Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
This week I was lucky enough to have a mid-week day off from work. So, in typical Ryan’s Kitchen Journal fashion, I decided to bake something. Being that St. Patrick’s Day is at the end of the week, I figured Irish Soda Bread was a great choice. I’ve also never made soda bread before but had been wanting to. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me up.
Continue reading “Irish Soda Bread, The Ina Garten Way – Barefoot Contessa 59”
In September of 2022, I made a Hummingbird Cake out of the Magnolia Bakery Handbook. For the blog post about making that recipe, I titled it “Move Over Carrot Cake, I’m Coming For You!” At the time, I thought that the Hummingbird Cake was the superior of the two cakes. This assumption was made before I tasted the Carrot Cake out of the Handbook. Let me tell you: I think I was wrong about the Hummingbird Cake being superior. Until I tasted this cake, I was only “meh” about carrot cake. This recipe is a must-have and I even included it below!
Continue reading “The Carrot Cake Recipe That Everyone Needs”
It’s winter in New England, and even though we haven’t gotten any significant snowfall, we have had a few chillier days here and there. What’s the best way to end a cold day? A warm and hearty pasta dish. If you’re looking for something super simple and flavorful, then you MUST give this Ina Garten pasta recipe a try. Trust me, you won’t be sorry. I’m patiently waiting for an excuse to make this guaranteed crowd-pleaser once again.
Continue reading “Ina Makes a Dinner Comeback – Barefoot Contessa 58”
As a way to make good on my promise to include more Ina Garten recipes this year, I made a Bundt cake with a classy flavor combination. At least I think it’s a classy one–for me it invokes upper crust and “adult flavors.” What is this flavor you ask? Chocolate and orange. Like all of Ina’s recipes, this cake was very easy to bake and tasted so yummy. I also got to use the new photography backgrounds I purchased a few weeks ago. I think the photos came out great.
Continue reading “A Bundt Cake with a Wonderful Flavor – Barefoot Contessa 57”
Earlier this week, I found myself on Ina Garten’s website. I can’t recall exactly why I was there but nevertheless, I was lost in the Ina’s World tab for a little while. I noticed the link to the cookbook index and wondered if it was finally updated to include the recipes from Ina’s most recent book, Go-To Dinners.
Sure enough, it was!
Continue reading “A Return to the Ina Project”
Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Can you believe it? Seems strange to me. It’s almost like it snuck up on us, right? This year, we are doing a much smaller Thanksgiving celebration and, officially, it’s on Saturday, not Thursday. But, I’m still tasked with making dessert and currently in the process of narrowing down what I should make.
Continue reading “Top Thanksgiving Dessert Options”
Ina Garten’s new book, Go-to Dinners came out towards the end of October. Being the Ina fan that I am, I was able to get my hands on a copy a couple days after its release (Thanks, bf!), but because of…life… I haven’t had the chance to really look through it, let alone bake anything from the book.
Continue reading “A Pound Cake with an Ina Twist – Barefoot Contessa 56”
This month, I made a huge dent in the Magnolia Bakery Cookbook project. (I’m kidding, of course. I only made one recipe!) But, July also saw the return to a time when this blog was just beginning. I made an Ina Garten recipe.
Continue reading “July 2022 Baking Round-Up”
I can’t believe it’s been over six months since I last made an Ina recipe! Wow, time sure does fly!! This is also a quick post because things have been quite busy for me the last couple of weeks. But I did get a chance to get some baking in. I needed something quick and easy and thanks to streaming services I found the perfect recipe!
Continue reading “Barefoot Contessa 55 – Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies”
This recipe can be found in Modern Comfort Food.
In addition to the Herb-Marinated Pork that I made last week, I was in the mood to bake. But I wanted a simple recipe that wouldn’t have me spending hours in the kitchen measuring, mixing, baking, and cleaning. After a few minutes of flipping through the Barefoot Contessa Index, I stumbled upon the Chocolate Dipped Brown Sugar Shortbread recipe from Comfort Food.
This seemed to be a somewhat straight-forward shortbread recipe. But it was the first time I made short bread before. In the head notes to this recipe, Ina said that these cookies taste just like Milanos. I mean, anything that tastes or resembles a Milano cookie has to be good, right?
While this recipe is easy and doesn’t cause an over abundance of dishes (which seems to be common with many baking recipes), this recipe does require you to get a little messy. But as Gesine Prado says, “…you have to get messy to get delicious.” After combining the dough, you need to shape pieces of the dough into logs.
I got about halfway through the shaping process when I realized that my logs probably had too much dough and would puff up a bit more than they should have during baking. It also meant I would get less cookies, but I think that was actually better for my family since it would help with controlling the amount we eat.
After baking, my prediction came true. The cookies ended up being a bit fatter than the ones in the photo. But since it wouldn’t impact the taste, I didn’t mind so much. I used a cookie scoop to ensure even sized cookies. I just used the wrong one. I should have used the smaller one, not the medium one. Oh, well. Now I know for next time!
The cookies looked and smelled so good after removing them from the oven that I had to try one even before I was able to dip them in chocolate! But as you can see in the picture above, some of the cookies lost their shape as well. Again, I think this has to do with the amount of dough used or how tightly I shaped them. Some may have been shaped a little more loosely than others, causing them to spread out more.
Once the cookies were cooled, I melted the chocolate and mixed in the melted butter. The addition of melted butter seemed odd to be at first but I did it anyway! It caused the chocolate to become a little thicker and helped it not to spread out too much.
After dipping them all in the chocolate, as directed in the recipe: only the top of the front of the cookies, I let them sit for about 45 minutes before eating one. I opted not to add the chopped nuts as called for in the original BC recipe.
These cookies actually taste better cool! At least for me. Allowing the cookie to cool gives all the flavors time to marry together and taste better. There is a LOT of sugar in these cookies, so if you eat one while still warm you won’t get the right effect since the sugar is still hot from baking.
While the cookies I made came out looking far from perfect, everyone liked them. In fact, some people recommended that they be made around the holiday season. And I think with them dipped in white chocolate and then decorated with chopped up peppermint pieces, they would look festive and taste great!
