Pam & Heather's Baking Bonanza

What do you get when you have two friends who love to cook and have a bit of I'm-glad-winter-is-over enthusiasm? You get a Bake Fest, apparently. It was kind of a last minute deal. I had been thinking about the idea of baking and then Pam conveniently asks me if I'm interested in cooking over the weekend. We didn't really have a plan. My kitchen contained an abundant number of bananas to use up and I also needed to make something chocolatey. She showed up mid-morning and I already had an enormous stack of potential recipes. We settled on merely 2 recipes... at first.

What a great day. We blazed through 6 recipes in 5 hours - a real accomplishment for us since we tend to not be that motivated when we cook together. We learned that we should really start cooking before lunch, otherwise we apt to lounge around and knit rather than do anything else (not a bad idea, however). The best part is that I was able to kill (oops, recycle) 6 sheets of paper from my massive recipe file -- I have saved hundreds of recipes from magazines for many, many years.

The Dark Chocolate and Cherry Brownies from Cooking Light (above photo) seemed like an obvious first choice. If you're gonna do chocolate, go all the way -- these brownies are RICH. It helped that Pam brought some black onyx dutch cocoa powder from Savory (If you haven't been to Savory (both in Denver and Boulder), go. now. really. go.). I didn't have enough cherry preserves, so we substituted with raspberry jam (always on hand) and a few dried cherries. We weren't exactly fighting over the leftover batter (not our style), but it was as competitive as she and I can get over food.

Next came the obligatory banana recipe: Banana-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, also from Cooking Light. Oatmeal is good for you. Bananas are good for you. So I pronounce these cookies "healthy". We (well, one of us) even forgot to include the vanilla and they were still scrumptious. Rum was going to be the substitute for vanilla, so we'll have to try making these again.

We were curious about these spicy, Moravian Wafer cookies. They're kind of a hassle to work with (not a huge fan of rolling out dough - I'm lazy that way). Molasses and spices pack a wallop of taste, so it's a good thing these gingerbread-like cookies are small. This is as Easter as it gets around here: note the little bunnies and chicks. It would have been easier to make rounds instead of shapes with pokey, pointy parts, but our cookies look better.

Once we blew through those recipes, we realized, to our horror, that we were dangerously low on muffins.

To prevent a potential catastrophe, we made Easy Morning Glory Muffins, a recipe from AllRecipes (a regular person). It looked tasty with the shredded carrot, coconut, and dried fruit. We substituted banana for the apple (good choice), and replaced some of the oil with applesauce (also a good choice). We also switched the walnuts for pecans (my favorite). This is a recipe with a lot of potential -- I can see making these and freezing for breakfasts, etc.

Lunchtime!

Avocados, smoked swiss cheese, mushrooms, cilantro, tomato, ciabatta bread and some dijon mustard... then we were ready for more baking.


We figured that we definitely needed more cookies. I mean, who stops at only two kinds? Plus, one of us accidentally doubled the baking powder, so we *had* to make a double batch. Orange Shortbread Cookies with Chocolate Chips from Bon Appetit had been on my recipe radar since 2003. The cookies originated at a 'funky little eatery' called Bump & Grind, located in Denver. 'Funky' eh? I've been there. In fact, both Pam and I have been there together for brunch. It's certainly more than 'funky' when the cross-dressing waiter/tress decides to give a lap dance to a teenager for his birthday. And before noon, no less. The food was good, yes -- but I honestly don't remember the food. The place unfortunately closed this past month.

Finishing off our baking marathon, it seems most appropriate to make Maple-Almond Granola, since it's fast and one of the only baking items left to do (other than pie or cake or the like). We've made granola before, so we know what we like. We like oatmeal. And maple syrup. And good berries (not raisins). This granola is loose and not pressed into bars. We improvised, as usual, although Pam tried to follow the recipe (or so she says).