Butterscotch Pudding -- Sweet Melissa Sundays

Time for Sweet Melissa Sundays! Today's dessert is Butterscotch Pudding, picked for us to try from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Jennifer of Maple n' Cornbread, thank you Jennifer! You can find the recipe for this pudding here at Jennifer's site.


While I am a huge butterscotch fan, I'm not really into puddings, especially puddings with egg. The only time I've made puddings at home were for Tuesdays with Dorie, we are not big pudding eaters here. But I just had to give this a try and see how it compared to the butterscotch pudding we made for TWD in December 2008. I ended up liking that one and Melissa's pudding had a very different ingredient list which made me curious.


The kids and I absolutely loved this pudding, picky husband hasn't tried it yet. ETA -- picky husband reluctantly tried one tiny bite, then requested the remainder of the ramekin, so that means it was a hit with the whole family :) It had an amazing butterscotch flavor and I enjoyed caramelizing the sugar, that is always a fun process to watch. I tasted the caramel cream before adding it to the egg yolks and it was too salty for me. I would decrease the salt from 1 teaspoon to 1/4 teaspoon for a full recipe. I made a half recipe and used 1/2 tsp salt and think 1/8 would have been plently -- the salt did mellow down a little after baking, but I would still add less than called for next time. The perfect butterscotch flavor surprised me since there is no butter or scotch in this recipe.


I baked my ramekins, covered with foil and in their water bath, for 65 minutes -- at 60 they still looked too jiggly. I did notice the top of the puddings (above where the water bath was) were more set than the bottom, almost giving a two layer effect. But both layers were delicious and I really did not taste an eggy note at all in these, they were so creamy and smooth, really perfect texture. I can't wait to make this again and maybe make it into a pie or tart, I'm so glad I didn't let my non-pudding-liking tendencies get the best of me and skip this one or I really would have missed out.

Mini Cocoa-nana Breads -- Tuesdays with Dorie

Tuesdays with Dorie, oh how I've missed thee! So nice to be back to making (and posting about) our Tuesday treat of the week. These delicious little cocoa-nana loaves were picked for us to try by Steph of Obsessed with Baking, thank you Steph!

The recipe actually makes one big loaf but I decided to bring out the mini loaf pan that had been sitting unbaked in for months, poor neglected pan...

I used up the last of my Hershey's Special Dark Dutch processed cocoa powder for this recipe, the recipe calls for 1 cup of cocoa powder and I used 3/4 cups of Special Dark (finishing up my box) and 1/4 cup of regular Hershey's cocoa powder. If you love dark chocolate you really need to have some dark cocoa powder in your pantry because this Special Dark cocoa powder really packs a dark chocolate punch. The Special Dark cocoa powder gave these breads an outrageously dark look but also a real chocolate depth to go with the banana. The little loaves were delicious and to me the flavor improved after sitting overnight.

Do these look familiar? They were last Tuesday's treat, Lillian of Confectiona’s Realm picked Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars to try and I baked along with everyone and really loved these bars (raisins and all!) but didn't get a chance to post. These were such a yummy treat and as much as I enjoyed them I did have a couple of taste testers who were turned off by the raisins and picky husband said that the chocolate part was good and the oatmeal base was good, but together they were just too much...he couldn't even finish one little bar, silly guy!

Black Bottom Brownies -- Sweet Melissa Sundays

I'm so happy to be posting again! Today's treat for Sweet Melissa Sundays is a giant pan of Black Bottom Brownies, picked for us to try by Cynthia of Bakingtherapist’s Blog, thank you Cynthia! The pan isn't really that giant, just a 9 by 13, but anytime I make brownies or bars in anything bigger than a 8 by 8 pan it seems like a giant batch to me.

Here are the brownies before going into the oven, notice that there aren't quite 2 cups of chocolate chips sprinkled over the top as called for in the recipe. I had measured out 2 cups and after sprinkling only about 1/2 cup I decided that would be plenty of chocolate chips on top. When I got started baking these I knew I would need quite a few eggs since the brownie layer and cheesecake layer both have eggs in them but I neglected to count out my eggs and only had 9 left when the recipe calls for 10 eggs and 2 yolks. Yikes, that's a lot of eggs! So I skipped the two yolks that were called for in the brownie layer (4 eggs plus 2 yolks were what the recipe requested) and in the cheesecake layer I used only 5 eggs instead of the 6 called for. I don't think these brownies suffered any adverse effects because I was short 3 eggs. One other change I made was to bake these at 350 instead of the 325 called for because I was using an insulated 9 by 13 pan and that bakes best at 350. Total baking time was around 50 minutes.

The kids really enjoyed these a little warm, after the cooling off period but before refrigeration overnight. I personally liked the better from the fridge. Husband was a no try because he hates cheesecake. They are very rich so be sure to cut them small if you give these a try. The recipe can be found in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book and I think it will also be posted at Cynthia's blog.

Romanian Easter Bread

Happy New Year! I'm hoping to be posting more in 2010 and getting back to my online baking and cooking clubs which I have really missed over the last months.

This bread was my pick for My Kitchen My World -- Romania. You can find the recipe here. I forgot to add the raisins while kneading and ended up sprinkling some on top before baking, and of course as soon as I removed it from the pan the raisins fell right off...oh-well. I had planned to make a powdered sugar icing and add raisins to the top of that but the kids wanted me to serve them this bread right away, so no chance for pretty icing and photos.