Apple Oatmeal Scones

This is another small-batch scone recipe.  I had an extra Granny Smith apple in my veg drawer, and I love them for cooking, but not so much for eating.  Rather than let the apple molder away until I would have no choice but to discard the rotted thing, I thought I would come up with something in which to bake it.

Blueberry Almond Crumb Muffins

This recipe is very loosely based off this one this one, which I pulled from allrecipes about 800 years ago.  Before I became an adventurous baker, I made the recipe as suggested several times.  It's plenty good, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for in the perfect blueberry muffin.  This is.

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake

Coffee cake is hard to ruin. Nonetheless, every time I make coffee cake, I end up on pins and needles until it comes out of the oven and I’ve sliced into it. This is entirely my fault. I’m unable to leave a good recipe alone and bake as directed. I stubbornly insist on mucking about with demonstrably good things.

Take this Smitten Kitchen recipe. It looks delightful – nay, it is delightful. And it sounded like just the thing. Except … (there’s always an “except”), her recipe calls for two cups of sour cream. I’ve had coffee cakes with that much sour cream before and found the flavor overpowering and the texture so rich that they approached cheesecake levels of decadence. Since I’m on a huge baking-with-yoghurt kick, I thought it would make a good replacement. Also, I really like nuts in my coffee cake, so I wanted to add them. And here’s where I’m just a big show-off: I wanted to use a bundt pan, not the 9x13 pan indicated, for a higher visual impact factor. Sometimes, even I am astonished by my frivolity.

Quiche Squares

This is a recipe I got from my stepmother. She often serves it at holiday breakfasts with bacon, french toast, fresh fruit, and other assorted goodies. I likewise enjoy it for breakfast, but it makes an equally nice  dinner. Paired with a green salad and bread if you want it, it makes a tasty and un-fussy weeknight meal.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

I’d been craving Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls for the better part of two weeks. Ever since I saw this recipe (via macheesmo), I had been tormented by visions of fresh, gooey, pumpkin-y goodness.

Not that I’d ever had such a thing. Last time I had fresh-baked cinnamon rolls was back when I took Advanced Food in high school. That’s the sort of course they had at my religious fundamentalist boarding school. I mock that sort of thing now, but actually? Advanced Food was pretty fabulous. We came, we cooked, we ate. Repeatedly, for a whole semester.

Pink Waffles

This recipe is in the “tastes better than it looks” category. I’m not much of a photographer under the best of circumstances, and my kitchen lighting definitely provides less-than-ideal circumstances.
Some years ago, my husband decided to do the environmentally sound thing and got rid of all our incandescent lightbulbs in favor of those small fluorescent bulbs. This switch has long displeased me on aesthetic grounds, but I fear it would bring nasty environmental karma if I pitched a fit and demanded my incandescents back.