Everyone borrows recipes, trying their hand at something that someone else has created and honed to perfection. This recipe comes from my favourite cooking site smittenkitchen.com. I recommend this to anyone who loves cooking or food porn – seriously the pictures are phenomenal. Cooking chocolate babka was something that always intrigued me after eating this at Max Brenner (a perfect little chocolate shop in Sydney) and when Deb put a recipe for it on her site, I was game and it was worth every bit of trouble.

Warning – This will create a chocolate overload!

This is an alternative recipe for pizza dough that doesn’t use sugar, for those who look for that sort of stuff. Tried it, and it’s really quite good. The pizza base ends up having a bread-like taste to it, familiar to those who have a bread machine.

B and I have been searching for a great pizza dough to make in the breadmaker. We founds this one whilst in Oz and it is pretty good.

This is a recent favourite. I prepare 2 loaves each week so B and I can have morning tea for the week. Highly recommend it, its lovely, moist and delicously bananery.

B and I are on a healthkick and these are great hunger stoppers. They are ultra healthy too. Change around the fruit as you like, raspberries, blueberries, banana or strawberries can be added (just to name a few).

I love a good crusty french bread, and this one is not too bad at all. Lately I have been on a baking frenzy and cooking these every second day. I am sure I will get sick of them soon enough.

You can put just about anything into a muffin. These are a delicious savoury muffin. They are best eaten on the day that they are cooked.

This is a great muffin recipe. I first stumbled accross this recipe when watching The Barefoot Contessa one Sunday morning in my pajamas. Whilst I love all of her recipes one must be wary that there is no Fat Free in her vocabulary, in fact I am sure she has a contract with butter and fat producers to not only double but TRIPLE the fat content of all of her recipes.

Originally it was made with banana, museli and cocount, but our house swinging more in favour of apple cinnamon concoctions we changed it around. What has resulted is muffins full of deliciousness, stuffed into a very easy recipe.

Enjoy.

One thing I can say about this recipe, “Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!” Unfortunately in the States there are no meat pies, so I have resorted to making my own. I found that the puff pastry on the bottom would go soggy unless I poked holes in the pie tin. This recipe creates the PERFECT pie base.

Make a few pies at once and put into the freezer for those nights you don’t want to cook.

This is for those people who love to cook from scratch. The consistency was the same as store bought and it probably cost about the same to make, but its handy to have this recipe for those days I dont have puff pastry in the freezer. It is relatively easy to make but the time consuming part is the constant refridgerating to roll out, which had me swearing out loud every now and then. I discovered that it is IMPOSSIBLE to contain the butter and once I had resolved myself to this it went a little smoother. Try sieving flour onto any escaping butter so it doesnt stick to your rolling pin.

Good luck.

Go ahead … indulge your sweet tooth. It’s not really a sin. It just sort of feels that way. I was looking around for some frostings that I could put on a fresh batch of cinnamon rolls, and I found this cream cheese recipe that supposedly is the recipe that Cinnabon uses for their famous rolls. So I whipped it up really quick, spread it on the rolls, taste-tested one or two of them, and give the frosting two thumbs … way up!

Always good for a breakfast treat, or a quick brunch-type thing … hell … anytime really; these rolls will be sure to tantilize your taste buds and make you forget all about those 12 pounds you’re trying to loose. I mean, really; what’s the point of eating if you can’t enjoy it every now and then, right?

My own personal touch is to add a little bit too much brown sugar and a little too much cinnamon to the mix for that extra sweet taste that I’ve grown up with.

For topping ideas:
> cream cheese frosting