Carrot Spice Muffins/Cocoa Meringues

The Tuesdays with Dorie bakers have been exploring Baking From My Home to Yours one recipe at a time since January 2008. With the majority of the recipes in the cookbook chosen up to this point, one would expect the remainder to be the less desirable ones.

Not so. Last week, we had a light, easy cocoa meringue cookie made with almond meal and peppered with chocolate chips. It was knock-your-socks-off delicious, too good to eat just one, wildly popular with everyone who had one. Mike of Ugly Food For an Ugly Dude chose this one and I am forever grateful. I probably never would have made this one on my own even though there is a photo in the book and I love chocolate. These were fantastic and I'll definitely make them again.

This week, my buddy Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs picked the carrot spice muffins, an erstwhile morning glory that I made with carrots, pecans, coconut and dried cherries. I was excited to make these and made them the day after the recipes for this month were announced. Muffins are usually easy to put together as they require minimal mixing, but these were a little labor intensive. I shredded the carrots in my food processor, and toasted the coconut and nuts in the oven while I measured the wet and dry ingredients.

I normally double most recipes since I take most everything in to work but this time I made the recipe as written. When I make muffins from this book, I always get a higher yield than Dorie specifies in the recipe. With this recipe, I forced myself to pile all the batter into 12 muffin cups and was rewarded with 12 large, perfectly baked muffins. They were crunchy on the outside and moist and flavorful inside, all elements of a perfect muffin in my book. And they were great the following day, and the day after that. Definitely a repeater around here. Nancy has the recipe for you here.

*******PLEASE NOTE: Lethally Delicious is on hiatus for the month of Ramadan. I will be responding to comments but not keeping up with my Google Reader or visiting bloggers other than those who leave comments. I'll be back around August 31st with a spirit refreshed by this blessed month of fasting and prayer. Peace.

Gingered Carrot Cookies

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick is gingered carrot cookies, selected by Natalia of Gatti Fili e Farina. Dorie relates that she was trying to capture the flavors of carrot cake in a cookie. The flavor of the carrots wasn't as prominent as she hoped but she liked the taste of the cookie as is.

These cookies have the flavors of ginger and nutmeg with raisins and toasted pecans added in for extra yumminess. I made these while I had a cold, and wasn't as in love with them as my tasters. My tasters were more enthusiastic about these cookies than practically any other chocolate-free cookie I've made. The texture is similar to a scone, flaky and light, yet chewy and chunky. People who don't usually care about cookies stopped me in the hallway to wax poetic about how fabulous these cookies were.

If you visit the other TWD bakers (you can find them here), you'll learn that the rest of them love Natalia as much as I do. Natalia and I are in several of the same blog groups and she is as talented as she is sweet and funny. She'll have recipe if you want to try these delicious treats.

CEiMB - Tuscan Vegetable Soup

This week was perfect for soup. We got a huge rain storm in the Bay area earlier this week, which is when I made this soup. I needed to bring a pot of soup to my P.E.O. meeting, and I was thrilled to see Lobster and Fishsticks chose this recipe for this week's Craving Ellie in My Belly.

I already had everything I needed to make this and came home a little early to make it before the meeting. I kept looking at the recipe, thinking "is this it?" It was so easy! I used fresh sage and rosemary from my garden, and doubled the recipe. After our meeting, this is all that was left (which was fortunate, since I'm a closet blogger and hadn't taken a photo!)

I went easy on the herbs and salt as I was afraid of overdoing it, and that was a big mistake. You may also consider grating some lemon rind into the soup, or finishing it with my favorite secret weapon, a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. It was even better the next day.

This is my new go-to vegetable soup recipe. If you'd like to give it a try, you'll find the recipe here.

TWD Rewind - Bill's Big Carrot Cake

I have used the same carrot cake recipe for YEARS. It is always well loved but I was ready for a change. Dorie Greenspan has a carrot cake in Baking From My Home to Yours that was chosen before I joined Tuesdays with Dorie, and I figured I'd give it a try. I have heard whispers about how yummy and flat out fantastic it is from reading some of my fellow TWD bloggers' posts, and I wanted to see how it compared to my go-to recipe.

My recipe has an 8 ounce can of crushed pineapple (juice included) and no coconut. That gives it a LLOOONNNGGGG life in the refrigerator, but that isn't always a plus unless you're a "B" diner. Dorie's recipe has just cinnamon, and mine had a mixture of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, etc.) Dorie's calls for raisins or dried cranberries in addition to the nuts. Otherwise, the two were similar.

The recipe came together quickly and smelled amazing while it was baking. Since I made this a couple of weeks before I needed it, I cooled the layers completely and then triple wrapped them in plastic wrap and double wrapped them in heavy duty foil. My freezer is small and my friend Susan has a humongo freezer, so they had a sleep over at her house. On the day I planned to serve the cake, I let the layers sit out at room temperature (still wrapped) for an hour or two before I assembled the cake.

Dorie's cream cheese frosting recipe uses a pound of confectioner's sugar to 8 ounces of cream cheese, but adds a tablespoon of lemon juice to counteract the sweetness. I didn't have an available lemon, so I cut back on the sugar (to 14 ounces). I left the sides of the cake bare as Dorie did in the picture in the book.

This cake rocked our world. I used Vietnamese cinnamon and it gave the cake a wonderful depth of flavor. Normally, I use about half the amount of Vietnamese cinnamon since it's so assertive, but I really liked the spiciness it gave. We even liked it without any frosting.

My old recipe? It's history. Dorie's recipe? It's the future. A very yummy future, indeed. To make this cake a part of your future, check out the book Baking From My Home to Yours. It is an amazing feast of go-to recipes just as great as this one.