I’m a Pinterest addict. And one thing about being a Pinterest addict is that you start to notice a lot of repetitive re-pins. Particularly in the food world. It’s definitely one way to help be become a better blogger- you start to realize what kinds of recipes people are looking for. People really seem to like quick and easy.

You really can’t get any quicker or easier than this recipe here. It’s called “World’s Best Chicken“. Quite the title to live up to. I think that’s why it has gotten so many pins, with a title like that and a good picture, it’s hard not to be intrigued. Even my curiosity got the better of me. I had to make it to find out if it was really worth all the hype.

Lucky for me I LOVE maple syrup and dijon. They make a great sweet & savory combination, so I enjoyed the dish. But, to the point, is it the “world’s best chicken”? Probably not… haha but it was good! Especially for something that gets whipped together so quickly. I like my chicken to have a bit of caramelization to it  which meant I would want to leave it in there a little longer to get the topping nice and brown (or turn the broiler on for a minute or two). No doubt this was going to Leave the chicken dry. Not ideal. To combat this, 30 minutes before pouring the topping on, I poked holes in the breasts with the tines of a fork, then I lightly sprinkled them with salt. Basically a quick dry brine to ensure moist chicken. It definitely helped.If you want it to be really moist though you should stick it in the slow cooker! I love slow cooked chicken : ) So tender and shreadable..

Not too long ago I made some really delicious, overindulgent cookie-bars. I say “cookie-bars” because that is exactly what they were- part chocolate chip cookie and part brownie bar. As if that didn’t make them rich enough… I placed a layer of Oreo’s right smack in the middle. They are called Slutty Brownies. Funny name for a dessert, right? Haha I didn’t name them and I certainly didn’t come up with the idea behind them. I’m sure the idea to combine three such beloved treats goes back very far to some unknown origin. The only thing that makes my version stand out from the rest is that it uses two really great recipes, both from Cooks Illustrated, which makes for what I like to call The Ultimate Slutty Brownie!

Since those went over so well, I thought I would try my hand at creating a peanut butter version. At first I thought I would do a peanut butter cookie dough with chopped Reeses‘ as the base, fill the center with peanut butter Oreos‘, and then top with the same chewy brownie recipe as the original Slutty Brownie. That idea was fine, but after further thought I came up with another one that I felt flowed better- peanut butter cookie dough with milk chocolate chips, Reeses‘ instead of Oreos’, and, again, my favorite chewy brownie recipe. You can do the first combination if you’d rather of course.

Gotta tell ya though, these didn’t turn out nearly as photogenic as the original slutty bars. The Reeses’ cup kind of blends into the peanut butter cookie dough, leaving it hard to see all the components when the bars are cut. But it still tastes great! And that’s all that matters right?

Unfortunately, these cookie-bars are so rich that you can really only serve yourself a small square… unless you’ve built up a tolerance like me of course hehe

Have I ever mentioned that I usually cook two different meals for dinner? Well, I know that I have at least said a thing or two about my Husband, Dave’s, picky food habits… which leads me to no other option than to cook two entirely different meals more than half the time. And it’s not just him that leads to the difficulty- it’s me too. I have a real distaste for meat. Dave on the other hand, would eat meat all day long if he could. So you see, if I would just eat meat than I wouldn’t have half the trouble planning meals that I do. We’ve simply been at an impasse about food for our whole marital relationship (5 years this June- wohoo!). But now that my daughter is getting older and she is going to start eating real food soon, I am on the search for meals that both Dave and I will eat. I don’t want her to see me cooking a separate meal for him and then end up having her expect that she can have something different too. That’s all I need is to be cooking three meals a night…

I am lucky enough that although Dave is picky, he doesn’t usually have a problem with healthier options, specifically whole-wheat. Which brings me to this pizza! It’s made of 73% whole-wheat flour, giving it a hearty dose of fiber and nutrients that you don’t normally get with the basic white pizza dough. The dough is a bit wetter and stickier than usual because of the added water to make up for the flour changes, just use a little extra flour for easier handling. 

