Pretzel Challah Rolls

Last May, Rowan Fae performed at a Spring Fairy Magic Market in Tacoma. After our performance, we walked around the market for a little bit, checking out the vendors. One of the vendors was a bakery called Forest Fairy Bakery. I ended up buying a cookie and a loaf of challah bread, the latter of which I stuck in the freezer and snacked on occasionally over the summer. I'd never had it before but I'd pinned a few challah bread recipes so when I saw it at the market, I thought "Why not?" Since I ended up liking it, I decided to make some challah rolls the next time I needed to make dinner rolls.

Because I hadn't had pretzel rolls in a while, I decided to add that extra step (it's pretty easy really - just give the rolls a baking soda bath). So I started searching through my bread pins. One of the pins was instructions from PopSugar, a lifestyle and pop culture website. It even included a link to a recipe for  challah bread on the YumSugar, PS's food section - until the link mysteriously became broken a few days after I saved the instructions. Couldn't even find the recipe by searching the website. So I quickly went through my pins until I found an easy challah bread recipe from Life as a Strawberry.

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

When I do my weekly grocery shopping, I tend to be the type who goes up and down almost every aisle and department, even if I don't need what's there. One such department is Safeway's bakery. I usually head there to get my sandwich bread but on the weeks I don't need it, I still peruse the displays to see what's new. Every few months, this includes seasonal treats. For the most part, I use the excuse of "I can make that! I think I pinned a copycat recipe for that." for not buying them. Except I never really make those recipes. So last month when I saw pumpkin snickerdoodles out on display, I decided that the next time I needed to bake for me, I would find a recipe for pumpkin snickerdoodles. After combing through my pins on Pinterest, I settled on a recipe from CenterCutCook.

Chocolate Chip Clouds (Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies)

After I learned the hard way that it's better to put egg whites in the freezer than in the fridge, I started freezing the whites after making Pepperoni Pinwheels. Fortunately the brief supply shortage of Pillsbury products (and I think also of pepperoni) helped buy me some time to finish the S'mores Cookie Bars. Once I got close, I started searching for recipes that use 8 egg whites (or at least could be adjusted to use 8 whites). I eventually decided on chocolate chip clouds (a.k.a. meringue cookies) from Skinnytaste. To defrost the egg whites, I put them in the fridge for a few days.

Velvety Cheesecake

This year for Easter, Auntie Vicki suggested something different than usual: a plain cheesecake that could be topped with fresh berries. For my search, I decided to stick with my books and magazines since I tend to go on autopilot to the internet. I considered choosing a fruit-flavored cheesecake but eventually decided to stick to finding a plain flavor. In the end, I chose a recipe from one of the pocket magazines I once grabbed from the register display, specifically by Gooseberry Patch.

S'mores Cookie Bars

Last summer, with a little coaxing from my mom, I once again offered to make dessert for anyone who wanted me to while in Chelan. Anne and Vicki both took me up on the offer, as did my immediate family. I decided to pick quick and easy recipes for the first two: since Anne and her family were making Mexican on their night, I decided on Sopapilla Cheesecake Bars while Vicki requested my recipe for pizza night - the golden Oreo fudge I'd made for Carly for her golden birthday.

For my immediate family, I decided on a more complicated recipe. The flavor was kinda easy to pick out: since it was the middle of summer, why not s'mores? I went through my s'mores board on Pinterest and eventually decided on S'mores Cookie Bars from Practically Homemade. The weekend before Chelan, I did some prep by crushing up the graham crackers and measuring out the rest of the ingredients. I divided them up into three storage containers: one for the graham cracker crumbs, one for the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder), and one for the sugars. I also packed the remaining non-perishable ingredients (marshmallows, chocolate chips, etc.) with the ingredients for the other two recipes. Once we got there, I bought stuff like eggs and butter when buying my other food for the week.

I was all set ... until I got a text from Lisa the day I was going to make these. She said that Tristan was going to take us all out for ice cream that night (which he does every year one night during Chelan), just in case it affected my dessert plans. Obviously it did but I didn't want to make Tristan feel bad (plus I look forward to that night every year) so I didn't say anything and decided to make these bars when the white chocolate chip blondies were done.

Which took a while since there were many weekends when I wasn't home for lunch on Saturdays so it took until the end of January for me to finish them. I was more than ready to get those containers out of my pantry (and the recipe removed from my bookmark bar).

Mint Chip Brookies

It really didn't take me long to at least decide on the flavor of Kevin's Christmas present. Kevin, our cousin Stefan, and I were talking at Thanksgiving and the topic eventually landed on my baking. One thing that Kevin gushed about was the Thin Mint Gooey Cake Bars I made YEARS ago (I'm still kinda surprised he didn't talk about the bars with mint Oreos that I made a couple years ago for Father's Day, considering within a week he asked me to make him [and Helen?] a second batch that he paid me to do). So I decided to search for a mint recipe. Eventually I decided on Mint Brookies from Crazy for Crust - like when I made Kati's peanut butter brookies a couple years ago, this recipe allowed me to use a box mix for the brownie layer so I would be able to make it semi-quick during the week.

I thought they baked great until I went to cut them: the brownie layer was a bit gooey, especially in the middle. But apparently they were a hit with Kevin because he brought a bunch to Auntie Vicki and Uncle Rob's house on Christmas Day. Stefan even commented that the gooiness of the brownies made them better.

Ube Sugar Cookies

When I worked at the passport office I had a few co-workers who were either from the Philippines or of Filipino heritage. One day while in the break room a couple of those co-workers were eating a bread that had a purple swirl in it. I asked them what the purple was. They told me it was ube, a purple yam that's really sweet. Which I found out when I tried a piece of the bread: it tasted more like berries. I've been a fan ever since (although ironically, I've only had it one other time in a cupcake). I didn't bake with it for Helen at first in part because I wasn't sure where to find the ingredients. So this year I decided would be the year that I made her an ube treat for Christmas.

During my search, I discovered that there's more than one way to add ube to a recipe. After trying the bread at work, I looked for ube bread recipes and they all said that the swirl is ube halaya (a.k.a. ube jam). But while looking for cookie recipes, the ingredients were different: powdered ube and ube extract/flavoring. According to the food blogs I looked at, both ingredients can be found at Asian grocery stores - like Seafood City, which is conveniently located at Southcenter Mall but I 'd always figured was strictly a seafood store based on the name. Turns out, they have a lot more than seafood. Like powdered ube and ube flavoring:

I had already picked out a recipe from The Little Epicurean that was exactly what I wanted to make for Helen. But also a bit different as many of the "ube cookie" search results were for ube crinkles (since I love chocolate crinkles I plan on making those for myself later 😋). She loved them and could really taste the ube flavor (which I was briefly worried about after a contestant on Food Network's Christmas Cookie Challenge made ube cookies with both powder and extract and the judges couldn't taste the ube flavor. He ended up going home).