Grapefruit Cake

It’s grapefruit season, and I got it in my head to make a grapefruit cake. As I searched around the internet for ideas, I was surprised to find that there weren’t many recipes available. And the reviews for the ones that did exist almost universally referenced very subtle grapefruit flavor. I wanted intense grapefruit flavor,…

Bananas Foster Cake

There were seven bananas in the bunch I bought recently. I used three of them to make my Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Banana Bread, and was in the mood to try something different with the remaining four bananas. Caramelized bananas sounded good to me, so I decided to try making a cake with a banana…

Chocolate Biscoff Ice Cream

I was gifted some Biscoff butter, which I’d been struggling to figure out what to do with because it was almost too deliciously decadent. Then I saw Biscoff cookies on sale at Costco and I had the revelation that Biscoff ice cream was what I’d been saving that Biscoff butter for. I threw in some…

Chocolate Sesame Crisp Ice Cream with Cinnamon Nut Butter Swirl

This was a pantry clean-out ice cream that turned out so good I had to rapidly make several more batches in succession. I definitely succeeded in clearing the semi-sweet chocolates, sesame crisps, and cinnamon nut butter out of my pantry! Now I just have to resist the temptation to acquire more so that I can…

Mexican Hot Chocolate Sugar Cookie Ice Cream

After success with using grocery store chocolate chip cookies as a mix-in for Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream, I decided I could do something similar with a container of grocery story sugar cookies left over from the same party. This time I thought Mexican Hot Chocolate would be a good base for the…

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream

A guest had brought over some grocery store chocolate chip cookies when we had a party. The cookies weren’t great to eat on their own, so pretty much the whole container was left. I can’t bear to throw food away, so I thought they might work as an ice cream mix-in. I decided to try…

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Banana Bread

There are a ton of banana bread recipes out there, but I’m not big on banana flavored things. So it took quite a bit of tinkering for me to hit on a banana bread guessipe that I actually crave and make regularly. The combo of white and brown sugar gives it extra depth of flavor,…

Salted Caramel Peanut Butter Cup Ice Cream

My husband came home with a package of peanut butter cups and said, “I thought maybe you could use these for something… like ice cream.” Subtle 😉 But I couldn’t deny peanut butter cups make a great ice cream mix-in. I could have just chopped them up and folded them into a vanilla ice cream…

Toasted Sesame Ice Cream

I was visiting Istanbul for a few days, and one evening when we returned to our hotel, they were serving house-made sesame ice cream in the lobby. It was one of the most incredible ice creams I have ever eaten – white sesame with and incredible deeply toasted flavor – and I’ve been hunting around…

Pistachio-Crusted Lemon Bars

Cookbook Club – Sababa We used Adeena Sussman’s Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen as our April cookbook. Sababa means “everything is awesome” in Hebrew, and is the spirit Sussman uses in her Israel-inspired recipes. We did indeed have a sunny afternoon meal – go to my Cookbook Club site to experience the…

Roasted Pistachio Ice Cream

I recently had a fantastic pistachio ice cream at a local Middle Eastern restaurant. Since then I found myself constantly thinking about pistachio ice cream, so I decided I better figure out how to make some. I searched around for some recipes to use as a starting point, but found that they all call for…

Orange Blueberry Cake

My friends gave me a ton of oranges from their tree. When we couldn’t bear the thought of eating another orange, I had a thought – if lemon cake is good, why not orange cake? I also had some blueberries from the local community garden. My first Orange Blueberry Cake was entirely consumed in one…