Chocolate-Topped Peanut Butter Bars – Healthy, No Bake & Gluten-Free

After we’re back from a vacation, I always find myself trying to hold on to a piece of it, checking the weather, reading the local news from wherever we’ve just been. After our trip to Tofino in August, I’ve found myself checking the Long Beach Lodge Resort’s Web cam with a view of the beach and Cox Bay and trying to recreate the chocolate-topped protein bars they serve as part of their complimentary continental breakfast. But calling them protein bars really sells them short. Would you believe me if I told you they taste good and they're actually pretty healthy?

ByMichelleSeptember 9, 20121Comment

Ono Dough Fo’ Sho — Malasadas @ Issaquah Farmers Market

Since I was a kid, I've loved donuts. Wednesday mornings on the way to school, my mom would stop at the donut shop in my home town. I'd hop out of the car and drop a couple of quarters into the newspaper machines for the LA Times and Examiner food sections and sometimes we'd get a dozen donuts in a pink box. Sugar-raised, glazed, chocolate-topped, a crumb cake (always the last one left in the box) and a plain cake for my grandpa. Other times, on weekends, we'd go to Dunkin Donuts and get a bunch of Munchkins in an orange handle box. The chocolate cake ones were my favorite. Fast forward 15 years. The first time I had a malasada might have been at Komoda Store in Makawao, Maui. It was good, but just seemed like a donut. Later, on the Big Island we got some malasadas fresh from the fryer at Tex’s, and a new obsession was born. Rolled in sugar, these yeast-raised donuts are tender and sweet, and they’re as key to a visit to the Islands as plate lunch and good shave ice. Everyone always says Leonard's in Honolulu is the gold standard, I can't say, I haven't had theirs yet.

ByMichelleSeptember 5, 20120Comments

Dessert Recipes

Ice Cream Dream: Shoyu Caramel Sauce

In FoodBlogLand, everything is well lit and screen-lickingly delicious. All dishes are successes and a minor misstep can be saved with a well-placed garnish or a sauce. But in the real world, sometimes things just don’t turn out the way you expect. I could let this custard melt back to its former state (which would take less than 5 minutes) and call it a shoyu caramel milkshake, but I’m not gonna do it. It was meant to be ice cream and it just didn’t freeze into anything that would hold a remotely scoop-like shape. It just didn’t. The caramel flavor is strong, the consistency is creamy with the elasticity you associate with caramel,but you just can’t lick it off a cone. But even in this beautiful disaster there’s a win – the caramel sauce.

ByMichelleAugust 3, 20124Comments

Baking Dessert Fruit Recipes

Summer Desserts: Cornmeal Biscuit Peach Cobbler

One of my all time favorite summer songs is DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince's SummerTime. It's a head-bobbin', windows rolled down song that takes you right back to the summer of 1991, but is still a jam 20 years later. You know the one: Summa, summa, summa-time. Time to sit back and unwind... Here it is... the groove slightly transformed just a bit of a break from the norm just a little somethin' to break the monotony of all that hardcore dance that has gotten to be a little bit out of control it's cool to dance but what about the groove that soothes that moves romance give me a soft subtle mix and if ain't broke then don't try to fix it...

ByMichelleJuly 5, 20121Comment

Baking Recipes

Pizza Dough Cinnamon Rolls

It's July. While the rest of the country is baking, I'm baking. After investing last Sunday morning in baking pane Toscano, this week, I wanted something quicker, something between a 3-hour commitment and the half hour drive to Top Pot for a pershing. I've been thinking about non-pizza uses for pizza dough. So, first stop, pizza…

ByMichelleJuly 2, 201215Comments

Dessert Recipes

Zoku Popsicle Maker: Fudgesicles with a Cayenne Kicker

Inspiration comes at the oddest moments. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do, still laying in bed, is a scroll-through of email, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to see what happened over night. Sunrise is at 5 something now, alarm goes off at 6, and there is zero chance I'm getting out of bed before that. On one of those scroll-throughs, Chronicle Books was doing a Twitter contest to win a signed copy of the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Bookand a bag of bacon peanut brittle. All you had to do to enter was come up with a dream Humphry Slocombe flavor. My idea: Chocolate y Churros -- a cayenne-kicked Mexican chocolate ice cream with churro chunks (I didn't win)...but it led to these cayenne-kicked fudgesicles for the Zoku.

ByMichelleMay 30, 20120Comments

Book Reviews Dessert

Humphry Slocombe’s Ice Cream Book and Butter Beer (at Home!)

There's really only one thing to say about Humphry Slocombe's Butter Beer ice cream: OMFG. It's not hyperbole. It's not even sucking up, this ice cream is really that good. It's ridiculous. And hold the phone, I didn't get this scoop at the shop, I made it. At home. From the new book - the Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream Book. Now, if you're already a Humphry Slocombe fan, I know what you're saying, "What, you didn't start with Secret Breakfast?" I love me some Secret Breakfast and Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee, but I said, "We gotta go for one of the deep cuts. And it shall be Butter Beer." This isn't the Butter Beer you're thinking of, it's a combo of their Stout and Brown Butter ice creams, and it's not one for the kiddies.

ByMichelleMay 28, 20120Comments

Recipes

The Zoku Popsicle Maker Returns: Orange Creamsicle

When I bought the Zoku last year, the two popsicles I knew I wanted to make were Nutella fudgesicles and orange creamsicles (did you call them 50-50 bars when you were a kid? I did). I figured out the Nutella fudgesicles right quick, but the orange creamsicle eluded me. I kept seeing it exactly as I remembered it -- a cream center with an orange outside. Last summer, I even made Lemon Buttermilk Zoku pops using David Lebovitz's recipe, but never stopped to think, "Hey, why don't you just swap out the lemon for orange?" DUH!!

ByMichelleMay 3, 20125Comments

Baking Fruit

Baked Strawberry Shortcake Doughnuts/Donuts

You've heard of the Donut Man in Glendora, California right? If not, let me introduce you, because what they do there, you need to know about it. The Donut Man is famous for their fresh strawberry donuts -- that's right, they take a glazed donut, slice it in half and sandwich in an enormous portion of fresh strawberries (or peaches, later in the summer) in goo. It's ridiculously deliciously goo-d. Today, I was thinking about those doughnuts and meant to stop by Top Pot on the way home for a couple of glazed and then I promptly forgot. Instead, I came up with these baked strawberry shortcake doughnuts (or in this case: short, cake doughnuts). Doesn't it look like one of those spongy dessert cups they sell right next to the strawberries in the produce department?

ByMichelleFebruary 20, 20121Comment

Baking Dessert Recipes

Ovaltine Nutella Cookies

World Nutella Day coincided with the SuperBowl this year and they basically cancelled each other out on the food front for me. I did make guacamole. You can't have the Superbowl without guacamole. Anyway, I've been playing a little catch up, so instead of just going the Nutella route, I did one better and came up with these Ovaltine Nutella cookies, because, well, just because.

ByMichelleFebruary 9, 20121Comment