thanksgiving dessert

(Image via)

For Thanksgiving Day dessert, I plan to contribute Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Caramel Sauce, which looks delicious.

Find it on Epicurious.

homemade oreos

I highly suggest these next time you want to bake something sweet.

Can you tell which one Husband filled for himself?

sharing the batter beater...

When I finished a final exam and research paper the other day, I decided to celebrate by baking cookies. I pulled out my favorite cookie recipe, and I started to mix the awe-inspiring array of scrumptiousness: butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, coconut, toffee...

and as if they weren't decadent enough already, I added a cup of semi-sweet chocolate morsels.

When the time came to lick the beater, I didn't want to be selfish. So I shared with my sous chef:

I know cookie batter is arguably much worse for dogs than for young ladies like myself...

But Khan looked at the beater, then at me, longingly, as if to say,

"Aw, come on. A Boykin Spaniel only lives once!"

He seems to have emerged from the incident just fine... although later I found that he had knocked about 6 of the cooling cookies from the counter and gobbled them up. So, if he had suffered any cookie batter injuries, I think it would have been from his own ill behavior and not my generous offering of the batter beater.

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(I'm having technical difficulties linking to the recipe. Go to http://www.hersheys.com/recipes and type "Oatmeal Toffee Cookies" into the little search box. )

sweet tooth mania

Don't you love finding utterly unintended yet delightfully wonderful ways to use ordinary things?

For example, Real Simple magazine once suggested using a garlic press to crush coriander seeds.

To get to the point, the intended use for Baker's Chocolate is to melt the squares with butter, flour, vanilla, and eggs to make yummy chocolate baked goods.

But the utterly unintended

yet delightfully wonderful way to eat Baker's chocolate

is one square at a time like a super-thick candy bar.

And the crisp white parchment paper wrapped around each square definitely qualifies as "pretty packaging." And once you've traversed down that road once to satisfy an intense chocolate craving, nothing else can meet that standard of elite, dark richness.

So, treat yourself to a hunk of Baker's chocolate on your next taxing day.

Do you use anything ordinary in an extraordinary, unintended way?

sheer brilliance comes in little paper cupcake wrappers

Husband and I went on an ice cream date to Coldstone on Saturday after touring his job site.

It was there and then that I discovered:

ice-cream-filled cupcakes.

Frankly, I can't think of anything better.