Snacks

Best Chewy Brownies

February 20, 2017 by mollygilbert520 7 Comments

I made these crackly-topped, perfectly textured (for me, that means damp and chewy, closer to fudgy than cakey… devastatingly handsome, ugh) beauties while the soundtrack to La La Land jumped and lilted around my kitchen. I basically made these brownies for Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, is what I’m saying. (Have you gotten a chance to see that movie yet? It’s a delight.)

Anyway, back to our scene: the Seattle sun peeked through the raindrops and the pop-flecked jazz filled the air, which became increasingly thick with the scent of melted butter and dark chocolate and, despite the baffling circus that is the political news cycle (you guys, WHAT IS HAPPENING), in that moment, all felt right with the world. And then we ate brownies.

As today is a holiday (albeit one of those weird ones that not everyone recognizes — sorry if you are, indeed, at the office), you might think about creating your own happy place, with music and brownies? It’s a start, at least.

Happy Monday!

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Sheet Pan Halloween Candy Bark

October 28, 2016 by mollygilbert520 2 Comments

Happy Friday, peepsicles!

We’ve only got a few days until Halloween, so I thought you might like a SUPER easy and festive weekend baking project — candy bark! All dressed up for hallow’s eve.

The only ingredients we need for this gem of a treat are some chocolate chips of your choosing, a handful of Reese’s Pieces (some for the bark, some for your face, you know the drill) and a boatload of Halloween-ish sprinkles. Sprankles. And some candy eyeballs, probably, for spooks and giggles.

This might be the simplest recipe I’ve ever posted, so get your sheet pans out and get barking.

Grab the recipe (along with accompanying video) HERE! #sheetpansuppers #4eva

Happy Halloween!

Deb’s Plum Cake

September 13, 2016 by mollygilbert520 8 Comments

Leave it to Deb to get me back in the kitchen! I mean, when that lady says “jump”, I’m the first to ask “how high?” so it stands to follow that when Deb says “make this plum cake,” I know it’s in my best interest to bust out the butter and search for some plums.

Except, as luck would have it, I didn’t have to search very far, because my neighbor, Martha, happens to have a plum tree in her yard, and Martha also happens to be quite generous (in general, but also specifically in plums), so as it happened, just as soon as I got it in my head to make plum cake, there was Martha, bag of plums in hand, to save the day.

The cake lives up to the hype. It’s a cinch to make (you could easily do it in the short span it takes for, say, a 6-month old to wear himself out on his play mat… just saying), looks beautiful, and tastes like it should — perfectly sweet, warmly spiced, and happily damp with fresh plum. I find it a perfect segue from summer to fall, using both the last of the season’s sweet, juicy fruit, and also a generous dash of warm cinnamon.

I actually made two of these plum cakes in one day — one for some neighbors who just welcomed their own new babe, and one for my own family to gobble up in a single (yep, just one) day. What I’m saying is, we need more plum cake. (Once plums are gone, I may give this another try with pears, although I don’t think Martha has a pear tree. Shoot).

In other news, I feel like I’ve typed “plums” one too many times today and now I can’t look at the word without feeling like it’s spelled wrong. Plums. PLUMS. Plummmmms.

I think it’s time for me to go.

And as an aside, we haven’t given Calder much solid food yet but we let him sort of gum and suck on a (ahem) plum and it was both amazing and hysterical. Boy loves him some PLUM.

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Brown Sugar Roasted Strawberry & Coconut Popsicles

June 25, 2016 by mollygilbert520 3 Comments

Hold onto your sticks everyone, because it’s Popsicle Week!

This is one of my favorite weeks of the (virtual) year, actually, because in addition to getting to make slash eat delicious, frozen treats, we also get to mix and mingle with a huge community of bloggers with popsicles on the brain. I mean, have you seen this list of genius?!? So much goodness over there. We’re going to need more popsicle molds.

In previous years I’ve tried to mix it up, tackling everything from Date Shake Pops to Dark Chocolate Pudding Pops to Honeydew Agua Fresca Pops (not to mention the Watermelon Limesicles and Blackberry Root Beer Float popsicles that have shown up around these parts), but this year I wasn’t sure exactly where to go. Creamy or fruity? Chocolatey or chock full of coconut?

