After making eight or nine batches, here’s my spin on the recipe:

We like our salsa less liquidy, so I briefly drain the tomatoes, and then add in some of the tomato juice at the end.

I also dislike getting chunks of raw onion and jalapeno in my salsa, so I process them into very small pieces first

And finally, I like more lime juice than the original recipe calls for, so I use the juice of a whole lime.

My version of the recipe is after the jump.

Salsa
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman cooking website
Makes about 3 cups, give or take

1/4 cup chopped onion (I use about 1/4 of a medium onion)
1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 jalapeno, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup cilantro
1 can (28 ounces) whole tomatoes with juice, drained and juice reserved
2 cans (10 ounces each) Rotel tomatoes, drained
1 Tbs sugar
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
Juice of one lime

In a food processor finely chop onions, garlic, jalapeno and cilantro. Add in whole tomatoes, Rotel tomatoes, sugar, salt, pepper, cumin and lime juice. Pulse until the salsa is the consistency you want, adding some of the reserved tomato juice if you feel it is a little dry. Taste and adjust for seasoning, then refrigerate for a couple of hours before eating.

She may be right. This is certainly one of the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made. The cookies baked up crunchy on the edges and chewy in the center. The dough itself has flavor (so many chocolate chip cookie doughs are tasteless, relying on the chocolate chips for flavor) due to three kinds of sugar. They baked up fat and round without much spread. And a sprinkle of salt on the tops contrasts nicely with the sweet cookie.

Skeptical? Click on that link up there for the recipe and try it yourself.

Seriously, these are good. The sweet, tangy filling is encased by a soft, just slightly sweet yeasty bread. The lemon flavor is everywhere. There’s lemon zest in the dough. The filling is made up of sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. And the cream cheese glaze has lemon juice in it.

You can find the recipe here.

I found the original recipe on www.browneyedbaker.com and made my first batch exactly as the recipe was written. Then I decided to experiment a little bit.

My first change was to use chunky peanut butter instead of creamy. It increased the peanutty flavor and gave the cookies a little more texture. I also increased the amount of oatmeal because I thought the original amount (1/2 cup) was skimpy. I increased the ratio of brown sugar to white sugar and added an extra egg yolk. My final change was to double the recipe and refrigerate the cookies for a couple of hours before baking them. This batch was a keeper.

The cookies stayed on the thick side, with crunchy edges and chewy centers. Be careful not to overbake these. You want them to just start browning around the edges. The middle may look a bit undercooked, but the cookies will continue to cook after you take them out of the oven. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet.

Recipe is after the jump.

Peanut Butter-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from browneyedbaker.com
Makes about 30 cookies

Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. I accidentally picked up a no-sugar added chunky peanut butter that wasn’t very sweet. If you use a peanut butter that has added sugar, I’d decrease the brown sugar by 1/4 cup.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chunky peanut butter
2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (I used old-fashioned rolled oats)
2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions:
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.

In a standmixer, cream together the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract for about 3 minutes. Add the peanut butter and mix well. Add the eggs and egg yolk and beat to combine. On low speed, gradually add the flour mixture until just combined. Stir in the oats and then the chocolate chips.

Use a large cookie scoop (I used a 3-tablespoon scoop) and drop dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and adjust rack to middle of the oven. Space cold dough mounds about two inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheets and flatten them slightly. Bake for 13-15 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly golden around the edges, rotating cookie sheet after 10 minutes of baking. Cool completely on the baking sheet and then store in an airtight container at room temperature.

I got the original recipe here. When I first saw it, I was smitten. I immediately ran out and bought a slow cooker (I know, I know. I’m the last person in the food blogging universe to get one). The first time I made the soup, it was a little thin and watery. Despite the onions, peppers and copious amounts of cumin, there didn’t seem to be much flavor in the soup. After the first bowl, Bryan politely declined any more.

(That was okay by me. I ate the rest of the soup for lunch for more than a week straight. And I don’t do that. Usually.)

The second time I made this soup, I made some small changes that made all the difference. I used yellow onions instead of red onions. I used yellow and red bell peppers and several stalks of celery. And, most importantly, I used two cans of chicken stock instead of water and cut down the liquid by two cups. This version was wonderful. It was full of flavor and not too thin. I have a feeling that I’m going to have to share this soup with Bryan for lunch.

Recipe after the jump.

Black Bean Soup
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen who adapted it from Bon Appetit

Watch your cooking time. The first time I made the soup, it took 4 hours in the slow cooker on high. The second time I made it, it took almost 6 hours on high.