We make pizza ALL the time at my house. Multiple times a month. It’s just one of the very few meals that we agree upon so it’s a natural solution to make my life easier. I always use this pizza dough recipe. It is my favorite for getting a thin crust pizza with great flavor and texture. It’s a Cooks Illustrated recipe and so is this one. This is like the healthier “sister” recipe to that one. They both function off the same principles and use the same technique for preparation- made in the food processor and given a long rest in the refrigerator. So not only are these recipes easy, but they are make ahead too. All you need to do for dough prep the day of is to plan on taking them out an hour before baking. Love it.

As far as the normal tomato sauce and mozzarella topping goes- it gets old. At least it does for me when I have to make it 4 times a month. I was really pleased to see that Cooks Illustrated was offering something different to top this dough with. And something not so strange that Dave wouldn’t eat it either. They actually mention in the article that the sweet, acidic red sauce didn’t pair well with the whole-wheat crust in testing. I could see that, but I am sure it would be just fine for most of us.

I am just glad to have a new alternative to the white pizza dough/red sauce/mozzarella combination. I don’t know about you, but when I eat it I always feel like it just sits in my stomach for hours and doesn’t digest. That and I can never get enough water afterwards. Terrible feelings of thirst. I would say that I think it’s from all the salt in the cheese, but I didn’t get that feeling with the whole-wheat pizza after eating my usual serving. Maybe it’s the white pizza dough then?

So, if you are interested in this recipe but need confirmation about how it turns out, here it is- this whole-wheat pizza dough is delicious! Absolutely wonderful. The wheat flavor isn’t overwhelmingly strong, just enough to know it’s there. The texture is light, airy, and chewy. Don’t worry one bit about it being cardboard like- it’s not. And the method for baking creates a perfectly crisp crust, by far the closest I have come to a pizza parlor crust in my own kitchen. If you like to make your own pizza at home, you’ve got to try this. And if you don’t have a baking stone, don’t worry, I don’t either (2 years ago my Pampered Chef one cracked after I took it out of the oven). I use a round sheet pan that I bought at Walmart. It doesn’t work as well as a baking stone, but my oven here in Germany is so tiny that I wouldn’t be able to fit one in anyways. When I do finally get back to the States, I am going to pick one up immediately. Specifically Old Stone Oven’s Baking Stone (per the recommendation of Cooks Illustrated). Can’t wait!

My Husband put together our new GIANT trampoline this weekend! It was so exciting. When I was younger I always wanted one, but my backyard was about the size of a 4-by-4 haha. Can’t blame my parents. It just wasn’t feasible. Dave on the other hand, was one of the lucky ones. Nice big backyard- nice big trampoline. Ugh, so jealous. As most parents do, I want my kids to have all the stuff I couldn’t have when I was a kid. So as soon as my daughter reached an appropriate trampoline jumping age and the weather was right, I set to hooking her up with one. Here is the thing though- I just wanted a standard sized large trampoline (with a net, of course, she is only 2 1/2 after all…). Dave begged to differ though. Standard wasn’t good enough- “We must have THE biggest one they make!” Haha My daughter is this tiny little spec of a girl on this enormous trampoline. Pretty silly.

Now on to this decadent pie! I did not make this pie this weekend. I made it a few weeks ago when my parents were visiting. I waited and waited to have visitors to make this pie. God forbid I make it when I am the only one in the house that will eat it. Because that is exactly what I would do- eat it. ALL of it! I’m sure you might have guessed that this pie isn’t quite figure friendly… so to say the least it would have been fairly disastrous. So I waited in order to save me from myself.

When I first saw this recipe (from “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking” by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito- LOVE it!) I thought it was a basic chocolate chip cookie dough put into a pie crust. NOT true! A better way to describe it would be to say that it is the flavor of a chocolate chip cookie, but with the texture of pecan pie- ooey and gooey. Pretty darn awesome. And of course, whenever you have anything ooey and gooey it just begs to be served with ice cream! Perfect.

I ran into a particular problem with this pie though. I put a sheet pan under it while it baked in the oven, which somehow prevented it from baking properly. I pulled it out at the time it was supposed to be done and it was no where even close to being done. I baked it for 30 minutes longer without the sheet pan and my toothpick still came out with wet crumbs on it. Bummer. I served myself a slice after it had cooled at least 2 hours and it still oozed out everywhere. Definitely not picture friendly. I ended up taking photos that day and the next to see which would photograph better- gooey and messy or solidified and neat? (See above photo.) The next day I warmed up a slice in the microwave, topped it with some ice cream and homemade salted caramel sauce, pumped out a few photos then immediately inhaled it. Any other food bloggers out there feel like they are sometimes so excited to eat something that they rush through the photograph process? I swear I do that 99% of the time. Bad Laura.