The answer, dear friends, is all of the above.

I settled on a creamy, coconut-milk-based, syrupy-roasted-strawberry and handful-of-white-chocolate-chips-for-good-measure-filled popsicle. They are PRETTY GOOD, if I do say so myself. They’re just subtly sweet, but packed with intensely strawberry-ish strawberries, creamy coconut flavor and a hint of brown sugar and white chocolate. Get into it!

I think they’d be Calder-approved, too, if he could, you know, eat things. He mostly stared at them in confusion, if we’re being honest, but I think I detected a glimmer of pop-citement in those baby blues. Gotta teach them young, right?

Happy #PopsicleWeek, everyone!

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Sour Cream Bran Muffins

June 6, 2016 by mollygilbert520 7 Comments

HELLO! Well, wow. It’s been awhile. It seems I had a kid (!) and everything else (cooking, writing, showering…) fell by the wayside. I’m officially one of those people. Yikes.

But! Lest you think all you’re going to find here is a terrible iPhone picture of a pretty delicious muffin, I’d like to introduce you to someone:

OH hi there! This is Calder. He’s my son and I’m keeping him forever. Incidentally, he’s also a pretty delicious muffin.

I’m still trying to figure out exactly how much of the little guy I want to put out there on the internet, but let’s start here. Calder likes: fresh air, hiccups, the sound of the vacuum cleaner, midnight snacks, bouncing. Dislikes: long car rides, crib naps, wearing socks.

Though I’ve not spent much time in the kitchen, the past three months (three months already! bah.) with this little man have been the most delicious ever – so thanks for bearing with my absence around here.

Before Calder was born, I loaded up my freezer with a few simple meals and snacks (including this soup and these meatballs) that I knew I’d want around post baby, and these muffins proved an excellent call. Parading under the guise of good health (I mean, bran muffins), these are light and tender crumbed cakes packed to the gills with sweet fruit and rich molasses flavor.

In the early days when the babe needed to eat every five seconds (or so it seemed), leaving me ravenous at all hours, my nighttime routine included pulling two (or, uh, three) of these muffins from the freezer and setting them by my bedside — they’d thaw just in time for that first, late night nursing session, and I’d descend hungrily on the things after my sweet boy had gotten his fill (of milk, not muffins… little guy didn’t know what he was missing).

I’ve made a few batches since the first to restock the coffers, as it were, and served them, warm from the oven and slathered with butter, to last-minute brunch guests (instead of shoveling them in my mouth at 2am, say), but these muffins will always remind me of those first few amazing, exhausting, terrifying and exhilarating weeks with Calder.

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My Favorite Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

February 12, 2016 by mollygilbert520 4 Comments

Sugar cookies! I won’t lie – in general, they’re not my favorite. They always look cute, and are fun to make and decorate, but flavor-wise, I always thought we could do better. I mean, give me a choice between a fatty chocolate chip number and a perfectly iced sugar cookie, and there’s no mistaking which one I’m going to choose (the former, for the win every time).

There’s something inherently nostalgic about the sugar cookie, sure, but why are they always so bland? Or overly sweet, or pale and pasty and just kind of fake-tasting?

We can do better!

Here, I present to you: sugar cookie redemption. These are simple and just sweet enough, perfectly buttery, light and tender-crumbed – you’ll enjoy eating them as much as making them! And that is saying something.

So, yes, these are the “caramelized” version – let’s not go straight to “burned,” okay? (I mean, I can barely see my toes anymore, so give a girl a break…) But you’ll do better than I will, and might actually set a timer so you don’t get to chatting with your mom on the phone and completely forget about the COOKIES IN THE OVEN. So. That’ll be good.

And, if you’re celebrating Valentine’s day this weekend, these little guys are perfect for cutting into hearts and busting out the cute sprinkles (if that’s your thing), or maybe just, not? It doesn’t matter. Either way we have cookies.

My Favorite Cut-Out Sugar Cookies…

Creamy Maple Steel Cut Oats

September 25, 2015 by mollygilbert520 2 Comments

Oh look! A new recipe! Well hallelujah and glory be.

