De Baking Psychopath

Square. Muffin. Pans. Pure genius. Sooooo cute. I'm infatuated. Maybe even in love. First seen here . Obsessed over for a couple of weeks, and then bought here . Bonus points: the pan I bought was marketed to be more of a bar cookie pan, so it's supposed to be amazing for brownies and mini-tarts too--brownie crust lovers rejoice!! But brownies will have to wait until next time. Instead, the inaugural recipe for my brand-spankin'-new square bar/muffin/cupcake pan was these Corn, Bacon, and Thyme Muffins. We had great plans for acquiring a bucket of Popeye's fried chicken for dinner tonight, and instead of getting biscuits, I thought I'd try my hand at corn muffins since we'd recently finally went out and bought a bag of cornmeal. Years of eating Boston Market as a kid (and I still *heart* Boston Market) has conditioned me to associate corn bread/muffins with chicken. Especially since my muffins are rectangular just like the BM ones (geometry flashback: squar...

I'm here in CA for a small, field-specific conference without my thesis advisor, and it's been a little scary to meet a very tight knit community of scientists who are the prominent investigators in our field of study, without my advisor to help me navigate the way and introduce me to people. Luckily she has some close friends who did come, and she asked them to keep an eye on me and help me get oriented (translation: babysit me). So I wanted to try to repay the favor by bringing a gift to help sweeten the deal and just say thank you for their support (translation: bribes). My advisor suggested buying their preferred alcohol for bribes, but I wasn't going to bring alcohol in my luggage, and as bad luck would have it, the duty free store at the airport was closed when I arrived. So good thing I'd also brought some fresh homemade biscotti for the purpose of bribing--much more my style. I made the triple-ginger biscotti again, because they were just soooo good. Sinc...

Yeah, those are palm trees. I would apologize...but I'm not sorry to be here. Here in Southern California, for a conference. And a break from lab work. In a studio suite with kitchenette the size of my first apartment when I started grad school. Livin' the high life, for 4 more days, at least.

Well, if you live anywhere in the Midwest or mid-Atlantic region, it's probably safe to say that you've been snowed in this week. School's been canceled. People are calling off work. Cities were in a state of emergency through the end of the weekend. And more snow is coming. So what did I do while I was snowed in at home over the weekend (other than making one adventure-through-the-snow-to-lab)? I was itching to bake, as usual, and specifically, I was itching to bake muffins. Which muffins, might you ask? Why, these beauties, of course: The first muffin comes from Proceed with Caution , a cooking/baking blog whose author has recently embarked upon a journey to focus on "Clean Eating," a philosophy of cooking with only whole, unprocessed ingredients such as whole grains and unrefined sugars. These Cranberry Orange Muffins exude wholesomeness, and they are moist and flavorful with sweet-tart fresh cranberries, nutty oats, citrusy orange zest, and buttery pecans....

Nutella. Nutty, chocolatey, gooey, thick...great on toast, on Triscuits, with jam, on ice cream, straight out of a jar. The lovely ladies at www.nutelladay.com started this world holiday in 2007, and it's kept on growing since. I decided to make my own Nutella in honor of the holiday, and I tried the following two different recipes. The first recipe for Chocolate Hazelnut Spread is from Gale Gand, found via Phe/Mom/enon. The recipe can be found here . In your food processor, puree the 1 cup toasted, peeled hazelnuts until smooth (you probably will need to add the 2 tablespoons of oil to get it to smooth out). Add the 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and continue processing. To the puree, add the 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon cocoa powder and blend until smooth. Then add 12 ounces of GOOD QUALITY milk chocolate, melted in a double boiler or in the microwave and cooled briefly. Blend until smooth. Transfer to heatproof jars/containers and let cool. It will set up and bec...

You know those gigantic soft chewy cookies that show up at catered events? The ones that you feel guilty eating, the ones the size of your face. Soft, chewy, oversized, yummy. Chocolate chip. White chocolate macadamia. Oatmeal raisin/cranberry. Since I've started baking, I've been on a quest to be able to make homemade acceptable replicas of my favorite catering cookies to keep me from being so shamefully scavenging of cookies at seminars and the like. Holy Grail #1 was the chocolate chip cookie, and the journey has largely ended with Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies from Cooks Illustrated. I am happy enough with that cookie that I don't eat store-bought or catered chocolate chip cookies in general anymore--they simply aren't as good as the cookies from that recipe and I am disappointed every time I eat outside cookies now. Holy Grail #2 was the White Chocolate Macadamia Cookie, which I have found a great recipe in a copycat of Subway's version of the cookie . ...