Brownie Roll-Out Cookies

I have made these many times before but was craving something chocolate-y so thought they'd make a good snack: Smitten Kitchen's Brownie Roll-Out Cookies . Mine came out much darker, almost black, because I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa instead of regular cocoa. They are rich, buttery, chocolate-y, with a good hint of salt. This recipe makes a TON of cookies - like 6 dozen - so good for holidays and for passing around to friends and co-workers (I gave my mom 2 dozen cookies right off the bat). I was boring and just used a glass to cut out the dough, but would of course work well with some fun cookie cutters. I like that mine came out kinda small so I don't feel too gluttonous if I eat 3 or 4 at a time...

Chocolate Banana Almond Meal Cake

 

Some of my most surprising baking projects come from taking stock of what's in my pantry and then Googling the ingredients to see if a recipe exists using them all. This past week that happened when I realized I had cocoa, bananas and almond meal that I wanted to use up. Lo and behold I found a cake using these ingredients. So I made it! My one tweak was to throw in a 1/4 cup of brown sugar - I only had a little brown sugar left and wanted to use that up, too. I like this recipe because there is no white sugar or flour in it, so it seems "healthy." Result: a pleasantly bitter, barely sweet chocolate cake with a faint banana taste to it. It was good. If I make this again I might completely eliminate the brown sugar, and maybe throw in 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to make it a little more decadent.

Thumbs up.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Globs

All the recipes I made this past month were just kind of blah, so I wanted to make something really decadent this past weekend. So I turned to Queen of Decadence, Ina Garten, for recipe inspiration and found this recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Globs in her "Foolproof" book. WOW: these were amazing, addictive, and hit the spot perfectly. They are cookies but they are so dense and chocolately that they are almost brownie-like. I need to drink a huge glass of water when I eat them. Delicious!