Is anyone else getting totally zonked by mercury in retrograde this month? If you’d asked me a week ago if I believed in this crock, I’d have told you to take your crock elsewhere, because I wasn’t buying it. But a batch of burned brownies, several stress-induced/bizarro dream-y sleepless nights, and not one but TWO clogged pipes later, the joke seems to be on me.

At least I’ve got a handle on breakfast.

Did you know that oatmeal could be luscious? Because it can! These are steel cut oats, cooked gently in water and milk, with plenty of salt and just a touch of sugar. They’re beautifully simple, but simply perfect – warm, incredibly creamy, just slightly chewy, and doused with a healthy amount of maple syrup. Plus a scatter of roasted pistachios and yeah, okay, maybe a handful of (un-photographed) chocolate chips because IT’S BEEN A WEEK.

Make these oats (or make a double batch!) this weekend, and eat breakfast like a goddess for days. Just store leftovers in the fridge, and scoop out a bowlful each morning to warm with some milk, or even a splash of cream. Because you deserve it! And mercury in retrograde can eat my oats.

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Best Zucchini Bread

September 9, 2015 by mollygilbert520 9 Comments

Oh HI! You may have noticed my random and entirely unannounced little blog break over here. Yep! I didn’t think about this little nook of the interwebs for ten whole days, and I have to say, it was kind of spectacular.

Not that I didn’t miss you! I definitely did. But sometimes, life starts to bubble up around you and ping you with stress (and sometimes it even gives you the shingles virus, TRUE STORY), and you need. a. break. And it’s okay! Things don’t fall apart. In what I find a both reassuring and terrifying universal constant, the interwebs are ALWAYS here.

So HELLO, people of the interwebs! What have you been up to these first few days of September? Soaking in the last rays of bright summer sunshine? Or hopping on the autumn train early to featherweight cashmere and pumpkin spice lattés?

I always find this time of year tricky. I want to savor the last drops of summer, to make it to one more outdoor concert, to eat dinner on the patio, but at the same time, fall is a welcome change. Something about routine getting righted, and my old boots, and feeling content to turn on the oven again, maybe? It feels happy and familiar.

I’m calling this zucchini bread “best,” because I’ve made a lot of zucchini bread, and this version is by far my favorite. Other recipes often come out of the oven too watery and dense, or else don’t really taste much like zucchini. This loaf is sturdy yet springy, rich and cakey but definitively zucchini bread. I made it twice in two weeks — that’s four loaves, total — and we didn’t even have any leftovers to freeze for later. It feels like the right kind of recipe for this time of year – hanging loosely onto summer while settling cozily into fall.

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Carrot Apricot Mango Muffins

July 7, 2015 by mollygilbert520 4 Comments

Home feels good. It’s hot in Seattle, our plants are sad and I’m jet-lagged as hell, but still. Home!

I ate an entire box of macaron cookies from Pierre Hermé on the plane ride back (I mean, what else is a person supposed to do when she’s spent all of her airport time buying chocolate at duty-free instead of a new book to read, and it turns out the plane is an old one and there are NO TVs?!? Pray, tell me), and between that and the endless pounds of jamón I consumed in Spain, I think it’s time for some VEGETABLES up in here.

Or, you know, muffins. Eeeeasing back into it, people.

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Brown Butter Skillet Cornbread

June 8, 2015 by mollygilbert520 5 Comments

I made us cornbread!

I actually made it a few weeks ago, but I never got around to telling you about it and at this point I’ve eaten it all, but now that the temperature has dropped below 80 in Seattle, it might be time to bake up a new batch. I think you’ll like it.

I also think you’d like our house, which boasts an entirely barren upstairs floor but a downstairs that’s coming along just fine. I wish I could have you over for breakfast! We’d eat cornbread and honey and maybe some fruit salad, too. We could pick our own strawberries and mint from the backyard! We’d stoop low to pluck the small green leaves and the tiny, ruby things and we’d say hi to the spiders who keep watch over the garden. They still make me jump, but I’ve learned to appreciate those spiders. Kind of.

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