De Baking Psychopath

Yes. You read that title correctly. No, I'm not one of those crazy bacon-is-god sort of people.  ...But I do like my breakfast meats sweet and salty. I've always drizzled a little bit of maple syrup on my breakfast sausage or bacon, along with a healthy dose of black pepper. So when I saw this recipe in Joy the Baker's new cookbook , I thought it weird but intriguing...     (stroking imaginary beard in contemplation) Meanwhile, I have been on a mission to use up my insane Costco tubs of peanut butter, and I might not have so much trouble if I keep making these cookies!  When I first tried them, I went "Hmmmm...." (more imaginary beard stroking) The nutmeg flavor packed a big punch fresh out of the oven, and I was a little overwhelmed. My second response was "I am not sure yet what I think about these cookies...but I think I need to eat another cookie to decide!" (which is always an optimistic sign)  Once they had full...

One of my classmates brought a PB&J sandwich for breakfast every single freakin' day in our first year of medical school. For his birthday that year, I decided to make a PB&J cake in his honor. It was a chocolate cake, with a strawberry jam layer in the middle and peanut butter frosting on top. Unexpectedly, it was another one of my other classmates, Mark, that took a fancy to this flavor combination in cakes, and he's requested it for his own birthday ever since. So when he decided to throw a get together for his birthday yesterday, I decided to re-invent the PB&J cake for this year's offering. After some Internet searching, I found myself linked back to one of my favorite baking blogs, Bake or Break , for a peanut butter pound cake with milk chocolate chunks strewn throughout. Perfect. I decided to throw some strawberry jam into the cake for good measure, and to top things off, I made a strawberry sauce to bring out the strawberry-peanut butter combo. Mar...

Tuesday was our last class of the 4-week Ethics course I was taking, which turned out better than I thought it would be. I baked for the once-weekly class, at first because we didn't get dinner (budget downsizing), but later we got some pizza, so it was just for fun after that... The first week, I went back to my beloved Cooks Illustrated choco chip cookies, and I also threw in some Mayan Chocolate Cookies from Robin Hood (a flour company) that I had frozen dough from awhile ago. The second week, I made the Samoa copycat cookies from Oatmeal Cookie Guy, which got rave reviews from my classmates and some requested it again for the next week, so I obliged. And for the last week, I decided to try some new things from those famous bakeries I blathered on about in my last entry (have you watched that SNL rap about macking on Magnolia cupcakes yet? if not, you really should...). The first item was brownies from scratch! Despite years of making cookies and cakes now, this was the first t...