It is cold and dreary here today. The leaves have almost all but fallen off because of the wind and rain but at least its Friday.

I made these muffins a while ago and wish I actually had one right now so I could eat it. Today is the perfect day for a spicy pumpkin muffin and a hot drink to warm up with. As I typed the recipe, I realized the cream cheese concoction is actually a spread not an icing as I've demonstrated in the picture. I was wondering why it made so little and was not very sweet. Just goes to show - read the recipe!

Have a great weekend!

Recipe: Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Fall is in the air and that means Thanksgiving is around the corner for us Canadians. I usually make pumpkin pie for dessert and most likely will again this year but if you're looking for something new try this Spiced Pecan Tart. It's easy, delicious and gives you a great reason to use your tart pan.

The tart consists of a pat-in pastry (no rolling required) and a spicy pecan filling that can be made with or without the addition of bourbon. What I like about making tarts is that they're generally smaller than pies thus requiring less ingredients and they're simpler to pull together. If you feel daunted by pies and crusts, tarts may be for you and they do look very impressive when served. This tart filling is just the right combination of gooey and firm with lots of crunch pecans to balance it out.

Overall, a super tart! Now all I have to work on is taking a decent picture of a slice!
Recipe: Spiced Pecan Tart

Making cookies is a special thing. Making the cookies into sandwiches is even more special. Who wouldn't be happy to see a plate of homemade coffee flavoured chocolate cookies with a creamy ganache filling ready to be devoured?

These cookies are very easy to pull together and have a solid chewy texture. They also have the perfect density to be sandwiched - they don't crumble or break apart and hold the ganache in place.

If you don't want to use ganache I think a coffee flavoured buttercream would work but would make the overall cookie a bit sweeter. Regardless, anyone you make these cookies for will definitely be impressed.

Sorry for the choppy post - I'm feeling rusty today!

Recipe: Chocolate Espresso Sandwich Cookies

I love ice cream sandwiches and have spent many years eating the typical rectangular chocolate ones with vanilla ice cream. (Who doesn't love those?) If you're looking to up the ante by trying to make your own, these oatmeal coconut cookies are perfect.

What you end up with is a very large, thin and chewy cookie that is perfect for filling with ice cream. After they have completely chilled, the cookies do not break or crumble and hold the ice cream perfectly. They are easy to bite through and the finished product is quite substantial - 2 whole cookies and a half cup of ice cream can really fill you up! If they're too big for you, just make smaller cookies and adjust the baking time accordingly. Let the ice cream soften a bit before filling. This process may get a bit messy, but its worth it.

The recipe calls for rum raisin ice cream but I substituted Breyers Dark Chocolate Velvet instead. The deep chocolately flavour went wonderfully with the coconut for a truly decadent treat. After trying all three of the new Breyers flavours, I think my favorite is the Banana Cream Pie with the Chocolate Cheesecake in second place and the Chocolate Velvet not far behind. Really though, I just love ice cream and these three did not disappoint. Try them out and see which one you like the best and if you're a resident of Canada you can enter to win some neat prizes if you create your own Breyers Moment. Check out the prizes here and the rules here.

Recipe: Oatmeal Coconut Cookie Ice-Cream Sandwiches

The summer is passing me by at a surprisingly fast clip. After spending some relaxing family time in White Rock, I've come home to find I only have 3 weeks of fun left!

I made these chipster brownies some time ago. They consists of a very moist and chewy brownie topped with chocolate chip cookie dough. If you like these two treats then you'll love these. I enjoyed the brownie a lot. They were solid, dense and satisfying. I did have some trouble spreading the cookie dough over the brownie layer so there were some gaps where the brownie batter poked through. I also think the cookie batter baked a tad too much and got crispier than I would have liked. Certainly, you can make these brownies sans cookie dough and still have sweet satisfaction.

I topped the brownies with Breyers Chocolate Cheesecake ice cream to make it extra special. This rich ice cream blends chocolate and cheesecake to produce a decadent, creamy and tangy treat. The cheesecake part is very subtle and there are no actual cheesecake chunks in the mix. I would say it runs a very close second to the Banana Cream Pie!

Recipe: Chipster Topped Brownies

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This month participants were given the option of making one or two types of cookies. I only made the Milans and not the marshmallow ones.

I don't do a lot of piped cookies so I was happy to give these a try. The batter was easy to put together but there was a lot of it so I was piping for a long time. I also found the the instructions to pipe 1-inch lengths a little crazy. The cookies were very tiny so I ended up completing the rest by piping about 4-inch lengths and putting two side by side so they'd be a little wider. This worked and eventually I finished.

Overall, I think the cookies tasted okay. They were crispy at the edges and chewy in the middle. Piping the batter was unpredictable - some cookies spread into wacky shapes. The ganache was perfect as ganache usually is. Even though they weren't my favourite, they all got eaten. What did help redeem them was pairing them with luscious Breyers Banana Cream Pie ice cream. I had added some coconut extract to the cookies so they were 'tropical' which went perfectly with the banana, vanilla, and graham cracker flavours.

To see how the other Daring Bakers fared with their cookies, check out the Daring Kitchen. Thanks to Harbinger for providing the ice cream.

Cupcakes are all the rage these days. It's no wonder that Martha Stewart has come out with a cookbook with 175 recipes dedicated to them. Up until now, I have never owned one of her cookbooks but Cupcakes seems to be a great fit for me.

The first thing that I noticed is that there is a beautiful colour picture for every single cupcake in the book. This is awesome. The recipes themselves seem straightforward and of course, they can be dressed up with a multitude of frostings, fillings and other visually interesting embellishments.

For my first cupcake, I made the Blondie Cupcakes which is a twist on the traditional blondie bar. After mixing up the batter the cupcakes are baked for 30 minutes. The thing to remember is that the batter is dense and not fluffy. There is a fine line to walk here between the cupcake being golden and chewy and burnt and hard. Half an hour is more than normal cupcakes are baked so check carefully and use paper liners. This will make removal extremely easy.

The cupcake itself is very nice. It is solid and substantial. They may have seemed hard on the outside but they were chewy on the inside. Store them in a container to keep them moist and enjoy. Thank you to Random House for providing me with this book.

Recipe: Blondie Cupcakes