Fresh from the oven
This recipe should be called Cranberry Cherry Chocolate Chip Coconut Pecan Honey Maple Peanut Butter Chewy Granola Bars, but that is quite a mouthful. In short, I cleaned out my pantry. Never before has spring cleaning tasted so good.
If you are anywhere near Chicago, you must try Lou Malnati’s pizza. It is a Chicago deep dish pizza classic. If you are not anywhere near Chicago, try making it at home with Marc Malnati’s Chicago deep dish pizza recipe.
As a general rule, when I go to a new restaurant I like to try their signature dish. This past weekend we were in Chicago, and across the street from our hotel was The Original Pancake House (or so the sign said). Their signature dish was an apple pancake, so I ordered it.
This week marks the end of March, the second week of spring and my birthday. To celebrate, I am making shasta daisy lemon cupcakes.
Easy is the theme of the day. Think of those Staples commercials with the big red “easy” button or of those Geico insurance ads where it is so easy even a “caveman can do it.” These enchiladas are so easy you won’t even need an easy button or a caveman to help make them.
Polly the parrot may be happy with any kind of crackers, but my pet cockatiel Birdie has a more discriminating palate. Wheat Thins are the only crackers good enough for her. Today I am baking a batch from scratch, but will they pass the Birdie taste test?
If you want a pan that can do just about anything, get a cast iron one. It can fry a steak, sauté veggies, simmer a stew and even bake a cake! It does especially well with pineapple upside down cake. It bakes the cake evenly inside and creates a nice crunchy outside. If it is well-seasoned, the pan will even let the cake slide hassle-free from it. Now if only the pan could clean up after itself.
Start your Saint Patrick’s Day off right with a breakfast that includes shamrock-shaped maple scones. Don’t have a shamrock-shaped cookie cutter? That’s OK. They’ll taste just as good cut into triangles.
I’m on a roll when it comes to making food for Saint Patrick’s Day. First there was the Irish soda bread and then the shamrock-shaped key lime bars. Now I’m making potato bread dinner rolls.
Has a song ever inspired you to bake? While debating with myself what to bake for my next post for Girl Meets Oven, the song “Coconut” suddenly popped into my head. If you are not familiar with it, the chorus goes, “She put the lime in the coconut; she drank ’em both up.” Then I thought instead of drinking lime and coconut, why not bake with them? Lime and coconut bars could make for a tasty and fun Saint Patrick’s Day treat.