TWD Cocoa Salt and Pepper Shortbread

These reminded me of Maida Heatter's Black Pepper Brownies. The pepper was a little stronger in these cookies, and I think I liked the drier texture with the pepper than with the fudginess of the brownie. Since I wasn't sure going in, I made half with the pepper and half without. The ones with the pepper, I could hardly taste the salt. But the ones without the pepper, the salt really stood out, like the World Peace cookies someone had mentioned in the comments. It's not my favorite cookie of Dorie's, but tasting both, I realized I kind of do like the black pepper.

Thanks to Tia of Buttercream Barbie for this week's pick!

Lime Pie Paletas and Ice Cream

We've been on a popsicle kick here, and while I was on the library's reserve list, I started searching for some of Fany Gerson's recipes online. One that seemed perfect was her Lime Pie Paletas
I didn't use the graham cracker crumbles, though I'm sure those would be a fun texture. Without, these were still a great treat - creamy, not too rich, tart. I love the lime.















I'd tried David Lebovitz's Vietnamese Coffee ice cream, and with the sweetened condensed milk, it stayed perfectly scoopable. So I thought I'd try the same with some of the Lime Pie recipe and ran it through the ice cream maker. It also was the perfect consistency. I think I almost liked it as an ice cream more - though I think I'd try the crumbles on top next time. We'll definitely have this again next summer, and probably some throughout the year!

TWD Classic Brownies

This is not the most amazing brownie picture ever (they were still warm from my last minute baking), but these are some very rich, chocolaty brownies.

I tried half with the walnuts and half without:














I don't usually like nuts in brownies, but then the espresso powder with the walnuts sounded pretty good, so I figured I'd try both :)

The brownies are very rich and dense, but thin. I think these are the only brownies that I like better with the nuts. The ones without seemed like they could do without a TB or two of the butter, but the ones with the walnuts were great!

Thanks to Anne of Anne Strawberry for this week's pick!

TWD Chocolate Spice Quickies

I'd actually gotten these baked on time, but then was late in posting, so I'm a week behind on these. The quickies were quick to put together - it pretty much all gets thrown in the food processor. The flecks are little bits of almond. These were really great warm. They'd be great holiday cookies with the spice, how easy they are to pull together and the make-ahead nature (they're rolled in a log for slice-n-bake, and then they need to chill at least 4 hrs). I'll be keeping these in mind for around the holidays!

Thanks to Jessica of My Baking Heart for the pick!

Baked Donuts

Ever since seeing the sweet potato donuts on the cover of Food & Wine, I've been wanting to try to make baked donuts. But as I started looking, the reviews for those sweet potato donuts said they were a little tough. I could imagine the sweet potato making them a little heavy, so I started looking for alternates, and settled on this recipe from 101 cookbooks.














The dough came together easily, and the rolling and cutting was quick, too. I made do with a canning ring and a 1M piping tip since I didn't have a set of round cutters. These worked pretty well!

In the end, the kids loved these. They were pretty good, but they were definitely rolls with icing. The donuts themselves were too big for one person to finish, and really it's the icing that carries the roll. The donut holes were the perfect proportion of icing to roll. We'll be making those again!

Bread and Butter Pickles

For the last year I've been looking forward to making my own pickles. So at the farmers market this past week, I got 7 lb of pickling cucumbers for $5. The $5 is incredible to me, and it reassures me when I look out at the backyard garden and see the deer lounging :)

As I looked more closely at the recipes I'd marked, I realized 7lb makes a lot of pickles. I ended up scaling down a couple of dill ones from the Ball book, and then found Simply Recipe's bread and butter pickles, which used 2 1/2 pounds and was perfect to use up the remaining cukes.

The bread and butter are the pretty ones on the left. They're great pickles. They're not too sweet and have a little bite, I think from the pepper. My husband, who does not like bread and butter pickles, loved these and ate most of a pint the first night. I may have underestimated how many I should have made!

Pineapple Paletas

Going along with our fun with ice pops, we tried these pineapple paletas. The recipe made them seem a little futzy with the pureeing and straining, but it actually was all pretty quick. And really none of the steps required any special attention or skill, so they were easy to throw together. And, I really liked these! They're sweet and acidic, very bright, and perfect for a hot day!