Lovin' From the Oven

NY Style Crumb Cake

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I’ve come to the conclusion that I have an unhealthy obsession with blogging. Whenever I get an idea in my head, I just want to hop over to google domains and create a new website. What’s the point of owning +10 (I really only have three) websites? Nothing if you dont do anything with them.

Looking back on it, I’m wondering why I didn’t just combine all of my websites into one. It’d make my life so much easier and I’d be saving twenty bucks a year. Plus, it would look like I update a lot more often. Darn, why didn’t my ideas all come at once instead? Kind of like Cupcakes and Cashmere, where she combines both baking and fashion. If you haven’t heard of that blog yet, make sure to check her out! I lust over all of her clothes and her lifestyle in general.

Oh well, I guess the good part of is that I get to keep it all organized and separate. Actually, not really. If my blog name wasn’t so specific, I’d probably merge my fashion blog into this one. Poop.

Moving onward, this crumb cake was a hit at the baby shower I brought them to. They’re fluffy, tasty, and a cinch to whip up! They’d be a great addition to breakfast, a cup of tea, or some coffee. I halved the topping because I only had a stick of butter left, but I definitely recommend sticking to the original recipe as posted. This comes from First Look, Then Cook, and surely makes a TON! Halve the recipe and bake it in a smaller pan if you don’t want to feed all of Kansas.

Topping:

  • 1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted, warm
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Cake:

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/3 cups sour cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For topping:

  1. Mix both sugars, cinnamon, and salt in medium bowl and whisk to blend.
  2. Add warm melted butter and stir to blend.
  3. Add flour and toss with fork until moist clumps form (topping mixture will look slightly wet). Set aside.

For cake:

  1. Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Butter 13 x 9 x 2-inch glass baking dish. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into medium bowl.
  2. Using electric mixer, beat room-temperature butter in large bowl until smooth. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating until well blended after each addition.
  3. Add sour cream and vanilla extract and beat just until blended. Add flour mixture in 3 additions, beating just until incorporated after each addition.
  4. Transfer cake batter to prepared baking dish; spread batter evenly with rubber spatula or offset spatula. Squeeze small handfuls of topping together to form small clumps. Drop topping clumps evenly over cake batter, covering completely (topping will be thick).
  5. Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean and topping is deep golden brown and slightly crisp, about 1 hour. Cool cake in dish on rack at least 30 minutes.
  6. Cut cake into squares and serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

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White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Blondies

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I was curious as to if the same dough would be able to make cookies, too. Sure, enough…

They make pretty cookies!

But definitely not as tasty.


The wonderful people at Oh Nuts! offered to send me some items to try out in my baking endeavors. Their customer service is amazing. Really. They kept in touch and updated me instantly on my order and shipment. I received the items in less than a week after they contacted me! They allowed me to choose a couple items to try, and one of my picks was a bag of macadamia nuts. Here’s a picture of all the goodies that I tweeted a while ago:


From left to right: macadamia nuts, dried cantaloupe, dried guava slices, dried mango.

Little did I know how big the bag I was going to receive really was. I always hated buying macadamia nuts from the grocery store because it’s SO expensive, but Oh Nuts! solved this problem my selling in bulk! What a great deal for a baking necessity. Not only that, but it comes in a resealable ziploc heavy duty bag.. perfect for using and reusing! No need to worry about storage. They also use good quality ingredients that result in wonderful items.

This recipe comes from Erin’s Food Files. They made very thick bars and I would even bake it in an even larger pan to get better results. These are definitely for the white chocolate macadamia nut lovers! I tried to bake them as a cookie just to see how it would turn out, and although they turned out, they weren’t very tasty. They didn’t spread and stayed as balls. This recipe wasn’t meant for cookies! I thoroughly enjoyed the bars, but I’d prefer a regular white chocolate macadamia nut cookie any day.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 pound, plus 1 teaspoon butter, at room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 tablespoons vanilla extract
  • 3 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 cups white chocolate chips
  • 1 cup macadamia nuts, toasted and rough chopped

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. Place 1/2 pound of the butter and the brown sugar in a bowl and cream together on medium speed until a smooth batter is formed. While the machine is running, add the eggs and vanilla extract, until incorporated into the batter.
  3. Sift together 3 cups flour and baking powder. Slowly add the flour mixture to the batter and mix on low speed until a dough is formed. Very gently, by turning the mixer on and then off, fold the chips and nuts into the dough.
  4. Once the dough is all blended, grease a 9 x 13 pan with the remaining butter and dust with the 1 tablespoon of flour. Pour the batter into the pan and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until set yet still moist.

Chocolate Toffee Cookies

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I just got home from Vegas and I can’t wait for a little R&R. Weird, right? You shouldn’t need R&R coming home from vacation, but this trip was just the opposite. We walked at least 3 miles a day in 110 degree weather, ate our weight in the 24 hour buffet, stayed out until 3 AM every night, and battled our way through outlandish crowds. Usually, people go to Vegas for the clubs, drinking, and gambling, but for me, it’s all about the food and shopping! You don’t need to be an alcoholic party animal to enjoy Vegas.

As much fun as my trip was, I’m glad to be back at home watching “Trick ‘R Treat” with my DB. Yes, I’ve talked about before how my guilty pleasures consist of bad scary movies, so this is a perfect way to end the weekend for me.

These cookies come from the Culinary Chronicles. My DB loved them, but that’s probably cause there’s toffee in them and he’s a sucker for toffee. They were really chewy and I would recommend baking them for longer than I did. These definitely are fragile cookies, so be careful if you’re going to travel with them. They’re also very chocolate-y, so if you’re not a fan of chocolate cookies, stay away!

  • ½ Cup All Purpose Flour
  • 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
  • ¼ Teaspoon Salt
  • 16 Ounces Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
  • ¼ Cup Unsalted Butter, room temperature
  • 1¾ Cups Light Brown Sugar
  • 4 Large Eggs, room temperature
  • 1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract
  • 8 Ounces Coarsely Chopped Toffee Bars
  1. Preheat oven to 350° degrees.
  2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Combine chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl. Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave using 20-second intervals, stirring in between each period. Continue until the mixture is melted and smooth—about 100 seconds, depending on the oven. Do this slowly and carefully as to not scorch the chocolate. Cool mixture to lukewarm.
  3. Beat sugar and eggs in bowl until thick, about 5 minutes. Beat in chocolate mixture and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture and then toffee. Chill batter until firm but not hard, about 30 minutes.
  4. Using a large scooper, about 1/4 cup, place dough onto prepared baking sheets, spacing the cookies 2½ inches apart. Bake just until tops are dry and cracked but cookies are still soft to touch, about 15 minutes. Cool on sheets.

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