Chocolate Cupcakes

with zucchini in them . . .cough . . .

But, I swear, you couldn't even tell!  Moist, chocolaty, and yummy!

Colors of Summer

It's been a little while since I took this picture.  And since then, I've harvested nearly 40 tomatoes, three more patty pan squash, and who know how many more zucchini!

 Patty Pan squash is pretty good hollowed out and stuffed with a sausage stuffing.  We smothered these with Marinara and it was mighty tasty!

Triple Layer Caramel Cake

My Dad had his birthday back on August 8th, and I realized last night I never posted the pictures of his birthday cake.  And if it's for my Dad, you can guess it's gonna be caramel!

 I like the texture of the frosting.  Caramel, cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar . . .

 This cake was super rich, and just the tiniest piece was enough to do the trick

 or make you sick, depending on how much dinner you ate first!

Sticky caramel goodness!

Zucchini Bundt Cake

with Vanilla Spice Glaze

 Because, let's be honest, I have a lot of zucchini growing out back right now!  And you gotta do something with it.

Pie

Blueberry and Peach

Because sticky buns are never enough.

Brioche Sticky Buns

My sister and I used our last batch of brioche dough to make these sticky buns:

 And believe me, these are not your average sticky buns.  This recipe came right out of "Baking with Julia" with the contributing baker being Nancy Silverton.  I didn't know who Nancy Silverton was before, but after making these . . . let's just say, I do now.  And I'm in trouble for it too.  She is amazing.  And these sticky buns were amazing.

Notice all the thin layers. These layers are produced by rolling and folding the dough with layers of butter and then rolling and folding again.  It was a really fun technique to learn.

 Rich.  Buttery.  Flaky.  Buttery.  Brown Sugary.  Buttery.  Amazing.  But eat more than one and you'll have all your calories for the week.

Each sticky bun has 1/3 of a stick of butter

Brioche

While my sister was in town, we made three batches of Brioche.  The plan was to make one batch, but well, sometimes one is just not enough.  I am not sure what we were thinking, but before too long we were laughing at the sheer volume of dough we had filling the counters (rising over the edges of the bowls and draping down over the sides).  We then began planning out the various ways we could use the dough.  The Brioche festivities continued for days, and after all the things we tried, I have decided I really just love this stuff. 

Here are the loaves from the first two batches:

 Brioche is a cross between bread and pastry.  So airy and yet so rich.  Lots of time, eggs, and butter went into this dough.  Did you know that you have to knead Brioche for nearly 25 minutes?

 I loved the Brioche plain.  Like I mentioned, it is so rich!  I also enjoyed it with fruit and honey.

That first night we took two of the loaves and made french toast out of them.  I highly recommend Brioche French Toast.  Too delicious in fact, that I forgot to take a picture.

The next afternoon, we had sandwiches on one of the loaves.  While you might tend to think of Brioche as sweet, it is not.  Our sandwiches consisted of avocado, spinach, tomatoes, and ham.  Again, I was too engrossed with the flavors to pull out my camera. 

Well, what did we end up doing with the last batch of Brioche dough?  Think butter.  A LOT more butter.  And brown sugar too.  But that will have to wait for another day . . .

In short, brioche is my new bakery friend.