Food Diary

I always have a box of graham crackers or two in my pantry. They can be a tasty snack on their own, but they’re also essential for making things like graham cracker crusts , s’mores and other s’mores-inspired goodies . If you’re a fan of graham crackers, you might want to skip the s’mores and give these Graham Cracker Blondies a try. It’s a unique recipe for a tasty bar cookie that makes these classic crackers the star. The recipe starts out with ingredients that you’ll find in most blondie recipes, including butter, sugar, vanilla and an egg. Instead of using flour to bind those ingredients together, you use graham cracker crumbs instead. I made the crumbs by pulverizing whole graham crackers in the food processor , just as I would do if I were about to make a graham cracker crust. The crumbs are stirred right into the batter. It may look a bit sandy at first glance, but the blondies come together very well as they bake in the oven and the result is absolutely delicious. The finis...

I am very proud to let you all in on some exciting news: my upcoming cookbook Perfectly Creamy Frozen Yogurt: 56 Amazing Flavors plus Recipes for Pies, Cakes & Other Frozen Desserts is available for pre-order! This may not be quite such a news flash to those of you following Baking Bites on Facebook or on Instagram, as I’ve mentioned it more than a few times on those channels, but if you didn’t know yet – you do now! Almost four years ago, a book called How to Make Frozen Yogurt was published as part of a series of books I wrote on how to make a variety of frozen desserts. The other two books in the series were How to Make Ice Cream and Making Vegan Frozen Treats . It offered readers a nice introduction to making frozen yogurt, but when I had the opportunity to more than double the size of the book and add in chapters about making a variety of frozen yogurt desserts, I jumped at it. This book walks you through everything you need to know about making frozen yogurt at home – ...

We’ve all got plenty on our everyday To-Do Lists – things like, put on pants, brush teeth, don’t lock your keys in your car.  We usually nail it, we’ve gotten good at this.   Then there’s the Weekend List that’s usually a bit more fun and may or may not involve pants.  There’s also the To-Email list that is well… just deeply stressful. And the To-Dust list that we willfully ignore because of the All The Things You Can Do Besides Dust List which is suddenly very relevant every time dusting crosses our minds.  I’m here with a new submission. Continue reading 10 Things I Do To Refresh In Spring! at Joy the Baker.

Friends!   I’ll tell you now that there is no April Fools Day moment in this post.  I don’t fancy myself much of a trickster save for the one time I put vaseline all over the toilet seat one April Fools Day when I was little.  The slippery seat was met with less than enthusiastic reviews from my family. That joke didn’t go over well and I mostly stopped with the pranks right there. Continue reading Let It Be Sunday, 165! at Joy the Baker.

Honey butter is one of the most delicious spreads you can have in your home and it is very easy to whip it up at home with the help of a food processor. Butters with flavorings added are called compound butters and they can be both sweet and savory. This one adds honey and salt to butter, for a spread that is especially good on things like toast, scones and biscuits. You can make honey butter by stirring together softened butter and honey – and there are tons of recipes out there that will tell you how to do it. There are fewer recipes that will show you how to make butter from scratch and then turn it into honey butter! Making butter from scratch is easy and extremely satisfying. It starts with heavy cream and takes just 5-8 minutes in the food processor. The food processor will first whip the cream to stiff peaks (and if you want whipped cream, just stop there!), but as you keep the processor’s motor running, the cream will begin to form small curds and will eventually smooth out i...

Remember that phenomenon a few years back when we pressed everything from hash browns to quesadillas and chocolate chip cookies inside of our waffle makers?  We had some success.  We had some failures.  We learned that waffle irons are mostly best for things like, say… Blueberry Buttermilk Waffles.   Can we waffle that ?  Well, lately I feel the same way about caramel.  Name a single ingredients and the first thing that pops in my mind is…. Continue reading Carrot Caramel Ice Cream Sundaes at Joy the Baker.

I like to think of this Blueberry Crisp as a crustless blueberry pie. It has a jammy fruit filling and a delicious streusel topping that would be a great addition to any pie, but lacks a flaky pastry crust. Leaving out the crust allowed me to turn this dessert from a pie into a crisp, a dessert that requires minimal preparation and is still extremely satisfying to eat – even if it has to be served with a spoon instead of sliced. This fruit crisp starts with lots of fresh blueberries. You can use frozen blueberries, but you may want to increase the amount of cornstarch in the filling by a small amount to make up for the fact that frozen berries typically give off more liquid than fresh. Both will taste delicious. I did not add any additional sugar or sweetener to the blueberry filling, as the cooking process really concentrates the flavor of the berries without the need to anything extra. That being said, if your berries aren’t at their peak (give them a taste and see if they are swee...