They're highly adaptable and incredibly easy to make, so they're a great make-ahead treat option for your little one's lunchbox (or for bringing along to work!).  For more pics and the full recipe, head on over to the Make and Takes blog!