I also didn’t have any whiskey so I subbed it out for vanilla extract. As far as I can tell it worked out fine : )

adapted from “Baked: New Frontiers in Baking” by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito

I’ve been feeling mega enthused lately. Enthused and particularly ambitious. Since I recently stopped drinking coffee, I don’t quite understand where this burst of energy came from… but I’m grateful. It’s helped me realize a few things. My blog has become stagnant. I’ve hit this plateau and I am dying to break out of it now that I know it’s there. I do the same thing, week after week after week. It’s starting to bore me so I am guessing it might be starting to bore my readers. There is nothing of variation on my page. Aside from the two posts I recently made about my trips, it is simply recipes. So I sat down and came up with a list of new ideas to implement on my site, which I am very excited about. I’m sharing them with you to not only prep you for the things to come but to keep me accountable for my new goals. Seriously, if things haven’t started to change up around here by the end up the Summer, e-mail me and tell me to kick it into gear already!

I am happy to say that I have already made two changes this week. Yay! Things are looking up already : ) You may have noticed that I reorganized my navbar menu. Instead of it reading “Home, About, Recipes, Shop, Contact”, it now reads “Home, Recipes, Resources (formerly known as “Shop”), About, Contact”. I mainly wanted to bring “Recipes” right over to the left hand side where your eye first goes because I think it is one of the most important items up there. I also completely changed the drop-down menu under recipes. It now has categories “The Bakery” for desserts and such items, “The Kitchen” for all savory-type dishes, and “Healthy” for all nutritious recipes. Those three categories are further divided into subcategories. I just feel like it organizes things a little better for you.

The second change I made was adding a button on the side bar that links to healthy recipes. I created the icon myself in photoshop and installed it myself : ) I’m pretty proud. I’m not very good with computers so the fact that I did that is pretty astounding actually. I wanted to devote an entire icon calling attention to my healthy recipes because I want to start featuring more healthy dishes on this site. You heard me- the Sweet Spot is not all about sweets anymore! It’s just killing my waistline. I can’t do it anymore.

Alright, now that I have mentioned a couple of things that I’ve already done, let me get to the stuff I am going to start including on my site!

Resources. I want to have regular postings offering information, not just recipes. By this I mean “how-to’s”, videos, step-by-step photos, etc. And most importantly I don’t want them all to be related to food. I want to share information about how to do various things on your blog as well. I’ve found this kind of info really helpful when I’ve found it on other blogs so I wanted to incorporate everything I’ve learned onto my site so people can learn from me as well.

Photography Tips. How to take photos AND edit photos. I recently learned how to take screen shots with my computer so I plan on using that to my advantage in this area.

Increase Income. Not only is it beneficial for me personally to have more money in my pocket, but it is a great way to show me how my blog is improving. If I start making more money then the changes that I am making are working. If things remain stagnant then I need to reach higher.

Personality. I realize I lack a bit of personality when it comes to posts. I can’t help it. When I have a recipe to share and sit down to type a post for it, I feel like I should talk about, well, the recipe. I’m not the type of person that can go on and on about the movie she watched last night and her love for Shea Lebeouf (which I do have), and then quickly add, “By the way you have to try these brownies- they’re killer.” At the same time I am sure a little more insight into my life and person might entertain you. I will aim to share at least one non-recipe related thing in each post and see how that goes.

Improvement Posts. I don’t mean improve my posts when I say this. I mean post about my improvements. Specifically what I have done and how it has been working for me. I think a lot of people will find this interesting and helpful, especially other bloggers.

New Design. I really want to change things up with my design. Make the site look more professional looking. Keep it clean cut and easy to follow. Attractive. This is going to take a while to achieve since I will have to inlist some outside help… I’m gonna give myself until the end of this year to achieve that one.

