Recipe Used: Fudgy Cosmic Brownie Cookies - Design Eat Repeat

I had grand ambitions and lots of ideas for this week, but the reality of the hot and humid late-summer weather had me dreading the thought of turning the oven on, so it was time to pivot. I have loved brown butter Rice Krispie treats ever since I first spotted them on Smitten Kitchen back in 2009. 17 years - we’ve been together longer than I’ve known my husband!

Since it was “toasted” week, I decided to go the extra mile and try King Arthur Flour’s “Ultimate Brown Butter Rice Krispie Treats,” which include additional toasted milk powder to double down on the brown butter flavor. And to really gild the lily (and get some more mileage out of the kitchen torch I purchased back in Week 10), I sprinkled some extra marshmallows over the top and toasted those too.

Unsurprisingly, I liked these a lot. I did think the toasted milk powder upped the brown butter flavor. The toasted marshmallows on top were purely aesthetic - they didn’t contribute much to the flavor. And the recipe also called for stirring extra marshmallows in at the end so they would not melt, and create extra marshmallow swirls. For me, this step was a bit of overkill and pushed the recipe almost to the edge of being too sweet. Next time, I’d probably go back to the Smitten Kitchen recipe but add the toasted milk powder to those instead. A worthy experiment!

Recipe Used: Polish Cream Cheese Cookies (Kolaczki) Recipe

My search for an egg-free ciasto z malinami (raspberry cake) led me to this recipe for almond and raspberry cake.

Nice and simple!

Recipe: Almond and Raspberry Cake (Journey from a Polish Kitchen)

The biscuit part is a bit to thick so the texture is off, I will need to work on that for next time. The taste is close to what I wanted to achieve though

This week I turned my favorite cookie bars into cookies to cut down on the baking time. 28 minutes start to finish. Skipped the icing here and added the sprinkles directly to the cookie dough.

https://www.thekitchn.com/sour-cream-cookie-bars-recipe-23656007

I keep it pretty simple because I don’t care for nuts and I don’t add the dried fruit until after because it gets too hard and chewy when it bakes with the granola.

These beauties are $4.35 a slice at the Starbucks in our area. Soooo I probably ate ~$40 worth of iced lemon loaf over the course of 3 days? Not including the savings from all the froofy coffee drinks I would’ve bought to go with them. 😬💸

Recipe: The Best Lemon Loaf (Better-Than-Starbucks Copycat) by Averie Cooks

Will definitely make this one again!

Living up to my grandmother’s baking

Made our household favorite… double chocolate biscotti! I meant to add in a little espresso powder along with the vanilla bean paste to double up on the ‘beans,’ but forgot in the end. Still delicious as ever!

We’re enjoying them with port tonight, and will enjoy them again with coffee tomorrow morning. Yay free will!

Recipe: Double Chocolate Biscotti (Once Upon a Chef)

Recipe courtesy of Stuffed: The Sandwich Cookie Book, Heather Mubarak

From Hetal Vasavada's Milk & Cardamom cookbook. This was the first recipe I've made from the book and it's a banger!

She says it's modeled after Jacques Torres' chocolate chip cookie recipe which uses a combo of bread flour and cake flour and has a long chill in the fridge. I only made it about 21 hours for the chill, but I still have some dough so I'm going to wait and bake a few more off tomorrow to see if an even longer chill changes anything. These have cardamom, slivered almonds, and pistachios in them, as well as a mixture of white chocolate and milk powder that is toasted and cooled before folding into the dough. They have a great, caramelly flavor and just the right amount of cardamom. They disappeared almost immediately and I forgot to take a picture of the full spread, but thankfully I had reserved two before setting them out. My husband gave them 5/5 and I definitely agree with him :)

I've wanted to make one forever so I made some mini ones. First time using my blowtorch!

The whole premise of this recipe is that instead of using flour, you toast the oats in your oven and grind half of them into oat flour. Great idea..and that's where the great ideas stopped. When I went by Alton's recipe, I ended up with hot baked puddles of admittedly delicious cookie goo. So I made a lot of changes. His recipe just ended up being a jumping-off point.

In the spirit of toastiness, I toasted 60g of ap flour and added it to the cookie dough. And now I'm trying to remember the difference in the taste imparted by browned butter vs toasted flour. Because toasting flour is WAY easier than browning butter.

Some of those cookies are blown out. That's entirely my fault. I accidentally grabbed milk duds instead of raisinets at the store. No regurts tho. Best baking mistake I ever made. I'm gonna figure out how to work with them. I want them in more things.

I found this recipe in the Zingerman's Bakehouse cookbook.

These turned out great! They’d also work for the fast and furious challenge, if anyone still needed an idea for that.

Flavor is awesome! Only complaint is they turned out slightly dry.

Recipe: https://www.reddit.com/r/Baking/s/2Pjxibqdv8