Apple Pie Macarons with Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

Between last year and Pinterest, I was able to remember that Chiara is a fall megafan. Since she was recently in Paris I immediately decided to make apple pie macarons and use what I could of the caramel frosting (from July) as the filling. One problem: I couldn't really find a good macaron recipe that had apple pie spice in it (I finally broke down and got a container off Amazon). You'd think it'd be easy; however, most recipes I came across either had another source for the apple flavor in the macarons (like freeze-dried apples - no idea where to find those) or had the apple flavor in the filling instead of the shells. Finally, I found a recipe on The Macaron Queen for apple pie macarons.

Chocolate Chip Blondies

A couple weeks ago we had a dessert potluck at work. Because it was a bit last minute I decided to stick with brownies or bars: quick to bake, usually makes enough for lots of people. Rather than turn to Pinterest or the internet I turned to my cookbooks (with a limited amount of eggs and butter, it would be quicker to skim the recipes for what I had). I grabbed 500 Best Cookies, Bars, & Squares and started looking at the brownies and bars sections, eventually settling on Chocolate Chip Blondies since I had all the ingredients (or so I thought).

Easy Dinner Rolls

A couple years ago for Thanksgiving my mom asked me to make the rolls. I chose a biscuit recipe that required cutting butter into flour, something I'd never done before. Since I didn't have a pastry cutter I just used two knives (as suggested by food blogs and recipe sites). I thought everything was going great until it was time to put the dough on the baking sheet.

And that's when the breakdown began, as I discovered that there was still chunks of butter in the biscuit dough (I tend to cry like a child when I get frustrated, especially when it's something that shouldn't be hard). So I tossed the dough and asked my mom to make a last minute run to the grocery store (surprisingly she found some). (Over the last year and a half that I've been watching Food Network regularly I've discovered that I didn't screw-up - there's supposed to be chunks of butter. If I remember correctly it makes the bread fluffier). So last year when Mom asked me to make the rolls again I decided to stick with a yeast dough since I'd made some before and was successful. I found some very fluffy dinner rolls from Recipe Girl. They were a hit! So much so that Kati asked me to make them for Easter when she and Anthony hosted. I can't remember why I didn't do a blog post either time - forgot to take pics I guess (something I do from time to time since, you know, I don't do this daily like a normal food blogger). So when I needed rolls for myself, I knew exactly which recipe to look for.

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Caramel Cream Cheese Buttercream Frosting

As I stated at the end of my chocolate macarons recipe post, I had a ton of caramel cream cheese frosting left over. So after a while of it sitting in my fridge. I decided to make chocolate whoopie pies and use the frosting as the filling. It didn't take me long to find a recipe: a while ago I bought a whoopie pie recipe book at Barnes & Noble. So I pulled it from my (barely used) recipe bookshelf and found a recipe for chocolate whoopie pies (not hard to find as it was the first one. Based on the recent Portland, Maine, episode of the Food Network show I Hart Food, chocolate with marshmallow filling is the original whoopie pie flavor). I mainly chose whoopie pies because a few years ago I got a whoopie pie pan at Kohl's and I've only used it once. Plus, these things are pretty easy to make.

Egg Yolk Cookies

I try not to be wasteful when it comes to food. So when I made my macarons I didn't want to just throw out the 5 egg yolks that were leftover. While researching the correct way to make macarons last year, I came across a Q&A on Food Nouveau that included some ideas for using up the yolks. I decided to keep it simple and make Egg Yolk Cookies from Food.com.