Post Every Weekday. As of right now I am only posting Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday on the weekdays. I do a recipe “round-up” post on Saturday too. More posts=more visitors=more income (which is one of my goals).

So there you have it, a handful of objectives. It’ll keep me on my toes- and yours too!

AND a picture of my 4 month old son. Because he’s cute and I like to look at him : )

Bahhhhh, I can’t find my spatula!! I hate when this kind of stuff happens. It’s not just any spatula either. It’s my offset spatula- the one I use for all my frosting and spreading needs. UGH! I just had it the other day when I put together my Strawberry Cupcakes. I don’t understand how things just up and walk away sometimes. And I lost my meat thermometer the other day. Boy, am I on a roll. So I guess the rest of my day I am going to be spending searching for that darn thing.

Aside from the disappearing act my kitchen utensils are performing lately, I wanted to talk to you about another not completely seasonally appropriate dish haha. Please bare with me- like I said yesterday, I’ve got to get these recipes out of the way so we can move on to the summery type dishes : )

Just like the Skillet Shepherd’s Pie that I shared yesterday, I made this casserole for my parents when they were here last month. This is not something I could typically make my Husband for dinner on a normal night so I was interested to see if he would eat it. He isn’t a fan of creamy, cheesy things. And casseroles in general aren’t his thing. He likes to have “divisions” in his dinner, ya know? Meat here, broccoli there, and mashed potatoes over here. He doesn’t want his food to be all jumbled in one. Me on the other hand? Jumble it up baby : D But guess what? I made him try it… and he liked it! Score! Now I have something else I can add to our menu rotation.

The really reason why I made this casserole lies a little deeper though. A while back I made a Light King Ranch Casserole from Cook’s Country Magazine. It was my first experience with King Ranch Casserole and I thought it was absolutely delicious. But it was a light version of something I had never had the full fat version of… So of course I had it in my mind to try the original King Ranch Casserole to see how it compared. Naturally this full fat version won out.

Seasoned shredded chicken layered with a spicy cream sauce, shredded cheese, and flour tortillas. Ab-SO-lutely delicious!

adapted from The Homesick Texan

You may have noticed a couple of happenings on my site this last week. Mainly a huge hiccup in the menu bar… that’s what I get for pretending that I actually know what I’m doing. I tried to reorganize the structure of my drop down menu under Recipes and well, all hell broke lose. I’d make 5 changes in WordPress and only one would show up and everything else would be deleted. I’d go back and redo my changes, save, and then error codes. FAIL. I’d try again and then the whole menu bar would disappear. EPIC fail. I was getting pretty frustrated with the whole debacle. Luckily for me I was able to rope my blog designer, Myla (from Design Me Pretty), to help me out- Thanks Myla! You rock! It took almost two days between me and her fiddling with it but she finally discovered that it was my WP search plugin causing the problems. All I had to do was deactivate it to make changes. Strange, huh? All those problems just because of one silly little plugin. Ugh, it’s times like these that I wish I knew a thing or two about computer design, codes, and all that…

Things are running fairly smooth now though! (For the moment at least.) I also rearranged some items on my sidebar. I am attempting to de-clutter my ads. Not sure that’s working, but it’s a work in progress. I’ve been feeling quite motivated lately. The feeling comes and goes every few months. Maybe it has something to do with the sun finally remembering where Germany is…

Speaking of sun and summertime, now that things are starting to heat up this is really my last chance to get this recipe out. I really don’t want to hold onto it until next Fall/Winter. I hate holding out on you. Plus I am aiming to improve my photographs so I don’t want my old photographs to be mixed in with my new photograph posts, ya know?

So disclaimer- Shepherd’s Pie in May… crazy! Haha I am well aware of this. You will just have to save it to a pin board for next season because this recipe is a keeper and like I said earlier, I’m not holding on to recipes anymore. Getting all the old stuff out there to make way for all the new stuff!

Isn’t this Shepherd’s Pie pretty though? It makes quite an impression. My parents were visiting this past month which gave me a chance to break out of the boring stuff I make routinely for my Husband and cook up something for in the kitchen! My parents will eat anything so it was the perfect time to experiment. Last time I shared a shepherd’s pie recipe with you, I mentioned that my family used to make Shepherd’s Pie layered plainly with a can of corn, lightly seasoned ground beef, and simple mashed potatoes. There was no gravy or sauce to it at all. It begged for ketchup. When I made this type of Shepherd’s Pie for them I think I kind of blew their mind a little. Not only was it unlike anything they had ever had, but it was so super delicious to boot!

