Those Sound Sweet! Cracker Cookies

A few weeks ago I was contacted by the great people over at Solo Foods to enter their Sweetest 16 Baking Recipe Contest. They sent me a box chock full of almond paste and several of their pastry and pie fillings and asked me to come up with an original recipe. I pondered over this for a while before I began to bake. I wanted to make something different and not the typical macaroon or almond cake. I almost entered my recipe for The King of Cakes: Baumkuchen but decided to think a bit outside of the box.

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PeanUtOh Butter Fudge

I was dead set on making this fudge before I went to bed. Why? Well, because I'm a hard-headed dork, of course. Actually there's really no good reason. I wanted to make this in spite of the fact that I only had about four hours sleep AND got up at 5:30am to workout AND made dinner AND cleaned a good portion of the house (I even scrubbed a large swath of my kitchen floor on my hands and knees!) By 11 o'clock I was one tired chick and should have gone to bed; but no, the fudge insisted on being made so I stayed up.

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Key Lime Pie Fudge

Last Fall, back when it was Allison's birthday, I made two beautiful Key lime pies to celebrate her special day. As I was leaving for work that morning, it occurred to me that I forgot to take photos of it and figured I'd just take some once I arrived at work. Well, those plans came to a screeching halt right after both pies slid off the tray and landed bottom-side-down onto the asphalt. Luckily, they were still edible but the jolt of being smacked to the ground caused them to crack and all my airy whipped cream deflated. I felt so terrible presenting such an ugly dessert, but Allison didn’t care one bit, nor did anyone else that devoured them.

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Caramel Apples

Caramel apples are one of my son's absolute favorite things that I make. I have only made them one time before and that was on a whim after a colleague asked me if I would make theme for his wife. Two years later, I decided it was time to make them again but this time I'd do it to raise money for two charities: Heifer.Org and Child's Play.

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Tootsie Roll Art

Did you know that you can use Tootsie Rolls like edible Play-Doh? Yup! It turns out that they are good for more than just removing your fillings or unhinging your jaw (giggle).

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Super Easy Chocolate Fudge

Looks a little like a martian landscape or an electron microscope image, doesn't it? Actually it's just a close up of the surface of the incredible fudge I made for my friend Pooja for her birthday today. She wanted something "very chocolaty" and left the rest up to me.

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Cashew Butter Fudge Terzetto Bars

Celese and I met during one of my son's baseball games about three years ago and soon became friends. She and I are very similar in some ways: we're both perfectionists, creative, and very detail oriented in the work that we do. Around the time we first became friends, I was organizing a big open house party at my job and I hired her as my party planner. We were in harmony with our thinking and at times I felt like I had met my clone. We just clicked.

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Frito Bark

Say you need to make a dessert in a jiffy but all you have in the house is a bag of chocolate chips, butter, brown sugar and a bag of Fritos (hey, it could happen!). What do you do? You whip up a great little treat that everyone will love.

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I Heart Bakerella's Cake Pops

It was a typical February afternoon in Seattle. Cold, windy and rainy. Blah. The day was progressing like any other and it was lunch time. I had just arrived back to my desk, waiting patiently for my piping hot (yet still frozen in the center) vegetable enchiladas to cool off. As I do just about every work day, I fired up the first of several of my favorite blogs while I started to dig into my lunch:NotMartha.org. The daily post consisted of a collection of a bunch of links to interesting stuff of or related to my favorite subject: food. I scroll through the links: something about beef (gross), crust less quiche (promising)...and then I see it: "cake lollipops at Bakerella". Bakerella? Cake lollipops? I'm so there!

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Graham Cracker Candy

Mandy has given more thought to her birthday treat than anyone else I know. She's considered a lot of options over several months. Some of possible selections were Baklava, Lemon-Coconut Macaroons, and a Lemon-Coconut Tart. But then the topic of graham crackers came up and how much she loves coconut and then hazelnuts and I got inspired by this recipe I found on Epicurious. She took one look at it and gave me the green light to make it.

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Bake Sale Caramel Chocolate Pretzels

I made these for a fund raiser to help raise money for the Breast Cancer 3 Day Walk over the weekend. Homemade caramel with Belgium milk chocolate and white chocolate... Yummmm!

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Chocolate Truffles

When I asked Martha what she wanted for her birthday her answer was, "I’d love something small (bite-sized even) and very chocolate". The first thing that popped into my head was truffles. After all they were bite-sized and are to some the very definition of chocolaty. I did my usual research and found two recipes to try but couldn't' decide between the two so I made both.

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