cookie brownies

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownies

cookie brownies

There’s something you should know.

I always underbake. On purpose. So today especially as you gaze upon that fudgy underbaked chocolate brownie with a chocolate chip cookie underbaked into the top, I’m hoping no one takes offense to the excessive gooeyness. It’s just how I roll.

There’s something else you should know. I don’t have much time to write this post today because right as soon as I’m done writing this, I am going to go up to the shelter to enjoy my favorite time of day: playtime.

This is an adorable video that Bjork made on his iPhone during a lazy afternoon of play that might help give you an idea of what is currently competing for my time.

I might have teared up watching that again, for the hundredth time. What a place of love.

Okay, let’s talk dessert real quick. This is the dessert that makes me think of my best friend which equals road trips, college, movie nights, and Mexican food. Totally a natural connection there.

Bottom line: we make these all the time.

This is also the dessert that should be really easy to make but somehow took me four tries to get it just right. I kid you not: I made this four times, so yes, everyone within a ten mile radius of our house now knows what chocolate chip cookie brownies are.

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Chocolate Cake Bars

Fudgy Chocolate Cake Bars

Chocolate Cake Bars

Roald Dahl wrote a book called Matilda and now I’m eating chocolate cake for breakfast.

Welcome to my life.

By the way, this is not just any chocolate cake. Try more like a perfectly dense and moist flourless (almost) chocolate cake that only requires 5 ingredients and can be baked into bars and is topped with the world’s best and most chocolatey and most simple frosting. THAT is what I’m eating for breakfast.

Chocolate Cake Bars

When Roald Dahl wrote his book Matilda, he included a cake-loving character named Bruce Bogtrotter whose punishment for stealing cake was eating a whole ‘nother cake. Poor Bruce! That is cruel. Oooor is it? That’s what I love about Roald Dahl – he makes us think deep thoughts about chocolate cake.

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papaya smoothie-4

Papaya Mango Smoothie

papaya smoothie-4

It’s official: I’m hooked on papayas.

Papaya smoothies, papaya in curry, papaya covered with brown sugar and lime, Thai green papaya salad (alright, so far that one just exists in my head)… but all around, sweet and savory and everything else, I am just adoring everything about this tropical fruit.

Did you know that papayas have these big seeds in them? Er, actually, they’re little. But there’s a lot of them. They are squishy and they taste bitter and spicy and they go straight to the garbage. Gar-bage. I said it.

But actually, every time I cut into one of these gorgeous fruits and before I scoop those seeds into my reject bowl, I just stand in awe for a minute and try to think of yet another angle for photographing how beautiful that sweet, juicy coral-pink-yellow fruit is against the texture of the squishy black seeds.

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fg-cookies2

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

perfect chocolate chip cookies-3

Gosh golly. I love cookies.

And I really love these cookies. These are the PERFECT chocolate chip cookies. I’ve made hundreds of thousands of millions of cookies in my 26 years of life, and that is a fact. Theeeeese are probably my all-time favorite.

Okay, that’s hard to commit to. Because what about these? My other all-time favorite, the peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookie?

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thumb-cake

Gooey Chocolate Caramel Cake

Gooey Chocolate Caramel Cake

That’s soft homemade caramel + melted chocolate you’re gazing at.

Smooshed into the middle layer of that piece of “cake”.

And now I’ll give you a minute to catch your breath and for me to wipe the warm chocolate and drippy caramel off my forehead. Things got crazy.

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thumbnail-fudge

10 Minute Peanut Butter Fudge

Peanut Butter Fudge

I’ve been sorta, um, off the grid for the last few days.

IMG_5212

So bring me up to speed – what’s the general feeling on Valentine’s Day right now?

We’re three days out. Are people talking about it? Is everyone annoyed? Are you, like, personally ready for it? And it is normal that after you’ve been married for about five minutes, you stop buying each other Valentine’s Day gifts?

That’s not entirely true, but if this year’s Christmas gifting is any indication of what’s to come during this year’s Valentine’s Day gifting, we are going to be eating a pan of peanut butter fudge together by the romantic light of Lost playing on the laptop.

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butterfinger monster cookies

Butterfinger Monster Cookies

butterfinger monster cookies

I never made any New Year’s resolutions, so that’s probably a good thing right about now.

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banana lumpia

Banana Lumpia with Caramel Sauce

I was going to make this last week. With my sisters.

