Do you remember the Mark Peel cherry ice cream sauce that I told you made me cry at the Silver Spoons event?  That sauce was so incredible that I found myself daydreaming about it a week later.  A dish that sticks in your mind like that must be recreated.  Now, I’m no Mark Peel, but I figured I should be able to jimmy up a home-style version that would appease my craving.  Oh people, I wish I could send each of you a little jar of this divine sauce so you believe me when I say that it may be the best thing I’ve ever made.

At the event, I actually had the nerve (ahem, cajones) to ask Mark what was in his cherry sauce.  Wine.  Vanilla.  Star anise.  Cherries.  Working from that rough outline, I came up with a respectable tribute to his other-worldly original.  A good red wine reduction sauce paired with juicy, fresh Bing cherries, freshly scraped vanilla beans and spooned over vanilla ice cream.  Say hello to your new Grown Up Ice Cream Sundae.

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At the first sight of ripe, red strawberries at the grocery store each spring, I go absolutely bonkers.  Bonkers, people. Three pints for $5? Great, I’ll take six … that kind of bonkers.  After a long, cold winter of nothing but apples, pears and imported oranges, strawberries are a sign of all things summery to come.  Visions of warm days filled with cookouts, burgers and fruit salad dance through my mind.  Of course, this all leads to thought of lounging poolside in a bathing suit, which immediately puts a damper on my desire to swirl those beautiful strawberries into a batter of sugar, flour, butter and all kinds of badness.

What is better than a bowl brimming with fresh, ripe strawberries topped with a lush, creamy vanilla yogurt?  Not much.  The beautiful thing about this dessert is the utter simplicity of it.  When it’s too darn hot for thinking of turning on the oven, this cool bowl of deliciousness is a perfect way to satisfy your sweet tooth without sabotaging your bathing suit body!  Rather than topping these beautiful berries with gobs of whipped cream, the topping is a mixture of Greek yogurt, agave nectar (or honey) and vanilla.  Super simple, low-calorie deliciousness to keep you in bathing suit shape!

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I wish that I could take credit for these ridiculously cute, ingenious bites of pumpkin pie goodness.  I can’t, but I can give credit to the brilliant Bakerella who is the creator of these too-cute-for-words mini-bites of deliciousness. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? If you don’t know Bakerella yet, consider this your official introduction.  Did I mention that Bakerella was the creator of the now-omnipresent cake pops?  Oh yeah, she’s that good.

Starting a new job (and tackling a 90 degree learning curve) has left me exhausted and totally out of time for cooking, baking, blogging and all things fun.  Luckily, this crazy-simple recipe takes almost zero brain power.  I’m fairly certain I wasn’t even paying attention when I made these little guys and they still came out perfectly!  I added some allspice, cloves and ginger to give the filling some extra zest.  I suspect that these will become a quick standby at holiday parties and potlucks.  Next time I’m going to serve these beauties with a little dollop of whipped cream and a dusting of cinnamon. Come on, how can you resist that level of cuteness!

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What makes a cupcake a cupcake?  Is it merely a muffin with frosting?  Or it is a small cake topped with an oppressive amount of sugary buttercream frosting?  To each, his own definition, I suppose.  Your opinion of these cupcakes will depend entirely on your personal definition of what the essence of a cupcake should be.

These cupcakes fall closer to the frosted muffin end of the spectrum.  They are mildly sweet, flavored with toasted sesame seeds, dense and crumbly.  Where you would normally find mountains of powdered sugar-laced buttercream, there is a zippy white chocolate cream cheese frosting.  With no added sugar, the frosting is tangy, mildly sweet and a pleasant companion to, what I’ve determined is the Perfect Breakfast Cupcake.

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Ice cream sandwiches are the pinnacle of summer food.  They evoke images of hot, sticky afternoons spent lounging outside in the company of good friends without a care in the world.  Obviously, some incarnation of these summer goodies needed to make an appearance at my Mini-Urban Cookout.

The outside of an ice cream sandwich needs to have a little crunch to it, in my opinion.  It needs some strength to hold up to all the soft ice cream in the middle.  While a brownie would taste divine, it may become overly mushy when sandwiched against ice cream.  To get the best of both worlds, the flavor of a brownie with the staying power of a cookie, I pulled out an old favorite recipe for brownie roll-out cookies.

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Brownie bites generally fall into one of two categories: (1) dry and cakey or (2) fudgy and mushy.  Bleh.  Rarely do you come across a brownie bite that manages to retain all the best elements of the brownie’s larger, full-sized self: a crisp outer crust with a warm, gooey center.  When I set about finding a recipe that would live up to this dream, I went straight for the Big Book.

Having read some mixed reviews of the actual recipe for brownie bites, I decided to experiment with the infamous Tribute-to-Katharine-Hepburn Brownies.  The story has it that Katharine Hepburn’s rules to live by were (1) Never quit; (2) Be yourself; and (3) Never put too much flour in your brownies.  Well, ok then.  If it works for Katharine Hepburn, then it’s good enough for me!

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Pretend that your favorite boutique cupcake bakery is located halfway across the country.  Pretend that despite this geographic divide you are a loyal subscriber of their email list which constantly updates you of their new seasonal cupcake offerings.  This, of course, leaves your mouth watering for key-lime pie or Irish cream cupcakes that you simply can’t get your grubby little hands on without boarding a plane.

Then they send out the announcement for their limited edition cherry cupcakes.  Gasp!  Oh good lord!  The craving overtakes you.  Rational thinking ceases to exist.  Suddenly you must find a way to make cherry cupcakes.  You know that they will likely pale in comparison, but you simply must have something cherry-flavored in the form of a cupcake.  Immediately.

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