Spring Gardening

To celebrate spring starting last Wednesday, we went out and bought several greens to grow in the next couple of months. Although it snowed here this morning and definitely did not look or feel like spring, the next week of weather looks promising and great for our new plants.

We have primarily just grown herbs and tomatoes in the past, but this year we bought three types of spinach, parsley, brussel sprouts and lettuce. We also want to buy several basil plants in a couple of weeks and plant them somewhere since we use a bunch of basil for pesto. Also, we already had a whole clump of oregano that survived from last year as well as a small bunch of parsley and lots of rosemary.

If you have any gardening tips or suggestions, please send them my way because I want to know as much as possible to help these greens thrive and be happy as the temperature rises a bit. Happy spring gardening!

Triple Chocolate Biscotti

I feel like I do not always realize how great something is until long after everyone else has already had their initial excitement about said great something.  

One thing that I feel I have been missing out on are sprinkles. As to why have I not been excited about sprinkles before now, I do not know, but they are just so colorful and exciting and I want to sprinkle them on any cake and cookie that I can. And, as you can see by this post,  the latest baked good I have sprinkle-ized are these incredible biscotti. 

Biscotti was on my list of foods to make in 2013 and now that I have made my first batch, I am so excited to make another version (with sprinkles, only of course). 

French Toast Pancakes

Although this a recipe for pancakes, it is also a recipe for french toast. Basically, this is a baked, doughy pancake, but when you cover it in powdered sugar and maple syrup, it tastes like a doughy piece of french toast slammed into a pancake, except no griddle is involved. So, instead of waiting beside a hot griddle for pancakes or french toast, you can wait by a warm oven for your breakfast (or lunch, or dinner) to bake.

Even though there is the traditional way to make french toast with eggs and bread, this is a different method that has it's own crispy edges made better with powdered sugar and maple syrup.

Candied Citrus Peel

I don't know about you, but I've always liked sour patch kids. Maybe it's because it's not something to commonly DIY at home, but I love their texture and sourness. Although I was not set on making homemade sour patch kids when I had these citrus peels in mind, after I finished making these peels they tasted so much like the sweet candy I love, except they aren't sour. The texture and taste are pretty similar, especially the lemon peels.

I have had candied grapefruit peels in the past, but never lemon peels. I actually liked the lemon more, even thought the grapefruit is still really delicious. I really want to try candied orange peels next, and maybe even lime!

Brown Butter Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies with Nutella and Sea Salt

Woah. So many words in the title! So many flavors!

I love simple foods and baked goods, and that is what these cookies are, but they do have a lot of flavors smashing together to create one crazy good cookie.

Basically, these cookies have a nutella center surrounded by a brown butter dough with chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. The finishing touch is the sea salt to balance out all these sweet flavors. The glob of nutella at the core is melty and great after the cookies come out of the oven, but once the cookies cool, the nutella gets hard. So, when you eat leftover cookies, just zap them in the microwave for a couple of seconds to warm them up a bit and soften the nutella.

Salted Caramel Chocolate Shortbread Bars

I don't know about you, but one candy I am not a big fan of are twix. I like the idea of twix with the chocolate, caramel and crisp cookie part, but there's something off about this candy to me.

However, these bars are pretty close to what you could call perfect. They have chocolate, caramel, and soft shortbread, plus they are sprinkled with salt. The salt really helps bring the flavor of the caramel to its full potential and is just the best with the other components of these bars.