RASPBERRY FRENCH MACAROONS WITH SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE GANACHE

French Macaroons. One of the yummiest desserts out there, also one of the hardest to make (from what I gather). I was actually really nervous about investing time and money into making these because i just wasn’t sure if i had the skill to pull them off. I just kept putting it off because i was scared of these cute little things, but today seemed like the day. I had wisdom teeth pulled yesterday and its actually snowing pretty hard in texas today so I had plenty of time to work though this recipe, and plenty of time to re-make if something went horribly horribly wrong. Ive searched the internet high and low for a recipe that didnt sound too scary, and I found a few…but I received the I ♥ MACARONS book for christmas and i wanted to put it to use, even though it had the most difficult recipe of all the ones i have seen.

Ill be honest, I hadnt even had one of these until recently. I had always been interested  in these little beauties, googling pictures, looking up recipes, stuff like that…So i decided to special order some from one of the two bakeries in Dallas who makes them. I just wanted a good idea of how they were supposed to taste, before i attempted to make some myself. They were pretty expensive ($15 for a dozen) but totally worth it. However, I thought ‘I could totally make these myself for a lot cheaper’… so today, I did.

CINNAMON CHOCOLATE DEEP DISH BROWNIES

Last night i was craving chocolate brownies in a big way. Sure, I have a few left over cake balls from the previous night…but nothing was going to satisfy me except a really fudgey brownie. There no way around it. I had to make some. I have a couple really awesome recipes, but they all called for coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate. I have none. At this point, im already kinda kickin it in my jammies because its like 10:30 and I live like a grandma. Anyway, i didnt want to go to the store. I do have a ton of unsweetened cocoa powder though…so naturally i went straight to the Hersheys website. (Because they sell a lot of cocoa powder…duh.) I found the most basic brownie recipe, made some adjustments and added some things…and after some mixing, like magic these perfectly baked, moist on the inside, chewy on the outside, squares of heaven emerged from my pink oven. And they only took 20 minutes to prepare! I mixed mine by hand, but you could totally use a stand mixer or a hand mixer if you wanted. I ate a third of the pan myself last night with some milk without thinking twice. My dad had a few, and i gave some out to my clients today. Every one loved them. BIG HIT.

(I cant lie, my original intent was to make bacon brownies..but we were out of bacon. I love cinnamon and chocolate together so i opted for that instead. I always have cinnamon on hand)

BLACK AND WHITE CAKE BALLS

Today I went to cake carousel, one of the largest cake, candy, cookie supply store in north texas. I picked up call kinda of fun candy molds, sprinkles, cookie cutters, and cupcake toppers. It was amazing! I was looking forward to going for a week and it was so worth it! I spent way too much time and money there, so I figured i should actually bake something.

Hello world!