This is a Cooks Illustrated recipe so the instructions are a little tedious. They have you do a couple out-of-the-ordinary things. They’re techniques to improve the dish like marinating the ground beef in salt, pepper, water, and baking soda. Whaaaaaaat? I know, it sounds weird, but it’s all part of a ploy to make the beef more tender and flavorful. It does in fact work, so kudos CI! You really just got to go with the flow and trust them. They know what they’re doing.

I really wanted to post a recipe for Strawberry Cake last year, but time just seemed to have gotten away from me before I had the chance. This year I was bound and determined to tackle the task even before strawberry season came into full bloom. After all, strawberry cake/cupcakes are kind of a big deal. Nothing beckons to it more than summer-time and barbecues! If you’re going to a summer party chances are there is going to be some sort of strawberry cake, berry topped cake, or lemon something or other. It’s just the way things roll in the summer.

There are lots and lots for strawberry cake out there, most of which center around the use of boxed cake mix and strawberry-flavored Jell-O. I wanted to find a recipe for strawberry cake that maintained great strawberry taste and texture without any of the processed, boxed products. Totally from scratch baby! The problem is there are not nearly as many recipes out there for a from scratch strawberry cake… and even less that are rated well. So I decided to take it upon myself to come up with my own. One that I would be proud to share with you and claim to be delicious, moist, and full of beautiful strawberry flavor!  Well, I am happy to say that I did : )

I usually depend on Cooks Illustrated to provide me with a recipe for these type of debacles, but their solution left me only partially satisfied. They had a really great idea to use frozen strawberries, heat them to release their juices, strain them while pressing out excess liquid, and to reduce all the strawberry juice to a concentrated 1/4 cups worth. They use a white cake recipe to let the strawberry flavor shine through which I also agreed with.  However! Their actual cake recipe was not what I had in mind. It called for cake flavor AND used the reverse creaming method. Both of these things I am not a fan of. I feel like they produce too tight of a crumb. It’s not as fluffy and soft as I like my cake. So I turned to my absolutely favorite White Cake recipe and changed it up to work with the concentrated strawberry juice.

The liquid called with in my white cake recipe is 1 1/3 cups buttermilk, so I had to do some maneuvering to get the quantities to work out. If I had used the 1/4 cup strawberry juice in replace of some of the buttermilk, I would have had to call for 1 cup and some ambiguous amounts worth of buttermilk. It didn’t quite add up. So instead I used one cup worth or regular whole milk plus 1 tablespoon of white vinegar, along with the 1/4 cup of strawberry juice. This made almost exactly 1 1/3 cups of liquid. Perfect! I used the vinegar and milk to work as a substitute for the buttermilk, which allowed me to keep the tender effect of the buttermilk without having to ask for an odd quantity of one ingredient. So obviously the substitution works both ways, you can use 1 cup plus 1 Tb buttermilk in place of both the vinegar and milk. In the end the cupcakes were a smash! They came out exactly how I wanted them too. I ended up taking them to a party and they all disappeared with many compliments aimed my way.

And let’s not forget the frosting…. and wow, what a frosting it is! Cream cheese strawberry frosting- yes, please! I did end up taking this recipe right from Cooks Illustrated’s Strawberry Cake. It just sounded so amazing, I had to. Plus, it calls for the remaining bits of strawberry that you extract the liquid from so it also prevents waste! However, as you may notice from my pictures, it is a very loose frosting. Definitely not something you are going to be able to pipe with. It’s because of all the moisture from the strawberry bits, so as great and exciting as they are to use, they are also annoying because they mess with the consistency. The original recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar. I tried everything to thicken it up without having to add more sugar because when you do that you don’t just thicken it, you sweeten it. I can’t stand overly sweet frosting. So, I added flour and cornstarch. A few tablespoons of the cornstarch and when that didn’t work then a few more of flour. Neither really helped much. Not as much as I wanted at least. I relent. In the end the only thing you can really do about it is add more confectioners’ sugar. I put 3 to 4 cups in the recipe so you could use your own judgement based on what you were looking for out of the frosting- taste or texture? Just tune it to your own desire. Trust me, no matter what you won’t be disappointed it it!