Cause it’s kind of a Filipino thing and I wanted to be a good Philippines host and everything.

banana lumpia

But we did this instead, which is like the most adventurous thing I’ve done in the last 6 months. Woohoo! I live on the edge.

Kayaking

I’ve actually been meaning to make banana lumpia (aka turon) since I saw it in a Filipino cookbook a few months ago. A FEW MONTHS AGO. It’s one of those recipes that you almost just… don’t want to make. I mean, you do, and you know you’re going to love it when it’s all said and done, buuut do I really have to? Because it involves finding something new – lumpia wrappers – at the grocery store, and then pulling apart those paper-thin, or actually, thinner than paper lumpia wrappers, which could make anyone look and feel like a fool. Plus it involves frying. Which, in the Philippines, also involves sweating and changing clothes for the 8th time this morning and makeup melting off my face. Can’t eat it for lunch tomorrow, makes a mess, and generally makes me feel like I have no cooking skills. It’s not all that practical.

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Peanut Butter Oreo Blondies

Peanut Butter Oreo Blondies

Dessert.

Peanut Butter Oreo Blondies

It’s been way too long since I’ve made dessert for Pinch of Yum. For me. For anyone. Actually, it’s really been more like one minute if you count those coffee cake muffins as dessert, which I don’t. Here we are at nine days into the new year, and these are already shaping up to be my top dessert of 2013. And I’m shaping up to be out of shape.

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chocolate thumbprint cookies

Mini Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies

Sprinkles. Everywhere.

chocolate thumbprint cookies

Stuck in the cracks of our placements, bleeding red and green dye under our fingernails, and sticking to my bare feet.

It’s the kind of thing where you say to yourself, “Why did I do that again?”

Not the cookies.

I mean the kids. The kids doing the cookies. In our apartment which.is.tiny.

And then the neighbors getting invited in from their peeking post at the window. The shyness. The laughter. The little hands that made their way into sticky mouths.

The lack of a vacuum cleaner.

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gingerbread loaves

Gingerbread Loaves with Lemon Glaze

It’s Christmastime!

gingerbread loaves

Or is it really? {crink eye}

I feel like the world is playing a trick on me. From where I stand it looks more like primo beach season. True, people are wearing jeans and little sweater-like things, Christmas music and flashing neon nativity scenes have been going strong since, oh, I dunno, JULY, and I can’t find a seat at Starbucks.

But nothing about the climate in the Philippines makes me feel like it’s Christmastime. Nothing. There’s not even like, a stray orange leaf or anything.

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pumpkin dessert bars

Pumpkin Dessert Bars

Pumpkin Dessert Bars

Time for a quick poll.

Pumpkin Pie: yes or no?

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best chocolate cake

The World’s Best Chocolate Oatmeal Cake

Why do people love free food?

Best Chocolate Cake

It’s so embarassingly true. It doesn’t matter if it’s last year’s leftover Halloween candy rejects or stale crackers from yesterday’s meeting. It’s like a science – people walk into the lunchroom, cafeteria, or whatever else you call an eating place at work and start scanning to see if there are any freebies on the counter. And if you want some, you’d better get moving. They will be gone in twenty seconds. Ten seconds. Five. Gone.

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baked gingerbread donuts

Fall Favorites

Do you know those times when you just wanna be with your mom?

I do.

And I got the best Halloween present ever this year. MY MOM!

Mom

I picked her up at the airport late last night just so we could spend our favorite holiday wearing cat ears and eating candy together. Kidding. But the candy part sounds about right.

Halloween feels like a good time for me to admit that I’ve never really been one to make holiday themed treats. Or I guess I should say cutesy holiday themed treats. You’re shocked, I know. Like the black and white cupcakes with a spooky/beautiful spiderweb pattern? I just… I don’t. I don’t and I won’t.

I will just be forever in awe of you who make our world pretty.

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chocolate oatmeal

Double Chocolate Oatmeal

Double Chocolate Oatmeal

I’ve always been a dessert fan. Lover. Adorer. Obsesser. And by the way, spell check wants me to write that as Observer. Not a chance, spell check. Not.a.chance.

It is a really bad and really good day when I wake up and see those chocolate cookies that I made yesterday sitting on the counter and POOF, just like that, three are gone. And it’s 6am. It all happens so fast.

I am definitely not a dessert observer, spell check. Sheesh.

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