Coffee Cake

Long since before I started this blog I've been on the hunt for a good old fashioned crumb topped coffee cake. I've tried several over the years. Either the cake is too dry or the crumbs are too hard or too sandy. Or too much crumb, or not enough crumb. Some include fruit, and although I'm sure they're delicious, I didn't want fruit. Just plain cinnamony coffee cake. And yes, I've posted Crumb Cake on this blog. But that's Crumb Cake and it's all about the crumb. This is coffee cake, and it's all about the cake. I'm sure you see the distinction. Don't ya? Please tell me you do. 

Anywho, I found this recipe and it looked promising. I was wary of the cream cheese layer, I didn't want a strong cream cheese tang to my cake. I was wary of the sour cream in the batter. Again the "tang" thing. Not that I don't like sour cream or cream cheese, I do, really, I just didn't want that for coffee cake. But the cake in the picture looked moist, and the crumbs looked just right and it had pecans. So, I gave it a try. . .

Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

Hello, long time, no blog. Sorry, lots of summer activities and vacation and no time to cook. No cooking = no blogging = unhappy me. But, I'm back and firing up the oven and stove again and ready to try a bunch of new recipes that I've collected over the summer. So get ready, here we go. . .

I realized that it had been quite a while since I made homemade cookies and that it was time to fill the cookie jar. So, I headed to my fist internet stop for recipes, Pinterest, clicked through a dozen or so cookie recipes and decided to make Chocolate Cherry Shortbread. Partly because they looked different and mostly because I love cherries and chocolate. As I was gathering the ingredients the recipe seemed oddly familiar. And why? Probably because I've made a similar cookie on this blog. HA! You may have seen it here. I decided to go ahead and share this recipe because it is somewhat different. No almond flavor and no two flavors of dough. This cookie is basically a similar flavor combination but the texture is more dense and shortbread like. It's is also a LOT easier to make, fewer steps. The only tweaks I made to the original recipe was to skip the chocolate drizzle and add sprinkles to the outside of the cookie. It was mostly and aesthetic choice, because I liked the look of these cookies. Sprinkles or not, give these cookies a try. . .