*This cake makes a great layer cake too- just divide the batter amongst two prepared 9-inch cake pans and bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.*

I have a banana bread obsession. I buy bananas all the time and more often than not they get too ripe to eat and I have to come up with something to bake them in so I won’t be wasting them…. you really have to twist my arm to do that, ya know haha. In reality I probably buy them just for baking and purposely don’t eat them, that way I get to try a new yummy banana recipe every other week or so. That’s quite a lot of baking with bananas. I told ya I was obsessed.

I’ve been trying my hand at some new banana bread recipes lately. Not just the traditional banana bread recipes- fun flavored banana bread, like the Nutella Swirled Peanut Butter Banana Bread I made a while back. This loaf here isn’t quite as crazy with the flavor combos but it still reaches outside the traditional banana bread box. Honey Banana Poppy Seed!! Ya see, I also have this weird love affair with poppy seeds. There is something about them that I find so alluring. Whenever I go to a bakery and see anything with poppy seeds I just have to get it. Almost every bakery here in Germany has something poppyseed (Mohn) to offer. Love it!

Needless to say between my obsession with banana bread and my adoration for all things poppy seed, I just had to make this loaf. It came from one of my new favorite baking books- “Baked: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients” by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito. They have a whole chapter dedicated to banana in it. I’ve already shared with you their recipe for Banana Whoopie Pies with Milk Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream, which was absolutely to-die-for! I really liked those whoopie pies, so although this loaf was very good, it wasn’t as good as the whoopie pies. But then again the whoopie pies took a lot of effort where as this banana bread was very simple and quick. I guess it all depends on what your looking for in a recipe.

This is a wonderful easy recipe to use up your bananas, plus you’ll end up with one absolutely delicious loaf of banana bread! You really can’t go wrong.

adapted from “Baked: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients” by Matt Lewis & Renato Poliafito

Last week I mentioned to you all that I was thinking about taking the month off from processed sugars, junk food, etc. and kick starting my body into shape, physically and nutritionally. I briefly mentioned maybe going vegan for the month but after further consideration I realized that I just won’t be able to pull that off. Not completely anyways. I have decided to out meat and to lessen my intake of butter, milk, cream, and cheese. But I could not give up my daily yogurt, I  just don’t have it in me. It pairs with my daily granola. I can’t go with out it. So you might be wondering what kind of recipes I will be making for the blog this month since I am taking a break from baked goods and all. That’s a good question. It took me a while to figure out where I want to go with this in relation to my blog, but I finally decided upon sharing some of the great nutritious meals, smoothies that I will be eating in place of my normal fare. Just this past week alone I have tried a handful of really great smoothie recipes. I’ve also been using coconut oil in a lot of baked goods so I plan on sharing those recipes too. But don’t worry- I will intermingle the healthy recipes with the not so healthy recipes to help appease both appetites : )

This is a perfect recipe for a healthy lunch or light dinner- Stuffed Whole Wheat Focaccia with Arugala, Feta, and Sun-dried Tomatoes.

by The Iron You

I adore anything made with mushrooms. This Wild Mushroom Papardelle looks delicious! Right up my alley.

by Love and Olive Oil

I’m on another coconut kick here so you’ll have to humor me here- Coconut and Chocolate Chip Cream Scones! Coconut + scones = love.

by Hungry Girl Por Vida

And here is a nice dose of decadence- Rocky, Road, Cheesecake! I love the ice cream, I can only imagine how great the cheesecake is…

by Bakers Royale

Who doesn’t love waking up to pancakes in the morning? Next time try something different with these Banana Bourbon Pancakes!

by A Cozy Kitchen

This Weeks Pick: As I mentioned above, I am going through a serious coconut craze faze right now- coconut milk, coconut oil, coconut butter, shredded coconut, etc. It’s all I think about. So it might come as no surprise then that this week I am going to choose Black Bottom Coconut Bars as my favorite recipe of the week. The topping was chewy, delicious coconut, and the bottom was a thin fudgy brownie crust. LOVED THEM!