I was able to make it to Costco this past weekend. I haven’t been since before Christmas (October to be completely truthful), and my full cart and bill proved my poor Costco attendance. I don’t buy everything at Costco, but the one thing I love to stock up on while I am there are almonds and pecans.
I felt the urge to bake this weekend. I guess it is my version of cabin fever. Now that spring is right around the corner I have a burning desire to whip up sweet treats. Or maybe it is because Christmas is so far in my rear-view mirror that I can justify baking again?
With the holiday season in full swing, it is time to think about Christmas baking. I know a lot of people have already started….but the problem I have with starting early, is that Jamie and I raid the freezer of our sweet treats, and we end up having to bake twice as much!
I had mentioned before that Jamie and I are moving and my cookbook collection has been carefully packed away, so besides the internet, the recipes I have at my disposal are from two cookbooks. So here is another one from The Designing Women Plain & Simple Cookbook that Laura recently gave me.
As I was flipping through this book, I was surprised to see a recipe called “Connie Squares“. Well, of course I am going to share this with you, it is almost like destiny 🙂
Jamie and I are in the middle of getting ready to move. In preparing our kitchen, and my precious cookbook collection, I left out only a few cookbooks and packed away the rest. What that means, is in the next few weeks be prepared for a spike in recipes from Make it Paleo appearing on Ruby Reduction 🙂
I spent this Saturday taking a cooking course from Le Cordon Bleu. The ingredient du jour was pumpkin and other fall harvest vegetables (spaghetti squash and butternut squash). I was very excited to take this class, as I love cooking with pumpkin.
The class didn’t disappoint! I came home with Béchamel topped ham stuffed with pumpkin and Emmental cheese and spaghetti squash topped with Alfredo sauce. Needless to say, I consumed a lot of cream, cheese and butter this weekend 😉
These past few weeks, I have found myself craving oatmeal raisin cookies. It must be a signal that my body wants to go into hibernation mode and stock up on hearty foods (I said hearty, not necessarily healthy! 😉 ) It is a common site for my 3pm coffee break to see me happily eating an oatmeal raisin cookie with my delicious concoction of half coffee/half hot chocolate with double milk.
I was in the grocery store and I discovered that Kraft made their caramels in an add-in size! I have used their traditional square caramels in the past to make Easy Salted Chocoate Caramels, but now a whole other world of possibilities had opened up for me; I could add caramels to cookies!
*I don’t know why I had to call this post Chocolate Brownies, because really, is there any other kind?
I am going to be completely honest with you – this is the first time I have ever made brownies from scratch!
I KNOW! You would think that I have dabbled with a variety of scratch brownies over the years, but nope, this is my first attempt. I have always fallen victim to the pre-boxed mix. Don’t get me wrong, the mixes taste pretty good, and they are incredibly easy, but they don’t compare to scratch baking.
OK, you all know how much I love bacon. It is true; in fact, I think I might be addicted. You know you have a problem when your friends and co-workers comment that your recent blog entries have been lacking that element of bacon. Well, hopefully this post will right the wrong that I have been avoiding my bacon quota 🙂
Ruby Reduction 