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 medium-size yellow onions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
3 stalks of celery, chopped
4-5 garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons ground cumin
1 16-ounce package dried black beans
2 chopped chipotle chiles from a can, about 2 teaspoons. I seeded mine before chopping them.
2 cans chicken stock (about 4 cups)
1-2 cups hot water
Juice from half of a lemon
2 teaspoons kosher salt
Ground black pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onions, bell peppers and celery and sauté until beginning to brown, about eight minutes. Add garlic and cumin; stir one minute. Transfer mixture to 6-quart slow cooker. Add beans and chipotles, then chicken stock and 1 cup of hot water. Cover and cook on high until beans are very tender, about 3-6 hours. If soup is starting to look a little dry, add more hot water as necessary.

Transfer two cups bean mixture to blender; puree until smooth. Return puree to remaining soup in slow cooker. Stir in lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Adjust seasonings to taste.

The recipe comes from a new book by Christie Matheson called Salty Sweets. I got the recipe here.  The first time I made these cupcakes, it was for a family dinner on Christmas Eve. They were easy enough to make, but I thought they could benefit from a few modifications.

First, I scaled down the amount of baking soda from 1 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon. I also added 1 teaspoon of instant espresso powder to the batter. Second, and mostly importantly, I doubled the amount of butterscotch icing.

But that icing? Oh. My.

See, you really only need one batch of the icing to cover the cupcakes (unless you like a really thick layer of frosting), but you really should try this stuff drizzled over ice cream or straight from the fridge by the spoonful.

The icing is the only part of the recipe that gave me any trouble. You combine brown sugar, heavy cream, butter, water and coarse salt and cook it, on the stovetop, until it thickens. The first time I made the icing, I let it cook for the 15 minutes that the recipe calls for. Well, it never thickened enough that I could frost the cupcakes with it. I ended up beating the icing with a hand mixer to thicken it.

The second time I made the icing, I let it cook for almost 40 minutes. This time it thickened enough to stay put on the cupcakes, but it was pretty thin. In the end, I think I prefer the beaten version of the icing. It makes for a really nice mouth feel, you can mound it up like frosting, and it just looks better.

Unlike regular oatmeal cookies, the dough for these contain no salt. Sea salt (or kosher salt, in my case) is sprinkled over the dough before baking. Another difference in this recipe is that the dough is chilled for at least an hour before baking.

The result is a cookie full of oatmeal flavor with a hit of salt. Not too sweet, these cookies bake up thicker than most oatmeal cookies. They’re a bit crunchy on the edges and softer in the middle.

The first batch I made plain. They were good. The second batch I added dried cranberries to half of the dough and chocolate chips to the other half of the dough. This batch was better, with the cranberry version edging slightly ahead of the chocolate chip version. I really liked the brightness of the cranberries.

But I wouldn’t turn down the chocolate chip version, either.

Anyway, that blog up there? Well, they’re the source for these cookies. The cookies don’t really have a name, and the recipe (which you’ll find here) is completely open to substitutions. They used different kinds of chocolate chunks. Other people used nuts and/or dried fruit. I used chocolate chips. I thought about throwing some dried cranberries in there, but in the end, I just wanted chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate.

The simple chocolate batter is made up of butter, sugar, baking powder, salt, eggs, vanilla, flour and cocoa powder (they call for Dutch-process cocoa powder, but I just used regular). It all gets mixed up in one bowl, then scooped onto cookie sheets and baked. No resting, no refrigeration. In less then 30 minutes, start to finish, you too can be enjoying warm chocolate cookies with a glass of cold milk.

The texture of these cookies is somewhere between a cookie and a brownie. They don’t spread out at all, and you have to be careful not to over bake them, or they’ll turn out dry. And that would be a shame.

Now go make these.

The only change I made to the recipe was to increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees and bake the rolls for about 15 minutes. The higher oven temperature seems to keep the rolls more moist inside.

This cake has been making the rounds in the food blogging world. The recipe comes from thepioneerwoman.com, a website by Ree Drummond, chronicling her life on a ranch. She’s witty, funny and irreverent, and I’m insanely jealous of her kitchen.

Anyway, back to the cake. It’s your typical sheet cake, you know, like the ones that showed up at every neighborhood potluck. Mormons may be known for weird jello salads and odd female names, but sheet cakes come in a close third. So when I saw this recipe, I started having flashbacks to past birthdays and ward suppers, and I knew I’d be obsessed with this cake until I made it.

It’s an easy, two-bowl recipe made with pantry staples. The cake is moist, chocolatey and sweet, thanks to two sticks of butter and two cups of sugar. The chocolate frosting for the cake is made with more butter and a pound of powdered sugar. You can add nuts to the frosting (or not) which contribute a nice crunchy texture.

I found the whole thing sweet and one dimensional. I used to love these kind of cakes as a kid, but now I prefer my chocolate darker and more bitter. That being said, as the cake sat, the frosting melded with the cake, and the whole thing sort of grew on me. Sort of.